Packing for Gotchya Day

 My sister and sister-in-law were gracious enough to throw us a shower back in October to help us get ready for this big day. We received lots of clothes and toys to prepare for bringing her home. I'm sure we've over packed. We've taken plenty of clothes and toys for her. We received her final discharge report telling us her size and weight. Bela is a small girl - at 2 she is the size of a 1 year old in the US. So we had to plan to take items that she could fit into comfortably for her size. In addition, she barely speaks and what few words she knows are in Marathe - a language that neither Ryan or I speak. So we're taking plenty of music, burning kids songs on our iPod and the like. Let's hope we can keep her entertained for 25 hours of traveling! We haven't found a thorough list of what we should pack for her so I'm sharing our list in case anyone else is looking for a starting point...we'll be with Bela for about 5 days in India + 25 of traveling. Given that, we decided to pack the following (the idea was comfort and ease of travel for Bela)....

• 4 night-gown/pajamas (including 1 extra for an 18 month size)
• 8 day outfits w/ a mixture of pants & dresses (including extra outfits for 18 mos. size)
• 2 sweaters
• 3 pairs of shoes (we brought one in a size bigger)
• Underwear for each day - since Bela is small, we had a hard time finding 1T underwear.
• Plenty of socks
• 3 bibs
• 6 Books with textures and and pop-ups
• Musical teddy bear & non-musical bear
• CD's and DVD's with kids music
• Portable DVD player
• Crayons and coloring books
• Alphabet blocks
• Bubbles (her report said she loves bubbles)
• Snack Food and age appropriate drinks
• Sippy cups for travel and storage containers for snacks
• Bath items - shampoo, tooth brush and tooth paste, baby oil, etc...
• Medical supplies - kids Tylenol, thermometer, bandages
• Diapers and Diaper Wipes
• Tissue and Anti-Bacterial wipes
• Journals to document the journey
• Plenty of batteries for our camera and video camera

Booked our Tickets!

So we finalized our trip today! We had a hard time picking a travel date without having all of the passport and travel documents in hand. The dilemma was that if we waiting for those docs, we would basically have about a week to plan the trip and not only could that get costly, but it would Ryan in an awkward position with his work as well. The agency has been so helpful in helping us pick a date based on their experience. We really wanted to take Bela to visit my grandparents in India but that would add 3 extra days and we didn't want to risk overwhelming her. After all, with my family, we would not be able to control the entire village coming over to visit with her and it could really stress her out. So we're visiting my grandparents and vacationing before hand. That way when we pick up Bela, we are focused on getting her final docs and medical checkup from Delhi and we can then head home immedidately.

Before we head to India though - we decided to squeeze in one more vacation before we pick Bela up in India. So we're leaving early to spend some R&R on the beaches of Dubai. We love vacationing and not knowing when our next vacation will be after we adopt Bela, we've made it our mission to vacation as much as possible this year to prepare ourselves metally and physically for a huge change to our life style. .