Online Journal

Today is GOTCHA DAY!

We were up and ready this morning. Everyone one going their separate ways to get their daughters. I forgot to tell you yesterday our group has grown to 15 families. Six families were added at the last minute and arrived yesterday. They only had two days to get prepared for the trip. They are picking up their special needs kids. We were so hoping that Lance and Hope would be with them but they were not. Don’t worry Hope you will be soon. We will all meet back up in Guangzhou.

Our flight was nice. Chinese Air is much nicer than our American planes. The flight was about two hours. When we touched down in Changsha we could tell it was very different than Beijing. There was a lot of farming fields and it was very hot. But there was no smog like in Beijing. All the parents were about to jump out of their skin. On the trip to our hotel we found out from our guide, Leah, that we would be picking the girls up at 3:00. We would have a little time to prepare being we got to the hotel at 11:30.

The room is nice! There is air conditioning and a glass shower, very modern. The one thing that is really smart is that you have to insert your room key into a wall unit device to cut the lights on. When you leave and take the key out everything in the room cuts off. Chinese way of saving energy. After we claimed our luggage and got our gifts ready to take with us we went to eat lunch in the western restaurant in the hotel. I ordered a french shrimp salad and Jay, Corey, and Mom ordered a pizza. My salad was delicious but the rest were disappointed. Then up the room to get our bags and Bailey’s blankie and toy.

We were on the bus as 2:30 and on our way to the CCAA building for our 3:00 pick up of the girls. We got inside and sat down.
There were other adoption groups in there that had already gotten their girls and some were getting theirs as we entered. We were all a bundle of nerves. So much is going through you head, Will she like us, will she come to us, will she scream bloody murder like some are doing when we enter the room. Leah has already prepared us that usually when one baby cries they will all cry. I know she is just trying to make us more comfortable but like I said it is just the not knowing. As I sit down to wait Renee Stone and I start to cry. We hug each other knowing how long we have both waited for this day. Then Leah comes in and says the babies are coming. The nannies walk them through the door and into another room. They are all dressed in matching yellow outfits. Well then we all start crying moms and dads. Then Leah and Linaker come to Jay and I and tell us that we are the first ones. Can you believe it! We walk up to the doorway and they bring out Bailey and hand her to us. She is NOT crying and she is holding the Pooh Bear we sent her in her care package and a tiny green orange. She is handed to me and she goes and I cuddle her. I know she is scared so I just hold her tight to my heart and she accepts me! We are so overwhelmed. The other families are handed their babies and they are not so lucky. All the babies except Bailey are wailing to top of their lungs. I cover Bailey’s ears and she sinks into my arms. We are there only about minutes and we were headed back to the room. The bus was full of screaming babies but not our Bailey.

About an hour after we got back to the room Bailey actually got down and started playing then she was running after Corey down the hall. When Jay gets back to the room from a meeting with Leah, Bailey plays with him too. The girl loves shoes she took hers off and tried to put Jay’s on. She does have a personality and I can’t wait to see it grow. She went to bed fine and then I put her in her crib. The only trouble so far is that she screams if you put her on the potty. But then again she has never seen one over here they have squatty potties. It is a hole in the floor and you squat. We took her down stairs to the children’s room but she still didn’t like it. So we put diapers on her. It that’s the only thing we have to worry about I can handle retraining her.

GOTCHA DAY WAS A HUGE SUCCESS! Finally, we are a family of 4 completed by the arrival of Bailey JiYuan Cato.

Updated with more than 3 pages of pictures:
http://journey2bailey.com/Gallery/The-Trip

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 at 7:24 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.