PS - We're home!

She made it

On the plane

Home at last

Kylie's room

Feels good to be home! We can’t wait to have steak and potatoes for dinner. Kylie did really well with the travelling. She got a little squirmy on the flight from Thailand, but no major melt downs.

In fact the only real meltdown occurred going through customs leaving Bangkok. Some of the paperwork that they wanted to see had been checked with our bags. We thought we just needed her visa, but the agents wanted proof that we were her parents and of course she was screaming like she had no idea who we were the whole time. Figures. But in the end I guess they just believed us because after about 5 minutes they let us go. She then immediately started to smile again.

We ended up getting into LA earlier than expected so we were able get a flight to Sacto that same night, which was nice. We got home at 12:00 AM, stayed up ‘till 2:00 AM (5:00 PM Thai time) and then forced ourselves to sleep (Kylie did not like it). So all’s well. We think by tomorrow we should have her adjusted to U.S. time.

So thanks again for all the comments, and let me just sign off with one last reference that may be lost on many of you, but of course I think is funny: “Stay classy”.

The End

Thanks to everyone who checked in and for all your comments. We're blogged out, so this is about it. We leave for home in 48 hours and we can't wait. Hotel life is tired. We will try to post one more time on your Tuesday or Wednesday to let everyone know we made it home safe.

Thanks again,

Justin, Christina, and the Kid

Rough afternoon

She likes to sleep with her butt in the air (morning nap)

Kylie and the Mean Old Lady

A bit short for big people chairs

this is about a one minute video

We had to go back to the nursery today to return some paperwork. It turned out to be a big mistake to include Kylie (as if there was a choice). Her “Grandma” (care taker) was there and Kylie instantly re-attached to her. It was a bad scene leaving, and it took about two or three hours to get her to come back around to what we have gotten used to. Unfortunately for “Grandma” she is now referred to by Christina and Me as “the Mean Old Lady” which could not be further from the truth – She and Kylie clearly love each other – but hey, she made it tough on us so them’s the breaks.

So that put a damper on any sightseeing plans for the afternoon, but we think we are going to give it a shot tomorrow. Here is some video of Christina and Kylie playing on the bed once we got back to the hotel as proof that the Mean Old Lady is again in the past. It's pretty cute I guess you would have to say.

The Griswalds march on

She sits now

Two breakfasts this morning

This is NOT okay

Look kids, Eiffel Tower

No problem at the embassy today. Kylie is a U.S. citizen as soon as we touch down in LA. It means that we are officially cleared to leave for home, but I think we are going to keep our scheduled flight. There is a chance we have primo seats so we don’t want to risk a change. I would much rather annoy the upscale folk with a crazy kid than the rank and file.

We spent the afternoon at a mall and patrolling our local streets again today, buying a few trinkets for some kids at the nursery who have birthdays this month. Kylie is doing much better in taxis, and likes her baths now. Constantly jabbering too. All’s well…. Almost.

I guess my only complaint is that she definitely has a shoe fetish. She loves to put her shoes on. She loves picking up our shoes and bringing them to us, and today at the mall…. Well, let’s just say that I did not take the picture above the first time she went to that window. I am considering immediate counseling for her upon our arrival back home.

The Big Day....One step closer to home

Red Cross and other adoption placement workers

Kylie's birth mother - three days after birth

Kylie - 3 days old

Today was the big day. We arrived at Thai Red Cross at 8:30 in the morning to double check our paperwork. Then we were off to our DSW appointment which is with the Thai Consulate Committee. It went really smooth. Everyone seemed to be very interested in what Justin does at work especially since it is related to water conservation. They had several global warming comments throughout the interview. The meeting lasted maybe 15 minutes. We were second in line. After that, we were off to the Homeland Security office to turn in our paperwork and get an approval for a Visa appointment. We submitted our paperwork and they set our appointment for 1:00 that same afternoon. We had an hour and an half to kill…which wasn’t bad. Kylie through it all was such a good girl. No problems whatsoever. She was laughing and smiling all day.


Our Homeland Security appointment went off without a hitch as well. They immediately approved us and sent us to the US Embassy to setup our Visa appointment. We turned in more paperwork at the Embassy and setup our appointment for tomorrow at 9 am. We were back at the hotel by 3pm. We would say it went extremely well today. Kylie was so tired she finally fell asleep in the cab. We think that tomorrow’s appointment is the last thing we have to do. We wish we could come home sooner. But, our flight is scheduled for Monday night. This means we arrive in LA Monday night as well (1/2 hour after we take off....) We are staying the night in LA on Monday and then home to Sacto on Tuesday.


