Gotcha Day! Has it really been seven years?
Isabella, a few days after adoption. She’s number one!
Today in 2006 was “Gotcha Day” for my youngest daughter, Isabella, who was just about a week shy of her 3rd birthday that day.
Gotcha Day is the day that a family gets their adopted child. Adoption Day is tomorrow (Halloween, which shall always be my favorite holiday!)
At the time, I blogged about the adoption experience. It’s still there at http://redthreadchronicles.blogspot.com though the site is now glitchy (I can’t seem to fix it) and many of the links to pictures are broken.
And here she is now, just about a week ago in Charleston!
I thought I’d run the 10/30/06 post again, though, in honor of my baby girl, who is going to be ten years old (gasp!) in just a few days!
10/30/06
So, in all of these posts, I still haven’t posted about the actual Gotcha Day. Here goes.
We got up early and had breakfast. I barely ate, D ate a little, and C did just fine. Nerves don’t bother 5yos, I guess!
Then we got on a bus and you could hear the nervous excitement in the air. We’d thought that it was very close (I’m not sure why we thought that, but all of us had that impression) … but no. We drove for what felt like hours but was probably twenty minutes, then parked on the street in front of a nondescript building, next to a storefront that said “insurance.” Somebody made a joke that we had to buy insurance first, and someone else believed them, and there was much nervous tittering!
We stepped off the bus, and C asked where the babies were! We had to explain that they don’t get handed over in the street!
We headed inside and then up to the 7th floor, and we could hear babies crying – but they weren’t our babies! Another group had just got theirs.
We were led into a relatively small room (here’s the link to the Gotcha Pics again:http://homepage.mac.com/juliekenner/JourneyToIsabella/PhotoAlbum41.html
There, we waited. And waited. And waited some more. And, at the risk of TMI, can I just say that I REALLY wish there were western style toilets in the gov’t buildings in China? (And no, I didn’t make use of the facilities!)
We heard some more baby noises, but then Michael told us that the babies weren’t even in the building yet.
Sigh.
So we waited some more. C indulged in a wild game of “Toss Kitty” before we convinced her to take it down a notch, and then, finally, we heard a baby was coming! Catherine’s baby (not my Catherine, of course!) came first because her little boy was from Hefei, and then Shanna and Scott recognized Zongming and Debbie and Rick recognized and were handed Alana (LaLa)! Don and Catherine and I kind of peeked out the door and we saw one nanny with two little girls. I **thought** the taller was Chenchen, and Don said it was, so we tentatively said “Chenchen?” and the nanny nodded, and so we went out slowly – and she burst into tears! At that point, we gave her (and Chuanling, although we didn’t know it at the time) some space and the nanny took them to the potty.
When they came back, we tried again, by CC was having none of it. Then Catherine needed to go to the potty, so off she and I went (SHE has no qualms about the facilities!!) and when we came back, the nanny still had both girls. We talked to her a bit, and then told Dan and Carla that we were pretty sure Chuanling was in the hall with the nanny and Chenchen. Somehow (Michael, maybe, I truly don’t remember) we ended up back in the little room, and I was handed a VERY upset little girl. She screamed and cried and wailed and did the boneless thing, but I held her and cooed to her and told her (in poor Mandarin, that she probably couldn’t understand b/c my pronunciation sucks and I’m not doing an Anhui dialect) to not cry and not be afraid, that I was her mama and that I loved her. I sang her a couple of little songs in Chinese, too, and offered her candy, which was rejected (surprisingly, she doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth, at least not for chocolate; she likes gummy life savers and these orange gummy things we bought at Disney … too bad they’re all gone!). Of course we’d been expecting this (and prepared for much worse!) so D and I weren’t upset by the screaming, and even Catherine pretty much understood. I was happy to see how attached she was to her nanny. And for the record, she is absolutely precious! We got eye contact pretty quickly, and those big brown eyes just melt your heart!
Anyway, after a bit, we had to sign some papers and then we all headed out. By that time, she was teary-eyed but not screaming, and on the drive home the tears would start and stop. Chenchen is the oldest in the group, with, I believe, Chuanling next by about 6 months. She didn’t fall asleep on the bus, though I know ZongMing did, and I’m not sure about the others, but it sounded like they did.
We all headed up to our room, with orders to report to the 6th floor lobby in a few hours to finish paperwork for registration the next day. In the room, I proceeded to sit on the floor with her in my lap for about an hour. She cried and sniffed and cried and sniffed and finally calmed down a bit. I wanted to get her clothes off and into something clean and fresh, but she was having none of that. At one point, I did get the top layer off (she was a sweaty mess!!) but she held onto it for dear life and later held on to her shoes the same way. Clearly, these kids lose their clothes if they let go of them, and there was just no way to communicate that clothes were now plentiful (and clean and pretty!).
It was about noon, though, so we ordered room service, and when the food came, we were blessed with a happy kid who had clearly never seen so much food in her life. Honestly, it about broke my heart how much she ate – and that she would pick and eat the bits that fell on the table, too. She ate at least as much as D and I did, and we finally decided we had to cut her off b/f she ate herself sick. So we got a cookie and distracted her with that while D took the food tray away and put it in the hall.
After that, she was okay with me changing her clothes (yay!) and I bagged up the old stuff. She had the same shoes, though, because that’s all we had, not knowing her size to buy before hand. She was wearing split pants under the outer pants, and so I figured she was potty trained and put her in panties.
I put her in a darling dark purple outfit, and she really seemed to love it (thank you Kathleen!). Then Don went to get the biscuits she’d had with her at Gotcha, and she and C and I were on our own. I put her on the bed to look at toys, and she squatted and peed. Oops! Clearly my idea of potty training isn’t the definition over here!
So, off to the bathroom we went, which worked out well because she got a sponge bath. She’s clearly been eating enough, if not plentifully, because there’s a bit of fat on her, and her skin and skintone are good. (And for those wondering, the bites are healing with the antibiotic cream, so I’m thinking NOT scabies! Yay!) About the only thing boo-boo wise was the bites around her ankles.
We changed into another purple outfit (see pictures!) and she was getting into this princess thing! The maid (bless her) brought us a fresh comforter and duvet.
The kids all seemed to be doing well when we met in the hallway. Chenchen and Chuanling are friends, although their interaction is interesting to say the least! They grin huge grins and sort of cry out for each other. Carla and I weren’t sure at first if they were friends or enemies! I think they were friends and rivals, though, vying for the attention of the same nanny. That first day, they traded toys, and the grins were so big they HAD to be friends, but it really is a hoot watching the two of them together!
After the paperwork, we headed back to our rooms for more hanging out with babies!
Now, I must sleep, as it’s 11 and we have to be up at 5:30 to have time to get the kids ready and have breakfast before the SWI trip tomorrow. Cross your fingers for us. I’ve never heard anyone post that they regretted taking their kid back to say bye-bye, and I really don’t want to be the first!! Everything I’ve read so far indicates that in CC’s age group it’s a good thing as they understand “goodbye” and also the nannies can tell them that we’re good parents and love them and that they want CC to love us, too. The downer is that it’s a 2 hour drive each way. Dramamine is in our future tomorrow. Hopefully, potential carsickness is the only downside. We’re praying it goes smoothly!
Happy Gotcha Day, sweet baby girl!
