Days 2 and 3

I can happily announce that things are going pretty much as expected.  Not great, not bad, just somewhere in between.  A little person just had her world thrown into a tizzy, and she's sad and confused.  Just like I'd be sad and confused if someone switched my husband, swapped my parents, or traded my house.  And while we go into adoption knowing this will happen, it's still hard.  Hard to watch your daughter suffer when you love her so much it hurts.  And hard to keep yourself together when you are tired, displaced, sick, and stressed.

On Tuesday, Francesca woke up a little confused but cheered up and ate a good breakfast.  We went back to the Guangxi Civil Affairs Office to make the adoption official after the "harmonious period" during which we basically test-drive our new daughter.  The officials asked us if she did well overnight, if she was what we expected her to be, and if we wanted to keep her and why.  After the awkward question and answer session, the CWI caretakers presented us with a few small gifts for Francesca, as well as an absolutely beautiful handmade photo album of her.  When we were done at the office, we said our final goodbye to the caretakers, and thanked them profusely for taking care of our daughter before we could.  I always find it absolutely impossible to convey enough appreciation at this moment.

Goofing around at breakfast.

So pretty.

Rosie planting one on her little sister.

After doing her footprint.  She did not like it at all.

After all of our appointments, we had a little playtime in the room and then we headed to the fancy new mall nearby.  Francesca was OK with riding in the Ergo, which surprised me.  We got her a cute new pair of squeaky shoes to replace the crazy red patent leather boots that were two sizes too big.

The requisite van photo.  There are getting to be so many of us
that we can hardly fit in!

At the mall getting some new shoes.

On Wednesday, Glenn took us to Qing Xiu Shan park.  It is an absolutely beautiful park, nothing like anything I have ever been to in the US.  The weather has been quite nice here, and the air feels dry less smoggy than it has on our previous trips.  I don't remember ever seeing a blue sky in China before.

In the afternoon we rested.  Everyone is sick now, all with something different.  Stomach problems, cough, fevers.  I seem to have the exact same illness as I had on Rosie's adoption trip, complete with the China-special oozing eyes.

Francesca is turning out to be a little like Rosie when we first met her.  She prefers Baba, but not in the extreme way that Rosie did.  She will let me hold her and care for her and play with her.  But sometimes, she won't even let me look at her, and even takes a swipe at me.  She gets very, very angry when Emmie or Rosie try to come near me, even if she doesn't want to be near me herself. She's still pretty hot and cold with her sisters.

She's also turning out to be a little like Emmie when we met her.  She wants to be out of the room constantly, a la Nanning 2012. While she's not exactly hanging on the doorknob trying to escape like Emmie did, whenever we are in the room, she raises her arms to be picked up and cries, pointing to the door.  She wants to be walked in circles around the 20th floor endlessly, which, as we learned on Emmie's adoption trip, is slimming but not sustainable.  She has cried so much that her sweet little cheeks are nearly bleeding.  Night time is hard, but at least she eventually wears herself out.

So, we are having some good moments, but overall things are not easy right now.  And trying to deal with hours and hours of heartbreaking screaming tests your limits when you are tired and sick and feeling like the walls of your tiny hotel room are closing around you.  But we didn't expect that it would be easy.  Luckily, we have experience on our side--we can just look at Emmie and Rosie and know that it does get better.  And not just better...but wonderful.

Party of Five

So, the "Gotcha Day" story.

We left the room in a frantic rush because, you know, we can barely make it anywhere on time with two kids, never mind three.  P and I were so so so super nervous.  When I told this to our guide, Glenn, he said, "It's your THIRD time!"  OK, so maybe this stuff gets to be old hat to some folks, but not us.  Emmie chatted and chatted and chatted the entire ride over there.  P and I just wanted silence in an attempt to calm down.  The Civil Affairs office is only a couple of minutes from the hotel, so there wasn't a lot of time to get ourselves any more in the zone.  It was more like the sweaty, shaky, I-might-puke zone than anything else.

We were the first family to arrive.  We sat in the waiting area, and I asked Glenn if we would see Yiman arrive.  He told us yes, and showed us where to stand to get pictures.  Right about then, I started looking around frantically for Yiman's little Hello Kitty backpack full of goodies.  It turns out, in our rush to leave the room we forgot the bag.  This sent me into a tailspin.  How were we going to meet our daughter who was DEFINITELY going to hate us and have NOTHING to give to her.  I mean, were the four of us just going to sit there and look at her and hope we'd get by on our good looks and charm?  I think not.  So I sent P back to the hotel to get her little bag.  Just as the van whisked him away, I realized that he had the camera strapped on to him, so if she came in while he was gone, we'd miss that first glimpse.  I was a wreck waiting for him to return.

Not-so-patiently waiting for their mei mei.

