Memorable Day #3: Bringing Them Home

Thirteen years ago yesterday we brought home Dara and Johnny. While we spent three weeks in Kazakhstan adopting Mira, we were gone only ten days start to finish with these two.

We arrived home around 6pm the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. John’s dad brought Emma and Mira to the airport, and several of our friends were waiting at our house to greet us. They didn’t stay long, just long enough to meet “the babies” and hold them. I for one was happy to let anyone who wanted to hold them because I had been carrying them for about three days solid, and Dara weighed eighteen pounds.

Kazakhstan has no car seat laws. So from the time we adopted them, we held them. On the flight from Astana to Almaty, driving around Almaty, in the hotel in Almaty (no cribs), on the flight from Almaty to Moscow. We had stashed a stroller in Moscow so we could finally put them down for a little while. Again, no crib in the motel, so some kind of makeshift way to keep them from rolling off the bed in the middle of the night. Then it was back in our arms on the flight from Moscow to DC. The flight attendant offered to move us to the bulkhead with those bassinets that stick into the wall. At first John didn’t want to do it because they don’t have they tray tables. But when we finally got them both asleep at the same time, for the first time, on the flight home from Moscow, and got to lay them down, we were ecstatic. And tired.

We didn’t get a lot of sleep for a few days, so this memorable “day” is actually about three days rolled into one. What no one ever tells you about “twins” is that statistically you have about a 25% chance of both of them being happy or asleep at the same time. Either they are both crying, or the one is happy and the other is crying, or the first is crying and the second is happy, or both are happy. (OK, I know personalities and all kinds of other stuff comes into play here, but you get my point.)

So when we finally arrived home, and everyone wanted to hold them but was afraid we didn’t want to give them up, I said, “Feel free. I held them across two continents and an ocean. It’s your turn.”

People all the time tell us how lucky or blessed our kids are that we adopted them.

But they’ve got it backwards.

The blessing is ours.