Monday, November 24, 2008

Gotcha Day



So this was the big day! I was up early and went for a stroll down by the river with my dad. Scott was tring to make up for major loss of sleep. Guangzhou is my favorite place that we have been to in China so far. The people are nice the pace is calm and peaceful, and the environment is serene. There is a park by the Pearl River that people are playing in all day. In the morning several different groups of people are doing Thai Chi and there is beautiful music playing. Oh yeah the birds in the early morning are like something you would expect to hear in the jungle or something, loud and beautiful.
So our nervousness during the morning was uncontrollable and I felt like I didn't know what to do with myself. I kept thinking I need to get myself together for Lucy's sake. We got everything together that we could imagine we would need for a 10 month old and all piled onto the bus around 2:30 in the afternoon. All of us were quiet and jittery. When we got there we went up on the elevator to the 8th floor and once we hit about the 6th floor you could hear the crying of babies. That pretty much did all of us in and what we walked into wasn't quite what we had pictured. There were numerous families from Spain and Italy who had just received their children. Most of the babies were about 2-3 years old. Since they knew a little more what was going on than a 10 month old, they were screaming. So there we stood for about 45 minutes with about 30 other parents and 15 toddlers stressed out and screaming. UUUGGG! I pulled myself together and went to the bathroom since we had been told that our daughters were being fed on the bus. When I came out of the bathroom Scott was all teary eyed and told me that Lucy had just gone by with the nanny and that she was wearing the dress that we sent. Yay! It was 10 minutes later and we were the second family up. All of a sudden I felt very calm. We walked to the nanny and next thing you know I was holding my daughter. The entire day was very surreal. I think back now and feel as if I were on autopilot until she was sleeping at the end of the day. As I was watching her sleep that was when everything hit me. I can't begin to explain the amount of joy bursting in my heart. She did exceptionally well her first night. It took her about 2 hours to warm up to us in the room. Lucy never really cried that night. She was crawling around on the floor with me and every so often she would get a pouty bottom lip and a look of fear in her eyes. As soon as I would pick her up she would take a few deep breaths and seem fine. Then she would go back to playing. Oh yeah during this time Scott had to finish up the official documents for the next day......which took about 2 hours. So I was all by myself. Oh darn again. Ha Ha.