home

Because we used flight miles to travel, we had a pretty long itinerary for the trek home - about 42 hours total travel time. We left the hotel in Guangzhou on Friday morning at 7:30am (Thursday night at 5:30pm in Utah) and got home to SLC at 10:30am on Saturday. But hey, the flights were free.

I also booked Anna as a lap child instead of getting her a ticket. Now Anna is pretty attached by now and in travel terms, way too attached for my arm, shoulder and back muscles. She wouldn't go to Joy even though Joy was sitting right next to me so except for a few bathroom breaks, I held Anna in my arms for the 2 hour flight to Beijing, the 12 hour flight to Detroit and the 3 hour flight to SLC. Tony has been rubbing my arms, shoulders, neck and back since I've been home, but they are still in pretty bad shape.

So home....what they say is so true. There is no place like home. I had my sister pick us up from the airport as I wanted my our reunion - and Ryan's meeting Anna for the first time to be at home instead of the airport.

We pulled into the driveway and Tony and Ryan came out to the driveway to meet us. Ryan saw me and started yelling, "there's mommy, there's mommy!" And that is when I started crying. He ran over to me and I sat down on the driveway and held my two babies and cried and cried. It was such a sweet and tender moment.

Eventually, we made it into the house and got down to the business of getting Anna settled. We had put Abby (our yellow lab) in the back yard since Anna is afraid of dogs. Anna was a bit bewildered, but seemed to be adjusting. Ryan was an absolute champ. He would bring his toys over to Anna and he would talk to her. And he kept repeating "you came home and you brought Anna."




Ryan telling Anna not to touch the clock in front of the TV:  It's not a toy, Anna.

They played with Ryan's legos and at first it was a bit of a power struggle over the toys. But I showed Ryan how to hand something to Anna and then ask for it back with your hand open and Anna complied. And then we practiced sharing - which Ryan is already fairly good at. Ryan would also bring Anna's stuffed bear over to her and say, "here's your bear Anna". And then he would say funny things like (pointing at Abby sitting sadly outside in the backyard) - "Abby is having a time out".




It looks like a hug, but I'm pretty sure it's not. Anyway, how cute are they?

They are certainly having their moments of conflict though - mostly over toys, but Anna gets really jealous whenever I hold Ryan. Ryan seems to be ok, but he definitely wants to be held by mommy a lot more than usual.

They had their first bath together on Sunday and seemed to like playing together - at least they were both laughing and splashing.



Ryan was definitely having a fun time...Anna seemed to be unsure whether to laugh or cry.

So all in all, things are going pretty well. Anna is pretty freaked out by the enormous monster in the house (Abby). How would you feel being taken from your home to a place that was totally foreign and being placed in a new home with strangers who fed you weird food, spoke a strange language that you didn't understand and there was a huge animal, twice your size that wanted to lick your face?