Mommy and Daddy Times Three!

It's Monday night at 9:09 p.m. and Jaden is sleeping behind me in a little crib! This morning I woke up again at 4:30 a.m. and not able to sleep. We had to change our money over to yuan and make copies of our passports and other documents and meet on the 2nd floor at 10:30 a.m.. I was a nervous wreck. I thought I was going to get sick from being so excited. Most of us were on the 2nd floor by 10. not surprised. We were hoping for the possibility of the babies coming early. Here we all are on the 2nd floor over looking the lobby waiting for the babies to come through the revolving door with the orphanage workers. Around 10:10 a.m. 4 babies were carried in but we had to wait for all of them before we could meet in the Gotcha Room and receive our daughters. So we knew that 4 were here and we are on pins and needles waiting for the other 10. And here they come at about 10:50 a.m. and I loose it. Oh my God we are about to get our daughter. Do you know I was the first in that room? We were all standing around being as polite as we can knowing we can not just find our daughter and grab her from their arms. We all kept looking at the babies trying to find ours. "Is that her, no that might be her,no. Is that your daughter? I'm not sure I think it's that one, and I'm thinking oh I thought that one was mine." The babies at first are all quiet until one of the orphanage directors stepped on one that was placed on the floor. Well of course she started to wail and that's all it took for all the others to join in and the room is filled with crying moms, dads and babies. The baby on the floor was fine of course. Then over the wailing our adoption coordinator starts calling families one at a time. The family goes up and is asked is this your daughter? Do you recognize her? Then is handed the new baby girl. Everyone is taking pictures for each other and waiting very patiently for their turn. And at 11:06 a.m. the Stokes family was called. I was not sure if this was Jaden until they showed us her referral picture that she had in a plastic card holder attached to her clothes. Before they called our name I was very emotional, no really I was. But when they called us I said o.k. Janel you need to calm down and be at peace for Jaden. So I just held her and told her mommy has you now and Mommy's here and gave her kisses on her beautiful full cheeks. I was very happy that she did not push me away or cry when I kissed her because I wasn't sure how she was going to react to all this. She really seemed to be o.k. she wasn't crying and she would do the boo boo lip once in a while so I'd tell her it's o.k you go ahead and cry Mommy's got you. A few times she'd let out a little cry then stop, she likes to be held close and snuggle. You know I'm loving that. The more I held her and stared at her I could see the Jaden that I saw in the referral pictures. Those picture were at 6 months and she is now 1 year. After all that calmed down we went to the restaurant for lunch they told us it was their feeding time. I started with Cheerios while we waited for the Congee and Boiled egg she liked the Cheerios and that was when she first started to smile, just a smidgen though and as lunch went on she'd open up a little bit more. Ron fed her as I held her facing me. I did not want her not looking at me or me not being able to drink her all in. After lunch we came back to the room and I bathed her. That went surprisingly well, she cried but not too much. Then we had to get on a bus to finalize the adoption. Then from there we had to go and register for the visa's. All in one day we received our daughters, finalized and did the visa's. So our Gottcha Day and our Adoption Day is the same. It is usually done in two but because the visas are taking longer we had to do it today which is good but made for ANOTHER long day. They really run you during this whole trip. It's been a long day. I'm going to bed. Pictures and video should be posted shortly.

Love Janel