Better than Expected...

Better than expected is the phrase I use to describe the travel home. I had geared myself up for 13 hours of non stop crying. I figured if I could handle 30 hours of labor I could handle 13 hours of crying. Ellie, however, was a trooper and greatly exceeded our expectations and handled the trip quite well.

We had a direct flight from Seoul to Chicago leaving at 12 noon, then a hop from O'Hare to Rochester after a brief layover. Ellie fell asleep in the van from the agency to the Inchon airport. At the airport she had a tough time and did some crying but fell asleep again after I tied her on in my podaegi (a traditional Korean baby carrier). She even slept through the boarding process.

There were lots of babies on this plane so we weren't able to get bulkhead seats where we would have had more room and a bassinet but it still worked out OK. We had two seats alone toward the back of the plane so I had lots of space between my seat and the window where I could stash the diaper bag and other necessities. Phil and I worked out a system for meals where one of us would hold Ellie on the back of the plane while the other one ate. Ellie was upset and crying 3 different times. The first two times we were able to walk around the plane and get her to fall asleep (yeah podaegi!). She even took one nap that was three hours long allowing Phil and I to zone out to a movie. The last time she was upset was the most difficult. We had only a couple more hours to go and Ellie was definitely mom shopping. She would reach out to every Korean woman on the plane. She was missing her foster mom and could not be comforted by me. One of the stewardesses was nice enough to hold her for a while. Ellie was very glad to have a Korean face to look at and Korean words to listen to. These times of crying only seemed to come when she was tired and needed to sleep, other than that she would play with toys and eat snacks and generally entertain us. Phil and I both think the flight home went faster than the flight there, who would have thought!

We had a small welcoming committee great us in the Rochester airport. Phil's mom and dad, Abby, Gabe, our good friend Polly and her children Eric, Gina and Luke. It is good that Grandma Patt was snapping pictures because we were too tired to think clearly.

Abby and Gabe were very excited to meet their new sister. Abby especially seems very smitten with Ellie.