| Day 3 - 2/6/2012 |
11:45 am China time - Hey everyone, lots of things going on
right now. We're back from the Civil Affairs office and getting
some family bonding time in with our new little girl. What a joy
she is! I'll write more later tonight, but wanted to get a few
pictures posted as I know a few of you are anxiously waiting for
pictures. Let me just say she is absolutely the happiest little girl
and after maybe 30 seconds of shyness has been giggling and
smiling since.
8:42 pm - Wow, what a day. It started at 3 am for me when I
woke up and was unable to go back to sleep as I had too many
thoughts running through my head. Tyler woke up around 5 am
for which I was thankful. He'll probably get onto China time right
before we leave for home.
right now. We're back from the Civil Affairs office and getting
some family bonding time in with our new little girl. What a joy
she is! I'll write more later tonight, but wanted to get a few
pictures posted as I know a few of you are anxiously waiting for
pictures. Let me just say she is absolutely the happiest little girl
and after maybe 30 seconds of shyness has been giggling and
smiling since.
8:42 pm - Wow, what a day. It started at 3 am for me when I
woke up and was unable to go back to sleep as I had too many
thoughts running through my head. Tyler woke up around 5 am
for which I was thankful. He'll probably get onto China time right
before we leave for home.
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Boy? Really? We had a good laugh over that one. Well, a lot of the 2T clothes and shoes that I have
brought for her will not fit. She is a surprisingly big girl and is right on par with American girls
size-wise. The 1 pair of 3T footed pj's I brought that I thought would be huge on her fit her like a
glove. What happened to the little Chinese baby girls who are always tiny for their age? Poor Tyler is
going to be dwarfed by his younger sister. We're planning on going clothes shopping for her
tomorrow.
When she woke up from her nap this afternoon she did whimper a little, but did not cry outright. This
evening has been a little harder. We laid her down and she started wailing. Bill is holding her now
and she seems to have calmed down. We'll see how the rest of the night goes.
We also wanted to send a quick thanks out to everyone for all of their wonderful congratulatory
messages of support. Unfortunately, I don't have access to Facebook over here so I haven't been
able to post or see anything there. China blocks both access to Facebook and YouTube. Bill has
only been able to get around the ban by doing some... creative thinking. I'll leave it at that. For a while
I was worried I might not be able to post videos either since I post them via YouTube. Anyway, we
made it work. Having said that we do have video to post of today, but since we're all extremely tired
I'm going to wait until tomorrow to post them. Sorry! I'm off to bed.
brought for her will not fit. She is a surprisingly big girl and is right on par with American girls
size-wise. The 1 pair of 3T footed pj's I brought that I thought would be huge on her fit her like a
glove. What happened to the little Chinese baby girls who are always tiny for their age? Poor Tyler is
going to be dwarfed by his younger sister. We're planning on going clothes shopping for her
tomorrow.
When she woke up from her nap this afternoon she did whimper a little, but did not cry outright. This
evening has been a little harder. We laid her down and she started wailing. Bill is holding her now
and she seems to have calmed down. We'll see how the rest of the night goes.
We also wanted to send a quick thanks out to everyone for all of their wonderful congratulatory
messages of support. Unfortunately, I don't have access to Facebook over here so I haven't been
able to post or see anything there. China blocks both access to Facebook and YouTube. Bill has
only been able to get around the ban by doing some... creative thinking. I'll leave it at that. For a while
I was worried I might not be able to post videos either since I post them via YouTube. Anyway, we
made it work. Having said that we do have video to post of today, but since we're all extremely tired
I'm going to wait until tomorrow to post them. Sorry! I'm off to bed.
fast that it is kind of a blur at this point. The plan was to meet our guide down in the lobby at 9:30 am
and then head over to the civil affairs office to be there before 10 am when she was due to arrive.
That way we could film her arrival. We got down to the lobby a little after 9:15 to give us some time to
relax, but when we got down there Jane was already there and told us that Vivian was going to be
early so we would leave right away. After what seemed liked hours rather than minutes we finally
arrived at the office and Jane said she thought that maybe they were there already because she saw
a van with Yangzhou license plates. So we were whisked into the office and sure enough she was
already there! We didn't even have our cameras out to capture the moment when we first walked in!
Bill managed to whip out his cell phone and capture a few initial photos and videos, but it was a
flurry activity from the start. As I mentioned in my short post above she was initially a little reserved.
The orphanage workers would tell her that's your mama, that's your daddy, that's your older brother
and she would flash us a smile. Then we pulled out the snacks and she was all over that. It was a 2
hour drive from her orphanage so she must have been starving. Once she had eaten a little she
opened up a lot more and was openly giggling and belly-laughing while I was talking with the
orphanage workers. While Tyler and Bill kept her entertained we got some of her background and I
was able to ask some questions that we had come up with. Although a lot of what we had wanted to
ask had already been answered in the detailed reports we received with her referral.
Typical for the Chinese is for them to bundle their children up so they can barely move. Even our
guide sort of laughed about it and said that we would probably need to take off lots and lots of layers
once we got back to the hotel. And sure enough, as you can probably see in the pictures she was
packed into something like 5 or 6 different layers. I'll go into more detail later. So they promptly told
us that she was getting over a cold and that we would need to keep her bundled up, not dressed like
Tyler. Oops, mistake number one right there. Before I could ask they also said that her nickname is
Niu Niu (pronounced Noo Noo) which is a basic general term for a little girl. Then they said her
cheeks were chafed because she likes to be outside and they had become raw in the weather. I've
seen it before in other children coming from China during the winter so no surprise there. They also
said that she is very active, which I can now say is VERY true. We are going to have our hands full!!
