Advertisement
Published: September 30th 2010
Edit Blog Post
Greetings from the USA!
The Nation finds itself greater tonight by one new and very cute little American! We are so happy to let you know we are back in the States tonight and Julia Rose An Campbell is officially a full U.S. citizen!
After leaving Guangzhou, China at 9pm local time, we arrived safely in our Port of Entry of Los Angeles, CA earlier tonight at about 7pm PST and are spending the night here as planned.
Our last day in Guangzhou (earlier today for us but yesterday for most reading this) was fun and filled with lots of packing and securing/arranging of official documents to ensure no one would challenge us as we left China and entered the U.S. with a foreign born baby.
I have to say we are so grateful to have gotten through both airports, both multi-step immigration checks, and the long trans-Pacific flight without any real glitches! The whole process was a long one with twists and turns and required a good bit of patience at times but the most complicated part is most likely over at this point. We feel so thankful for the many answered prayers for health
and the blessing of this process evolving successfully to bring Julia home! God is Good!
On our last day I got a chance to revisit the Guangzhou Fish Market one last time with our travel group. There was a good deal of gawking both ways, the locals being dumbfounded to see foreigners walk through, and our group being awestruck at some of the sights. Definitely another example of the mesmerizing unregulated nature of authentic China, in all it’s non-OSHA-compliant uber-glory!
I posted a few picks at the end of this post but be forewarned that they’re not for the squeamish!
Sweet Baby Julia did well on the long flight and I had her sleep on the seatback tray directly in front of me swaddled in a fleece North Face jacket. That and a touch of good old benadryl seemed to do the trick!
We are looking forward to finally getting Julia back into the nest at home and trying to adjust our internal clocks back to mountain standard time. I imagine we will all be a little off for a few days but I’m sure we will all readjust quickly. We will be continuing to foster
deepening attachment of Julia into our family. While we’ve posted a few pictures of our the kids and grandparents holding Julia at times, they can all attest to the fact that we have been focused on her being primarily held/fed/etc by Mama and Dada in the first months of her adoption. This is not to ever discourage other important folks in our life from getting to know her but to promote a strong sense of confidence deep in her heart and mind that we will be her parents forever and will always take care of her. Given that she’s had a great deal of change with caregivers in her first year of life, we, as her parents, now have some catching up to do!
We can’t wait for those among our family and friends who are interested to meet Julia over the coming months! She is still going strong, happy and smiley, well regulated and showing signs of continued strengthening attachment to Shannon and myself.
At one point in the many security checks today in China, I had to release her to be held by a Chinese security officer who walked her through the metal detector. (No clue
why I wasn’t permitted to do this myself.) In any case, she was her smiley self for only about 10 seconds before she started to wail and then quickly consoled once I got through the detector myself and could scoop her up to my chest again. She would not have done this in the first week of her adoption.
It’s another paradox of adoption, but newly adopted child’s growing insecurity with others and deepening consolation with her new parents is exactly what we hope to see in the way of ongoing positive bonding manifesting between parent and child. Woo-Hoo! Let’s hear it for Crying and Wailing!!!
We can’t wait to make the last leg of our journey as we fly from LA to Denver tomorrow morning and my parents fly from LA to Seattle. We are excited to meet up with Shannon's extended family in the airport!
Thanks again for all your prayers and well-wishes. They have surely been heard!
JC
Advertisement
Tot: 0.094s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 13; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0437s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.1mb
Sherry Becker
non-member comment
Glad to hear you are in the USA! I have a meal for you all! Please e-mail and let me know if there is a good time this weekend or next week when I can bring it over! I understand the not wanting to overwhelm Julia so I can even bring it over after bedtime.