Category: China Trip

Hi all. I am going to post in detail in the morning about the last couple of days. I will say that we now have an interesting souvenier of the trip- a HASEE Chinese laptop that Mike picked up at the electronics market in Nanchung. He will have to blog about that adventure.

Enjoy these photos, she is just a cutie pie!

Hello everyone. We will get some photos posted as soon as we can – she’s the cutest thing!

Nadia woke up at 5:30 (for real Karen 🙂 ) She had a bottle, took a nap and we got her up and dressed. We met everyone downstairs at 8:15 and headed back to the Civil Affairs office to pay assorted fees like for her passport and orphanage donation. While there we were interviewed and asked our profession, age, year we got married, if we had any other kids and why we wanted to adopt from China. We were also asked if we were never going to abuse or abandon Nadia and what our education plans were for her future. They gave us a gift of a porcelain vase and our registration folder. This is the folder that shows that we are her parents and shows the US Consulate everything is legit so she can get her American Visa. We gave her a bottle while all this stuff was going on. Jiangxi Province is the birthplace of Porcelain, so this is an important gift for the baby.

Next we headed to the notary’s office and were asked all the same questions as the Civil Affairs office and we had to give the guy some money for being the notary on all our Jiangxi docs. He told us he was from Suichuan County like our baby and seemed very excited about that. He asked us if we loved her and I said, “Oh yeeessssss.” He and the translator laughed at my strong reaction.

Then we all loaded back up in the bus and headed for the Security office in Jiangxi where I think they do her passport and Nadia promptly fell asleep for nap #2. We had to wake her up when it was our turn so they could take her photo. Back on the bus and we went back to the hotel. Nadia scarfed down a bottle since we missed one of her SIX feedings in the middle of all that activity and she went down for nap #3. This kid can sleep!!! As her mother, I love this because I love sleep!

Mike and I decided we needed a nap too and everything was peaceful. We got her up and introduced her to Gerber Graduate Fruit Puffs and at first she thought they were totally weird and she was moving her mouth around in funny ways to get the hang of it. She had quite a few and then we decided it was time for the first official bath. We only gave her a sponge bath before, so this was the big time. The babies are so used to being bundled up that Nadia does not like to be unclothed.

So I gave her a bath and tried to distract her with stacking cups. I could tell she liked having her back rubbed and the warm water, but by the time we got to the hair washing, so was done with bath time! I got her out and bundled her up and she calmed down. She still hasn’t had a full on crying fit and just seems to be getting used to us more and more. She started to “baby babble” after the 3rd nap and talked more and more as the night went on.

We went to dinner at a Chinese restaurant with all the other families and it was AMAZING. We got boatloads of food, more than we could eat and the total including tip was $5.33 a person!!!!! Mike said he felt a little guilty that we got all that food for that price. The food was blow your mind amazing. I got to try Peking Duck for the first time – yum. Mike really liked the Lotus Roots.

The best part was that they ordered this steamed egg dish for the babies and I thought Nadia might like to try it for her first “solid food” adventure. I was holding her with one hand and trying to feed her with the other. I gave her the first bite and she looked at me funny like, “Why are you giving me this?” Then BAM she grabbed the spoon with one hand and the bowl with the other and started trying to pull the bowl into her mouth! We couldn’t feed her the stuff fast enough. It got all over my pants when I was trying to gain control of the bowl and so Mike grabbed her to keep feeding her. The whole table was laughing and one of the grandma’s said that she had to take a photo because it was so cute. Mike and I were cracking up at her reaction and we just kept giving her more. I finally tried it myself and the stuff was FANTASTIC. I am going to learn how to make it and Lisa (another mom in the group) told me all about how to do it, since it’s a family favorite for them. The waitresses at the restaurant really liked Nadia and kept trying to come over and let them pick her up, but she was having no part of that, she was with her Daddy. But they were playing with her a lot when Mike was out in the hallway with her.

