I'll keep this one short; I'm tired.

Plane trip. Ben's first from Nanjing to Guangzhou. The plane was delayed one hour, so a longer wait in the airport. We got on the plane and Ben started screaming. Not crying, but screaming. Oh God, I thought, not two hours of this. Guess what the people around us were saying? Oh God, please not two hours of this. He did stop after a while. He hadn't had his morning nap and was Mr. Crankypants. He fussed during the ride and cried a bit more, but finally fell asleep on Nancy. Needless to say, Nancy was not a happy camper.

Then the car ride from the airport to The White Swan hotel. As we got in at 7 pm instead of 5 pm, it was dark and we couldn't see much. We met two other couples from Beijing, which was wonderful. You find, after a week of being mostly unable to communicate with people, finding English speaking people is wonderful. No offense to my non-English friends.

For dinner we ordered Penne with Tomato and Basil, French Onion Soup and Vanilla Crème Brulee. Stunning and awesome. It was SO great not to have friend rice again. I'm sure we'll do one more Chinese meal or two before we leave, but I'm not in any rush to see another grain of fried rice.

While we were waiting for dinner to show, we pulled out some Cheerios for Ben and the most astounding thing happened: he fed them to me. My son fed me Cheerios. He is so awesome.

The crib is just fine with a couple of toys on the crib itself. Ben had no problem being put in his crib to play and one second he was awake, the next, he was down asleep. A beautiful thing considering last nights 30 minute tantrum. I'm sure there will be a few more of those, but when he goes to sleep easily, it's a wonderful thing!

Speaking of sleeping . . . it's time for me to get to bed. Tomorrow we have a family photo and medical check-up. I'm going to find out if there's any time and anywhere we can go to see pandas before we leave. I think Ben would really love it. I know I would!

Peace,
Gary . . .