Home safe and kinda sound

The Dad here again. Some of you had been wondering, and so this is
just a brief post to let you all know that we did make it home safe
and sound on Saturday night. Since we've been home, Ren has been
having difficulty with the time change which has affected us all,
though particularly Tamara who Ren still needs when he's tired or
upset. So sorry about the lack of posts, and lack of pix for this
post - we've been rather energy-limited.

In brief, Kiyomi puked on the plane, so we gave her gravol. That gave
us an excuse to drug Ren too (the Gravol was out after all...) So
both kids slept most of the flight to Toronto and it went quite
smoothly, though we all still felt like crap at the end of it. We
then madly rushed through every stage at the Toronto airport - on the
Beijing-Toronto leg, we figured out that we had all of 50 minutes to
get through customs, and then register Ren for Permanent Residence
status with immigration (which took us well over an hour last time),
then wait for our bags, take the bags to check-in for our Ottawa leg,
meet Miyo and family briefly, and then go through security.
Miraculously, everything went very quickly (we got ushered into a
short line for people with young kids at customs, and there was nobody
in line at immigration) and we made it through security just as they
were calling our names for "last call".

We were able to briefly see Miyo, Martin, Mika and Kai along the way
at the Toronto airport, and at the Ottawa airport, we were met by
Kenji, Aya, Miya, Laura, Nat, Amy and Les. It was wonderful to see so
many familiar faces and to introduce Ren. Thanks all for coming out -
it meant a lot.

Interestingly, Ren has been very comfortable here from the moment we
stepped in the door on Saturday night. Kiyomi took Ren to the back
room and showed him some of the toys we had waiting for him, and from
that point, he's been happily playing with these toys and other toys,
wandering around the house independently, and has generally made
himself at home. Sunday was a banner day with him just happily
playing with all of us all day. And for the rest of us, it's been
wonderful just to be back home.

The nights have been a different story. He has cried uncontrollably
in Tamara's arms for long periods at a time as a result of which
Tamara has been getting limited sleep. Fortunately, Kiyomi has slept
through most of it and she continues to be a gem. We don't know what
we would do if we had to deal with any difficulties she was
experiencing. Essentially, her adapatability has meant that we don't
have to worry about her, and we can just concentrate on Ren. In fact,
with our sleep-deprived brains, we can barely handle just that.

We'll try to post some pix soon. It's 8:20p and Ren has been asleep
for almost an hour. Our strategy for tonight is to try to get to
sleep ourselves immediately, knowing it's likely that we will have
another rough night ahead of us.

Wish us luck. Good night from (ahhhh...) Ottawa.