What time is it? What day is it? Where am I?

I am very tired.

Our daughter, our little bundle of boundless love, is doing her best to help Mama and Baba experience the hidden secrets of the universe via extreme sleep deprivation. The last couple of days, she’s gone to bed around 7:30, popped back up around 11 and 12, and then come fully awake about two, clapping and laughing and ready to play.

This is challenging.

The girl is the most adorable human I’ve ever met, but that counts for surprisingly little when you’re working from a two-plus-week sleep deficit and you’re worried you’ll fall asleep on your feet and drop her.

I have a profound respect for single parents. The only way we’re staying even remotely coherent is by trading off nighttime duties and spelling each other during the day just to get a few moments to recharge. I couldn’t imagine doing this without Kim’s help.

On the plus side, this jet lag-induced sleeplessness is going to make the normal late-night soothings that are sure to come feel so much easier. So we have that going for us.

And fortunately the rest of this experience is so positive that it’s easy to forget the nighttime misery. Well, most of the time. In all seriousness, this kid is a joy and we continue to feel so fortunate that we found each other. But boy are we looking forward to something resembling a full night’s sleep.

Time Travel

In case you pop by this blog every now and then, and are currently rubbing your eyes wondering where all the new posts came from, I’ll explain. Over the last two weeks, my wife and I have been in China, adopting our first child. Of course, I wanted to share all this with family and close friends, but at the same time didn’t want to advertise too loudly where we were at any given moment — or more specifically, where we weren’t, which is to say, home. So I hid it all behind a secret invisible magic wall.

But now that we are home, I figured I’d open it back up for general viewing. Feel free to follow along with our adventures.

I’d write more but my body still thinks it’s five in the morning. I’ll have more coherent thoughts soon…ish.

Doing Tomorrow’s Playing, Today!

Welp, in spite of the fact that the three of us have gotten a collective seven hours of sleep in the last 22, the girl seems to have decided that playtime in China should be playtime in America. At least it’s the future there.

I have no idea what I’m saying.

Whilst I try to keep her entertained and me caffeinated, please enjoy this photo, taken mere seconds after Eleanor officially became a U.S. citizen.

20120816-150637.jpg

Home!

We left our hotel twenty-four and a half hours ago. We’ve just landed in Cleveland.

We are fried.

Eleanor has been amazing but she’s starting to lose it now. We’ll update more once we get our brains back together, but I just wanted to say we made it and we’re well and we’re grateful for all your support.

Love, -joe and Kim and Eleanor

We’re on a Plane! Again!

And it’s supposed to be on time! This is shocking to me and probably now that I say this we will be massively delayed. But maybe not! Regardless, something like 15 hours from now we should be back in the US, though not yet home. We did get the seats we reserved this time, which should make this flight much more pleasant than the one here.

But then, on the other hand, we are now traveling with Baroness Squirmy Von Squirmington (of the Easthampton Von Squirmingtons) so who knows?

Will try to update from Newark if there’s time!