Can you die from jet lag?

It was ugly and every single person on both homeward flights hates the site of us but we made it. We are home! Smiley is one unhappy kid right now and he's lucky he's so cute because I was sorely tempted to leave him in the airport in Seattle.

Although we had a hotel room for the night in DC it didn't help at all with jet lag. Smiley (aka grumpy goose) decided that he'd had enough of the traveling and strange sights and sounds and smells and people... That kid did not sleep for more than 20 minutes at a stretch all night and screamed his way through the 5 hour flight to Seattle. In fact, it wasn't until the flight from Seattle to Alaska that he got any sleep at all and that was a hard fought war on my part.

Most of the family was waiting to greet us at the airport and I didn't get even one single picture of the homecoming or first meeting. I was ready to fall flat on the ground and sob by the time we got off the plane so fishing around through all of our carry-on bags for the camera was the last thing on my mind. I was in endurance mode at that point - mission: putting one foot in front of the other. My family took one good look at Zman and me, who must have looked like we were dragged on our faces from DC, and didn't have the heart to capture our pitifulness on camera.

It was nirvana to come through that gate and see all the smiling faces our family and my beautiful daughters who were bouncing with joy to see us and the baby. The jet lag seemed to wash away as I kissed and hugged on their sweet faces and was able to finally introduce them to their brother. Smiley was on his good behavior, having slept for a record 1.5 hours on the last flight, and charmed everyone with his big eyed wonder at all the new people.

I wish I'd had out my camera when, an hour after arriving home, I was putting Smiley to sleep on the floor in the living room and both girls had to go and sit on the other side of the blanket and watch him fall asleep. It was even more precious when our puppy went over to sit with them and all three of them gazed lovingly at our beautiful baby boy.

My pediatrician was kind enough to make a house call on a Sunday and came over convinced that we did not have chicken pox and that what we were seeing was part of his scabies infestation. She had to admit after looking at him that Dr. Mom was right on the money and he does indeed have chicken pox. Joy, joy, joy. Since neither of the girls have had them, or the vaccine, I suspect that we will be doing the chicken pox thing around here for a while . So for the official record, our sweet boy has a cold, is cutting his first and second tooth, has scabies, and has a bad case of the chicken pox. Add in traveling half way around the world with two people who are virtual strangers and you can understand why we have such an unhappy baby on our hands.

Luckily, once he fell asleep here at the house he has crashed hard core and so far has been sleeping for a little more than 3 hours. I managed to pass out on the couch not long after he fell asleep and Zman’s parents have spirited the girls away somewhere because when I got up the house was quiet with Zman asleep, with a bit more decorum than his wife, on the bed in our room.

All of our luggage and everything in it has currently been quarantined to big black bags in our garage on the advice of our pediatrician to kill off any remaining scabies. Zman and I treated ourselves for it on the way home so we are hopeful that we can prevent it from infesting the house.

I was unable to post much of anything from Addis but I did try to journal as we went along so hopefully I can spare you all the details of us getting over our travels by posting some our Ethiopian adventures over the next week or so. I hope to find our camera and post some new pictures soon... but not until tomorrow.

posted at 6:28 PM  
Labels: Adoption, Attachment, Zboy