I am now back at home in Tokyo. The babe and I got in late Friday afternoon. It is good to be home, though we had a wonderful visit to the US! We were gone for about 3 1/2 weeks. We spent part of it in California, and part of it in Utah. The babe loved getting reacquainted with some of her grandparents and other relatives.

A week ago, in Utah, I woke up in the middle of the night to the sounds of the babe throwing up. I got up with her and sat on the edge of my mother-in-law’s tub and held her with a towel in front of her while she continued to throw up for a good hour. She also had some pretty incredible diapers going on as well. That night was the worst of it, but she continued to not feel very well, and wouldn’t eat any solid foods until a couple of days ago. Even now though she won’t eat very much. You would think that the story ends there, but then you would be wrong! On Monday my mother-in-law woke up feeling really sick and had to call in sick to work. I flew back to California that morning with the babe and my mom. By the time we got back to California, both of us were feeling really sick. Then we heard that my father-in-law was also really sick. Then, my mom talked to various relatives and found out that two of my aunts and one of my cousins were sick as well. On Wednesday my dad woke up really sick, and then I talked to my mother-in-law and found out that her mother-in-law was sick! I just can’t believe how incredibly contagious this junk has been.

We definitely had an interesting flight back to Tokyo. On the flight home, the babe fell asleep for about 15 minutes at dinner time, long enough for me to eat my meal. She did not fall asleep again until we were over 8 hours into our 10+ hour flight! There was an older Chinese woman on our flight that was sitting about 6 rows behind us. She kept coming up to where we were sitting and clapping her hands in front of the babe’s face. She took the babe out of my arms several times, but each time the babe would start to scream. One time the babe had just fallen asleep in her basinet, and the woman came over and started patting her hands (which were gripping the cover to the basinet) and pantomiming to me that I needed to cover them up, and the babe woke up. Another time she stuffed a piece of candy in her mouth before I knew what she was doing, which I had to quickly fish out. About half way through the flight I was breaking off little bits of banana and then letting the babe pick them up out of my hand to eat. The woman saw this and came over, grabbed the babe’s hand and cleaned off the piece of banana she had just picked up with a kleenex. She then proceeded to pick up the whole banana and shove it in the babe’s face. Needless to say, I had to get the flight attendants involved. They kept ushering the woman back to her seat, and started blocking the aisle when she would try and come over to me. Fun, fun, fun. I guess I can’t blame the woman, I mean, who can resist a face like this?

Well, I am finally back from my whirlwind trip around Asia. It was fabulous! I am exhausted and have approximately 200 loads of dirty laundry waiting for me, so I will make this brief! I promise that I will post again shortly, as soon as I have acquired a few hours of sleep and have downloaded some pictures to share!