It's My Birthday and it Couldn't be any Better

Today is my 33rd birthday. Troy did well - yesterday when we got back from exploring Mumbai, one dozen red roses were waiting for me and a German Chocolate Cake. He brought 33 candles and I managed to blow them all out in one breath. I really wanted that wish to come true!


Thanks to jetlag, I was WIDE AWAKE by 5 am and had an hour to myself to journal and reflect. I haven't had time like that since 1 day in February, and it was food to my soul. We enjoyed another wonderful breakfast - to my own amazement and delight, I am enjoying Indian food for breakfast. To my dismay, we are all already starting to smell like the Indian food we eat as we sweat away in the Bombay heat. Speaking of food We've arrived just in time for favorite Indian fruit - lichis, yum! And true to its reputation, the restaurants in Bombay are great! I thought I would lose weight on this trip, now I'm afraid I'm going to gain weight.

All of us took another delightful swim in the pool on the roof of our hotel, overlooking the Arabian Sea.
The cityscape of Bombay against the Sea is beautiful. I am feeling in many ways that I have come home. I am enjoying using my Hindi,though the few Spanish words I accidentally throw in I am sure confuses the shopkeepers. It's fun to see the highly acclaimed Bombay/Bollywood. It is true that a lot more peole wear western clothes than I remember in Delhi. We have found everyone to be respectful and helpful, whether we're lost on our own walking city tour or trying to find a place for Jia to potty for the FIFTH time! I have heard South India is different from North India, but I have not spent much time in South India before. So far the differences we've seen (and it's been 5 years, so maybe North India is different too - we'll see when we get to Delhi): no cows in the street, no elephants lumbering down main thoroughfares, no bicycle rickshaws and only a handful of auto rickshaws. The people also seem gentler, somehow - can't quite put my finger on that one.

This afternoon we board a train to Pune. At least we think we will. We just got a message that a car is waiting at the train station to bring us here to our hotel. Somehow the message was translated backward, he's supposed to be at our hotel to take us to the train station. We have time to work it out, but this trip certainly is not like our China adoption, where we were handheld through every step. If you read this in the next few minutes, you could send up a prayer for this one, though I think we can work it out pretty easily. I love train rides in India, though I don't love the train stations. I love looking at the countryside of India stream past while I listen to music. Troy did a medical school internship in Pune, but I have never been there, so I look forward to it.

Standby to Bombay

They say adopting a child is adventure enough, and you shouldn’t make it any more difficult than it already is. On the other hand, it is hard to turn down a generous offer of buddy passes for the flight, since it drops the cost considerably. The catch is, you fly standby.

We got to San Francisco on Wednesday, the night before our departure. The plan was to take a 9:10 am flight to New York and then a direct flight from there to Mumbai (Bombay). If the 9:10 flight was filling up, Vicky (the donor of the standby passes) would call us and we’d change to the 6:55 flight. When we hadn’t heard from Vicky by bedtime, we decided to get up early for the 6:55 flight, just in case. At the airport the next morning, we were told there was plenty of room on either flight, so we chose the earlier one, just to have one leg done. Vicky had indeed been monitoring the situation, and when we got to New York called to help us with the next part of the trip. That was how we found out that the 9:10 flight had been canceled! Yikes! And yes, there was plenty of space on the flight to Bombay, with two of us getting seats in business class and Jia and one of us in coach, 5 rows back. We did a lot of seat-swapping, but those business class seats laid flat, and helped us get some much-appreciated sleep on a 7,000 mile, 15 hour flight.

Stacy teaches Jia the limbo in the New York airport

The taxi ride to the hotel reminded us that we really were in India. It wasn’t so much that the taxi had a 2-cycle engine, or that our gear was lashed to the roof, or that we had difficulty passing a bicycle while going downhill. No, it was more that we went through nearly every red light without stopping (although with liberal use of the horn), that the lane lines superfluously marked on the street were universally ignored, and that on the dimly lit streets our driver chose, for reasons not entirely clear, to leave the headlights off for the majority of the 30 km/45 minute trip through really busy city streets. Other markers of our location included people sleeping on the edge of the road or on top of open trucks, paving equipment with open fires keeping the tar hot, and the hot moist night air that made it a relief to get in to the air-conditioned hotel at around 11:30 pm on Friday evening.

Today we are adjusting to the time zone and seeing a little of Bombay. We’ve seen the Gate of India and one of the main shopping districts. Kim is finding out that she hasn’t forgotten all of her Hindi, and she still knows how to bargain. Jia is learning that India is hot. Right now most us are napping, while outside our frosted-glass hotel room door a construction crew is using a grinder/sander of some type to try to prevent this activity. Thankfully they started after Jia had already fallen asleep. Other than that, our reception here in Bombay has been very warm and gracious. Later today we plan on a movie or the swimming pool, depending on when Jia wakes up. I wonder how we are going to deal with competing naptimes.

Jia shops for a sari in Mumbai

The ladies at the Gate of India




Tomorrow is a train ride to Pune, and Monday we meet Saloni for the first time!

Happy Birthday to All

Birthday Milestones:

JIA'S 4TH BIRTHDAY - May 20, we found out that the paperwork for our baby was complete, they had her passport, and we could book our tickets.

So . . . we're leaving our house Wednesday night, May 28 to drive to Kim's Grandma's where we'll stage our departure. Stacy will fly in that night, and meet us at Grandma's.

