We Made It Home!

We didn't drop off the face of the earth.  We actually made it home from China and are adjusting to being home!  It has been so crazy since we got home, however, I haven't had a chance to look at e-mail, blog, or pick up my house.  It's driving me crazy! I like things in their places, enjoy answering my e-mail and text messages, and talking to my friends and family on the phone, but life is showing me that there's a new normal, and her name is Peyton! 

We left the White Swan in Guangzhou at 7:00 pm so that we could get through check-in, customs, immigration, blood tests, all the other nonsense we needed to go through in time to board a plane for a 10:40 pm flight to Hong Kong.  I have to say this was the most miserable part of our trip.  It was late, so Peyton was restless, but the lights were on, so she was on!  The airport was a nightmare - lines and organized processes are something I don't think any of the airports did well at all in China.  We must have had our bags inspected 3 times and showed our passports no less than 5 times.

When we finally got to our gate, and can I just pause for a moment to ask why it seems that every flight Darren and I have ever taken leaves from the last gate in the terminal.....seriously?  It just doesn't seem fair.  Anyhow, Peyton was not interested in playing with the other children traveling with us.  She wanted to ride on the beltway.  So, while Darren wandered the terminal, I walked Peyton to the beltway, and then rode it back to our gate, about 20 times.  She couldn't get enough.  Finally, I had enough of it and made her come down to our gate to look at the planes and lights outside.  Finally, she sat down and colored for a few minutes with some of the other kids.  She just doesn't quite know how all of that works, so she clung to me and made me sit with her while she colored with them. 

I was excited when we were finally boarding.  We showed our boarding passes and passports (again), and when we got to the point where we were just about to board, there was another baggage inspection.  I was about to lose my mind!  Hadn't our bags been inspected enough?  It was absolutely insane, and Darren was about to lose it too.  So, we get on the plane, and I wasn't worried about this flight - thought it would be a piece of cake since it was only a 45 minute flight, but it was actually the most miserable flight of our trip.  Because Peyton was a ticketed passenger, they made us put Peyton in her own seat, and they weren't very nice about it.  She was literally screaming at the top of her lungs.  I would have much rather spared the other passengers her screaming and just put her on my lap, but I had to make her sit there, thrashing and screaming in her seat.  As soon as we were in the air, I took her out, and she sat on my lap.  We were barely in the air, had a little snack, and we were already descending.  The flight attendants told me I needed to put her back in her seat, and we had about 15 minutes left before we landed.  Two of them stood there and watched me to make sure I got her in her seat and belted her in.  I was so irritated with them that I glared, told them we were just fine, and shewed them away.  We landed somewhere around 11:30 pm, and all I wanted to do was get to our hotel, but no.....we needed to go through immigration...again. 

The smartest thing we did was to check our bags from Guangzhou all the way back to Denver.  Thank heavens we didn't have to deal with all of our luggage.  We packed a change of clothes and a toothbrush in our carry-on bags and thought we were really smart for booking a room at the Regal, which is attached to the Hong Kong airport.  We finally made our way to the hotel lobby, and the line to check in was a nightmare.  By the time we got through immigration, checked into our hotel, and got Peyton to bed, it was 2:00 am, and we needed to be back out of bed by 6:00 to shower, pack up, and get back to the airport to check in again.  So, total travel time from the door of the White Swan to the time we laid our heads down at the Regal was 7 hours - and only 45 minutes of that was flying time. 

My alarm went off (there are no alarm clocks in any of the hotels we stayed at in China) at 5:30.  I got up first, then Darren, and we both took showers.  We decided not to bathe Peyton since it was so early and she was so tired.  Poor little thing - we woke her up, not knowing how that would go because we hadn't done that yet, got her dressed and gave her a bottle, and she just curled up on the bed and went back to sleep without even touching her bottle while we threw a few last minute things in our bags.  Then, we hauled her back downstairs to check out - that is, check out of the hotel we paid $300 to for 4 hours of sleep.  Ridiculous, but we were thankful for 4 hours of comfortable sleep since we had a 15-hour flight from Hong Kong to Detroit to endure. 

