Home

We are home.

We got out of bed at 4am in Tasmania and 36 hours later were (trying) to go to bed at home.

(I say trying since Sam got a second - or third or fourth - wind and kept us up another couple hours.

And of those 36 hours, my children slept exactly 8 (Sadie) and 6 (Sam).

Not exactly what I was hoping for. However, they were fairly happy and managable for all of the waking hours, so I can't complain too much.

Sam was enthralled with the safety videos shown before each flight (he also knows the emergency procedures card backwards and forwards) and we spent quite a bit of time discussing water landings, most of which consisted of me trying to convince him that we didn't really want to have one.

Sadie was not as wiggly than she was on the flight to Australia and required much less "wrangling" by me. She happily played her Leapster, colored, and played with stickers. Her other delight was holding her finger over the attendant call button on the handrest, grinning at me and asking "This one?" even though I had already told her no somewhere around 217 times.

Here's a lovely shot of the Devonport airport before we left. We got quite the looks when we traipsed in with our 6 large suitcases, 4 backpacks, 1 laptop bags, 2 blankets, and 2 preschoolers in a double stroller.
Joe's retort: "Lot of stuff for a weekend visit, huh?"

I felt the need to explain: "We've been here 3 months."

We thankfully didn't have to get our baggage in Melbourne and transfer it to the international terminal as we had been warned might be the case. (I think we got the nice guy at the counter that morning, since the first guy that was supposed to help us grumpily told us to wait for the other guy as he apparently did not want to deal with us and all our stuff.)

The next place we got looks was in LAX when we had to get our luggage to go through Customs. We had all our bags divided between two carts, but that still left the kids and the stroller. Unable to push both a cart and a stroller, we made our way through the airport with Joe and I both pushing a cart and Sadie pushing Sam in the stroller.

At LAX, the kids were quite entertained trying to see if they were the right size to be carry-on luggage. At that point they had each only slept 4 and a half hours, so I was ready to stow them in an overhead compartment. Too bad they were a little too big. (Just kidding....)

Grandma and Papa were waiting for us at the airport in Chicago, with the gingersnaps that had been promised Sam in hand. I have never been so happy to see O'Hare in my life.

We got home and had our pizza eaten by about 9 and tried to put the kids to bed around 10, hoping that since they had slept so little on the plane we could just avoid the whole jet lag thing.

No go.

Sadie actually did well, sleeping all night until 6am. Sam didn't fall asleep until 1 and then had to be woken up at 1 the next afternoon.

I had hope the next night when we had both of them asleep by 9:30. Again, Sadie did great. Poor Sam woke up around 11 from what had apparently been a short nap and was ready to be awake again. I tried laying with him in bed to get him to go back to sleep, but by 12:30 gave up and we headed downstairs for a treat and some playtime. He looks real ready to go to sleep, doesn't he? (Maybe the ice cream wasn't such a good idea...)

He finally fell asleep again around 3:30. I feared we were moving in the wrong direction, thinking he might sleep until 3 in the afternoon this time. Thankfully, I was wrong and he woke up around 10:30 fairly happy.

So tonight, in trying to avoid another "nap," we kept him up until 10:30 and are hoping to make it to morning.

Of course, as he was going to bed, he asked "What can I have for a treat in the middle of the night tonight?"

Benedryl.