June 4, 2007 (Gotcha!!!)

Consider yourselves warned...this post is a LONG one. This was the day we'd been waiting for! One year ago on this day we were introduced to our daughter. Let me just say that she wasn't quite as thrilled about meeting her new parents as we were to meet her. Some of the photos may surprise you a bit. They were a bit painful for me to look through today. We all know a beautiful happy little girl who is about to celebrate her second birthday, but I remember that it took some time before we saw a lot of her joyful and playful personality. This was one of the most incredible days of our lives, and the days that followed were very emotional for all of us as we learned about being a family.

We started our morning with a walk after breakfast. We were invited to head out for a "10 minute" walk. Yeah right. :) We walked at least 20 minutes I think. Remember how hot it is now. Not at all what we're used to here in the midwest. I wrote that it was over 90 degrees with 95% humidity. To the local people, this was nothing. In fact many people we encountered on the sidewalk were actually in long sleeves.

Anyway, we made it, picked up diapers, formula, snacks, wipes, and a few other things before we made our way back to the Wharton. Some of our group took a cab, but we walked...and survived. :) We sent our laundry out that afternoon. Due to the heat, we were quickly running out of clean (and dry) clothes.

On Our Way to the Market
Also, here we are in the formula aisle. We really didn't know what we were doing, but somehow we came out of there with the right kind.






















We had a meeting after our grocery excursion. We had some paperwork to complete and we were able to see an updated photo of Hope. We could hardly believe how she'd changed. Here is Hannah (local guide) with Tu (Crossroads guide) getting things all sorted out for us.








FINALLY, at about 3:00 we decided we just couldn't sit in the room any longer. Guess we weren't the only ones. Most of our group was already in the lobby waiting for our 3:30 departure. So, we gathered for some before photos.
Mommies - Daddies - Families

























You can see the everyone's intensity as we rode silently to the Civil Affairs Office.










Once we arrived, everything seemed to happen so quickly. We took an elevator to the 4th floor where we were told to enter the room on the right. AAAHHHH!!!! There she is...in the doorway of the room to our left. Open the flood gates. Here come the tears. I tried to pull it together, but wasn't very successful. We all lined up around the room, the Civil Affairs Officer called the names of the girls, and then the new mothers were presented with their daughters.

















Hope screamed! She was sobbing before she was handed to us, but the transition to our arms didn't improve her mood. She certainly didn't want anything to do with her new Mama. She kicked and screamed and pushed me away from the start. It was pretty hard to take. I don't think that all the adoption workshops and attachment seminars in the world could truly have prepared me for what I was feeling. We certainly knew that it was typical for a child to choose one parent over the other, but holy cow does it hurt when it happens.

Anyway, just look ahead at the following photos. You can even see in one of the photos with Ron, we had a hard time just getting Hope to allow one of us to hold her face to face. This is certainly not uncommon either. But it was so hard to watch this tiny little girl grieve so severely and hurt so much. So, while these first few moments as parents were magical and our hearts were overflowing, our hearts were also breaking for the pain we were witnessing in our daughter's cries.











Here are three close-ups from Tu.



Hope fell asleep on her new Daddy's shoulder on the bus back to the hotel. When we got off the bus, Ron passed her to me and I had my first tender moment holding her without tears. Oh my gosh we were so in love!


We went across the hall to Andy and Betsy's room to borrow a little computer time and post this photo for our family and friends at home.

Once Hope woke up again, she was terrified. We tried to calm her down by walking outside around the hotel. Ron just carried her and I kept my distance a bit. He was continuously trying to reinforce to her that we are her Mama and Baba and she is our little bao bao. (I'm not sure about the spelling there, but that is what it sounds like and we were told it means "treasure.")







Once we were playing on the floor we were beginning to see some of Hope's curiosity coming through.












I was able to feed Hope a little dinner of fruit and congee that night. She wouldn't take a bottle from us yet though. She fell asleep at about 8:00 in my arms after a quick bath.


She slept until about 1:30 at which time she finally had something to drink. She had almost a full bottle and fell back to sleep until 5:30 the next morning. Not too bad for our first night together. I wish I could say that I got some sleep. :) I was too busy peeking over the edge of the crib to watch our sweet girl finally at peace in dreamland.