November 28: Gotcha Day!

Yesterday we received Emily - what a joy! We left our hotel at 9:30 AM yesterday (November 28) and traveled about 15 minutes by bus to the local registration office. Unlike our last adoption experience, in which the children were with their nannies in a back room, brought out to us one at a time, this time the children were all with nannies in the foyer of the building! This created a few minutes of chaotic confusion as the mothers realized they just weren't sure which baby was theirs. Eventually the chaos settled to minor confusion and, after the director of local adoptive affairs addressed us for a few moments, the babies were all handed out to their adoptive parents. Emily was one of three babies from the Xiaogan City Social Welfare Institute, all of whom hold the surname of Lin after the surname of the director of the orphanage.

We received Emily as one of the first babies of 14 given to adoptive parents in our group. Along with Emily, we received a photo album of her taken each month she was in foster care. We also received the disposable camera back that we had sent to China for the foster family to record her activities. We have not yet developed those photos, but we'll do so soon. And as you can see from the photo, we received Emily in beautiful, bright clothing that we'll cherish as keepsakes for years to come.

Emily did not cry at all after we received her; in fact, she smiled almost all of the time we remained in the registration office and on the bus ride back to the hotel. Once we returned to the hotel, we stayed in our room for a few hours getting to know Emily. We shot video, took pictures, and introduced Emily to our family. Sydney took immediately to Emily. She held Emily's stuffed bear and offered it to her as soon as we received her from the orphange director. She's a little jealous, of course, and Emily soon started getting jealous of attention given to Sydney. So now we have experienced the first of many sibling rivalries, ranging from attention to feeding to toys.

We are returning to the registration office this morning to complete paperwork and to complete an interview with provincial government officials. We'll post more information after that - we need to get going. But I'm posting our first family photo now.