We're Hers!

While Jia and Stacy enjoyed the first playground Jia's seen for a few days, Troy and I walked into Saloni's baby room and I spied her right away, sitting on the floor with some colorful rings in her hand.



She was the tiny one, with a pixie face. I sat down next to her and spoke Hindi/English tickling the bottom of her feet. She stared at me. The social worker/psychologist- Smita - encouraged me to pick her up. So I picked up and marveled at my tiny baby. Honestly, I don't remember if she cried - I think she was still quiet. In only a few minutes we walked her down the stairs to Jia's delighted and sweet greeting. She ran up, gently wrapped her arms around her, gave her a kiss on the hair, and said "Okay, let's go now in the car." Unlike China adoptions though, we were encouraged to stay the day, get to know and have lunch wiith some of the staff, take her through her routine with the other babies, and let her get to know us in her own environment. It felt so much healthier and less traumatizing. So we explained this to Jia, and she insisted she wanted to hold her.

We went to a low wall, so Jia could be sitting, and while walking over there I realized Saloni was grasping onto me for dear life. When I put her into Jia's lap, the wails of sorrow began. Big crocodile tears. I quickly took her back, and Jia wide-eyed, handed her back. But now the mourning had begun. Jia declared that she wanted her other mommy. It didn't seem like a good time to carry on a discussion of birth mommies with Jia, so I just said I was her mommy. Since she would not stop crying, I tried to hand her off to Troy to see if he might be fascinating and soothing to her, but she would have none of it. Instead, when I took her back she stopped crying for a minute--aha!--only to resume again with her tiny but loud voice. Finally I got up and walked around with her, which quieted her and she just stared at us wide eyed, fascinated by her big sister's pranks on the slides, merry-go-round,and trampoline. By this time, her age group of babies and aunties had come down too - so she could be in my arms comfortably with her familiar care gives and babies near her. Eventually the trauma of the whole thing exhausted her and she fell into a deep sleep. I handed her tiny frame over to Troy and he carried and studied his new daughter.

We were eventually directed to take her back to her room and put her down for her nap. When Troy laid her down, boy did she turn around and frown at him. This girl can frown! With her face alone you know she's not happy. She refused to go back to sleep. Looking back, we realize at that point she had decided we were hers. Smita got her up again, handed her to me and she quietly clung on with all she had. Eventually we fed her lunch with the other babies.

She ate slowly and not nearly as much as the other babies in her room. A repeat performance of feeding her later in the day warned me that I may be spending the next months of my life slowly feeding and coaxing high calorie food down her little body, until she has some healthy baby fat rolls.

After lunch they gave us some time alone with her in a guest room. We were all exhausted - having woken up at 4 am, and wiped out from the days of travel and today's emotion. She was only happy next to me or with me holding her. Jia tried to play with her a little bit with the toys we brought but she didn't interact much. She watched Troy and Stacy out of the corner of her eyes. Finally, unable to keep our heads off the pillow, I held her on my chest as she sucked her thumb and absorbed her new mommy's smell, feel, and sound.

So that we could have lunch with the staff, they took her for her nap - she was not happy to be handed off to an Auntie, whimpering as she was taken. Sadly, I could not think of much to ask or say to the staff - my mind was pre-occupied, though I know they were instrumental in helping to raise her the first year of her life. Luckily Jia was in fine spirits and regaled them all with her talking, and gave them a good idea of who Saloni had for a big sister. And again, they let us go back to the guest room to rest - Jia was asleep in 5 minutes! Stacy stayed with her (we are SO HAPPY we brought Stacy with us!!!), and we were able to go meet the Foster Mom that Saloni lived with from 2 months to 6 months old. Again, not much to say but happy to see her. She didn't have any insights on Saloni, as she was "too young - babies don't do much then." Anyway, we thanked her for her care of our baby during those young months, took some pictures, and she was off.

Finally we woke Jia up for the departing ceremony, and they brought in Saloni. She hadn't slept a wink. She grasped on hard to me again, and fell asleep promptly. We were hers! All the staff were amazed at how she just nuzzeled into me. So was I! Your prayers are powerful - that's all I have to say!

We finally headed back to our hotel. For the next several hours, she would not tolerate being moved even slightly away from me to readjust, and I certainly could not put her down. She was not interested in playing or anything else, just being close. So, again I laid her on my chest and rested. She happily sucked her thumb, eyes open, absorbing. We could hear Jia's delighted squeals from the pool below, where Stacy was keeping her entertained.

Troy and I eventually got all of us changed into swimsuits and headed down to the pool. She was fascinated by everyone, but not at all interested in having more than the tips of her feet in the water. And then she seemed to wake up.

When we brought her back to our room, she sat on the floor and happily played with all of her toys with Jia. And Jia was delighted to get to play with her. We saw her crawl a little, and she even made her first sounds outside of crying. She was going to be okay!

But were we exhausted! I hardly made it through our ordered-in dinner, and sent Troy off to the store to buy more baby food and dish soap. By the time he was back, Saloni was in bed with me (I found out that they don't have cribs at this hotel), screaming bloody murder. Uh-oh, now what? She finally quieted when I cradled her close and sang. She must have just been exhausted, because when I finally laid her down with her drooping eyes she slept from 8 pm to 6 am! And we ALL slept! Ahh-thank you God!

Breaking out the first diapers

It's 8:30 in the morning. They're coming for us at 9:15. It's the end of the world as we know it. Not that we're nervous, or anything. We've done this before, thought about it, spent a year preparing for it, prayed about it. We're pros at this. Besides, she's just a little girl. All 14 pounds of her. Hardly threatening to 3 adults and a big sister. Right?

We meet her and her care givers at the orphanage this morning. If the adjustment seems to be going very smoothly, we'll bring her back to the hotel with us this afternoon. If there are issues or questions, the handoff will happen later. We'll have an opportunity to ask questions about her care and living patterns, and drop off the donations we brought for orphanage.

Actually, Jia probably is the only one of us with no fear--and she probably has the biggest adjustment to come. We're expecting a lot of excitement at first, and then when reality hits that she is going to be sharing Mom and Dad, an extended period of jealousy. Hopefully, her excitement about having a baby sister (about which she has been questioning us daily, "Are we going to get baby sister right now?") will blunt the other response.

Jia is actually helping Kim pack the baby bag with diapers and other baby necessities right now.

Yesterday's train trip went off without a hitch. We got picked up at the hotel by the adoption agency's greeter, then easily found our train. Kim and Stacy immediately noticed that a gecko (or something very fast) was living under the seat in front of us. It looked to me like it made them shudder. We all felt better about the gecko when we realized it was probably eating the cockroaches that we found crawling out of the hole in the window frame. Jia was so excited once the train started moving that she stared out the window the entire time.

She has been a great traveler, staying happy and positive almost all the time, but it has exhausted her. After we had been moving for 1o minutes she started to droop, still intently looking out the window but refusing to give in as her chin started bouncing on the sill with every sway of the car. Once she was asleep and couldn't resist us any more, we nestled her into her seat, where she slept through the rest of the 4 hour train ride. She was totally jazzed by the autorickshaw ride from the train station to the hotel (picture at top).

They're coming for us.

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.