Niranjana, Melissa and Andy

Greetings! I'm not much of a blogger, so I'll get my feet wet with some observations of India (on events before we got to the orphanage).

- Continental Airlines took good care of us through various scenarios (see Andy's blog). I'm sure it didn't hurt that Mona had upgraded our seats. It would be easy to become a business/first class snob. The food was fabulous and Pirates 3 was playing on our individual TV screens, so it counted as a last "dinner and a movie" before becoming parents. Hot towel? Champagne? We're enjoying it while we can.

We've made it to Delhi, but it wasn't necessarily smooth or easy.

Getting to Seatac on Monday morning was simple enough (gotta love that new Tacoma Narrows bridge). However, a storm system on the East Coast - specifically New York City and Newark, N.J., caused first a 30-minute delay, then another 30-minute wait. The big problem was that we originally had only about 1.5 hours in Newark between flights - which is plenty if you don't have two delays.

I've been reading up on Indian cuisine on food-india.com. Most of us are used to Punjab because that is the style that tends to be served in the United States (though we noticed a South India menu once when we were in India Palace restaurant in Kennewick).

The cats know something's up whenever we pack the bags.

Little dudes, you have no clue, but we're all about to move down on the food chain.

Niranjana lives in Chennai, formerly known as Madras. Chennai is India's fourth-largest city at more than 7 million people.

Chennai is in southern India and is the capital of the state of Tamil Nadu. It is a coastal city, directly north of Sri Lanka. Chennai and this stretch of India were affected by the 2004 tsunami, which killed more than 12,000 people in India. Niranjana was nearly a year old when the tsunami occurred, and it did not play a factor in her circumstances.

Niranjana. This is our beautiful daughter's name. It's who she has been since she was 10 days old and who she shall be for as long as she chooses.

"Niranjana" has a few different meanings: