In n' out!

Good bye China, hello America!

I want a medal for surviving a thirteen hour flight with a gassy baby who woke up crying every hour on the hour. Between the noise, the claustrophobic bassinette, the weird Chinese lady in the seat across from us who kept making crazy faces and the leaky diaper all over my clothes...and did I mention her farts? Yeah, that's what I want, a medal. Made of any kind of metal, as long as it has some weight to it. Although if Makena gets her hands on it, it will probably become a teether.

I Benadryled Jack and I should have done the same for Mak but at the last minute, I called an audible and gave her infant Dimetap because she was so snotty (literally) that I wanted her to dry up more than I wanted her to sleep. In any case, that did the trick but she was not inclined to pass out.

So we finally made it onto American soil and we could see the finish line, in fact we were the first to line up at the "Adopted Babies'" checkpoint after we got off the plane...and NOTHING HAPPENED because NO ONE WAS THERE. An officer finally walked up to us and told us to take a seat and that someone would be with us, shortly. By then, the whole plane had unloaded and some immigrants were actually trying to stand behind the yellow line, ahead of me, even though I'd been seated and waiting for ten minutes. I'd be dammed if I let someone cut ahead of me at this juncture in time. Hello? I'd just spent three weeks in China. I knew how it worked. I used the good old sleep-deprivation "glare" and made them back up to the end of the line.

You'd thing that with a dozen babies waiting to be processed, that "Homeland Security" would have sped things up... made it comfortable for the children. Nope. We stood there aimlessly for a good forty-five minutes before some uniform-wearing woman showed up and told us to stand in line before she would take our dossiers. So we handed her our child's future, sealed in a brown envelope, and stood there, moronically, for another forty-five minutes, opting for second degree butt rash instead of changing a diaper for fear of having having her show up and start the processing. We waited and we waited...we didn't dare rase a fuss because we didn't want to piss off the government employee, because we wanted him or her to stamp the passport and make Makena an American. Hell, we just wanted to get our baggage and get home.

This was the final indignity. We waited two hours. We watched as everyone else on the plane was processed ahead of us. Only after that did they free up one person to help the dozen of us adoptive parents, and then we all panicked because a plane from Jamaica landed and travelers started queueing up.

When they finally called our name, it was uneventful. They returned our passports -- along with Makena's Chinese one that was stamped with a shiny visa. And that was it.

When we finally stepped out into the cool night, Los Angeles air, we inhaled deeply for the first time in several weeks. After the time we spent breathing "Chinese air," breathing "L.A. smog" was like changing cigarette brands and going from Marlborough to Marlborough "Light". We sealed off the trip with a ceremonial stop at In n' Out burgers for a heart-stopping "double double". And what we felt was relief.

I wanted to post a picture of the group of children who traveled halfway across the world to greet sisters into their families. None of them asked for this kind of adventure but all of them stepped up to the plate and were great ambassadors for their country. First class troupers.

I also wanted a record of the dress Makena wore to her swearing in at the US consulate and a picture of my number one-son "raging" at the final dinner party, on the eve of our departure. He actually tried to sing Chinese karaoke because he was so into the Asian disco groove. I regret not having taped his show.

f="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6995/2428/1600/DSC01717.jpg">I'll post more pictures and thoughts as they occur. I was also given two cameras full of pictures of Makena before we adopted her and I hope to have something special to show her when she is old enough to grasp all the excitement of her early life.

She is a survivor. Call it fate, call it destiny, she is finally home.


And we love her, dearly.


Is - a - jetlagged