One year ago today - October 15, 2007

Gotcha!

One year ago today CiBaby was in our arms. It was not the experience that I had imagined either. The crying and clinging to her nanny I'd planned for. For some reason I had this all played out in my head that we would be in a cozy room with couches and someone would walk down a long hallway and bring her to us. Nope, to quote CiBaby. It was a cold, hard, grey building and room with big banquet-like tables and lots of folding chairs. There was one other family there getting their 11 month old daughter, who was fast asleep in their arms.

Our darling daughter saw us and started crying...her little hi-yah! cry, squishy face and all. Her nanny was going through the photo book we sent with her, showing pictures and pointing to us. Still lots of crying. The two of them left the room for a few minutes and came back with a small bottle of tea* We signed some papers. These papers were giving us 24 hour custody of CiBaby, and we would return the next day to sign the real ones. Kind of like a dry run, I guess.

Finally it was time to go. The nanny placed CiBaby in our arms and we were off, into a cab to CareFor, the department store to gather known** supplies with a hysterical baby. We wandered through the store, guessed how much she weighed so we could buy diapers and guessed what kind of baby food she would like best. They definitely had some interesting food combinations...beef marrow and vegetable paste***, water lily and lotus seed paste...all very well received! Too bad we didn't have our baby carrier with us, she got really heavy carrying her for so long and of course I was the only one she would allow to hold her. At that point, any time T-Daddy or our guide would look at her, or she would look at them, she started to cry. Poor baby.

Once back at our hotel she went down for a great nap, right on schedule and for the amount of time they told us...2 hours.

10/15/2007 - 10/15/2008

We had dinner at our hotel and talked with the other family that had received their daughter that morning as well, as they were staying in the same hotel.

Today, to celebrate we had Chinese food, and CiBaby was super excited about it! "I eat Chinese!" she said over and over. Of course it came out "I Chinese" but we knew what she was saying, but it was still technically correct.

She's becoming quite the chopstick pro!

Baby, I can't believe a year has come and gone. You have brought so much joy to all you meet and fill our life with lots of love and laughter.

Love,
Mommy and Daddy

*She still loves tea. And it must be tea and not herbal concoctions.

**We'd asked our guide to bring us there the day we arrived so we would have everything but he'd advised against it. We waited until we were able to talk to the orphanage director and find out what kind of formula and food she'd been eating.
***The call the purees "paste."