Wow, it is hard to believe we have been home a week today. Sorry it has been so long since my last post. No, we are not still stuck in China. Our trip home was an event that is just now starting to feel like a distant memory. As I mentioned in a previous post we missed our connecting flight in Beijing and had to stay an additional night in China at an airport hotel. I did not cry or lose it when we learned we were going to have to stay an additional night in China, but both Chris and I did almost cry when we arrived at our room in the hotel. Small is an understatement. It was maybe 40 square feet, with 2 twin beds and just enough room to walk in between them and I won’t even tell you about the disgusting bathroom! We literally slept in the room for maybe 5 hours and then decided we would rather be in the airport than that small room so we took the 7am shuttle back to the airport on Friday morning. It was like groundhogs day . . . when we woke up we felt like we had done this before. Oh yah, we had just the day before!
Anyway, we hung out in the Starbucks in the airport (Starbucks makes everything a little better), and walked around looking for “feminine necessities” for me, which apparently they do not have in China or I just was not doing a good impression of “tampon” for the local shop workers. Side note: I have the best husband in the world. While Dani and I napped in the airport Burger King, Chris walked to every store in the airport (it’s a huge airport) determined to find me my “necessities.” He returned an hour later with an array of products, but no tampons. I think I loved him more at that moment than ever before.
We finally boarded our flight at 1:40 pm for a 10 and a half hour flight to San Francisco. We purchased a seat for Dani and upgraded to Economy Plus, which was a great move because the section was empty. Chris had the entire row of the middle section to himself and Dani and I had the window section to ourselves. We were able to spread out and pass Dani back and forth without worrying about bothering any surrounding passengers. Needless to say, Dani did great. She wasn’t able to sleep more than 2 hours because of all of the noises and distractions (she is very nosy) but she also didn’t scream or cry. Once we landed in San Francisco, we sprinted (literally) to the Immigration line as we heard from others in our travel group that it could take up to 4 hours to clear Immigration and we did NOT want to miss another connecting flight. We were the 2nd family in line and cleared Immigration in about 20 minutes. It is at this point that Dani Jade Bagalini is officially a United States Citizen. We really should have taken a picture to mark the occasion but were so exhausted we just weren’t thinking straight.
So now we have a 2 hour wait until our flight departs San Fran for San Diego. It is at this point that our trip became eventful. We think that all of the running, waking up early, not getting a full 2-night’s sleep started to take its toll on Dani. While waiting in the San Fran airport she began to throw-up. No worries, I brought a change of clothes in our carry on so we cleaned her up, changed her clothes and everything was ok. Until that is, she threw-up again. Not having anymore clothes, we cleaned her as best we could, sacrificed a blanket and everything was once again ok. Until she threw-up AGAIN. At this point, we are out of clothes and blankets and are holding her over the airport trash can and sacrificing my North Face fleece. The poor thing was exhausted and uncomfortable and I just don’t think she could take anymore. Unfortunately, midway through our flight to San Diego on our small, very small plane Dani had full-blown, liquid diarrhea. It took both Chris and I crammed into the small bathroom (picture me kneeling behind him, while he is holding Dani over the toilet, because there is not enough room to lay her down and change her, handing him wipes between his legs) to get poor Dani cleaned-up and changed. All three of us were tired, sleep-deprived, jet-lagged, still functioning on China time which was 16 hours ahead and on the verge of a melt-down, when the plane landed in sunny San Diego. The moment we stepped into the airport and saw our boys holding a homemade welcome home sign and my parents, that all disappeared and we were overcome with emotion.
It took almost 3 years, 7 planes and over 12,500 miles, but we finally have our daughter. What started out as a selfish act to add a little girl to our family turned into a journey to add to our family and provide a life and loving home to a little girl who may not otherwise have one. Our little girl was abandoned when she was 2 weeks old at the river bank, found, sent to an orphanage, sent to a foster family and then off to surgery and back to the orphanage. She has endured so much in her 14 months in this world and yet is the most content, easy-going, silly, happy little girl who now resides on the other side of the world. We can’t help but think that someone was watching over her and guiding us as well and everything happened at exactly the moment it was supposed to so that she could become OUR little girl, Dustin and Dylan’s little sister and the Bagalini Family a party of 5.