The Thai Red Cross has been taking pictures of Kylie since she was born. They gave us all the pictures….which is sooo sweet. There are even pictures of Kylie’s birth mother. Major progress today, Kylie only wanted us not the caregivers at the Red Cross. :)

BTW - she weighs 20.5 pounds, is 30 inches tall, and has 16 teeth (used mostly for chewing on shoulders).

The rope stretches

We made it to the Chao Phraya River today and took a boat ride once we got there. It was by far our longest journey of the trip. Kylie did really well on the sky train and the boat. Hopefully it is a foreshadowing of a nice peaceful flight home. We got off the boat at the Maharaj Pier which is the place to get off if you want to walk to the Grand Palace, but we did not make it. Supposedly you are not to wear flip flops or shorts if you go there so I was out. We never thought we would make it that far so I did not prepare. It is just some dead guy’s old house anyway right? Maybe we will take another shot at it later in the week.

The river is very busy and rather disgusting. I hope the food we are eating is not coming from there, but it probably is.

We hit a book store on the way home and Kylie insisted on carrying the bag with the books. Even once we got back to the hotel she did not want to let go. This seems like some kind of road towards a shopping fettish and I certainly don't approve.

She likes to say “yeeeeaaaah” after giving a high five and I got another “oot-all” from her today, but so far no luck on “the refs screwed us again”.

I'm calling it!

She said “football”. Okay, maybe it was “oot-all” but she said it twice trying to repeat what I had said and Christina had no choice but to confirm. Next up, “Go Raiders”.

Kylie really is changing every day. It is pretty amazing. She seems to be very smart. Christina and I are really just counting the days until we head home. It is kind of too bad because this city would be a lot of fun to explore, but our rope attached to the hotel is just still so short. We are afraid to venture out for too long. Today we took her on a tuk-tuk (3 wheeled scooter taxi) for the first time and she started to cry as soon as we climbed on. It’s hard to take. So our routine is more or less to just wander the streets around our hotel.

We bought a DVD today of the movie “PS I Love You” which Christina says is still in theaters in the states. While we were buying it a police man started getting near and the ladies operating the little table on the sidewalk that they were selling from suddenly picked it up and took off down an alley. We had to follow them to get our DVD. If you’ve seen the Seinfeld where Kramer is in the movie bootleg biz, the production value of this DVD is pretty much exactly that. Very bad. It’s kind of funny.

Thank you to everybody for posting your comments. I think the main reason we are posting every day is that we like to read what everyone is writing.

And oh yeah, Kylie gave Christina a kiss today. Um, Mom liked that.

Pizza in Bangkok

We mostly just hung around the hotel today. A few short walks, but no rides. We found an Italian restaurant with a wood fired brick oven so of course had to order some pizza. It’s run by some old Italian lady and very authentic. Very tasty.
Kylie is doing a lot of pointing and trying to say some words. So far we have “dee”, “boo”, “ee”, “ma” and maybe some others. I expect full sentences by the end of the week. For all I know that is a full sentence in Thai. She is also smiling a lot more often and even lets out a couple of laughs here and there. Eating more too.
Anyway, here are a couple of more pics. She does not seem to be a big fan of water, but did okay if she could hang on to one of us. Also included a couple of pics of her waking up from her nap still holding all the items she fell asleep with. Then when she could not use her hands to hold onto the bottle she just kept it clamped in her teeth while we carried her around until it finally dropped out. Pretty funny stuff.

Food=Poop

Well, Kylie started the day off by eating a couple of pieces of potato. Very exciting. She did have her conditions though. She would eat if we placed the food on her spoon and allowed her to spoon it into her mouth. She then refused to let go of the spoon for about the next four hours. She later let us feed her some ice cream for lunch and actually had most of a jar of baby food for dinner. It seems this new appetite changed the contents of her diapers though. That's a shame.

Bangkok has a great elevated train system for public transportation. Today we traveled on it with Kylie for the first time. While it was definitely not as bad as the taxi ride, she still did not much care for it. We are going to continue to try and get her comfortable with it in preparation for the flight home.

