iPad messages not syncing to iCloud

Hello y'all. I've read a dozen questions and none of them seem to match my problem.

SOMEHOW I deleted my notes. Don't know when or how. Don't care right now. I had over 900 notes all being perfectly synched for almost 13 years - but now on my iMac, iCloud and "iPad #1" says only 4 messages. These 4 were all recently created. The Recently Deleted folder says 10 on all three devices mentioned above..

I have a second iPad (iPad #2) that's been in Air Plane ON, Wifi OFF and powered OFF for a number of months. When I BOOT UP iPad #2 (NO wifi) it shows 800 notes in iCloud.

As soon as I enable WiFi , the iPad #2 notes count starts going down. It would seem the iCloud is telling iPad #2 to delete everything to match the empty cloud. So I immediately shut off iPad #2 WiFi to stop the bleeding.

How to I force the iCloud to ADD iPad #2's notes instead of telling iPad #2 to delete every note?

Thank you.

iMac - Ventura 13.6.6

iPad #1 - iPadOS 17.4.1

iPad #2 - iPadOS 16.7.5

[Re-Titled by Moderator]