leg 1 accomplished

We made it to Charlotte!  We left home a couple of hours later than we had planned--not too bad, for us.  We left the house reasonably clean, our mail is stopped, a kind neighbor has plans to empty our dehumidifiers and water my indoor basil plants, and things are generally feeling organized.  Our packing is brilliant, if I do say so myself.  The last leg of our trip, from Shanghai to Jinan, was bought separately from the international portion of our flights, so it's subject to China's domestic baggage restrictions, which require fewer and lighter suitcases than the U.S.  So we are traveling tomorrow with two checked bags (one of which has a smaller suitcase packed inside it) and four carry-ons; we will travel on Saturday with three checked bags (one of which will have a former carry-on packed inside it) and three carry-ons, and once we have our son, we will travel without anything packed inside anything else, and we should be able to make it back to the U.S. without buying another suitcase in China.  Not only that, but we should not have to unpack our checked bags (except to switch which smaller suitcase is packed inside our largest one) until we get to Jinan, because we have two nights' and days' worth of clothes and all of our airplane supplies packed in our carry-ons.  I'm proud of myself!  I have already discovered two things I forgot: my hair scrungy (easy enough to replace in China) and Esther's eczema cream (rather more problematic, but we'll figure out something).  Well, we're getting up at 5:30 AM, so I'd better get to sleep!  The next post might be from an airport layover...or it might be from China!