Early Thursday morning (May 29) we are flying (via New York) on buddy passes to Mumbai (Bombay), India -complements of my co-worker Vicki Cowley. We might even have 2 of our tickets in first class, so we can rotate some good naps, whch will feel great on the 16-hour flight from NY to India. Thank you Vicki!!!

We'll arrive late Friday night (May 30) and rest two days at a hotel on the Bombay coast - the Arabian Sea.

On KIM'S BIRTHDAY - June 1, we take the express train to Pune, India and prepare to meet our daughter. Kim receives her birthay present of a second daughter early the next morning - June 2.

On June 4 we fly to Delhi, where we process all of our baby's visa paperwork, so she can come into the United States as a legal immigrant who we've vowed to financially sponsor (while we're going through the US hoops to make her our adopted daughter - in India's eyes we have been her parents since April 22). We'll also get to use some of our evenings to visit some of Kim's old friends from when she lived in Delhi - wahoo!

Late in the evening of June 7, we depart on an airline that my travel agent mother and grandmother have never heard of - Etihad. But the price was unbelievably cheap - we'll soon find out why ;). We fly through Abu Dhabi, JFK, and back to San Francisco, arriving in the afternoon of June 8.

We'll crash at Grandma's again, and try to open our eyes for a 3 hour doctor appointment at an international adoption clinic in Oakland. We'll regroup at Grandma's, maybe take a swim/lunch/nap and try to be on the road for home that evening, where Meema (Troy's mom)will be waiting for us- Ahhh!

SALONI'S FIRST BIRTHDAY, on June 10, we'll be home! Amazing, huh? That late afternoon (to keep us from going to bed at 4pm) we'll have a casual open house to welcome home our new baby and wish her a happy birthday! All are welcome BETWEEN 4:30-6:30.

As Jia sings it, "HATTY BIRTHDAY TO ME!"

Troy, of course, is literally the odd man out in this group. He'll have to wait for his birthday until December.

The Start of the Story (Kind of)

India said, "When you've been married three years you can START the adoption application for our country." So, on March 27, 2007 -exactly 3 years of marrital bliss :), Kim called Holt, our adoption agency and asked them to start our Homestudy update - we were ready to begin the process of adopting an Indian girl.

The Homestudy update was supposed to be quick, (after we got refingerprinted, new reference letters, new tax summaries, etc) - done in 1 month. It dragged on for what seemed like forever. But in August it was finally complete. At that point, the Holt India program said we would go on a list and it would like take 1 1/2 years for the match. A little anxious, I called in November to verify where we were on the list, as we studied Waiting Children and tried to see if our family was a fit. They said, we were number 18 on a list of 21 (the list wasn't moving very fast). But because we were open to so many issues (toddler, medical unknowns, etc) it might go a bit faster than 1 1/2 years. I prepared myself for at least a year's wait until the referral and then another 6 months until we could get her.

On December 19th, I got a call from the Director of the Holt India program - Dean Hale. A call from the director, when we're in this wait mode, meant heart stops, find a seat fast, and try to remember to breathe while I'm also trying to memorize everything he says. In short, he said he had the youngest baby he's seen come across his desk in years and she's perfectly healthy. Would we like her? Breathe . . . Breathe! Don't believe it!

"I think you've made a mistake," I said. "Last month we were number 18 on a slow moving list of 21, we asked for a toddler, and we're open to all kinds of Special Needs. Are you sure you don't have the wrong family here?"

He hadn't. She was ours if we wanted her. Since it was Christmas, it took us a little bit of time to get through the mandatory rituals required before we're allowed to offically accept her. In that time, the confessions started coming out from all corners. "We know you don't think you're a baby person, but we thought you needed to have a baby, so we have been praying that God would give you a baby."

Honestly, God's handprint is clear to us. Jia loves babies, and we could see that a toddler would likely be competition for mommy whereas a baby she wants to help mother (though we still expect some jealousy issues). Also, I had prayed, "God, you know India is a rough place on little girls - especially orphans. Protect our girl like the Lion of Judah you are. You know as well as we do, the sooner you get her out of there the better." He seemed to say, "Yep, your heart and mine are on the same page here. I've pulled a few strings to get my baby to you about a year earlier than any other babies come out of India. Now you love and care for, as her forever parents." So, on December 30th, we faxed a resounding "YES, we officially accept her!"

God's pulled a few more strings on this timeline, and now we're thinking we'll get to leave in only 2 weeks (third week of May)! The Indian government has finished nearly all of their court work. The only things left are the application for her passport and our visa applications, all of which are in process. Once we have the final word, we will be making travel arrangements.

This trip our travel group will be twice as large as our trip to China. Obviously we're going. And, of course big sister Jia Anastacia is coming. She is so excited to have a sister! Kim's friend Stacy is coming too. Her job is to help us with Jia, aka Energizer Bunny. Stacy is the only person we know who has been able to wear Jia out. Not only that, she has lived and worked in developing countries, she's incredibly tough, she's really easy to travel with, and Jia adores her. We couldn't have special ordered a more perfect friend, travel companion, and helper.

Right now the blog title is Baby Saloni. We're still debating the exact name we will give her. Her birth mother named her Saloni, which means "beloved" and "beautiful," so we will keep that name. In addition we are considering adding Asha ("hope") and Kiran ("sun- or moonbeam"). Just what order they should be in is still up in the air. Please comment on this post and help us decide by voting your favorite order, tell us why, and let us know who's leaving which comments.