Home, part 1

We've had our fill of airports. Our epic journey home took a total of 30 hours and Abe was a dream traveler. Here he is waiting to board the plane in Addis:

While waiting outside the gate in Addis, a couple of twins adopted five years ago from Ethiopia by a couple in Denmark were entranced by the boy. They played and giggled with him for at least an hour:


On the plane with KLM (my favorite airline ever--they still use real silverware!). Abe is thinking, "Dudes, I look ridiculous with this monster booger on my face."

We like our "Royal Dutch" flight attendants on KLM. He offered to take the obligatory family photo:

The worst part of the trip was the short flight from Amsterdam to London. Abe got overheated in his pajamas and screamed bloody murder for half an hour before we took off. A nice Somalian man sitting next to us kept trying to tell us that he might be too hot, so we finally got the message and Abe was immediately happy for the rest of the flight. I, obviously, didn't take a photo of this meltdown

We flew American Airlines from London to L.A. and they were nice enough to give us three bulkhead seats all for ourselves with the most legroom I've seen on a plane. The in-flight videos weren't working, so between meals and playing with Abe, we tried our best to sleep, which we weren't very successful at. At least the games were working, so I got to play a few minutes of Tetris. Fun.

Abe waited patiently to get off the plane in Los Angeles. Everyone who walked by oohed and ahhed over him sitting here in the big chair:
Abe slept through his first time in a carseat and spent the next couple of hours bonding with Auntie Carolee:
As much as we enjoyed our time in Ethiopia, it feels so nice to be home again. We were all passed out last night by 9pm, and when Abe woke up wide awake 1am, I got up to feed him but was so tired I was nauseous. Super-Dad Ted took over for the rest of the night. The two guys played downstairs until 5am when Abe finally went back to sleep. Mama slept through it all.

Ted has currently been awake since 1am and is walking around the house wondering when he's going to get tired again. I, on the other hand, feel like a new person thanks to the ten hours I sleep I got, and Abe is falling asleep by sucking on the hand puppet dragon's head in his Baby Einstein activity center as I write this. I should be responsible and lay him down in his bed.

I'm still going through all the comments you all left while we were gone. Though I was able to send emails for posting here, I wasn't able to read many comments, so that is going to be fun reading for me once the boy sleeps again. I also can't wait to check all your blogs and find out what's happened since we've been gone. We'll be posting more about our trip in the next week. Thanks to all who've followed this story and for all the love.