Gotcha Day!!!

Sunday Morning:We woke up early at our hotel in Beijing, all of us feeling the excitement that today was THE day! It really felt rather unreal! We packed up our room, ate breakfast at the buffet , then met our group & guide in the lobby at 7:30. We rode a bus to a small local airport. Ran into a glitch with Steve's passport that required additional time of waiting as they fixed the problem. We were so glad we had come early. Going through customs, most of us endured a thorough pat down. Awkward! 

Once on the plane we had a 2 hr flight to Xian.  We were met by our new guide, Sherrie. Boarded another bus and during the 1 hr drive to our hotel she went over the instructions for the rest of the day,and the rest of the wk.

Our hotel is right smack in the middle of  a huge city. We are on the 23rd floor and have a great view of the city below. Although, so far there has been a constant haze, which dosent allow you to see very far. We have 2 hotel rooms. They really are amazing and have wonderful bathrooms.(important to me!) Each room has 2 twin beds, which in my opinion seem even smaller than our twin beds. We also have an extra cot in the one room for Javonn.

We only had a little more than half an hour to unload our luggage before we needed to rush back into the bus to head to the Civil Affairs building to meet our children. Oh my! It really was stressful and at the moment it felt anything but calm and serene! We were all hot n sweaty, tired, nervous and I was esp worried that the children, or mainly Kianna would create chaos in an already chaotic room of various families all meeting their child at once! I knew she was tired, clingy and fragile. We Prayed hard and trusted again that God's peace would prevail!

Nerves running high we enter the building and go to the 20th floor. As soon as we walked in the door, there he was!! All the kids had already arrived! 

Our first glimpse....our guide in the front pulling files, the orphanage director and nanny holding Shao Bo. As soon as the guide told them we were his parents the nanny came to us. Poor Shao Bo's eyes widened in terror, and the closer they came the more he started crying and holding his hand our waving No! NO!
It was heart breaking!!
For a few seconds my mind just froze. All I could think was, "What am I supposed to do!! There is NO Way I could force myself to pull him  away from the only people he has ever known!!"
 

Then suddenly I remembered the stash of options we brought along for exactly a time as this! I knelt down on the floor and opened the back pack. I pulled out cheerios and Steve got the stickers. That did it! He reached for them right away and as he did I gently pulled him onto my lap. The nanny was jabbering away and repeatedly kept saying "Shao Bo Ma-Ma, Bah- Bah (chinese for daddy. pronounced like pappa, except w a B) !!!" 

And he never cried again for his nanny. He seemed to know he could trust us! The children gathered around, and he happily accepted every snack that was offered to him. He preferred the food above any toy!

We had some legal papers to sign that gave us temporary custody of him for the next 24 hrs. His nanny & director quietly slipped out and we were on our own! 

Our family of 6! As soon as the Chinese tell Shao Bo to pose he pops out the 2 fingers. All the Chinese kids do that!

My "twin" toddlers!!

We are SO amazed at our new treasure! He is so smart and such a live wire! He is small but mighty! Steve thinks he will be the liveliest of our crew! He's been giggling, running and bouncing all over the place. He seems to be adapting so well, better than I could ever have hoped for. He loves both Steve & I and cant seem to get enough of us holding him.

He is fully potty trained. The orphanage took him every hour!!! SO it seems like he is forever telling us he needs to go!

He jabbers away in Chinese but easily repeats ANY word in english we ask him to. Seriously, he just amazed us how smart he is, and how fast he seems to understand almost anything we say!

His first night wasnt easy... I'll tell you more about that later. For now, Steve & I need ot run off to do more paper work.

Tired but blessed!!