The Two Longest Days (Days 16 & 17)

Well, this is our final blog post from China.  Today was a great day, but also at times seemed a long and slow day of waiting, waiting, waiting.  It seems that every day since Gotcha Day is really just a day of waiting to go home!  We've titled this blog post to include tomorrow too, because we also know it will be a long, slow day and we won't be able to blog because of travel.

Wakeup was awesome as Alia woke up smiling, laughing, and giggling...such a sweet start to the day.  Breakfast was normal but also not.  Alia had a good thirty minute melt down before and after breakfast.  Did we mention the mid-breakfast melt down?  After such a peaceable day yesterday the melt downs were discouraging after a great start.  Part of the reason for the meltdowns are some diet changes we are trying with Alia.  

Ever since her first few days of the diarrhea plague, Ali has been severely constipated.  We have tried lots of things with varying success, but think she needs a more liquid and fruit diet until we get home.  Our pediatrician has been awesome in encouraging us through this, but it is no fun having a new, sick child overseas.  We are glad that Alia is eating and drinking, but we hate seeing her so bloated and at times in so much pain and discomfort.  Despite her constipation she still likes McD's French fries, haha! Did you know that McD's delivers in China?

One of the challenges that we've seen newly adoptive parents experience is breaking the bad "parenting" habits set by the orphanages or foster care families.  It's not the workers or kids' faults in some ways, they simply had a high ratio of kids to adults.  Every kid's challenges are different, but we foresee one of our challenges being her meltdowns.  We are very familiar with the melt downs of two and three year olds, but we think Ali's caregivers caved into hers with food and outside play time.  So if we don't respond the same way?  Long melt downs with spitting, biting, and collapsing on the ground screaming.  The joys of parenthood, haha.  This too shall pass.

After the morning drama. We took Alia on a walk in the hotel garden but got rained out rather quickly.  We relocated into an indoor kiddie room where we played with blocks again.  Because of her arms and back, Alia works very hard to do even simple tasks...but she is so determined.  Block by block she assembled another "castle."  In order to reach a block, she slowly squats, holds the position, and slowly grasps the block.  She does the same in order to place the block and repeated this about twenty times.  She is going to have some serious leg and abominable muscles.  Her determination paid off and she finished, but then collapsed into Brittney's arms, drenched with sweat.

We then headed back out to pickup some souvenirs we had ordered the previous day and took an early nap.  After nap time we said goodbye to one of the three remaining families.  They headed out today via a four hour van ride to Hong Kong for a one night stay before their departure tomorrow.

After their departure, we were the last two families awaited our children's visas, and thankfully the Lord provided them on time and with no errors, praise God!  Here is our priceless paperwork and the infamous "do not open this no matter what" brown folder of Alia's citizenship paperwork that we courier into our first port of entry.

We had a great final dinner with our last set of adoption travel friends.  The kids ate well and we had a fun time together, helping speed up this day of waiting.  Jonathan was tempted to eat some duck (for practice when he gets home, word on the street is that our home ducks have made our front porch their bathroom...their days maybe numbered), but restrained himself.  Notice Brittney's skilled use of chop sticks and Jonathan's spearing technique...to each their own, lol.

We made an effort for an intentional early bedtime since we have to wakeup around 4am for a 5:40am departure for the airport.  We should leave Guangzhou by about 8:30am and arrive in Beijing three hours later.  We'll have a four hour layover before boarding our FOURTEEN hour flight to Chicago.  Somehow Jonathan doesn't think he'll get to watch five movies on the way home too, haha.  After our long flight to Chicago, we'll have a three hour layover as we process through customs and immigration and board our final short one and half hour flight to Louisville.  By the time we make it home, we will have been traveling for close to 31 hours!  If you see a man walking through an airport with pink luggage, we'll give your three guesses who it is...packed & ready to go!

We do appreciate the prayers as we head home.  This long day of travel is going to be difficult in many ways.  We are praying for no major meltdowns at 30,000 feet in an enclosed cabin, lol.

Thank you!  Thank you to all who have followed us on this journey.  We know there have been literally hundreds of you reading these posts and praying for us day by day.  Your encouragement and support has meant so much to us during these past 16 months leading up to Alia's adoption, and especially during these past seventeen days.  Alia is a true gift and "bundle of Joy" from God and we look forward to sharing you with her in person in the days ahead!

May we keep sharing Christ's adoptive love in words, actions, and giving toward the adoption of the 150+ million orphans worldwide.  If you would like any information about our awesome adoption agency, American World Adoption Association, please let us know! We have been blessed to work with them through the entire process and highly recommend them should The Lord ever lay adoption on your heart. Our prayer through this entire process was for God to use us to provide a loving forever family to an orphan but to also come alongside other families and encourage them if God has adoption in His plans for them as well! So, please ask questions, come visit, and let us know if we can ever help! Thank you again for the blessings you have each been! We love you and will be in touch, keeping you up to date with how our journey of faith, hope and love (no longer pending) is going!

"Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world." James 1:27