Monday, September 6, 2010

Gotcha Day!

Well, here we are 7 hours from our Gotcha moment and it still feels very surreal.  This little person is sitting here in our hotel room.  He doesn't know us and we don't know him and honestly it is weird!  Here is how the day went…

 

We met in the lobby at 9:30am.  There were 6 families that got their children with us and 3 that waited until the afternoon and were brought the babies here at the hotel.  We were #3 in drop off.  All the families were waiting in an office building and when we saw a mini-van pull up everyone would get ready and then wait and see who it was and then as soon as we knew who was coming that family would get to the front and everyone would start photographing.  It was nuts.  This is different for us, because with Luke we were all by ourselves (kids and parents included) and it was very quiet. 

 

When Mack arrived his two nannies carried him in.  It was our turn to go to the front of the line.  They were talking Chinese to him telling him "mama" and "baba".   When I reached out for him he turned back to his nanny and wouldn't come, but Dave was able to take him without any problems.  We held him while we finished our paperwork and he mostly watched all the activity around us.  He warmed up to us and really never cried.  The special moment for me was when the nannies were getting ready to leave and they came to visit with us.  Our guide stood with us for about 20 min while we talked.  They gave us a gift.  It was a photo album of pictures of him at the Kaifeng Social Welfare Institute where he has been for his life of 19 months.  We flipped through the pictures and they told us who the other children were and who the different workers were.  We all cried.  I told them thank you and they told me thank you and how much we appreciated each other.  They told me that he was a stinker.  That he would get into everything and that he was funny.  I'm anxious to see his little personality peak through the doors of insecurity, they are starting to even this evening.  He had a best friend…there are several pictures of her in the book.  She was adopted to the states also.  I love knowing all this and having had this conversation especially since it is unlikely that we will be going to visit his orphanage.  Our group is too big and it is to far away for everyone to visit their orphanages.  After we visited it was time for them to say goodbye.  They were bawling (not Mack) the nannies and they were precious.  Two beautiful women (notice pictures) that cared for this little baby boy with a messed up little mouth since he was there at 2 days old.  I loved them and hugged them and we stood and waved while they waved back wiping tears all the way out the door.  I will never forget that.

 

Now we have been back to the hotel this afternoon and we played and got on Skype with kids.  It was midnight for them and they were very tired!  Mack fell asleep for 3 hours.  Dave worked out and I finished "Choosing to SEE"  Mary Beth Chapman's book.  We got him in the bath and put one of our outfits on him and continued to asses the situation.  He has bug bites all over him.  This is common.  His lip looks good.  It is a bigger repair than Luke.  So I feel like it's more noticeable, but Mack has the inside repaired and it looks great so that is different and a blessing.  The one thing we weren't aware of is how bow-legged he is.  Dave has already been on Web MD.  Of course not a major concern but something else to think about.  It doesn't slow him down, he is running all over the place.

 

We are looking forward to coming home. Even more now!  Love you all, Missy


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