Now We All Match!

Fat Baby in a Little Hat

Ehren got his first walk in Crieve Hall today. The weather is beautiful, 60 degrees, nice crisp air. There's still a bit of color left in the leaves on the trees. The pines are foreshadowing Christmas.

Ehren loved seeing the neighborhood, and watching daddy rake leaves for a bit. A good time was had by all.

Baby Jet Lag

We are home and back in Nashville. We had quite a greeting at the airport and we played pass the baby one last time before Joshua and I are sequestered at the house with him for the next month.

I've spent the last 3 hours working while the boys are sleeping. The three of us are having quite a time adjusting to our new timezone on the other side of the world. However, Ehren loves his new house. He had a bit of trouble doing anything but staring when we first got home. Now that he has adjusted to the blue walls it is a toss up between whether he likes the mirror or playing best. I can't quite decide.

We've also transitioned to the cloth diapers and realize we need a LOT more. Hasn't been painful at all though. The only thing that is painful is the fatigue. He naps great but now he is napping through the night instead of sleeping which is so tiring. Hopefully he'll transition soon to the new schedule and then it will be all peaches and rainbows, right?

Next step is pediatrician appointment, social worker visit, starting the American adoption proceedings and those pesky vaccines. Should make for a full week month!

So Ready for Home

We are back in Taipei and Ehren successfully survived his first plane ride. We had our AIT appointment today and we are sitting in the hotel room waiting for 2:30 when they said his visa may be ready. There is a small chance they call and tell us there was an issue with the birthmother interview but barring that we got the "clear to go" and we get to pick it up this afternoon.

AIT was interesting. They do your interview just out in the open so you can hear everything. The couple before us met online and he came out here to marry her. They have only seen each other 3 times and they are trying to get her visa so she can come to the US. I can't imagine the stories these officials hear because just this one was fascinating.

Currently Ehren is asleep, Joshua is out finding us lunch and I'm frantically trying to figure out if we can get on a plane in less than 12 hours. The only earlier flight we can take is tonight so I'm trying to be prepared for everything if we get his visa. We have a southwest flight to book, hotel in LA and then packing us all up again. We wouldn't normally be in such a rush to get home but we are 3.5 weeks into the traveling and home just sounds so great.

So if you don't hear from us again that is a great sign and we'll be home on Saturday night. If we don't get an earlier flight then we'll get to buy a cheap ipod, computer and drink more milk bubble tea so it won't be all bad.

Here is America's newest immigrant:

Why I Wasn't a Camera Op

I have a really hard time documenting things when I just want to experience them. So sorry but you are left with very little pretty pictures. When we left for the afternoon I turned to Joshua and asked if we had the camera. Nope we had forgotten to grab it. But we did have 4 diapers, a bottle ready to be made and one content little boy with us.

Our last day in Taitung was spent checking out more of the aboriginal side of the area and learning a tiny bit about Peinan which is the tribe of Ehren's birthmother.

Then we sufficiently freaked out our waitress at dinner. We decided to eat at the hotel and invited some of the Hannah's Hope staff to join us so we could eat family style to try a few dishes. They needed to eat later than we normally did and it corresponded with Ehren's play time instead of sleep time. Not a problem! We brought a blanket and laid it out on the hotel restaurant floor between our chairs and let him play while we ate. The first waitress laughed and then brought the rest of the girls to see what we were doing. It didn't seem that weird to us but they were very concerned that we understood that the floor wasn't clean. Hello, we brought a blanket - he'll be fine!

Hot Pots

It's like Taiwanese fondue but with potentially scarier ingredients. I vowed to wait until we had our translator to try it so I didn't offend by not eating anything I was served. Sansan and Lanfen invited us to dinner and were able to help me negotiate the menu to an original beef hot pot that I loved. They have these great mushrooms that I couldn't get the name to, all kind of "tofu cousins," beef, and an egg. There were unidentified fish parts that I left in the pot so I'll leave them out of the blog as well.

I basically copied Sansan as she ate her hot pot because the way you cook it is just as important as the ingredients. Took quite a bit of time to eat with Ehren strapped to me but it was really good.

Would I order it again? Absolutely! Without supervision? Probably not.

Dinner was a lot of fun talking, laughing and getting to know these great Taiwanese women who had both heard of couchsurfing - how crazy is that? We laughed so hard over the impression we had made before coming and the fact that we forgot our camera when we showed up to pick up Ehren that I actually woke him up from his nap. It's like friends away from home.

We are the first family that has been here and not jetlagged so we are getting to hang out with the staff a lot more which I think is so important to the experience. Besides couchsurfing we also had the scooter in common. They have Vino scooters over here and Sansan just thought it was great that Joshua and I drive a scooter like they do since that is so rare in the US.

High five for not being jet lagged and having a scooter!

Ehren took the best nap ever (you know in the last 2 days) so we stopped by this thing on our way home:

Taitung has a lot of aboriginal tribes in it. I thought they had something to do with this but turns out it is a Toaism thing. This is a show for one of their gods to watch. There is some important festival starting tomorrow and so they erect these things all around the city to entertain the gods.

Three stories. Animatronics. Sounds. Lights. All night. Outside our hotel.

Austin vs. Ehren

Growing up I was called the dog's name more times than I was called my siblings' name. I understand the tendency but after being away from "Austin the Dog" for 3 weeks I didn't think we'd slip into it so quickly. Turns out seven years makes quite a habit.

As a matter of reference for all involved here is how we are going to tell them apart:

Austin hates baths - Ehren loves them.

Austin barks at people she doesn't know - Ehren smiles.

Austin is cool to sleep for 8 to 10 hours - Ehren is NOT.

Austin hates traveling - Ehren seems to be fitting into the Fykes world traveling quite well.

And the most obvious... Austin has white hair - Ehren has black.

Should be simple.