Our Flight Home!

Guangzhou at sunrise!

This is a picture taken on the way to the airport at sunrise on August 2! We got out on time, everything packed and the boys handled it quite well. On the way to the airport Max had quite a talk with our guide. He was worried still that I was not going to America with him. She told him he was going with me and he would be with me always! Then he was worried about school. He wanted to know if he would go to school and she told him yes but he was worried that we would take him to school and just leave him. She straightened that out and said that when he goes to school Mama will take you and pick you up and you will always sleep at home! He seemed quite relieved about that!

The wait at the airport was uneventful. The plane leaving Guangzhou was loaded for two hours before we finally took off. At that point I was very thankful Sue had booked it with a five hour lay over in Beijing! The picture above was the play area right by our gate in Beijing Airport! The boys were quite good with only a little upset with Marc about eating. Nothing major!

The last leg of our flight started out great! We had the center of a large plane with four seats across for the three of us! Marc got an aisle seat, then Max and the Mom with an empty on the other side of me (the TV did not work on that seat). It took over an hour before we took off but the boys were excited about flying so no problems! After take off the Movie screens started working and they had a couple cute cartoon movies so I set it up for both to watch there own. They are being little cherubs! I am thinking great we will have an awesome flight and it is only 10 1/2 hours so this will be awesome, they will watch a little TV and then fall asleep and then we will get there right?! Not right!

Well the first part worked, they watched a cartoon and had dinner, then we started on the second one and got 1/2 through it when it was about 8:30 PM and past time for bed. I was hoping they would just fall asleep watching TV but no such luck. Marc started throwing things and hollering, which is a signal he is going to escalate before he quits so I quickly pick him up and move him over by me and move Max over by the aisle. Well Marc is really upset then and he is overtired on top of it not a good combination! He is screaming and crying and yelling in Mandarin that he wants to watch cartoons! He has huge crocodile tears streaming down his face at this point and trying to bite me along with hit and kick all in an airplane seat! Well this is a Chinese airline and mostly Chinese people flying to the US. I am trying to calm him down and in the process am drawing a crowd! People are standing up all around us and leaning over our seats, I am holding him at this point, and jabbering in Mandarin! Then they start telling me what to do! Their biggest suggestion is to let him watch cartoons, well because he has such an audience he cranks it up a degree or two! I try to tell them he is tired and needs to go to sleep. They keep offering suggestions and I finally tell them that he was watching cartoons when he started yelling and throwing things and I will not reward his bad behavior by turning cartoons on now when he is acting so bad! I went on to say if I do that I will have little boy that would be intolerable to everyone around him and that it would not be in his best to do that. I also said I was sorry they had to listen to him scream and cry! After that everyone shut up and went back to there seats!!! Guess what he calmed down and fell asleep and slept for about seven hours!

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful other than when he woke up he wet his pants which he has not done since the first day I got him. We changed into dry pants since I brought an extra pair in the plane in case of spills or other accidents! Then once we got to Seattle in the Imigration line he wet his pants again, unfortunately no more dry pants so we met the family with wet pants and changed as soon as we got home. I think it was a more stressful day than he let on otherwise.