Gotcha Day Times 2!

I am sitting here looking at both my babies sleeping soundly and I couldn't have more love in my heart than I do right at this moment! We have talked about and dreamed about this day for so long and we have guessed many times how it would go and now we know! I'll share with you everything I can remember... It was a long morning because we got up very early. Due to excitement and also falling asleep around 8:00 last night! So we were up and ready and the hours before we left seemed to drag on forever. But finally, Grace got here and we headed to the Civil Affairs office. The traffic was crazy and busy, so it took longer than we thought to get there. When we pulled into the parking lot and got out, I looked at the building to see if we should take any pictures outside and that's when I saw my little guy looking out the window at us. I waved and he smiled and then we quickly went in. His nanny was so nice, I was extremely impressed with her. She pointed to us and said Mama and seemed genuinely excited about the moment she got to introduce us. I sat down on the couch beside him and patted him. It took a lot of self-control to not scoop him up and kiss his sweet face. He was holding a roll in a package and was really more interested in that and looking out the window for awhile. I got some toys out and showed him and he loved the bug that jiggles when you pull the string. He also liked the "That's Not My Snowman" book (a little plug for Usborne Books, Ayra!). He was happy and content but not really wanting us to mess with him for awhile. After a bit, his nanny quietly slipped away to the other side of the room where he couldn't see her. We both tried to interact with him and for the most part he was happy. He let me hold him and play with him while Tim did some of the paperwork. Then Tim wanted me to do the writing on the forms where we put their official American names, so we traded places. Not too long after that, I was standing there looking out the window and I saw two ladies walking up with a little girl in a green coat with a Mickey Mouse backpack on. I saw they were headed to the Civil Affairs building, so I knew it was Reese! We got to video them walking in. She looked like such a tiny peanut! I was equally impressed with her nannies, they also said Mama and she repeated them- it was one of the sweetest sounds EVER! And then she said BaBa (Chinese for daddy) and Reese repeated her. It was so adorable. She had been asleep on the more than 3 hour drive, so she was a little more shy and looked confused. She let me hold her and I couldn't believe the feeling of relief to have both of them there with us! Words cannot describe it! When we had to move to another room to take a picture both of them started crying and it was not a good picture for their red books (official adoption book). The staff at the Civil Affairs and Grace were trying their best to help us get them to stop crying but they were both just wailing. It was sad. When we walked outside to leave, it was like turning a faucet off! They both stopped immediately! Ethan said something in Chinese and pointed and was perfectly content! I guess they were just done with that place! Ethan sat on my lap on the ride to the hotel and Reese sat on Tim's. Grace talked to both of them. She said to Ethan in Chinese "can I hold you" and he threw his hands toward her and said no. It was funny! He is not afraid to say what he wants or doesn't want. Reese was very subdued and just looked around. When we got to the hotel, Grace came up to do paperwork (will it ever end????). We called home and introduced the little kids to all the big kids and Grandma. Ethan said Grandma plain as day, several times! It was so cute! He absolutely loves books. He spent a long time stacking up all the books we have and moving his stacks from place to place. Reese finally perked up after she had part of a banana and some milk. In the last few hours they have played and explored. It is so amazing to watch them together and think about how much fun they will have growing up together. Today is the beginning of a new chapter in their lives and I am so thankful to God for giving us these two precious gifts. Before Grace left she translated all Ethan's medication instructions. Two of them are pills that he takes 1/4 and 1/2 of and they are the tiniest little pills. I have no idea how I am going to give him those and get them cut up. Grace said to just crush it and put it in a drink. The problem is I don't know what he will drink good enough to get all the medicine. The 3rd kind is a powder in a packet that he needs 1/4 of. Are you kidding???? So I have to find a way to dump it out, divide it and save the rest. Good grief! We got the kids stripped down to one layer so we could see their true size! Plus Ethan was sweating, literally, sweat dripping down his face! I'll never understand the whole bundling concept. The poor things can't even move! We received some nice gifts from Ethan's orphanage and all of his stuff back that we mailed in care packages. I don't think they ever let him wear the clothes or use the blanket or bear, but the photo album was very worn, so I know he played with it. He will point to our pictures and say mama and baba and he is trying hard to repeat all his sisters' names! Again, it is very adorable! They also sent back all the pictures the girls' drew and the letter we wrote. Reese came to us with a little backpack that had the disposable camera in it, a bottle, and some diapers. They also gave us the most awesome book of pictures of her with dates and captions. It is priceless and I am beyond thankful that they took the time and effort to make it for her. There is a picture of her on the day she arrived. She looks so cute and she's wearing a Spiderman shirt!! Too funny! She reminds me so much of Lindsey Bauer (our friend from China)in her looks and how tiny she is. She likes to be sung to and must not be too concerned about if it sounds good or not because I am no singer and she liked me singing to her. She finally relaxed and fell asleep in my arms. Tim tried to get Ethan to lay down in the bed with him and he threw a tiny little fit, so I traded Reese for Ethan and he fell asleep, too. So, they are napping at the same time and so is daddy! I was really afraid that I would fall in love with one of them more than the other and that I would have to feel guilty and weird about it, but, honestly I can say that they are equally precious and wonderful and I love them both to the moon and back! This journey has been so long and so difficult, but the blessing of today has wiped away any heartache and pain. God has had this special day in His plan and I am in awe of His greatness. I do wish that my big girls could have been here to be with us, but the homecoming on the 18th will be very special and amazing and then our new normal can begin. I am looking forward to watching these two kiddos bond with us and eachother. God has answered so many prayers and we are so grateful for the number of prayers that were lifted up on our behalf... what a testimony we have!

