Written on the Plane

I wrote a little yesterday as we were on the LONG flight over the ocean. As for pics, we promise to post some once we have some that were NOT taken on a plane! Susan, our guide, talks very fast and is a little hard to understand, but she is cute and excited about everything! Maybe I was just tired beyond measure last night when we met her!!! I slept a few hours last night and feel OK (I remember last time that I thought I was doing better than I really was). S and L continue to sleep, but Ally has been wide awake since 5 AM. We are trying to get our stuff put away and Doug is going down to exchange some $$!

Here is my "post" from the plane:

Dec 26 (about 6 PM GA time) – we are a few hours into our LONG flight to Shanghai. We actually had another scare in the San Francisco airport with our boarding passes. Somehow, they printed Lauren’s pass twice and didn’t print mine. Since we had 5 slips of paper, we didn’t immediately inspect each one. We realized it just before boarding of our flight began! Thankfully, we did have seats, but were not all together. Right now, Sara, Ally and I are in a side row, while Daddy and Lauren are several rows in front of us. Lauren is thrilled that “Mama Mia” is the in-flight movie! Ally continues her Diego marathon, while my concern is what will we do when the DVD battery dies? I will conserve the laptop battery as a back up. Sara and I have laughed at Ally as she watches her very favorite animal resque-er – she will break out in song (with headphones on) and laugh out loud occasionally. She just laughed and said, “Mommy look, the puma licked Diego”. She always says that she wants to do what Diego does once she is 5. I’m not really sure why 5 is her magic number – the age that she will be big enough and brave enough to zip line through a jungle or ride on a dinosaur. Maybe it’s because her buddy Linzi is 5 and, in Ally’s eyes, Linzi can do anything!!!

I’m thinking a bit about our upcoming meeting with Alaina. I think about the scar on her chest from her heart surgery 4 years ago. It makes me a little sad that at that time, I wasn’t even aware that I might realize the long time dream of adopting from China, much less adopting AGAIN from China! Makes me sad to think that she, at such a young age and likely fragile state, was in a hospital with her nanny or foster mom by her side. OK, not to make anyone cry or anything, I’ll move on to happier thoughts.

As I look at her picture, I see her spunk. I just so hope that she is not absolutely terrified when she is left alone with us. I guess that is really asking a lot, but it is my hope. Yes, I am prepared for her to have a hard time, and I have said that we will “expect the worse, but hope for the best”. But honestly (BTW, I really don’t like that phrase because it makes everything else I have said seem not honest), I am not sure that we are prepared for what might come our way. I have heard of very happy meetings of older children, but I have also heard of older children yelling and screaming in Chinese that “these people are NOT my parents and they are kidnapping me”. I guess that is where our guide can fend off people’s concerns and stares! Hopefully, it won’t be that bad; I’m not sure how I will handle that.

So, now we are just relieved to actually be on the flight to China. We hope and pray that our connection to Kunming will be seamless (that seems to be asking a lot with our shaky track record). This trip has offered us several opportunities to teach Sara and Lauren how to handle the unexpected. They immediately panic and then want an instant solution. We have tried to be reasonable at each step and challenge, trying to think of our best “next step.” I’m not sure that all of our “steps” have been the best, but we have remained pretty calm, for the most part.

I think we have about 10 more hours on this flight, so I’m hoping for time to pass quickly and quietly! All in all, we are hanging in there!