March 13: The Big Day!

Today was Gotcha Day - the day all our families received their babies. It's just after midnight in Nanning. Doug and Norah are both asleep. I'm pretty tired but wanted to post a few pictures. The day went quite well considering how stressful it was for the babies. They were bussed from the orphanage, which is about 3-4 hours from here. We all waited in a conference room in a hotel and the babies were brought in by their nannies. The families' names were called and we were given our babies one at a time. Norah was very quiet for a few minutes and we thought we had a "deer caught in the headlights" kind of baby. Then she started screaming and we realized we had a really angry baby. She refused to let Doug hold her and barely tolerated me. I can tell you that she is quite strong and arches her back well! We've learned quickly that she lets you know when she wants something. She cried herself to sleep and we all went for a 15-minute bus ride back to our hotel. Unfortunately, we had to have our official family picture taken (for her paperwork) and they had to wake her up for this. She was not pleased. We took her to our room and she sucked back a bottle petty quickly. Many other babies refused to eat, so we were lucky - and she didn't mind the bottles we brought. We took her out into the hallway and discovered that she's very sociable. She loves other children. The Rodmans have their son Ian with them (4 years old, I think). She loves him. She gets excited when she sees him and claps and coos. She also likes to pull other babies' hair (that's a form of sociability, isn't it?) and isn't happy when we make her stop. She ate some cheerios and then we took her for a walk in her stroller in the hallway. She fell asleep in it and slept through us getting dinner. She then woke up long enough for us to take her out of the stroller and put her on the bed. Doug was so empathic that he slept with her. She woke up about 3.5 hours later, screamed bloody murder for a bottle and drank it and a bit of another one. Then she fell asleep again (oh, and need I mention that Doug did too?). So, all in all, not bad.

So far she wants to be held all the time (except for her little stroller jaunt) and will only let me hold her. I think she prefers me because I'm female, however, when she looks at my face and sees that I'm not someone she's used to, she cries. Doug fed her her second bottle tonight, so we'll work on the holding tomorrow. My arms are already killing me - I knew I should have worked on the upper body strength before getting here! Tomorrow we process the actual adoption paperwork. Right now we're in what they call the "harmonious period" where we have her, but she is not legally ours yet. Tomorrow we make it official.

Here' a couple of pictures - one of our group in out hotel before leaving to get the babies, the other of Doug and I receiving Norah.

P.S. I hope this posts OK - the computer and Internet is in Chinese and I'm just guessing at things based on their placement and colour!

P.P.S. We can't see the blog from here or read comments, so if you want to communicate with us, please email. You can press the link on the blog that says email and the message will come to my account.