Consulate Day = Coming Home Eve

What took us 8 weeks to pack up to come to China now must take us less than 8 hours to re-pack to come home to America. Wow, one little 16lb. baby is taking up ALL the space in my backpack for the trip. It weighs more than she does. Good thing our new buddy Jessie on the Island was willing to sell us a nice new backpack for $6 American. Now all we have to do is remember to pick up our 16 little bags every time we plane, train, bus or automobile on the way home.

I want to take my girls home so badly it hurts. And then again, seeing them here in China makes me sort of ache leaving their homeland. Ava flows effortlessly between life here in China and our American life. She takes the sights and sounds and smells of Guangzhou and marches on just as she does at home feeling the entire universe revolves around her 4 year old world. People have asked me on this trip whether China has brought forth sensitive feelings for Ava. I suppose it would be sweet and rather melodramatic to say yes, but the true answer is not that I can tell. She wants to come home to her soccer team but is honestly happy watching Chinese cartoons and playing the game of gathering my attention by pulling my pants while I attempt even one conversation with an adult. Her questions about Chinese life and the orphanage have been all matter of fact. In typical fashion I don't sugar coat it with her I just attempt to explain different people in different parts of the world live differently. She nods and moves on to the next interesting event of the day. I must add one caveat to this though, and that is that life here at the Swan and 5 star living is NOT typical Chinese life or Chinese culture, heck it is not even typical American life for that matter. It is not reality when you don't even have to push an elevator button by yourself for heaven's sake. Perhaps the sights and sounds of heavy city poverty, Chinese life and the adoptees story will come a little closer to home later in her life.
For now though we are focusing on getting to America to start our life as a family of 4. No more waiting... waiting for paperwork, referral, baby, trip to China. It is all now under our belt and I almost feel this unspoken permission to begin living life since everything we could have asked for in life is now here.

Scroll down a bit to see the famous red couch and the cutie pies who sit rather tenatively on the velvet.