Nadia is sleeping now after her adventure out on the town. We walked from the hotel to the restaurant down the busy street in Nanchang and she was just looking at everything and taking in the sights. It was really loud out there with a lot going on, but she just watched everything very closely. She is sleeping now and seems like she might be teething. She has one little tooth showing and another looks like it was poking through and she tried to chew my finger off several times tonight. One of the other moms (Mya) stopped in a store and bought a teether for her baby and Nadia as they were both behaving in the same way. I think most of the babies are teething right now.

She is just beyond what we could have hoped for and we just thank God continually for allowing this beautiful and sweet baby to become part of our family. She just seems made to be with us always. It amazes me to think that our paperwork sat in China for a year before she was ever born. I already can’t imagine any baby being more perfect for us and the wait just melted away.

Thanks for all your sweet and funny comments so far. It’s great fun for us to wake up and see what people have had to say overnight. Love, Louanne

There is a part of me that doesn’t know where to start, so I am just going to run with it. First off, we woke at 5 am and gave up the fight at sleeping anymore. I double checked the bags and put a bunch of stuff for the baby in my carry on in case the bags got lost again. They picked our bags up at 7 and we were told to be in the lobby at 9 to catch the bus to the airport. We were also told to change a good amount of our US Dollars into Yuan for the various bits of paperwork we would be doing with the baby on Monday. Once we all had our money, we headed for the airport. We flew on China Eastern airlines for this short flight and they were fast and efficient like everything else we have experienced in China. After we had been flying about 15 minutes they said, “Our flight is 1 hour and 50 minutes long and we will serve you lunch.” WHAT? Real food on a short flight? And a ticket that only cost $200? Anyway you should have seen these women move, in less than 45 minutes they served everyone a bottled water, then they came through with the food, then they came through with a regular drink, then they came back through for the trash. Speed racers! And all the Chinese people on the plane knew the drill and that you have to eat and drink fast so they can clean up. It was very entertaining.

Now back to the emotions….I thought that my stomach was going to jump out of my throat. Mike and I kept giving each other the countdowns. 5 more hours, 4 more hours and so on. The flight was smooth and once we landed in Nanchang (pronounced Nan-chung) you could see the excitement/stress on all the parents faces. We were ready!!! No more talking about it and making plans, get us to those babies! We were driven to our hotel where we checked in and our guide Michael took one person from each family to buy formula, rice cereal and bottled water. While Mike did that I moved everything for the babies needs into my pink backpack and then started to fidget. By the time Mike got back, I was unpacking all our stuff, just to make the time go by faster. It didn’t help 😉 So I tried brushing my hair and generally making sure I didn’t look totally travel weary. I didn’t even bother with make-up because I was so sure I would have cried it all off.

At 3:15 we were supposed to meet in the lobby to go get the babies. So we were all cheering each other and talking about it and off we went to the Civil Affairs office. First, it’s just in the middle of town (okay a town of 2 million people) on the 26th floor of a regular office building. It was BLAZING hot in there. There were nannies and babies all over the place. There were other families there from another agency. On the way there one of the mom’s (Tina maybe) said, “Embrace the CHAOS that is Gotcha Day.”

It was CHAOS!!! Mike was calming looking at the babies and I was frantically scanning the babies trying to see which one was Nadia. (Would she have a shaved head? Would she be healthy? Was she going to cry?) I thought I was going to pass out I was so excited. Then a couple moved out of the way and across the room a nanny was pointing the baby she was holdings’ hand at me and saying, “Mama, mama.” And I just looked at her and screamed out, “Is that my baby?” And she shook her head and kept pointing and saying, “Mama, mama.” I thought my heart was going to burst right out of my chest right there. So I was grabbing at Mike saying, “There she is, there she is!!!!” And I tried not to cry too much, but it was overwhelming.

