Back Home! What time is it?

Mission accomplished! We pulled into the driveway a little after one o'clock this morning, which was just after two o'clock in the afternoon Tokyo time. That means we are all wide awake! Actually I've been sleep deprived the past 32 hours or so, and am about to crash. But here are some highlights of what's transpired in that time:

• Gunner slept until six-thirty Tuesday morning! I can see he is quick to learn our ways of sleep. No overnight poo, either.
• Caught a nine-thirty bus to the Incheon airport. As the bellman helped lug our luggage to the bus stop, he says hey, why didn't you hire a van? All I could say was maybe next time.
• After a one-hour bus ride to the airport, we were checked in and at our gate in plenty of time for our one-thirty flight. No poo on the bus.
• During the two-hour flight to Tokyo, Gunner got to ride in the lap of his grandmother (a.k.a. "Lala"), while Nicol sat next to her and Calvin sat next to his granddad ("Lolo.") No poo on the flight to Tokyo.
• Making the connection at Narita was a bit of a challenge. Calvin had fallen asleep on the plane, and we lost the help of my parents who had to catch a train back home. So I had Gunner on my back and Calvin in my arms, plus a bag or two. Nicol stepped up her game and threw Calvin's carry-on onto her back, wheeled her own carry-on with her hands, and carried Robin's travel pillow in her teeth. This is imagery is a fair representation of our two-hour layover there, during which we did not look like the kind of people who should be doing something like this. Still no poo.
• Once again, though, we had a fantastic flight around the world! With the tailwind I think we were only in the air for eleven hours. During that time, Robin and the kids slept and... slept! It was great! We had bulkhead seats where the flight attendants rigged up a contraption they call a bassinet, and Gunner was content to use it to put in his ten hours of sleep. There were a few diaper changes throughout the flight, including one resulting in a casualty due to friendly fire (I like to think he peed on me because he loves me)... but still no poo.
• We landed at JFK around six o'clock Tuesday evening. How we got from the airport to our car in Brooklyn is an experience I hope our children never remember.
• We picked up our car from the home of our friends Lindsey and Sean... but they made sure to give us a warm reception first! They had a sign welcoming Gunner in Hangeul and made us a welcome-home meal: breakfast! Western-style, with eggs and bacon and ham and pancakes and cinnamon rolls! Gunner even crawled around on the floor a bit, fascinated by the activity of the other kids around him.
• By nine o'clock we were back on the road again, Calvin's and Nicol's eyes glued to in-car DVD screens showing Animaniacs videos, and Gunner freaking out. After we realized we needed to feed him, he downed a bottle and kicked back for some more shut-eye on the ride home. Four hours later (including a stop for a snack), we pulled up to our house where Robin's parents (Grandma and Grandpa) were happily waiting for us. And Gunner made poo.

I hope to get some more pictures up tomorrow and maybe get a feel for Gunner's first impressions of "America."

Something Feels Right

It was during his first feeding with us that Gunner began to figure out what was going on. He dropped his bottle, surveyed the situation, and expressed his feelings the only way he knows how.

Up until then, everyone was having a splendid time. Calvin and Nicol demonstrated consideration beyond their years at the office where we picked Gunner up this afternoon. They were so excited to see him and play with him and introduce themselves to him and even give him hugs and kisses. When the greetings and paperwork are complete and it's time to leave, the foster mother brings him to the elevator where our family is waiting with the door open. She hands him to Robin, the doors close, and that's it. Having missed the handoff, Calvin blurted out in a concerned voice, "Don't forget our baby!" as the elevator carried us irreversibly forward in time. I'm still not sure Gunner's new brother and sister grip the permanence of the situation, but for now they are thrilled to have a new baby brother.

Gunner was perfectly content to leave with the strange-looking, funny-talking bunch. We walked him a few blocks through the streets of Gangnam-gu (in Seoul) to our hotel. Finding our room still being serviced, we spread ourselves out in the hallway on our floor and played a little game, giving Gunner time to crawl around and inspect each of us one at a time. There was laughter on everyone's part.

