5 a.m. in Buffalo.

We drove into Buffalo, NY last night (7/6/2012) to be ready for our 5 a.m. departure to JFK. Needless to say, there are no direct flights from Erie to Bangkok. Our total travel time, not counting layovers, is about 22 hours. I must say, Buffalo airport is surprising busy this early in the morning.

Claire and I had a hard time sleeping last night. For me, the anticipation of what is to come was difficult to contain. Claire says she was, “too cold”. I think however, she was also taken back by the upcoming changes. We often say to each other, “Next time we do X, we will have a child”. In this respect, adoption is a strange route to parenthood. To go from your normal self (i.e., not pregnant), to being handed a child is an interesting transition. Once we land in JFK, we head to my mother’s house and make ready for my brother’s wedding in the evening.

We were given a boarding pass for Eli (in which you can see his current name). We were stopped by a TSA agent who cautiously looked at our bags and asked, “where is the infant”.