our first night as parents

We made it safety back to the hotel. I'm sure the cab ride was life threatening, but I didn't notice through the tears.

We got out of the cab and managed to get into the hotel room with all our gifts and a sleeping baby. I laid on the couch with him on my chest to just let him sleep. Nick unpacked our stuff and we just sat their and looked at him!the gifts from our foster family

Nick went into the other room to email and call folks and I just laid on the couch and watched my son sleep and cried. I couldn't believe it- I was a mom. I had a sleeping baby on my chest- my sleeping baby. Tears were running down my face and into my ears. Bates cried in his sleep. It was a silent cry, but there were tears running down his cheek, so sad. It's heart wrenching to see your baby grieve. Adoptive parents know.... it's an indescribable pain.
Eventually Bates woke up and we all got up and played in the floor. He was a bit teary and would cry a little, but nothing major. No big meltdowns. He would play with us, but he had to be IN our laps. We couldn't sit beside him or behind him. We HAD TO HOLD HIM! I could tell he was a daddy's boy. He would reach out for his daddy to hold him and would just melt into his arms. It was so sweet to watch.I decided we would put him in his carrier and go out to pick up his name chop that was corrected and maybe grab some take out and come back to the room. We changed his clothes. I didn't want anything to happen to the special outfit his birthmom sent him, so we put him in his orange and white!
Try one for the carrier- major fail! I think he was scared and we didn't really know what we were doing. So we quickly decided we would just carry him, it wasn't that far of a walk. He did great. He would just look around and squirm a little, but all in all he was great. We went to the name chop place and the nice man and woman just smiled and talked to him. He was looking at them like "thank goodness, you speak my language!"After picking up his name chop, we decided he was doing well enough to go grab a pizza and take back to our room. We walked to the end of Insadong (and stopped to grab a Korean paper, which I wanted from the day we became a family!) and went to Mr. Pizza and ordered a Bulgogi Pizza to go (and Nick got some chicken dish). Bates smiled and flirted with the table of girls behind us. It was the first time we saw him smile and the first time we really saw his personality. He just smiled and even played "GaKoo" (peek-a-boo) with them. It was so refreshing to see him happy. He liked looking at them, but was sure we were always close at hand. He wouldn't leave our laps and kept a good grip on us. When the girls were leaving we told Bates to tell them bye-bye and HE WAVED! Yeah, without any prompting, he waved. .

When our pizza was ready we headed back to our hotel. By then my arms were a little tired and I wished we had the carrier. We found a short cut through a Buddhist Temple, which was so pretty!

Back in our room, we discovered the boy does love him some gerber treats! We took turns holding him and eating. He did great. Nick had worked with him before we left on using his snack trap cup and he finally mastered sticking his hand in it and grabbing A HANDFUL of snacks! He wasn't happy with just one at a time, he went for the handful!got an apple stuck on his nose and was staring at it!

After dinner, we tried to wined down and maybe get ready for bed. About that time their was a knock on the door. It was another family that was staying at the Somerset and their little girl, Shannon. They had picked Shannon up from Holt about 30 minutes after we did. Shannon was a cutie and a busy busy busy girl. While Bates would just sit in our lap, she would run and giggle and play and laugh. Bates ventured out of our laps a few time to play with toys in the floor, but all in all, he was like glue to his momma and daddy.

playing with Shannon

As they were walking out the door, the phone rang (Bates is quite a celebrity!). It was a friend from the message board who just arrived. We headed to their room to show off Mr. Bates and meet them in person! We decided to put Bates in the carrier and after a 30 second scream, he just settled in and laid on my shoulder. The family was super sweet and Bates just laid in the carrier the whole time and didn't make a peep. They even brought us some medicine to hopefully help with the stomach issues.

After spending a few minutes with them, everyone was ready for bed so off to our room we went.

Well, here's a brief run down of our first night.
Bates slept in the bed between us.
He was up about every 1 1/2 to 2 hours for a bottle.
He sleeps like a fish out of water. He flops, he kicks (well, I guess fish can't kick), he rolls, he whimpers.
He throws up!
We finally gave up on the pjs after the second round of throw up and just went with a diaper and socks!

All in all, it went well. He threw up on me twice, just after eating a bottle both times. He would cry (well more like a holler) every about 20 minutes and would seek one of us out and snuggle up against us and fall right back to sleep. Total I think we were awake about 5-6 times, but it normally only took about 20-30 minutes to get him back to sleep. Nick and I thought it went well, we have some work to do, but we were starting at a good place.

I was up for good about 6:30 and started packing up for the long trip home. Packing was a bit of a challenge. I had to make sure I had bottles and formula for the plane and anything we would need to Bates for the 18 hours, as well as packing the stuff for the night in Chicago where we could get to it.

Our Holt friends called about 7:00 to see if we wanted to go eat breakfast with them, but Bates was still asleep! I finally woke Nick and Bates up about 8:00 to get ready, since we had to be out of our hotel by noon before we headed to the airport.

First night as a family: SUCCESS!!