June 5, 2007

We woke up on this morning with a daughter! There was a little girl in a crib next to us! We could hardly believe how blessed we were feeling that God had entrusted us with the life of such a perfect little angel.

As of this morning, Hope officially became our daughter in the eyes of the Chinese government. We put on our red, white, and blue and went back to the Civil Affairs Office at 9:00 where we had to have a short interview. It was so great to see all of the newly expanded families together. The girls are all so beautiful! We also got to see Hope relax just a bit as she played on the rocking horse. Even though it was short lived, it was the beginning crumblings of some pretty tough barriers.

Imagine what she's thinking here.

One of Our First Smiles


With SWI Director et.al


We then headed to the notary office to answer some more questions. We promised to love "this child" as our own, never to mistreat or abandon her, etc...and YES! She is certainly "satisfactory" to us.

We're done! It's official! Hope looks very excited doesn't she?


At 12:30 after a cool bath Hope finally dozed off for a nap. We were a bit concerned about her heat rash, she didn't seem to be drinking well, and we also hadn't had a poopie diaper yet. Another flip? Hope became "Mama's Girl" overnight. When me met Hope the day before, I could barely look at her without evoking terror and now I couldn't leave the room. Ron was in for a tough couple of months since this change in attachment. It took a very long time for Hope to be comfortable with her new Daddy. He even ended up taking extra time off work when we got home for some more much needed family time. She's certainly Daddy's girl now though. :)

This day was a very sad day for Hope.

She started this sad sort of moan/whine that just didn't end. She was grieving pretty hard which we knew was actually sort of a good sign that she had been attached to her foster family. All we could do was hold her and try to comfort her, reassuring her that we love her and we are her Mama and Baba. I just kept rocking her and singing...Jesus Loves Me, Twinkle Twinkle, Jesus Loves the Little Children, Jesus Loves Me again....she cried and I held her closer. Believe me, I cried, too.

Bedtime & Bottle at 8:00
Countryside Visit Tomorrow

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.

June 3, 2007

So here is where things start to get a bit sketchy with our blogging last year. Some of the information and almost all of the photos will probably be new to everyone. Enjoy.

After our final Beijing post our laptop hard-drive crashed. UGH! Talk about frustrating. We carried a busted camcorder and a non-functioning lap top all over China for two weeks. Think about the weight we could have left at home. :) I was terrified that we'd lost all of our downloaded Beijing photos. Luckily Ron had also put them on the iPod so once we were home he was able to purchase a program to retrieve the photos from there. Everything on our computer was lost. We were so bitter. You may have heard me screaming "TECHNOLOGY SUCKS!!!" here in WI. :)

Well, we had to get over it. We were on our way to meet our little girl. Today was the day we flew from Beijing to Nanning, Guangxi. I think Lisa's comment last year said something like, "it isn't about the gadgets anyway...." She was (and is) so right. We had some pretty important things to take care of while we were in China, so no matter how disappointed we were we'd better get our priorities in order.

I remember being pretty upset about the inconvenient timing of our laptop's demise, but I don't remember deciding to finally get up at 3:30 because I couldn't sleep any more. According to my writing, I guess I had plenty of time to get our things packed for the trip. Tu joined our group that morning and I'm quite sure we were all thrilled to have her leading us. It was nice to have someone take control of everything since our emotional state was pretty anxious now. Our plane was delayed about a half hour that afternoon before our turbulent three hour flight to Nanning. Thank goodness for motion sickness patches.
At the Airport - Waiting
Hey! We're adoptive parents. We're pretty darn good at waiting. ;)


Boy were we in for a shock when we got off the plane that afternoon.

We thought it was hot in Beijing. I guess we didn't know what HOT was. Instant sweat. At least the AC was functioning on our waiting bus and our hotel was comfortable. YIKES! We knew we'd need to be careful though because that was the climate Hope was used to. We couldn't bring her into our frigid room and expect her to be happy about it. We were already expecting her to make some incredible sacrifices so if we could keep her temperature comfortable that would be important.

We arrived at about 6:00 to get checked in to the Wharton Hotel. We knew we'd feel comfortable there for the week. Everything was just beautiful in spite of the rock hard mattresses. As we opened our door, this was the most beautiful sight:

WE HAVE A CRIB IN OUR ROOM!!! - insert tears here. :)

Upcoming Schedule:
Dinner with the group tonight
10:00 tomorrow morning-group meeting (paperwork and baby updates)
Shopping
Meet our daughters at 3:30!!!!!

This is a photo of the soon-to-be big sisters trying out their chopsticks at dinner. They were such great travelers!

Here was the birthday cake Tu arranged to have ready for Betsy. Check out all that yummy fruit!


Here are a couple shots of the river from the boardwalk behind our hotel. At night, there are valves that open up on that bridge and it becomes a beautiful laser-lit waterfall.