Thank goodness, he got back in the nick of time.  Not long after, Glenn said, "There she is!"  P started clicking away with the camera and I started rolling the video.  But as I looked through the viewfinder, I knew it wasn't her.  I mean, people often look different in real life than in pictures, but this was *really* different.  Like, a BOY different.  I asked Glenn about 4 times if it was her and he confirmed that it was.  They took her/him into a playroom where Glenn said they would change her, presumably into girl's clothing.  

P looked at me and said I looked disappointed.  Emmie and Rosie seemed a bit flummoxed, too.  I started reviewing the video...she had boy clothing on, but this was totally possible.  She had a whiffle, but this was possible, too.  But it just wasn't her FACE.  I mean, a mother knows her daughter, even the very first time she meets her.  All of a sudden, I looked up, and in walks in a man carrying a precious little baby girl with big eyes and a crazy hat with fake hair on it.  THAT was Yiman!  But, obviously in all of the confusion, neither of us were documenting her arrival as we had been told she already arrived.  As a boy.  Before I could get the video out, the moment was over and she was taken to the back room.  Emmie and Rosie was just reeling by now.  It was like one minute their little sister was a boy.  The next their little sister took Rogaine, grew long hair, and got a color and perm.  I mean, do we EVER do things normally in this family?

I wanted to scream at Glenn but we were quickly asked to come into a back room to meet her.  She walked in with her orphanage foster father in one of the craziest Gotcha Day outfits I've ever seen.  Padded everywhere, red patent leather boots with rhinestones, and a hat with the aforementioned crazy curly hair.  But she was the prettiest sight we had ever seen.  Well, tied with the other two prettiest sights we have ever seen.  She wasn't that interested in the stuff we had in her Hello Kitty backpack, and when it was time to leave the meeting room she started screaming her little head off.  Actually, we were the only family with a screaming child on this particular day.

Rocking quite the trendy outfit.

First meeting.  The man with her is her "in-house" foster father from the CWI.

With Baba while I talked to her caregivers.  Emmie was running out of
tricks by now trying to cheer her up.  "Mama, she doesn't even like STICKERS!"

I went over and reviewed my list of questions with the caretakers.  I found out that she has had a lot of transitions this past year.  Before July, she was in the regular baby room at the CWI.  From July to October, she "lived" with a foster family IN the CWI.  Some of the younger children actually have foster families who are put up by the CWI to take care of children in-house.  From October to two days ago, she was living with a foster family outside of the CWI.  Then she went back to her in-house foster family.  They said she cried for much of the past two days.  The told me that in both of these families, she had a very strong preference for the Baba, because the Baba's played with her more.

Medically, she looked good to us, a little pale maybe, but with all of the anemic people in our house, we sort of get used to pale so my judgement might be off.  She hasn't been transfused since 11/11.  The transfusion before that was two months prior.  It seems as if she is not particularly well transfused, and when she does get blood, she's not getting very much.  This is due to yet another very bad blood shortage in Guangxi.

After gathering as much information as possible, they gave me her finding clothes.  Unless you've done it before, you have no idea how unbelievably sad and empty it feels to hold your child's finding clothes.  There was no note with her when she was found under a bridge, at 3 months old.

During this entire question time with the caretakers, P was trying to soothe Yiman.  Emmie and Rosie kept taking turns coming over to me and saying things like, "Mama, she doesn't like me at all."  And, "Mama, she doesn't like any of the stuff we brought for her."  They were trying so hard to cheer her up, and you could tell that it was bothering them that they could not comfort their new little sister.  It's moments like this when I know that I am blessed with two of the most amazing, compassionate daughters in the world.

And then that was that.  We carried her kicking and screaming out of the office.  She was hot and sweaty and sad and scared and dazed.  Our hearts just broke for her, knowing how utterly confused and terrified she must have felt.

When we came back to the room, she seemed extremely angry with me.  Probably a combination of her strong preference for males (she was even going to Glenn for comfort) and the fact that I didn't do any of the comforting at the Civil Affairs office because I was talking with the caregivers about her.  Surprisingly, she also did not like Emmie and Rosie one single bit.  We were a bit shocked because kids usually like kids, but not this kid, I guess.  Emmie and Rosie were such troopers about it and refused to give up, even though it was clear it hurt their little feelings.

Sad and hot.  Where have I seen this scene before?
Talk about giving us flashbacks!

Rosie:  If she doesn't want to eat these snacks, I will!
(The Snackinator)

One of her first semi-smiles.

So the remainder of our afternoon was oscillating between screaming and sort of cheering up.  At one point, she screamed until she passed out asleep.  We took that as an opportunity to strip off some of her sweaty layers.  When she woke up, we went to the Executive Lounge and she smiled a bit and ate some watermelon.

Emmie still trying!

Definitely not happy with any of the females in this hotel room.

And I cried myself to sleep.

Rosie pulling out all the stops at an attempt to gain little sister's favor.
Not working.