I was nervous about the long flight - we'd only taken a couple of short flights with her, and I wasn't sure how she'd do on that long of a flight, but she was amazing!  My little rock star!  I guess the 4 hours of sleep the night before was a blessing because about an hour after take-off, she slept for almost 3 hours.  When she woke up, we ate, she played on my lap for a while, and then we gave her some benadryl and put her to sleep.  She slept for another 6 hours.  It was awesome!  Neither Darren or I slept much at all on the flight back home - I maybe slept for 1/2 hour, and Darren maybe slept for an hour, but I do have to say that I am completely impressed with Delta Airlines and their international flights.  I've never been a big fan of their domestic service, but all 4 flights we took on Delta were really great, particularly on the flight from Hong Kong to Detroit.  Darren asked one of the flight attendants if we needed to make Peyton sit in her own seat, and she apologized and told us we needed to have her sit in her own seat, so we belted her in, kicking and screaming, and the one flight attendant came over with some cookies, which totally helped.  She was so nice to Peyton through the entire flight.  Darren took Peyton on a couple of walks, and when she saw Peyton, she loaded her up on snacks to bring back to her seat.  She gave us extra moist hand wipes and more cookies for landing.  When we were about to land, she came up to me and told me it was okay to just let her sit on my lap.  I loved her!  We thanked her before we landed, and she said she knew how it was to travel with  little ones.  Made my day! 

Peyton found several cute games she thought were funny on the flight.  One of them was throw her plastic cup we had water in and make Darren pick it up for her.  She laughed and laughed as she played that game.  Then, she figured out how to bend the cup in half and thought it was hilarious.  Even more hilarious to her was when I'd snap it back into shape.  She giggled and played those games with us in addition to looking through every magazine in our seat-backs, playing with her stickers, playing with her crayons (she had no interest in coloring in her coloring books), and stacking her cups she'd collected from Darren and I as we finished our drinks.  I was completely impressed with her.

As we made our descent into Detroit, both Darren and I were overwhelmed with happiness to be landing on US soil.  Even though we were still hours from home, we were back in the good old USA!  Whoo hoo!  We had to go through immigration with Peyton, and she became a US citizen right there!  It was really exciting, and we went through it with at least 6 other families.  After immigration, we had to pick up our checked bags and go through customs.  Because I put on our form that we purchased jade in the declarations section, they sent us through an additional screening line, where they would go through every single item in our bags.  We were watching them, and it was like having to re-pack all over again.  Darren was highly irritated.  I was thinking we had 4 hours to kill before our flight to Denver, so it didn't bother me as much; although, I wasn't looking forward to repacking all of our crap.  When we were called for inspection, they looked at our form and the one guy said to the other guy, "Are we looking at this?" as he pointed to the word, jade, on our form.  They asked us where we purchased it and wanted proof we didn't purchase it from Bermuda.  I could not, for the life of me, remember at that moment where I put the jade.  I showed them the bag of other items from the same store, which had the address of the store in Guangzhou where we purchased it, but I was having trouble finding the jade itself.  They were both really nice and said they weren't going to put us through all of that, believed us that we made the purchase in Guangzhou, and let us go through without searching all of our items.  Hallelujah!  We were both relieved.  I guess they said they check jade to ensure it wasn't purchased in certain areas because there's a market out there, same as purchasing blood diamonds. 

We were both in such good moods to be at our gate, in the US, Peyton was a citizen, and we were just a few short hours from being in Denver.  We were in a bit of disbelief, thinking that our trip was coming to an end.  It had been such a long journey, and we were facing reality now.  The reality that we would soon be home with a new journey to travel - getting Peyton acclimated to her new surroundings, and then the challenge of working through our options with her hearing loss, rather than the journey of waiting and waiting to be matched with the perfect child for our family.  And there we sat, taking it all in as we watched our daughter play at our gate.  At one point, she saw Darren's wallet sitting beside him, picked it up, took the money out of it, and handed it back to him.  It was hilarious! 

Exhausted from so many hours of traveling and very little sleep, the 2 hour flight from Detroit to Denver seemed to last forever, and we didn't feel like making Peyton cry, so Darren sat in the seat next to me while I held  Peyton on my lap, hoping they'd think we had a lap ticket for her.  They bought it, and we flew home without a crying baby.  She was getting a little restless though, understandably so, and wanted to play, so Darren took out a toy he purchased for her at the Detroit airport.  It was a cute little Delta Airlines airplane that made a taking off noise, which she couldn't hear, and flashed red lights.  Her eyes lit up when he pulled it out and gave it to her.  She played with it until we all fell asleep.  Darren and I probably slept for about 1/2 hour, but Peyton slept until we landed at DIA.  We actually had to wake her up.  She looked like a mess.  She had some serious bed head; her pants were too long and had formed a hole in the side and in the butt; and her shirt had food all over it.  When we got off the plane in Denver, we both took a bathroom break and then wet Peyton's hair down, wiped her down with baby wipes, and changed her into a fresh, clean outfit, so she could meet people looking as cute as a button! 

