Merry Christmas, Stateside

It's 6am, Christmas morning, and i'm the only one awake.  I just put Jordan to bed after his 5am feeding, and all is quiet.  There's no presents under the tree because, like many big families, we no longer celebrate Christmas on Christmas day.  My brothers and sisters are all off with in-laws, and we will get together on the 27th.

Jorkevstherdan (it's a work in progress) successfully made the trip to Chicago, a mostly uneventful 24 hour journey from Hangzhou.  I lost count at how many people tried to make me worry about the flight, warning that traveling with an infant would be a nightmare.  I never let myself give into the hype, though, and in retrospect, it was truly uneventful.  Part of that if due to Jordan's awesome personality.  Even at 10 weeks, i can tell he's going to be a cool, relaxed dude.  He smiles on cue, doesn't fuss, sleeps well, loves cuddling, and doesn't cry.  I've been keeping count; he's cried 5 times so far, and two of those were when he got vaccinations.  

United also made our trip much more bearable by providing a bassinet that attached to the bulkhead in front of us.  Basically, that made the whole "traveling with an infant" thing simple.  Now if they would only resume giving away free alcohol on international flights, they would continue to be my airline of choice.   

So we arrived in Chicago and immediately made a bee-line for Portillo's.  Obviously.  If you're from Chicago, you understand.

We've been hanging out with whatever local family i have, and getting ourselves onto the new time zone.  Having an infant adds a whole new wrinkle to that problem, but he's basically sleeping through the night now again, so even that problem is mostly behind us.  Now i just need to make myself sleep through the night.

We're spending two weeks in Chicago and two more in Colorado, with very few things actually planned.  We like it that way, and should make it easier to travel with the little man.

I'll leave you with an example of the English we find on baby stuff here.  This was on a diaper changing mat.   It's fantastic!  I mean, are they even trying?  Even with the minimum of effort, like if they copied straight from an online translator, it wouldn't be this bad.  Note: in the first line, "wanmei" means "perfect" in Chinese, so that's at least a decent attempt at Chinglish.  The rest is just madness.

wanmei baby

My best Friend

LtitLE SWEET

Too are

go puhhy

and make

me smile!! 

Honestly, they must be slapping together a bunch of random words and letters, randomizing the capitalization and hoping no one can read it. Because, you know, having "English" on a product makes it worth more?

~Kev