Soon after, our room was ready for us and we moved the party in there. Calvin and Nicol really wanted to play with their brother. Nicol built a play nest for him consisting of blankets and some of her favorite toys. Calvin demonstrated the mechanics of playing with toy cars, even sharing one with Gunner (who quickly inserted it into his mouth).

Feeding time was interrupted by the sinking in of some reality, but it didn't take long for Gunner to cry himself to sleep for his afternoon nap. A few of us took this opportunity to make a smoothie run. Unfortunately for Gunner, when he awoke he found himself surrounded by the same disturbing faces he'd hoped were just a bad dream. His tears were off and on, but in the middle of it he began to warm up to me for some reason. He would stop crying as long as I held him. He felt comfortable enough to crawl around and explore again, but when I went into the bathroom and closed the door he freaked out. He pawed at the bathroom door through tears.

Tonight he fell asleep, amid more sobbing, on his grandfather's shoulder while Robin and I packed. He's sleeping soundly now, but we don't know for how long. In this moment, with Nicol, Calvin, and Gunner all filling the room with the sounds of their heavy slumber, something feels right.

Pick Up Day

This afternoon at two o'clock, which is about one o'clock in the morning Eastern Daylight Time, we pick up Gunner for good. We will then enter "survival mode." We plan to give him some time to introduce himself to his new siblings and have some playtime. Then tonight, when it's time to sleep, we expect the novelty of it all to wear off and for panic to set in. We have a shift-plan in place for walking him up and down the less-inhabited halls of our hotel, giving him time to cry himself to sleep, while allowing his brother and sister a peaceful night's rest. Hopefully he will fall asleep no later than eleven o'clock so we can all be up by seven to pack our bags for a very long day:

• hour-and-a-half bus ride to the airport 
• two hour flight to Tokyo two hour layover in Tokyo 
• fourteen hour (or whatever) flight to New York City 
• eat breakfast no matter what time it is 
• four hour drive back home 
• crash 

If you happen to see us in the next few days, don't expect us to look rested.

All I want is Breakfast

OK I know we have a lot going on here but I really have to make a comment on breakfast in Korea. The fact is I like a good rice dish with fish, beef, pork, vegetables, and spices, just as much as the next guy. I just don't like it for breakfast.

The other day I went to a little restaurant with my parents where not a lick of English was spoken, but they had pictures of what looked like an omelette on a sign outside. We went inside and tried to order three of them, but the way to get service is to mark your order on a paper order sheet that's written entirely in Korean. We had to walk back outside and try to match the characters on the picture with the ones on the menu; but it was complicated by the fact that the sign said "omelette" under the picture while the menu said in effect stuff like, "western omelette," "three-cheese omelette," "seafood omelette." But all in Korean. You get the idea.

We managed to order three of something. While waiting for our order to be cooked, my dad got up to get us some water - because they don't bring you drinks, you go get that for yourself. He came back with four glasses of warm, murky liquid. "I think this is tea," he says. That's fine. It tasted nothing like tea. Later we found out the warm tea was in fact soup. We were supposed to pour that into the soup bowls, not the water glasses. Who eats hot soup for breakfast? I didn't care, I was waiting for my omelette.

But it turns out that "omelette" is completely misleading. The dish was essentially a scrambled egg wrapped around a bunch of rice. More rice! Agh! I like rice, but three meals a day??? I'll come right out and say it: I want some pig! Dead pig! Does anyone in Asia know how to fry up some bacon, ham, or sausage? Even as I type this I'm sitting in a Dunkin' Donuts, one of the two U.S. franchises that appears on nearly every corner of the city of Seoul (the other being Starbucks). I've just polished off two of their egg-and-bacon-with-cheese english muffins which appear to be made with uncooked (but slightly warm) bacon. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

My adventuresome eating spirit is withering without the ability to start the day with a decent breakfast. Everything is complicated by the fact that we're still waking up every morning about three hours before the restaurants open (six hours early on weekends!), and of course by Robin's pregnancy. She has pregnant-lady cravings, and they are not for rice or fish. Fortunately Robin is able to satisfy her hunger at our hotel restaurant which has a bunch of western chefs who know how to make stuff like, well, omelettes. Unfortunately, eating there comes to about $30 a plate. For breakfast! A Denny's would transform this place. What I wouldn't give for a Grand Slam breakfast right now...