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One More Day... AAAAAHHHHH!!!

We made it safe and sound to Nanjing! We met the other families in the lobby. It was exciting to see the others and briefly talk about our adoptions. We are looking forward to meeting back up with everyone in Guangzhou when we all have our children! We were the latest flight, so we were not as panicked as the others when things seemed to take a long time. The drive between terminals was crazy long, I guess getting her so late at night all 3 times we have flown in didn’t give us a chance to see how huge the Beijing Airport really is. I was very impressed with the plane, it made the short flight very easy. There were some turbulent spots, but nothing too scary. Grace was with us, so we didn’t have to worry about finding where to go or figuring out what to do. That was nice! She has really opened up since we have her to ourselves and we had some great conversations. She is friends with Veronica, our guide with Reagan’s adoption, and they traveled to America together last summer. She told us that Veronica is having a baby! We are so happy for her, there will always be a special place in our hearts for her. Grace talked a lot about working for Great Wall and also her feelings about what happened to us in August. While it validated a lot of what we felt, it was also sad to hear her talk about some things. I am not going to share what she said because I don’t want to cause problems like I feel like we did for Jane (our guide in August). Grace knows Jane and said that she would call her and let her know we are back for Ethan. I wanted to tell her that we appreciated everything she did for us during that horrible time. Once we got to the hotel and checked in, we had lunch at Pizza Hut. It was great! The only complaint was that Tim got water to drink and they brought hot water. I was nice and shared my coke. We took a really long walk and enjoyed seeing all the little shops and all the people. This is so different from Beijing. It’s like the Branson Landing China style. There are a lot of young couples walking around like they are on a date. Our hearts skip a beat when we see people with little kids, knowing that tomorrow we will be toting two of them! I’m sure that is going to get some looks! We met Grace at 3:00 in the lobby. She is not staying in our hotel (not by her choice) so she had to go find a place to stay. We walked to a bank to exchange all of our money that we will need on Tuesday. What an experience that was! So, now have 6 times the amount of bills that we came with. That is a huge stack, let me tell you! There was a lady that helped us. Since she has an account at the bank, she got the money and then we gave her our money. She got a better exchange rate or something. Grace worked it all out and it ended up saving us around $50 and we didn’t have to do an hour of paperwork. So glad Grace took care of all of that! And for $50 we can eat at McDonalds 9 times! I attempted to arrange the room and unpack to prepare for the little ones, but we are very limited on space. There is no dresser, so our clothes are staying in suitcases and there’s not many places to put them. The cribs take up a massive amount of space. I think I got it figured out enough for now. We also went to the grocery store and got a few things. It seemed like things were expensive and it’s just hard to know what to get for the kids. We wanted to have some snacks for them in case its too hard to go out right away. We got bananas since we know how cute Ethan is eating one from the video we got! The plan for tomorrow is to meet Grace at 10:00 and go to the Civil Affairs Office to meet the kids at 10:30. It doesn’t seem real and I am surprisingly calm. Grace said she would help with the picture taking, so hopefully we will be able to capture both Gotcha moments! Well, this blog is pretty boring, but tomorrow will be one worth reading, or at least seeing the pictures. Thank you for continuing to pray for our family. I am so humbled by the amount of support we have received and we are so thankful so many people have had a part in bringing us to this day, it truly does take village to adopt a child! Please pray that Ethan and Reese can feel how much we love them right away and that they are not scared. They will only have a few minutes to get used to the idea of us, when we have had years to prepare for Reese and over a year to prepare for Ethan. Also, please pray that we get all of Ethan’s medications that will last until we get him home. He has his appointment with Dr. Tong on the 21st, so we need enough medication to last until then. Half the Sky was supposed to work this out with the orphanage, so we are keeping our fingers crossed that it will not be an issue. Check back tomorrow!

