sugar and spice . . .

did i mention that the road to yuanling is not for the faint of heart and fraught with many dangers? (don't get to use fraught that often.) we made it back in 8 hours. but it was 8 hours of terrorized, screaming infants; chinese nannies babbling; knees crammed into the seat in front of you; brain cells dying left and right as your brain sloshes in the noggin'. man, what a trip.

how do you sum up a watershed day in your life? some watershed days you know are coming and you do your best to get ready for them - getting married, the wife going into labor, the broncos in the superbowl. other watershed days sneak up on you and it's not till later you realized how truly significant the day was. i don't know where to put what is happening with us right now. to be certain we've been preparing for this day for well over a year but so much has happened that we'll look back and realize something that snuck by in the myriad of events, some small event, was as big as any of the things we've taken 100 photos of. i don't know. i'll have to add to that thought later.

mostly i want to tell you about my daughter. she's sleeping right now. i should be but we're on our standard go to bed really late and get up incredibly early. partly amy passes out (in a dramamine induced coma) in the early afternoon. even on a bus that is literally flailing its contents to and fro. remarkable really. in fact, amy was holding joy, both asleep, and i had to keep one hand on the infant because amy is so zonked her hands just fall limp to her sides. so i end up staying late, typically fighting with the computer (now it doesn't want to import photos), while amy is out cold. amy wakes up some time around 4a and is ready to play. so i get up, too. at least that's what is going on right now. but i want to tell you about my daughter. i'll just give you bits and pieces and hope to fill in details later.

walking to the bus all 5 of us are crying. joy who knows she's about to be dumped on some really strange looking white people (i mean, how hard is this? it's the second time in her short life she will feel abandoned) is bawling. her foster mom is crying because she'll never see again this precious girl who she has raised as her own for the last year. the foster dad is also crying. amy is in on the act. and the whole spectacle is more than i can handle.

joy's foster parents give us a bunch of gifts to send us off. they basically packed a lunch for joy - yummy breads, fruit. but they also wrote two notes to us. haven't had them translated yet. we have their address and will keep in touch.

joy falls asleep on amy, doing that snuffling/breath catching thing kids do after they've just cried really hard. she's doing that in her sleep.

joy and i play eat the cracker from the baby's hand. she has this great big, whole face (and it's a large face), toothless smile. little did i know that this was some sort of intense bonding ritual. joy instantly became a daddy's girl. i can't be out of her site. she's pretty much been stuck to me for the last 8 or 9 hours. i can only type this because she's passed out.

she woke up a few minutes ago. amy was there but she wanted me. amy made her a bottle from the two week supply they gave us at the orphanage. she chugged. no, i mean, chugged nearly the entire bottle in 5 minutes. she went from sleeping, to fussing, to chugging, to back to sleep in 7 minutes flat.

amy is doing great. so far she's bemused at playing the daddy role (getting the bottle, moving the blankets, etc) while i get the usual mommy role of baby stuck to my side. hmm. wonder how that will go over at work when we finally get back to the states? amy is euphoric. when she's not completely crashed and passed out she's on a perpetual high. and, being in a hotel room that means packing, re-packing, sorting, organizing, and packing some more. (editor's note: in her fit of reorganizing and packing amy just discovered in the closet some complementary condoms - lubricated, size 33mm, strawberry's on the package). another story of life when amy and china intersect. after breakfast on saturday amy headed up to the room before me. i make it up to the 26th floor a few minutes behind her and she is going down the row of doors trying her key because she couldn't remember what room we're in.

today we're off to the provincial office to do the official handing over of the babies to the parents. but we won't do the paperwork part until tomorrow. it's nice to be "home" for awhile. i'm going to see if i can't get the last couple blogs uploaded and maybe a picture or two while i'm at it.