arrived in Chiang Mai... and this last few months in numbers

I never got around to publishing my last post stateside- oh well. It's just as well because all of my worries about how we were going to get everything done were unfounded. John is an amazing do-er and he got everything out of storage in Philly, sorted, up to Boston, resorted with the rest of our stuff and packed 11 50lb bags for this trip to Thailand. I contributed with about 3 hours of sorting. I'm such a lucky lady :-)

Our flights went as well as could be expected- it was less travel door-to-door than I'd expected and Sam didn't have any meltdowns enroute. Thanks to this lovely family we're subletting from, we were able to come straight to a spacious furnished place that same night. It's a good thing too, because Sam (and consequently the rest of us) is not really coping with jetlag as easily as we adults normally do. He only slept 4 hours that first night despite being short on sleep from the previous two days. Up and happy at 3 am, we tossed some toys on the floor, a sesame street video on the computer and tried to keep sleeping as he played.

We took a trip to Tesco (think Walmart/Kmart/Target) in the morning to do some grocery shopping and to keep awake. Sam passed out on the way home and as we were meeting with our doula half an hour later, we just moved him upstairs. Our appointment with our doula was wonderful- I"m so so so grateful to have found her and to have been able to meet with her with John before he takes off today (Sunday). However, when we woke Sam up from his "nap" three hours later, he had the biggest tantrum of all time. Poor guy. He really thought we'd let him go to bed at 1 pm. John was so exhausted that he passed out during that tantrum and while in the same room as Sam- that exhibits a special level of fatigue. But then Sam was over it and happy to play. Of course, then it was my turn to conk out- I fell asleep on the couch while "watching" Sam and woke up once to him crying from having fallen off the ottoman and once to see him climbing all of our luggage to reach a pen. Realizing the lack of safety in this, I woke John up to switch and I remember nothing else until Sam woke up at 2:30am. "What a good time to be awake", he must have thought, for he was as cheerful as could be. I sent him downstairs to John who was obviously having a jetlag moment himself and not sleeping. I see now that he was updating his facebook page among other things :-) Anyway, enough of this boring account of jetlag- all that to say that it is now 6:20 and I have gotten Sam back to sleep but can't sleep myself. What better time to blog?

I'll write more about Chiang Mai in my next post, but for now I'll finish a post that I've been working on in my head for awhile.

I decided that we have just done too much and visited too many people precious to us to do them justice, so I'm just going to sum up the last few months in numbers. But behind every single number is the memory of a special time. It is a bit mindboggling to me that we could visit so many people and have every visit be as wonderful as it was. Sam held up really well for all the transition and travelling too. I will really treasure my memories of these visits.

By the numbers (since March 30th) :

5 countries

13 states

Friends from...
high school- 3
college- 8
ywam dts- 1
japan- 3
philly- 14
indo- 3
congo- 2
extended family- 43

Beds slept in - 27

Over 27,352 miles travelled :-)

We were also able to visit 5 zoos, an aquarium, 5 kids museums, a working farm, a science museum, an art museum, and a national park, mostly thanks to reciprical benefits through our membership at Boonshoft Museum in Dayton Ohio. And we had two amazing family vacations- one in Scotland and the other on our Disney cruise.

By any standard, these last few months have been packed and it will be nice to be on the other side of settled here whenever that happens.

Here's a flash forward of the coming months:
-John leaves tomorrow for a week in Indonesia and Singapore with his boss
-our friends and pastors Brad and Becca arrive Tuesday for a week or so of vacation
-John leaves again with his boss after a day and a half back here with us for a trip to the Burmese refugee camps on the Thai border
-Sometime during that time, I meet with doctors and choose one and a hospital for our birth
-When John gets back he has around 4 weeks to get our new house fixed up and furnished so that we can move in by Aug 4th at the latest.
-My due date is August 2nd
-John's parents arrive August 7th for two weeks to help us out pre/post baby
-our friend Kathryn comes to town for a few days on August 7th too :-)

After that we'll be settling into life as a family of four, John will be getting things established at work here (he's setting up the regional office), we'll be looking for a babysitter/cook to hire (always one of the most important decisions we make), etc.

Our eventual house, and our current sublet are on opposite sides of the city, so I'm not investing much in orienting myself to things down here- just doing my shopping the easy way (at Tesco) and doing the outings that are down here. At some point, we'll need to find our market, community pool, church, and perhaps a playgroup for Sam. I expect that it will be at least until November before we feel a bit established here.