Hanging out in Beijing

We made it to China!  After a short trip to Chicago, a looooong lay-over, and a very smooth 13.5 hour flight to Beijing, we got settled in our hotel at about 1:30 am local time.  After showering, getting the computer set up, and unpacking a few things, we got to bed around 3:00.  We decided that we would skip the tourist stuff today.  This decision was based on several reasons:  we have done the exact same tour twice, it’s freezing cold outside, we are exhausted, we are enjoying some time just the two of us, and honestly I just don’t feel like being a tourist today.  When we were here in August, it was on the bus to the Great Wall that we first heard the news that Ethan was in the hospital.  So, there are some bad memories associated with that trip.  Our guide is the same person and when we got here last night she acted a little bit surprised that it was us again.  That didn’t give us much confidence that she is very prepared to help us with Ethan’s medical issues.  We have been told that Half the Sky has worked hard to get all the medicine he needs for the duration of the trip, but they gave it to the orphanage and who knows if they will cooperate and give us everything.   This guide will be flying with us to Nanjing, so we will not get to see Jane, who was our guide in August.  She was so amazing, so kind, and we really wanted to see her again to thank her for all she did for us.  She had the most difficult job of all having to be the one to tell us we weren’t getting Ethan and that he was so sick and we couldn’t see him.  I think back to how hard that must have been for her and how sad it was for all of us.  She tried so hard to help us and our suspicion is that she told us things and helped us more than she was supposed to and possibly got in trouble.  Anyway, don’t want to rehash all of that…

 

 

So, we have had the day to ourselves, which has been completely awesome.  We ate a great breakfast (China has such good breakfast buffets!) then talked to the girls on Skype for about 45 minutes.  Ryleigh is being dramatic and there seemed to be some tension between my parents and her, so I am praying that she will straighten up and make the most of this two weeks.  I think it’s so hard to be away under the best circumstances, so when things don’t seem to be going well at home, it makes it even harder.  I think everyone will feel better when we have the babies with us and we can all focus on that.  It has been such a long journey and to be so close to Gotcha Day, I think the stress and excitement is coming to a head and everybody is about to explode.  Anyway, it sounds like we missed an awesome game for Becca.  I can’t believe we are going to miss 5 games.  There were so many changes in the freshman schedule, she hasn’t had very many games yet this year and now we are missing all these ones that are in the next few weeks.  Big bummer.  But maybe she will play better when her dad isn’t yelling at the refs (always with good reason, of course)! 

 

We took a walk down the street after we talked to the girls.  We found a few familiar places:

 

 

We also went to a grocery store and a store that had a bunch of booths selling a wide variety of things:  clothes, shoes, jewelry, toys, make-up, etc.  It was interesting and I am sure we could have found stuff to buy, but we have to wait until Nanjing and Guangzhou when we will purchase another suitcase.  While we were out, I started breaking out in hives, which has been happening the last week or so.  It really stinks because I don’t know what is causing it and it has never happened before.  I brought some medicine for it, so we came back to the room so I could take it.  Then it was naptime, not what you are supposed to do to get over jetlag, but when you are exhausted, it is just too hard.  I am enjoying a day with nothing much to do because it has been a long time since I have had that.  I think Tim is a little bored and wishes we would have gone on the tour with the group, but I am happy to sit here and piddle the day away.  Who knows when we will have a relaxing day again, right?!?!? 

 

Our hotel room is so hot, we have the windows open and it also has a weird smell.  Not a gross smell, just strange, kind of like burning motor oil.  The beds look so soft and cushy and then you sit down and realize they are typical Chinese beds that are anything but soft and cushy.  We piled on the extra blankets in an attempt to make it more comfortable and we certainly didn’t need any covers with the heat so we slept on top of all the layers of blankets.  We will leave early in the morning to fly to Nanjing and then Monday at 10:30 we will have our babies in our arms.  It will be such an exciting moment to be able to have them and to share with our family and friends those first pictures of us meeting them.  I hope Grace, our guide, will be helpful with that since we won’t have Ryleigh with us to take pictures and video, which was the plan in August.  And that was with just one Gotcha moment!  Now there will be two!  I still can’t believe it.  I think part of wanting to just lay low today has to do with not wanting to share all of our story with the people in our group.  I don’t want them to be nervous or to be the family everyone is whispering about.  We are pretty sure that all the GW families were informed of our situation and reassured that everything was fine and that things like what happened to us only happen on extremely rare occasions.  I just want to have Ethan and Reese and then I might feel more like connecting with everyone else.  God willing that will happen SOON!