We're Home!

We're home! Who can believe it? Its funny, Jimmy and I were sitting in the airport and I remember saying " Can you believe we get to take her home?" Its all so surreal--I've used that word a million times in the past month, but it just IS. All of it........The trip to China and now having her here at home. surreal and wonderful.

She's doing well! She just ate her first solid food--very messily and not a large amount, but its a start! Oatmeal with applesauce, thank you very much! She has been getting all of her feeding via a bottle, which a lot of orphanages do to save time---lots of babies to feed, so they often put the food in the bottles mixed with formula. We didn't want to stress her out too much in China, so we tried to be consistent with what she was used to. I am going to sit her in the high chair twice per day now that we're home, and introduce her to food and eating with a spoon. She still doesn't love it and sometimes still clamps her lips shut, but actually did some appreciative smacking and grinning today, so I think we're on our way.

last night she slept from about 8:30 till 10:00 and then from 11:00 until 4:30. We all went back to bed at 6:30 a.m. and slept until 11:00 she then took ANOTHER nap from 12:30 until almost 2:00. Its 5:00 now, and she has been really sleepy for the past hour or so. I'm keeping her up and will do an early bed time. The reason she has slept so well is because she (and we) came home completely exhausted. We looked like survivors of some catastrophe, and I'm pretty sure we all smelled. I said I would be honest about my experience, good or bad, so here goes. China was wonderful. The first couple of days after gotcha were a little rough but we were completely amazed to be parents, so we just rolled with it. After about 3 days, we fell into our rhythm a and had a great time. The flight home though, was torture, and Jimmy and I agree that this was the hardest 20 plus hours of our entire life. During the last 2 hours of the flight from san Fran to Atlanta, I felt like I was going to have a nervous breakdown and Amelia and I cried together during the final meltdown :)--from sheer exhaustion. And no, we did not use the benadryl. I bet you guessed that already. Our pediatrician said it was fine to use it to make her sleep on the plane, but that we should experiment with it first in China, because it makes some kids agitated and wide awake where they CANT sleep. Amelia was so easy going in China and fell asleep for naps wherever we happened to be, so we didn't think we needed the Benadryl and Jimmy is very anti-medication unless absolutely necessary. We were so confident we didn't need the ventral that we packed it in the checked bags----and because we never experimented with it to see if it made her drowsy or wild. I'm telling you this for a reason. TRY THE BENADRYL! TAKE IT WITH YOU IN CASE! And the other lesson is THANK GOD we had a third seat for her because if we hadn't had it on the long flight, I would have had my own meltdown much earlier :)

She would fall asleep for about a half hour and wake up screaming. THE WHOLE TRIP. You know the upside of that though? She came home tired enough to go to bed last night and is pretty much close to her normal schedule. Woo! That's why I didn't let her take a third nap today, and once we go to bed about 6:30, I think her adjustment to the time difference will be about done. So see? There's an upside to 20 hours of pure h***. Of course, let it be known that we would do it a million times over to get our little Georgia peach home. It has been a wonderful day, and Amelia just looks around completely amazed. Actually, we're pretty amazed ourselves!