No place like home

We're home! Finally, finally, after driving home from Chicago yesterday and today, Louis is home! We're not sure whether he knows he is finally home or if he thinks this is just yet another hotel his parents have selected for the night. Sometimes I wonder what's going through his mind.

But we made it and Louis was terrific during the ride. He had never been in a car seat before noon yesterday and only cried until the car started moving. He enjoyed watching out the windows and he had a lot to say about what he saw, though I can't tell you what that was exactly. We are sorry not to know what he thinks of everything. We can tell, however, that he was excited about a lot of things we saw along the way.

Sometimes Louis did get upset about being in the car seat for too long so we would stop and explore the rest area. We discovered that service areas (at least the ones we visited) sell Cup of Noodles (sadly, not the octopus flavor, which I accidentally fed to Louis last week--with no complaints from him) and today's rest stop even had containers of mandarin oranges. (The Cup of Noodles in the photo was left over from China, so don't get excited thinking that the Ohio Turnpike offers Chinese lettering on their Cup of Noodles.) Apple juice was easily accessible (John will tell you we almost missed our flight from Guangzhou to Beijing on Saturday because I made him stop for apple juice in the airport and the restaurant made it from scratch) and Cheerios served as both nourishment and entertainment. The car will need a full cleaning.

We spent last night outside Pittsburgh and had a relatively easy drive home today. Our latest struggle is jet lag. John and I don't know whether it's affecting us but it's definitely affecting Louis. We were up until almost 4 a.m. last night with Louis who was energized and ready to go!

When we were in China sometimes we joked about driving home, so it serves us right that we ended up driving the last stretch of our trip. But it was actually one of the best travel experiences of the trip. We could work around our son's schedule, be as loud in the car as we wanted, play with all the obnoxious musical toys, scream "Peekaboo!" and not worry about who heard, and in the end we are home.

We stopped briefly at my parents' house to pick up the key to ours (next time we travel internationally, remind us to take a key to the house, a cell phone, an ATM card...). It is a credit to life in 2009 that we had exactly $22 in US currency when we landed in Chicago and we had almost $20 in cash when we arrived home tonight. Thank goodness for credit cards and rental cars that come with EZ Pass. Our visit with my parents and two of my sisters was brief but good. Louis was a bit overwhelmed by the house, and shy with my parents, but he warmed to Aunt Treasa and Aunt Shai almost immediately. John had commented that Louis often tries to interact with young women, and it's true. He had a blast playing the family piano and spinning on a stool (under supervision, of course). The photo of him and John with all the snow is at my parents' house.

The best part of the day was our arrival home. Louis was asleep, but he woke up and looked and looked and looked at the room. Then he jumped off my lap. He went to sit in his "Louis" chair, and to play at his table and chair set. He pulled out several toys, talking and laughing and smiling the whole time. Our families welcomed us home with a beautiful homemade sign and balloons and groceries and gifts and clean bathrooms and a newly painted kitchen and living room ceiling. When Louis realized the balloons weren't just decorative, he had a wonderful time, bouncing them around and yelling.

After our long journey home and staying in four different hotels with our son over the past two weeks, it was so moving to see how Louis responded to the home we have been preparing for him. We had to go into every room, pull books off the shelves, meet stuffed animals, play with toys, and just explore. When it was time to go to bed, Louis kept pointing downstairs to the play area and the balloons. He is probably afraid that we'll wake him in the morning and take him to the next temporary living space, and he'll miss out on all the toys. But he will have many days to enjoy them!

The photos include one of Louis eating a McDonald's cheeseburger in South Bend (his Baba was so proud), Louis wearing a pair of "sunglasses" we bought in Guangzhou, Louis sleeping in his car seat, using his panda bear hat as a pillow, and a photo from our Friday night dinner at a second German restaurant in Guanzhou. Louis was thrilled to be reading the menu. And he loved the freshly squeezed watermelon juice the waitress brought him. You will notice that Treasa is better at posting photos than I am.

I have many photos to go through and videos we want to post, but those will have to wait for another day!