We are going to see what we can do about venturing out a bit further from our hotel in the next few days. So far we have not had the chance to do much sightseeing at all. Our first few days were at the nursery and then since we’ve taken Kylie we’ve been trying to see what that entails before we get too crazy. Apparently naps are a part of the program.... For the kid too. Our hotel is basically right at Na Na Plaza, so we’re getting to know that pretty well. We’ll see how it goes…

Smiles, but no food.

Our second day at the hotel was pretty good. She slept throughout the night. Usually, she has a bottle at 2am and 6am. She didn't wake up until 7am. It was wonderful!! We may not be so lucky tonight. Kylie doesn't like to eat with us. She refuses to eat anything we give her. She only lets her caregivers feed her. She takes the bottle when she is too tired to fight us. Tonight we had to force feed her....which was not fun. She is also not fond of bath time. We saw the caregivers bath the children in a oversized sink. They stand during bathtime. We've tired to get her to sit in the tub and play with the toys...but it is a no go. She may get distracted by a toy for a second then it is back to clutching my hand or wrapping her wet body onto my neck.

Overall, she has been good girl. We ran some errands to get supplies and she was a trooper. She was staring at everything with big eyes. This is only the second time she has been out of the nursery. The first time was when she had pneumonia and she had to go to the hospital.

Today she seemed very tired and needy. We think she may be missing the nursery. She only wanted to be held by mommy today....which was horrible for me. I hated every minute of it. :)

Inmate on the loose

Big day! Kylie escaped from the cell block. We have her back at the hotel. This seems to mean that we are now responsible for everything. I was kind of hoping that she would be able to you know, run errands and stuff, but that does not seem to be the case. Oh well. One of the care takers from the Red Cross went with us to the hospital to get her medical clearence, and that went just fine. Except that Kylie does not like riding in cars. Hopefully she likes riding in airplanes.

So now she is ours for the remainder of our stay in Thailand. We have some appointments with her in the middle of next week and then we come home. Even though we have not been able to see much of this city (and it does not really look like we are going to be able to), we can't wait to get home.

In other news, Christina got her to smile and I was able to document it. Twice! So quite a day.

good grip - no smiles

Kylie loves to go for walks around the nursery. She will latch onto one of our fingers and she is off. Really she will latch onto just about anything and once she does there is no unlatching. I'm pretty sure she has a future as a walnut cracker. There is some power in that grip.

So far we have yet so see much of this city. Most of our time is spent at the nursery trying to get Kylie to smile. Sometimes we think we're getting close, but she seems to catch herself right before she shows any teeth. We have seen her smile for others though, so there is hope! She did let us give her some water yesterday, but still does not want to take a spoon. Anyway, we are off again today to prove that we are more stubborn than she is.

Lunch time

Here is a short clip of Kylie eating cheerios. Our producing abilities are definitely subpar, but hey, the content first rate. Everybody knows that Cheerios are no good unless they hit the floor first.

Still the bad guys

Day two at the nursery and still no smiles for us. We've seen a couple, but not for us. She does pretty good when we have her alone, but when the care takers come into the picture it is no contest. That is no surprise I suppose.

We have not done much sight seeing yet (busy trying to win over the kid), but this is a crazy city. The best part so far are all the motor scooters (that sound like weed eaters) that filter to the front of the line at a stop light. Traffic gets really bad here so all these scooters just weave through it and make their way to the front on red lights. When the light turns green it sounds and looks like the start of some gigantic Supercross race. They all just fire out of the gate in a ball of smoke. It's loud!

We did find our way today to what must be the world's largest mall. It is like 7 or 8 stories high. thankfully we had an appointment to get to or Christina would still be floating around there. As it was I had to drag her away. I should not have to deal with that all the way over here....

First Day With Kylie

I think I have finally met my match. Kylie is very stubborn and strong willed. On our first playdate with Kylie, she did not want to look at us. Finally, she let us hold her mid afternoon, but she wouldn't look at our faces. It was wonderful to finally hold her. She loves her caregivers very much. She also knows what is going on and she doesn't want to go. She is very smart and alert to everything. It may take a couple more days for her to warm up to us. She is absolutely beautiful. She is walking and running. She also has a very strong grip. She would not let go of the toys we mailed her. Her favorite toy is the cell phone toy we sent...go figure. Her grip was like a deathgrip...nobody was getting near those toys. Kylie also loved the photo album we sent her. She recognized our faces. Also she was pointing to all her cousins. I think she may have a crush on Jack. She pointed to him the most. She finally gave us a big smile and blew us a kiss when we left. She liked us on the other side of the door. :)