We're Home!

And we'd love to see you! We are adjusting to some pretty extreme jet lag, exacerbated by a certain willful little someone who doesn't understand the importance of keeping "normal" hours to re-set circadian rhythms, but phone calls and stop-bys would be most welcome.

It's a glorious sunny day in San Diego and I'm hoping we can get some of that before the day is done since I think it will help us all. Jarrah hasn't seen much sun in her lifetime because Chongqing gets only about 100 non-rainy days a year, and even when the sun is out, it's very smoggy. So the nickname I've given her recently--Blinky--should be very fitting today.

Of course the trip home had to have some special extra hellish touches just for us. They began with a sudden diaper extravaganza as we checked in at the Guangzhou airport, resulting in David having to literally dunk the baby into the sink in the men's bathroom and call for backup via Paul in the form of an entirely new outfit right down to the socks. Ugh! All this was going on when the rest of our merry party had already gone to the gate and our rep, Jason, stood around wringing his hands for us to hurry up. The young one bore a certain distinct odor from that moment forth, and we hadn't even left the ground.

In Hong Kong, I had dreamed of a refreshing stroll and a fortifying lunch, but instead we spent the majority of our time standing in what appeared to be a rather short line at the Cathay Pacific "Transition Center" for international flights. How a line in which there were only six or seven people in front of us can take a hour is still a mystery. Joy was screaming so Mary and Paul were removed from the line and processed elsewhere, though how we were given boarding passes for LA-San Diego and they weren't is another mystery. When we finally reached Leon at the front of the line, we had to stand there another twenty minutes while he apparently reprogrammed the computer to take over the world or something that could not possibly have involved printing out our boarding passes for a flight booked nearly a month ago for which we already had seats. At the last moment I noticed that the ticket he'd printed for baby read "Yu, Mei Zhi" which is actually Joy's name and let's just call that another mystery since the Rupperts were not even standing in the same line as us.

We had time for a little relaxing running to the gate and the procurement of a coke and two tiny Danishes, and then we were off to LA. Although the flight wasn't very crowded, it wasn't the carefree days of two weeks ago when we each had our own row. David, Jarrah and I were seated directly in front of an elderly Chinese couple; the man had the seat right behind me. This was delightful as he spent the entire flight alternately engaged in two activities: forcing his appendages through any available orifice in my seat back as I shoved them back out again, or vomiting lustily, with many sound effects, into his sick bag. Each time he'd hurl, he thrust his body with great force, so that I was frequently awakened by the sensation that I, personally, had just been vomited forward in space.

Two rows ahead of us, a friendly blonde woman (Mary talked to her, but I resented her uterus too much to be civil) wrangled what looked like an ordinary blonde toddler but was apparently part devil spawn, part castrato in training, who emitted shrieks for at least six of the 12 hours that caused my brain to feel like fireworks. I have never heard a child cry this way, like a pig being slaughtered, or a teenage girl in a horror film. I will never forget that sound.

Meanwhile, back at Row 57, a very cute girl who screams loudly only when you leave her in her crib was having the time of her life jumping on her seat, pitching headfirst into the hole between seats, throwing her toys, flinging her body across David and me to grab fistfuls of hair, and systematically destroying the book I was trying to read. There was also the ritualistic pounding on the seatback video screen playing Disney's "Fantasia," accompanied by high-pitched noises of approval. And that, my friends, was my introduction to international flying with a toddler. If you think long flights are bad, try one with a 1-year-old (though I agree with Marlene that the white noise is great for sleeping--too bad the sleeping portion of our program only added up to about four hours.)

When we reached Los Angeles, we were all completely wrecked, and we had to be sequestered for a while so the girls' visa paperwork could be processed. After showing our passports to about 10 different people, we were allowed go through customs and then re-check our bags, and though we didn't closely investigate the matter, we now figured we had oodles and oodles of time in which to enjoy a leisurely lunch. We set ourselves up at the Daily Grill, and were savoring our Chinese Chicken Salads (seems ironic, but they really don't serve lettuce in China) when David remarked that our flight to San Diego was leaving in 20 minutes. Gack! We started running, but then discovered that Paul and Mary did not have boarding passes, and that we actually needed to catch some sort of bus to our next terminal, and well, that's when we missed the flight. Ladies and gentleman, after thirteen hours of flying and six hours of waiting in airports, after two and a half weeks away from home, on the cusp of welcoming our babies to our hometown, we missed a 30 minute flight because we were eating salad. I blame myself. I was the one who insisted we had enough time to eat anywhere we liked. Clearly I was wrong.

The hourly flights were booked solid for the rest of the day, so it was a sad day in Babyville as we sulked in the American Eagle terminal awaiting our fate. At the last possible moment, the announcement came that all six of us had made it onto the next flight, and we cheered and cheered. I cringe to admit that our place in line might just have been enhanced by inadvertently leading the gate agent to believe that we missed the previous flight due to our wondrous act of adopting babies--we were so busy adopting them that we couldn't get to the plane.

Mary's family and Jen and Craig were waiting for us in San Diego with bells on (well, I didn't actually see bells, but they had brought some really lovely balloons, which delighted Jarrah no end) and though we had to rush Joy to the bathroom for Part Two of "Airport Poopapalooza," all was well. And our newest member of the family didn't make a peep about her first ride in the car seat, either!

Since then, we've been snacking, sleeping, and exploring the new options on the toy front, and maybe one of these days we'll start feeling like human beings again. Thanks for all your wonderful readerly and writerly support during our journey. I'll continue to update the blog on a regular basis, though I can't promise to keep it as exciting as it's been. Love and smooches to all!