Then they started calling the families over one by one and the babies started to wail! We waited our turn and got to watch most of the other people in our group get their babies and it was so sweet. Mike was holding the video camera up high trying to get shots of Nadia with the nanny, but it was madness in that room. Then they called our name and I was over the edge. I had our passports and the nanny was already handing her to me before they double checked it. Nadia just checked me out and was holding on to her little tag that had her “mug shot” photo from referral day on it. She was really interested in the other babies that were crying and looked at me and looked at Mike, but she just didn’t get upset.

Some of you may be wondering how the nanny knew me. We sent a care package a few days after we got the referral with socks for the babies, candy for the nannies, 2 disposable cameras and a photo album with photos of Mike and I inside. So they must have been showing it to her and so they knew. We got the photo album and the 2 cameras back and I can’t wait to get them developed. What a treasure since we couldn’t visit the orphanage.

So we got out of the way and were just talking to Nadia and checking her out. She was so HOT! Her little jammies were absolutely soaked and it was just too hard to get any air in there. Babies were crying everywhere. Nadia was just looking at them, and then looking at me. They moved us down a hallway to take our family photo and she became fascinated with Mike’s little tag he wore around his neck with her photo and Chinese name on it. He had that in case the Chinese people ask why we have her. On the back it says that we love her and she is our daughter and we are taking her back to America where we will provide for her. It also says that we will bring her back to visit her home country when she is older. Our guide Michael gave it to us and Mike added Nadia’s photo. She is hooked on looking at it and playing with it hanging around his neck.

Once all the photos were done, we were allowed to ask the nannies a few questions and Michael translated for us. We found out that 2 of the babies in our group were her crib neighbors. One family lives in Sugarland and the other in Florida. Cool! We found that she didn’t have specific nannies and that they all helped with all the babies. We found out that there was no note or any other information on her when she was found. We learned that she likes to have her back scratched when she needs to calm down. Right around then it seems that she crashed out in Mike’s arms and stayed asleep until we were back at the hotel.

Once that was all done they told us to go back to the bus and we were going back to the hotel. Once there Michael was able to give us the babies sleeping and eating schedule. They say Nadia wakes at 5:30, takes 3 naps a day, takes 6 bottles a day and goes to bed at 7 pm and sleeps through the night. WHOA! We headed up to our room where I was dying to get the sweaty jammies off of her and cool her off. Once she cooled off we were playing with her and she even laughed and smiled.

Nadia never cried through the whole Gotcha Day event. She watched all the other babies wailing and watched Mike and I very closely, but never cried. She is a very inquisitive little girl. She tries to get at things and see if they make noise or what they do. We played with her a bit and then realized that she might be hungry and it was one of her feeding times. She was not having any part of that. We tried making the nipple hole larger, I made the second bottle even hotter. Nope, she was not eating. She started to get a bit fussy and we just walked around with her, but she never full out cried.

She is a tiny little one and I got on the scale, then Mike put her in my arms and she is only 15 pounds. There is NO WAY she weighed 14.5 pounds at her referral. I think they weighed her with all those clothes on. I got her on the bed lying on my chest and I was just whispering to her and she fell asleep. And as I was laying there I thought of Eddie and Kim and their kiddos. Many a time when we were visiting them or they us, Claire or Reagan would fall asleep on their chests like that and I remember thinking it was the sweetest thing. And here I was with the most amazing baby who fell right to sleep on my chest.

I kept saying to Mike, “I can’t believe we are really here and we really got this baby girl.” It’s a bizarre and overwhelming flood of emotions. I imagine this is what pregnant moms feel when they finally see the face of the baby they have carried around with them for so long. I just can’t believe it!

What an exhausting but wonderful day. We flew to Jiangxi Province this morning and then got Nadia this afternoon. We’ll post about it in more detail tomorrow after getting some rest (Nadia and Louanne are both asleep right now). I uploaded a couple of videos, so head over to the Video page to get an idea of the Chaos that is Gotcha Day!

Mike