Gotcha Day/Forever Family Day!

Our Gotcha Day was an unbelievable experience. Let me first say that I am keeping this somewhat brief because we have an appt to go to and I wanted to get some pics posted. We have MUCH better videos of our Gotcha moment than photos, but unfortunately, I cannot email them to my daughter to post because they are too big, and I cannot go on youtube here to have here post them from there. I will try and have Jacob drag them into imovie and shrink them. We didn’t have anyone help us to take pics or videos for us, so he had to take a video as they brought her out to us, then we took these pictures about 20 minutes later.

When they brought her out, she walked right up to us. She said Mama and Baba at Ms. Zhong’s prompting. She let me pick her up and hold her. After about a minute, she began to cry at the realization and she became hysterical. We knew this might happen with her being 3, and several other kids in the room in her age group 2 -4 years old were all screaming. We took her in another room and played for a bit with some finger puppets Jacob took out. He really got her to calm a little. She then cried and cried and our hearts broke as she left the nanny and orphanage director. Can you imagine her fear and pain?

She was beautiful and tiny. Ms. Zhong had her dressed in a dress and shoes and had a backpack with snacks an a special photo album of Xi Hua with her friends. Even pics of her as a baby that I have never seen. As we got into the car she cried and then sat quietly. We returned to the hotel and she played with some little coloring books and crayons. She cried again as our guide left, the only other Chinese person in the room.

That evening she and I, Annie, had a lot of bonding time with toys, coloring and taking walks. Jacob blew some bubbles and she liked that. She will let him help her with things but is very wary of him. She is probably not used to having men around at all. She WOULD NOT go into the crib. She screamed and held onto me like a baby kangaroo and I couldn’t peel her off. We took off the front of the crib, because it is low and you can. so it was like a little bed and tried to see if she would lay down there, but no way. She actually wanted to sleep on my chest, but I finally got her to lay next to me on our bed. She is stuck to me like glue, follows me everywhere in the room! She is so precious and we love her and we get a smile occasionally. This is amazing. She is an amazing girl.