We were very excited for Peyton to meet her Grandpa Taylor and Grandma Sue in addition to the Lang Family.  They were all waiting for us as we came up the escalator from the train, before going to baggage claim.  I had butterflies in my tummy, and I was so excited to be home and to have her start meeting our friends and family, I could hardly stand it!  When we got to the top of the escalator, we scanned the crowd for our peeps and saw them almost directly in front of us.  Peyton was pointing up, looking at the lights and the mesmerizing ceiling of DIA.  As soon as she realized we were saying hi to people, she looked at them and smiled.  It was so cute.  Dad and Sue were so excited to see her, particularly since they had never been the first to meet any of their grandchildren, so this was a really special moment for them.  Turner, Angela, and their kids were elated to meet her, and Cayden and Sydney (Turner and Angela's kids) were being so sweet to her.  She smiled at them, but she was overwhelmed.  We made our way over to baggage claim, got our bags, and took a few pictures.  She let her grandpa hold her while I snapped a few pictures of him with her, and she also let her grandma Sue hold her.  She was still overwhelmed by the kids, but they loved her and were adorable towards her.  At one point, Cayden said, "She's SO cute" in his sweet little voice, and then Sydney said, "She IS cute!" in her sweet little voice.  They brought balloons for Peyton, which she was afraid of, so they showed her that they weren't scary.  She warmed up to them a little bit, but still wasn't sure about them.  Finally, we headed to our car for the ride home.

We dreaded putting Peyton in her car seat, based on how she reacted to having to sit in her seat belt and her own seat on an airplane.  She'd never known riding around in a bus, car, or airplane, and since we got her, she'd been on my lap everywhere we went, so this was a little scary to her.  Just as we suspected, she wailed when we put her in the car seat and fought me big time.  I had to have Angela come over and show me how to loosen the car seat straps because I couldn't remember, and Peyton was clinging to me and bawling.  Before we put her in the car seat, Angela had Sydney sit in it, clap her hands, and smile like it was fun, but Peyton didn't buy it.  So sweet of Sydney...  I gave her a sucker as soon as we had her strapped in, and that quieted her for a bit.  She whimpered for a while, and then quieted down once we were well on our way home.  She didn't like it and kept grabbing for me (I sat in the back seat with her), but she remained relatively calm.  I took my cell phone out and showed her pictures.  When we came to one that I'd taken of her view from the hotel window in Shanghai, her eyes got big, and she pointed at it.  She totally recognized it. 

When we got home, our driveway had been lovingly decorated by our sweet little neighbor, Caileigh, in sidewalk chalk, with a "Welcome Home, Peyton" message and a huge heart.  It was so cute.  Nancy had dinner waiting for us, and we were excited to eat food we knew we loved.  I couldn't get over how good the air felt and smelled.  It was cool and clean.  I'll never take it for granted again!  I made everyone wait outside while I went inside to say hello to my kitties before all of the chaos descended upon them.  They were so happy to see me, and I was able to smooch and snuggle my face on their fur before I opened the front door.  The minute I did so, they ran for cover.  Poor babies.  I felt so bad for them. I also noticed that my house smelled good.  I never knew how good home could smell!

The first thing Peyton did was locate the windows straight ahead, which looked onto our back deck, scrub oak, and houses across the ravine.  I took her over there, and she gazed out.  Then she pointed her finger and directed me from room to room, wanting to see every inch of this new place we were in.  I'm sure she was thinking this was the biggest hotel room we'd be staying in yet!  She had no clue that she was in her home.  She cried when I took her into her playroom.  I think she was overwhelmed with the people, too many toys, and too many new things all at once, with all eyes and all attention focused on her.  I felt so bad for her.  After our tour of the house, the Lang's said their goodbye for the evening, and we visited with Dad and Sue.  They brought her 2 huge stuffed gingerbread people and a really cool John Deere wagon, which is pink.  I loved them!  Peyton will love them too, as soon as she figures out what they are!  Nancy also stopped by to meet Peyton, and Peyton loved her.

Finally, everyone was gone, and it was time to put our little angel to bed.  She had been through a lot and was exhausted.  She could hardly keep her little eyes open, so putting her to sleep; although, she did cry and fought sleep for a few minutes, was relatively easy.  As soon as she was asleep, around 10:30, I thought I'd take advantage of it and unpack our suitcases and get some laundry started.  By the time I finished, it was around 1:30, and as I was putting myself into bed, she woke up, smiling and ready to play!  To her, it was 3:30 in the afternoon, and she'd just woken up from a long nap!  I couldn't believe it.  So, I took her out of bed; Darren got up with me; and we played with her for a bit before giving her a dose of Benadryl so she'd go back to sleep.  It was a struggle, but she went back to sleep and slept with us until 9:00. 

  

That's where I'll end this post.  I should get some sleep myself because I'm not sure how long she'll sleep tonight, so I better get in a few hours if I can!  I'll give more updates on her progress now that we're home whenever I can, sometime tomorrow.  Enjoy the few pictures of our homecoming!