Our Son the Rock Star

For months, I had dreaded the 12 hour flight that would take us from Seoul to Chicago. I had read many adoptive parents blogs about the flight and researched and studied their survival techniques. I was as prepared as I could be, but who needs it when your son is a rock star traveler?

We woke up at about 5:30 on Friday morning, not intentionally, but when everyone goes to bed at eight the night before, it's bound to be an early morning. We took our time packing and eating breakfast. We got ready and met the van that would take us to the airport around 9.

We got checked in and made it to our gate and waiting. This whole time Jax was great. As long as his daddy was holding him, he was doing great! I remember saying a prayer as we were boarding asking for the best flight possible for all of us and the strength and knowledge I would need to help Jax through the next 12 hours.

My prayer was definitely answered. Jax did awesome on the flight. He started out on my lap. Played with all the buttons on the tv. We played a couple games of Mommy closes the window shade, Jax opens it and as soon as we had taken off he was out. He slept for a couple of hours and then he was up and ready to play. He created many different games to keep himself occupied. He played with water bottles and bowls with lids. He would transfer animal crackers from the bowl Mommy was holding to the bowl Daddy was holding. He would plug and unplug the headphones and USB ports. Then play with the remote. He's so curious.

He only cried for a total of 15 minutes and both times was when he was tired and wanted to stand and be rocked, but that just wasn't happening. We were very fortunate that there were a lot of empty seats on the plane because the lady next to us was moved so again we had an empty seat and Jax could use that which was awesome! He loved having his own seat and space!

Once the flight was over we hopped in the line at immigration and waited a few minutes. The lady working the lines noticed that we had Jax and the yellow envelope with all of his visa information and moved us to the front of a line and to a separate line of our own. Then the immigration officer took us directly to customs. I had been so worried about getting everything done before our connecting flight and it was a breeze. We were done with an hour and a half to spare. We ate some lunch and then Jax fell asleep and slept all the way to Cedar Rapids.

I'll write about our homecoming later. It deserves a post all its own with some amazing pictures. I had totally intended on taking pictures during the flight, but the camera was in the overhead compartment and really I had a 20 month old being an angel on a 12 hour flight, I was not messing with trying to take pictures!