GOTCHA Day Has Arrived!!

It's A Girl!! At long last. It's hard to believe it's finally here. Charlene mentioned earlier that it feels like we're just baby sitting. In actuality, that is what we are doing. Before we were given our babies, all the parents had to sign a temporary "custody" form. We have them for 24 hours temporarily. They want to make sure there are no incompatibilities between baby and their new parents. It was explained that this 24 hour period, will give our babies and us a chance to get to know one another and that if any parents decided it isn't right for them, they were under no obligation. I can't imagine anyone doing that.

After signing the form, we were introduced to the director of Civil Affairs. Then they introduced the orphanage directors. There were babies from 3 different orphanages in this province. Each director brought with them an extremely valuable gift for us. It's photo album of our baby in her first 10 months. Even a photo of what is possibly when she was found. The description of what she was wearing when she was found matched the photo they had in the album. We'll scan those when we get back and post them for all to see.

Wouldn't you know it. We were the 2nd family to sign the temp custody form, and THE last to receive our baby. There were so many people milling around that had just received their babies, it was hard for Mommy and Daddy to get to her. Mommy almost crawled under a table to get to her!



They were very kind to all the families. Everyone got a photo album of their baby and a gift bag with several bags of formula, rice cereal (I think), and some kind of snack cakes, a baby bottle, container for mixing, and a spoon. The bad thing was no directions in English. We were able to figure out the chart on the side of the bag.
Proud Daddy and baby bonding.

No one told us when the last time the babies ate anything. Grace started getting fussy and you could tell see was very tired. She looked like she wanted to eat the toy in the photo above, so we decided to try and giver her a bottle. Daddy expertly prepared a bottle for her despite the foreign directions and Mommy fed it to her and she hungrily ate most of it.


After several burps, it was back to more fussing and out and out wailing. Mommy held her to calm her down and we think she was just so tired that she refused to go to sleep. After a few minutes, she dropped her head on Mommy's shoulder and was out like a light. Daddy has to go take some documents to our coordinators and later make a trip to the supermarket so he gave directions to Mommy for another bottle.

Hope everyone enjoys the photos!