Tonight we gave her a bath with the girls which was a huge hit.  After Emmie and Rosie got out, Francesca proceeded to poop in the tub, which was a bit of a surprise because the caretakers went on and on about how constipated she was and that we had to go to the pharmacy to get some ancient Chinese herbal remedy for this problem.  Emmie and Rosie thought this was both disgusting and hysterical.  P said that Emmie will probably talk about this as much as anything else about our entire trip to meet her sister.  And, for those of you who know Emmie, this is absolutely true.  If anyone from Emmie's pre-K class is reading this blog, I'm sure you'll be hearing about this when she gets back.

Loves the bath!

After cleaning up the poop and re-cleaning Francesca (which she did not mind one bit and I'm sure makes her think she gets a double bath every night), the girls watched Classical Baby.  Now, Emmie and Rosie are pretty serious when they watch Classical Baby, and they were a little miffed with their baby sister grabbing at the screen, putting her face up so close that they couldn't see, drooling on the DVD player, etc.  Emmie kept saying in her Emmie-tone, "Mama, what is she DOING?"  Rosie rolled her eyes more than once.  Ah, sisters.

Why does it look like they are already up to no good?

Rosie, very triumphant that we survived the day!

We love you, beautiful baby.

Sisters forever.

It's GO TIME!

The balloons are here:

The crib is not:

And in 30 minutes we leave to go from a family of four to a family of five.

Thank you to everyone back home and everywhere who has been sending prayers and good vibes our way.  Please pray for quick healing for our little girl.  We love you!

Nanning

We arrived in Nanning a little late last night.  Our girls are great travelers, but even they were pretty weary from the long days of airports and airplanes.  As we were dragging them and our tons of luggage through customs for what felt like the 10th time in two days, I looked at P and said, "There are easier ways to have children."  But, not our children.  Our children came to us through stacks and stacks of paper, from thousands of miles away.  They came from our hearts, and this is how we come to be a family.  And like I've said the last two times, the trip to meet them is far from a vacation.

After making it through line after line, we were met by our guide, Glenn.  Our driver is actually the same driver we had for Emmie's adoption trip.  We headed off to the Nanning Marriott.  Glenn informed us that this is actually an extremely busy adoption week and time in general because of all of the closures for different holidays, and because CCCWA is closing to upgrade their computer systems.  As a result, lots of families are trying to get their adoptions done now to avoid the risk of being pushed off for a long time.  He told us that we will be meeting Francesca at the Civil Affairs office with probably 12 other families.  We were honestly a little sad that we wouldn't be meeting her in our hotel room as we did with Emmie.  Glenn gave us a report from the foster family about Francesca.  It reiterates over and over how much she dislikes strangers.  Honestly, this makes me nervous.  Glenn helped us check in to our hotel, went over our itinerary with us, and we called it a night.

This morning we headed down to the breakfast buffet at the hotel.  I wasn't ready at all for the flood of emotions that hit me when we walked right to one of the tables that we tried to eat breakfast at with Emmie.  I say "tried" because for most of our adoption trip with Emmie, she was so unbelievably sad that she wouldn't let us sit anywhere to eat.  P said he remembered sitting there alone while I took Emmie for a walk so she could look out every window for her foster mother.  Emmie said that she doesn't remember anything from being here before.  P noted that he has a lot of sad memories at this hotel, and I do, too.  It's cathartic for us, though, to watch Emmie sit here happily eating bacon and telling her little sister, "You know, Rosie, they met me in Nanning, too!"

This afternoon we headed out to a new mall about 10 minutes away from the hotel.  For those of you who have stayed here before, things have changed a lot.  The Walmart next to the hotel is gone.  The mall that was attached to the hotel is gone, too.  The entire area is under massive construction.  The little strip of restaurants behind the hotel is gone, too.  We miss the old stuff and especially that crazy Walmart, but the new mall has plenty.  The first floor has a lot of neat food shops and a Whole Foods-type supermarket.  The mall was really decked out for Christmas, but mostly with a Garfield theme.  We were laughing because Garfield seems so 80's to us, but here you couldn't turn your head without seeing a Garfield Santa or a Garfield next to a Christmas tree.  Outside the mall there is a huge Christmas tree, and even the tree topper is Garfield.  Rosie just said, "Who IS this tiger everywhere?"

Garfield celebrating the season with a huge sub by the
Christmas tree.

Rosie:  "I love this tiger."

On Santa's lap in Garfield's house.  So weird.

In Garfield's house.
"Mama, quick!  Take the picture!  He's getting heavy!"

The girls climbing the walls waiting to meet their little sister.

This is how much wine I'd have to drink to feel calm on the
Eve of meeting our third daughter.

Tonight we packed Francesca's little backpack full of things we hope will bribe her to like us.  Or, at least come with us without kicking and screaming.  Or, maybe come with us WITH kicking and screaming.  Either way, tomorrow is the day.  Sad, happy, or otherwise, we become a family of five.   I pray that she's not too afraid, and that her little heart heals quickly.  She doesn't know it yet, but she's got a forever family who loves her to the moon and back already.