First Visit

Sorry for the delay, but we lost our hotel internet connection... so without further ado... here's Gunner!

There are a few things we immediately found upon meeting baby Gunner.

1. He is healthy, strong, and friendly.
2. His head is huge. Just look at that picture... his head is almost as big as mine! (Fortunately we'd been forewarned that Koreans' heads trend on the larger side during the early years.)
3. He is very busy, as in not gonna sit still for no stinkin' plane ride!
4. He's got a great laugh. His sense of humor appears to be rooted in mischief. His hardest laugh came after knocking several cherry tomatoes onto the floor and watching them scatter all over.
5. His clothing size is "80." We don't know what that means, but he has about three chins when he laughs.
6. He is playful. We were with him for a little over an hour at his foster home and it was all playtime and smiles!
7. He sleeps a total of ten hours a day including two one-hour naps. Clearly we have our work cut out for ourselves in raising his sleep aptitude to the standard consistent with our family.

We are now off for some Seoul-seeing. And waiting...

Anticipating Gunner

Later this morning (Friday) we meet Gunner in person for the first time. It's a little before four o'clock in the morning and I can't sleep. Part of it is the ongoing effects of jet lag, but part of it is the combination of excitement and terror about meeting our new son. It's funny how our "normal" is defined by the world in which we happen to grow up. Yet my own children's world, the one I'm shaping for them, is going to be foreign to me. It's a strange feeling.

Surprise!

This is as good a time as any to share this photo. Robin is about 16 weeks along now, due in September. We found out a couple weeks after accepting our referral. Surprise!

Safe in the Air, Safe in Japan

We made it!

From Sunday to Monday we spent fourteen hours in the air during which we, as a family, consumed four feature-length films, six children's stories, ten meals, three hours of Leapster2 gameplay, four hours of Japan Airlines video gameplay (mostly Calvin), an hour studying the Boeing 777 safety card (that was Nicol), three hours of Disney channel, three magazine articles, and twenty hours of sleep (not at all uniformly distributed), all interspersed with periodic treks up and down the aisles and visits to the lavatory.

Calvin in the zone

To our surprise and relief, there was no whining, crying, or complaining. We even had a few measures we didn't have to deploy, like the read-to-me books on our Nook Color, a couple card games, and a huge bag of candy. The kids were in great moods the entire flight!

Calvin began to show the signs of a weary traveler while going through customs. But having a wailing three-year-old gets you expedited service in a lot of places, and Japan is no exception. Nicol, on the other hand, is a champion traveler. She had nothing but smiles the entire trip. Her excitement is exhausting but also contagious. She's a great influence on Calvin, who is often overwhelmed by the blitz of activity around him. Nicol sees the fun in everything.

Here's a brief anecdote from the airport about Japanese efficiency: A mere thirty seconds after walking through customs with what we thought was all our luggage, the airport paging system announced that they were looking for me. My parents, waiting for us in the lobby, heard the announcement before we got to them. It turns out I had left one piece of luggage on the carousel. An airport official whisked me back to the other side of the customs gate so I could retrieve it. I couldn't help but think that if I'd been so absent-minded at JFK, one of two scenarios would play out: the first is that I would get my luggage a week later, after it had been thoroughly inspected and run through various bomb/drug/cigar-sniffing machines. The second is that I'd be arrested. I certainly could not imagine a U.S. airport notifying me of forgotten luggage before I'd even left the airport.

