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!