November 18, 2004
Coming Home
Finally, the day to come home arrives! After navigating a maze of paperwork at the airport, most of which is SARS-related, we get on the plane for the trip home, and what a long flight it is! But though the flight is long, we still arrive in Los Angeles one hour before we left, due to the International Date Line and the time zone change. We have to go through Customs so our baggage has to be re-checked, and I make a big mistake here - I take our baggage to the next airline counter, and the ticket agent says "Why didn't you just recheck it at customs?" Duh! That was what all those people were doing. Chalk one up for inexperience. Even though the baggage barely makes it through security in time for the next flight, it still gets home when we do.
Getting Rebecca's citizenship is easy. All we had to do was hand the Customs officer her immigration packet, then they stamped an "IR-3" in her Chinese passport, and SHE'S AN AMERICAN CITIZEN! Yea! Since Amy and I both traveled to China and participated in her adoption, she automatically became a citizen when she came to America with us. We got a Cerificate of Citizenship from the Department of Homeland Security about six weeks later, with President Bush's signature on it.
Click the following link to see some pictures taken in her first month home.
When Rebecca first came home, she just sat. No crawling - it's a cultural thing, but in China, babies are not encouraged to crawl. They're just set somewhere (like in the pictures we got in our referral). We encouraged her to start learning by leaving toys about four to five feet away from her, and helping her to move her legs to get around. Of course, I had to crawl too. After about a month, she was crawling around slowly and awkwardly.
Spoons? We don't use spoons!
Bath, Bed & Beyond (my favorite picture)
Learning to walk
I CAN WALK!
This was in March - she took her first steps early that month