Robin on the balcony of my parents' house

A minivan was our ride home, and while the kids were excited to play with their grandparents at their house in Ichihara, we all crashed by 8p local time. It turns out the typical pattern for travelers from the U.S. to Japan is to wake up at three o'clock in the morning after their first night here. Robin and I tapped our deepest desires for sleep to break this pattern, but Calvin and Nicol were not so strong. They were up and ready to go very early, and we finally released them from their room when we heard my parents stirring a little after five o'clock. We stayed in bed.

For our first excursion into the local neighborhood later that morning, we strolled up the bike/jogging path just outside my parents' house, passing a row of cherry blossom trees that are expected to bloom any day now. Some isolated trees are already blooming.

Calvin on the walking path across the street

A row of cherry blossom trees

Nicol and Calvin in front of a cherry blossom tree already in bloom

What I call the rocket slide

We continued on to a nearby playground where our children joined other kids from my parents' missionary team. It was a beautiful, cloudless day, the temperatures a warm sixty degrees. The park was full of children climbing on an assortment of playground sets. Calvin and Nicol took over this rocket slide, Nicol declaring that she was going to go down it a hundred times, and Calvin experimenting with different sliding techniques with the aim of achieving maximum speed. They played their hearts out until lunchtime, after which Calvin went to bed for a nap and Nicol watched a movie. After her movie, Nicol also put herself to bed for a little rest.

They both awoke from their naps at five o'clock the next morning.

Going for a ride

As we sit here at JFK airport preparing to board our plane for Japan, this is what I've been thinking.

Every now and then people make decisions that remind me of that feeling you get right after leaping off of a diving board for your first dip into a pool. Perfectly dry, you travel through the air and sort of wonder about the decision you've just made.

Sure, the pool's clear, cool water looked inviting as you approached the edge of the platform; and it's a warm, sunny day, perfect for a swim. But now, as your movement upward is overcome by the force of gravity and you're briefly suspended in the air, neither rising nor falling, you think, I wonder how cold that water is? Maybe I should wade into this. And how clean is it? Look at all the people reading and sunbathing in the lounge chairs. That sure looks relaxing. Maybe I didn't really need to do this. But it's too late. There is no changing your mind. The decision you made a second ago when you launched yourself from stability has set into motion a series of events that will transpire with considerable certainty. You will briefly fly through the air. Gravity will pull you toward the earth. You will hit the water at about 30 mph (I like the high-dive). You will get wet. So there in mid-air, as you begin to fall, you think, nothing I can do now but brace myself!

I've gotten this feeling many times in life. Choosing a college, accepting a job offer, putting a ring on a certain young woman's finger, then putting another ring - one signifying a deeper promise - on that same finger several months later.... Obviously I think all those decisions were good ones. But each time, once the decision in my head became a public commitment to another person (or people), I felt an overwhelming sense that I was no longer in control. I'd become a passenger of life, maybe having chosen a destination and a route, but far from being in the driver's seat (which may explain all the detours). This is how I've felt since accepting the referral for baby Gunner.

Back to the diving board analogy. I've never regretted splashing into the water after a dive. I love that feeling, and I've always put enough thought into it that no matter how cold the water is, I know I'll enjoy it when I'm surrounded by it. But after all these years jumping into pools on hot, summer days, I've never shaken that feeling. Now I'm suspended in the air. In a few days, I'll brace myself.

Preparing for Korean Cuisine

This morning I discovered that eating Korean food makes me wake up with a headache and reeking of garlic. Last night we had a small, celebratory dinner at a Korean restaurant a few minutes from our house. We ate gun mandoo (pork and pork dumplings, sort of) and sushi for appetizer, then for main course we had bulgogi (ribeye), joomulback galbi (prime short ribs) and bibimbap (indescribable). It was topped off with a dessert whose name I didn't get, but it was a bowl of sweet, sugary liquid with rice floating in it. It tasted better than it sounds. In fact, everything was tasty, but I'm concerned we won't have the luxury of ordering by pictures and numbers when we're in Korea.

Oh, there was something called soju served throughout the dinner. I drank a lot of it. This is the likeliest cause of the headache.

App for that?

Does this Blogger app for the iPhone work? (Can you tell I've deviated from the list?)


