Home Sweet Home

Home Sweet Home... at 3:30am with sweet potato. I'll post more about our homecomming once I get some photos of the affair. I have a feeling Hannah's Nana and Grandpa took several... and if they didn't... I'm sure some of the other people in the crowd at the airport will e-mail me a few. We were greeted with a welcome home banner that people signed, balloons - pink with Hello Kitty!, and lots of hugs and kisses. It was so cute that there were so many little kids there running around, and we thank all of the families for coming out on a cold January night with your kiddos.

It took a village of people to help us carry all of our bags out to our car and my mom and dad's car. We had a little trouble in the dark trying to get little Miss into the car seat as it wasn't adjusted for her height yet. Thankfully, my cousin's little one just finished with his carrier style car seat that was already adjusted for Maddux's height, and it fit Hannah just right. Hannah's uncle hooked up the carrier base for us as sleepy Daddy and Mommy weren't too mechanically inclined after traveling for 28 hours.

Backing up...

Immigration in Detroit was just fine. Luckily we were off the plane pretty quickly and were in line before most of the hundreds of people that were on their with us. Unlike some other airports, they didn't allow adopting US families to the front of the immigration line, but we only had to wait about 20 minutes. We showed our passports and Hannah's paperwork stack from AIT to an officer who checked them over before having us go stand in "the blue line." There was only one group ahead of us in "the blue line" so that didn't take long. The officer was friendly, didn't ask many questions. I was holding Hannah, and joked that it looked like her paperwork weighed more than she does. The officer smiled at us and said, "I think you're probably right. Welcome home, folks." I was too tired to break out the little American flags that I had in the diaper bag... too sleepy for photo opps, just very thankful we didn't have any problems.

Daddy loaded up our luggage on two carts and Hannah sat on top a suitcase as I wheeled a cart through customs. When we were loading up our carry ons onto the x-ray equipment and VERY STRESSED about taking off our shoes, or belts, getting out my computer, and making sure that the disposable cameras containing photos of Hannah at the nursery before we picked her up didn't go through their machine... a lady remarked, "Oh... how cute! Where'd you get her from?" I was putting our stuff on the belt and trying to hold Hannah and pretended that I didn't hear her because I didn't have the time or patience to deal with adoption related questions right now. When I didn't reply after about five seconds, the woman remarked, "WELL... it looks like she doesn't have a very friendly mommy." Are you kidding me?!?!?! I'm going through airport security with a child and you tell me I'm unfriendly because I don't want to talk to you right now??? Whatever.

Northwest's WorldClub lounge in Detroit was a blessing as we were able to take showers, have some snacks, and try to relax a little bit during our four hour layover in Detroit. Hannah was fussy and mad that we wouldn't let her crawl around on the ground and explore.

Hannah has been pretty fussy since we got home. Last night she woke up three times. At 3am we decided that we were all hungry. Hannah had a bottle and some squash while we had pizza rolls and milk. We were awake and decided to start unpacking, but Hannah wanted to explore and would not sit in the Bumbo chair or play nicely by herself. She had to be held or wanted into what we were doing. After listening to so much crying I was on overload and told Kevin that I couldn't deal with this all right now. I called my mom at 4:20am and told her that she could come over ANY TIME today. Right now? Yes, right now. She said that she'd be right over. I took Hannah into our bedroom with me and we laid down together. She went to sleep after 30 seconds of back patting. Kevin later came in to put her in her crib, but I heard her start crying again several minutes later. Luckily, Nana was here to the rescue soon so Mama could check out for some much needed sleep with and turned off the baby monitor.

Sedona is still at my parents' house, and hopefully we'll be ready to add her to the mix once some more laundry is finished and things put away. Last I heard she's catching up on her sleep after spending nearly two weeks at Amy's house enjoying the most amount of attention she's ever had in her life.

Kevin and I are taking turns sleeping, doing laundry, and putting away all of our gear from the trip. I'm starting to upload more photos into our Flickr account, and hope to make some catchup posts soon.

Thanks so much for so many sweet comments and prayers. We're so blessed.