One nice thing is they said she is pretty much potty trained. The tough part is going to be recognizing
it when she says she has to go since she says it in Chinese. Jane told us the words so we would
recognize them, but we've already lost them. Needless to say she's wearing diapers until we can
communicate with her better. When the topic of our orphanage visit came up they mentioned that
she had cried during a lot of the car ride from the orphanage. They mentioned this because they
basically wanted to warn us that when we visit she may cry when we visit. I had to assure them that
we were aware of this, but that we would really like to visit. After further talk about it the visit was not
changed. We will be going on Wednesday.
After taking a few official pictures for the adoption certificate we headed back out to the car and as
we were heading out Vivian says "uh-oh!" I look at her in surprise. Bill looks at me and says, "Did
she just say uh-oh?" Uh yes. Great, apparently that is the one phrase she has already picked up
from Bill. The entire ride back to the hotel she would call out uh-oh and look for Tyler and Bill. She is
basically enthralled with her new brother and he is doing his best to be a good big brother for her.
She is a little spitfire though! Man, she's already tried to tell Tyler off and take his toys away. Tyler
took it in stride though and I'm very proud of him for handling it so well.
When we got back to the hotel room we started peeling off her layers of clothes, a lot of which
consisted of crotchless pants. In China, when a child is young in order to more easily get the diaper
on or off or get the child to the potty in time they sometimes use these types of the clothes, so we
weren't too surprised by this. What did surprise us was one of the sweaters that they had chosen to
put on her.
and then head over to the civil affairs office to be there before 10 am when she was due to arrive.
That way we could film her arrival. We got down to the lobby a little after 9:15 to give us some time to
relax, but when we got down there Jane was already there and told us that Vivian was going to be
early so we would leave right away. After what seemed liked hours rather than minutes we finally
arrived at the office and Jane said she thought that maybe they were there already because she saw
a van with Yangzhou license plates. So we were whisked into the office and sure enough she was
already there! We didn't even have our cameras out to capture the moment when we first walked in!
Bill managed to whip out his cell phone and capture a few initial photos and videos, but it was a
flurry activity from the start. As I mentioned in my short post above she was initially a little reserved.
The orphanage workers would tell her that's your mama, that's your daddy, that's your older brother
and she would flash us a smile. Then we pulled out the snacks and she was all over that. It was a 2
hour drive from her orphanage so she must have been starving. Once she had eaten a little she
opened up a lot more and was openly giggling and belly-laughing while I was talking with the
orphanage workers. While Tyler and Bill kept her entertained we got some of her background and I
was able to ask some questions that we had come up with. Although a lot of what we had wanted to
ask had already been answered in the detailed reports we received with her referral.
Typical for the Chinese is for them to bundle their children up so they can barely move. Even our
guide sort of laughed about it and said that we would probably need to take off lots and lots of layers
once we got back to the hotel. And sure enough, as you can probably see in the pictures she was
packed into something like 5 or 6 different layers. I'll go into more detail later. So they promptly told
us that she was getting over a cold and that we would need to keep her bundled up, not dressed like
Tyler. Oops, mistake number one right there. Before I could ask they also said that her nickname is
Niu Niu (pronounced Noo Noo) which is a basic general term for a little girl. Then they said her
cheeks were chafed because she likes to be outside and they had become raw in the weather. I've
seen it before in other children coming from China during the winter so no surprise there. They also
said that she is very active, which I can now say is VERY true. We are going to have our hands full!!
One nice thing is they said she is pretty much potty trained. The tough part is going to be recognizing
it when she says she has to go since she says it in Chinese. Jane told us the words so we would
recognize them, but we've already lost them. Needless to say she's wearing diapers until we can
communicate with her better. When the topic of our orphanage visit came up they mentioned that
she had cried during a lot of the car ride from the orphanage. They mentioned this because they
basically wanted to warn us that when we visit she may cry when we visit. I had to assure them that
we were aware of this, but that we would really like to visit. After further talk about it the visit was not
changed. We will be going on Wednesday.
After taking a few official pictures for the adoption certificate we headed back out to the car and as
we were heading out Vivian says "uh-oh!" I look at her in surprise. Bill looks at me and says, "Did
she just say uh-oh?" Uh yes. Great, apparently that is the one phrase she has already picked up
from Bill. The entire ride back to the hotel she would call out uh-oh and look for Tyler and Bill. She is
basically enthralled with her new brother and he is doing his best to be a good big brother for her.
She is a little spitfire though! Man, she's already tried to tell Tyler off and take his toys away. Tyler
took it in stride though and I'm very proud of him for handling it so well.
When we got back to the hotel room we started peeling off her layers of clothes, a lot of which
consisted of crotchless pants. In China, when a child is young in order to more easily get the diaper
on or off or get the child to the potty in time they sometimes use these types of the clothes, so we
weren't too surprised by this. What did surprise us was one of the sweaters that they had chosen to
put on her.