- Posted using BlogPress from Robin's iPhone

"To Do" List

For your amusement. This is the list of tasks we wrote down for ourselves last week in anticipation of Monday's phone call. The idea was to get them all done before boarding the airplane Sunday. Funny what makes it onto these lists:

1. Make hotel reservations for Seoul
2. "Buy" plane tickets
3. Organize NCAA March Madness pool
4. Make sleeping arrangements for Brooklyn
5. Paint bedroom trim
6. Install bathroom mirror
7. Install shower glass
8. Install bathroom baseboards
9. Buy and install soap dispenser
10. Assemble crib
11. Find crib
12. Buy replacement parts for crib (added two days later)
13. Watch NCAA basketball
14. Plan a celebration dinner at the local Korean restaurant
15. Clean house
16. Set up Gunner's blog
17. Install safety gate at top of stairs
18. Prepare airplane-friendly kid entertainment
19. Download Nook books
20. Clean guest room
21. Arrange dog walker
22. Watch more NCAA basketball
23. Repair A/C duct
24. Plan food for trip
25. Get Nicol’s homework
26. Borrow Leapster games
27. Fix shower grout
28. Buy and install doorknobs
29. Buy and install door hinges
30. Strip and paint doorway
31. Do taxes (while watching NCAA basketball)
32. Set up high chair
33. Wash Gunner’s clothes
34. Buy diapers, wipes, baby food
35. Clear out chokable toys from playroom
36. Clean car
37. Buy booster seat for Calvin
38. Install baby seat for Gunner
39. Fly to Korea

Travel Plans

Here is a brief run down on our travel plans. In a later post I'll reveal Robin's secrets on how she got all our flights using frequent flyer miles when, in fact, we are not frequent flyers. But for now, here's the important stuff:

1. Saturday, March 26 - drive to Brooklyn, NY for an overnight stay.
2. Sunday, March 27 - depart from JFK airport for Tokyo, Japan.
3. Monday, March 28 - arrive at Narita Airport in Tokyo, then ride the train to Chiba to stay with my parents for a couple days.
4. Thursday, March 31 - depart from Narita airport for Seoul, South Korea. Arrive in Seoul a couple hours later.
5. Friday, April 1 - meet Gunner Jin face-to-face! Go back to our hotel (without him) an hour later. Hope we made a good first impression!
6. Monday, April 4 - day of "The Transfer." I don't know what else to call it. As far as we're concerned, this is the day Gunner is brought into our family, though technically we are only considered "temporary guardians" at this point.
7. Tuesday, April 5 - back on the plane, thanks for staying, hope you enjoyed South Korea, now get out! The Korean program does not want us loitering about in their country with our new baby. I will try to explain this when I better understand it myself.
8. Tuesday, April 5 - in a flight that seems to defy the space-time continuum, we arrive at JFK in New York only five minutes after leaving our connection in Tokyo. We hope to drive our family of five straight home from here.

Hanging out in Japan for a couple days while en route to Seoul may sound like poor planning given the recent seismic, tidal, and nuclear disasters that have struck the nation. We are not going into this casually. But it turns out all the available flights took us through Narita anyway. The option to acclimate to the new time zone in the company of my parents, who have been living in Japan for a year now and dearly miss their grandkids, is more appealing than that of hauling our two kids from one 14-hour flight onto another bound for Seoul without giving them a day or two outside the confines of an aerodynamic tin can. On the surface, it probably is a bad idea. In the deeper context of our family's growth, we hope it's a wonderful, memorable trip.

Phone Call

Yesterday we got the phone call inviting us to South Korea to meet and bring home this little guy. Isn't he cute?

Although we've been waiting for this call for a few months - you could even say almost a year - the event has initiated a whirlwind of chaos in our home that will last until... well, until all of our kids are enrolled in Summer's Best Two Weeks? I hope you enjoy following along on this adventure over the next couple of weeks as we fly over, with our five-year-old and three-year-old in tow, to meet baby Gunner Jin.