FAMILY OF 4EVER: Forever Family Day

What a day! Today we met Hope at the Civil Affairs office at 3:00 PM. We arrived first, filled out some paperwork, and set up the camcorder. Hope arrived maybe 15 minutes after we did, accompanied by two of the nannies who took care of her at the orphanage. We assumed that it was her coming through the door, but she had even less hair than her photos (our guide later explained that it's a tradition to shave a babies head on the sixth day after every six months). Hope started crying soon after arriving. She had just been driven six hours from her foster families home, and had been up for nine hours straight at that point. Here she was in a new place, with several strangers, dead tired, and probably aware that something was up. The nannies eventually handed her over to Jen, and poor Hope just cried and cried. A toy was handed to her, but to no avail. So I brought out the universal bonding food, Cheerios (well, Honeynut Cheerios). Hope stopped crying, and at one point, actually tried to feed one to me. It was soon my turn to hold her, and Hope fell asleep in my arms, and stayed asleep until we arrived back at the hotel.

Before we left, the nannies presented us with a wonderful gift. It was a photo album with many pictures of Hope, from the day that she was found, to pictures of her in the orphanage, to pictures with her foster family. This is something that we can share with her when she's older. Not every adopting family gets something like this, so we will cherish it.

After returning to the hotel, Jen and Hope stayed behind, as I ventured off to the grocery store for some additional necessities, and McDonald's. I returned about 45 minutes later. Poor Hope apparently cried for a half hour straight prior to my returning. I picked her up, and she stopped crying. The nannies told us that Hope was very attached to her foster father, and he to her, and this may be why, at least at this point, she is preferring me. This hurts Jen, as you can imagine, but Hope eventually warmed up, and Jen got her smiles. Yes, smiles! We were so worried prior to meeting her about what the experience would be like, how she would react...Would she be a crying, inconsolable mess? The worst case scenarios rolled around in my head leading up to the meeting, and now, we were getting smiles. It's a good start.

Jen had tried to feed her baby food while I was gone, but Hope wasn't having it. She did like the formula that we had brought from home, quickly downing it. She also liked the french fries that I brought back. She ate a little bit of the double cheeseburger, and had a few bites of my Chicken McNuggets. Not the healthiest of meals, but it seemed to satisfy her.

We played on the floor with the stacking blocks that we had purchased the previous day. She really seemed to enjoy taking them apart, banging them together, etc. We also showed her a video of our dogs that I had taken and uploaded to the laptop. She gave a few grunts of what I hope was approval...She did not have pets in her foster home. After an hour or so of play, we dressed her in her pajamas, plopped her in her crib, and watched as she very quickly fell asleep.

Hope appears to be in good health. Oh, and she's walking! We also heard her say a few words, but aside from what we think was ba ba (daddy), we didn't understand. She makes some grunting sounds, especially when she sees something that she wants. She also imitated some of the things that we were doing, so hopefully, she'll pick up our language quickly, as well.

This has been a very trying day, fiilled with emotions going from one extreme to the next. We made it through, though, as we knew we would. We'll see what tomorrow holds, but for now, time for some sleep for all of us.