Hello everyone! I know you have all been waiting for the picture postings for today! Scroll down and see our girl. She is absolutely beautiful!
Ken and I were truly exhausted this a.m. after our long day yesterday and late flight. We decided to skip breakfast with our group and spend some quiet time alone in the room to rest some more and pray for our day. At 9:00 my friend Lauren called and said the babies would be here at 9:30 and to come down to the lobby! We weren't nervous until this moment. . . . we looked at each other and tears started swelling up in our eyes. Our emotional level was a little higher than normal due to the lack of sleep the last 3 days.
We proceeded down to the lobby and met everyone coming on to the elevator "They were early! they are already upstairs!" We then went back up to the 4th floor "adoption room". The babies were all in the room with their nannies and we got to get a glimpse of them through the door. Lauren recognized her daughter Maddyn, the Hanna's daughter Sarah, and our Anna sitting in a circle together! They all looked so cute sitting together. Then they took all of them to a back room where we couldn't see them anymore. We all took seats in the room and did some paperwork with Zhou. Then the chaos began!
The room was packed with people adopting from several different agencies. They started calling the parents up one at a time and handing the babies to them. It was going nice at first then more and more babies started crying. Our agency was last so by the time we were called people were standing everywhere with crying babies and it was mass chaos. I went up for Anna while Ken ran the video . . . . . I cannot even find words to describe how we felt when we held our daughter for the very first time! It was the same feeling I had when Drew was born . . . .like a miracle had just happened.
We then were instructed to return to our rooms to let our babies bond with us and settle down from the event. Oh I forgot to tell you, earlier we had to sign a release paper to keep the babies for 24 hours. They told us "You have 24hrs to decide if this is the baby you would like to keep." The Orphanage director was being serious, and everyone laughed. I don't think anyone in that room would give their baby back for anything! We then proceeded to our room with our beautiful Anna.
She had a stunned look on her face with little outbursts of cries while we walked to our room. When we got there we placed her on the bed with all of her toys, put some children's praise and worship music on, and gave her some cheerios. She warmed up to us right away and in no time was laughing and giggling, especially when Ken was dancing to the "Cartoon Song" for her. Everything was going great then Ken said to me, "Do you want to see the video from earlier?" I said yes and turned to look at the laptop on the desk.. . . . just about then Anna rolled over and almost fell off the bed! Ken caught her just in the nick of time! That's all we would have needed to do, damage her during our 24hr trial period! She is absolutely adorable and unbelievably beautiful! I'm sure you will all agree after you view her pictures! We still cannot believe that this amazing gift from God was entrusted to us!
She then proceed to get all red in the face and grunt. Ken said "What is the matter?" I told him what was happening. Time for a diaper changing lesson! He observed real closely. . . .well not too close! Bath time next followed by a bottle. Ken is a quick study and is learning everything so easily. He is so comfortable with her. I think it is related to all the babysitting we have done for friends over the last 10 years. Anna fell asleep and Ken and I looked at each other, high fived and said "what's so hard about this?" . . . . . 45 minutes later, Anna was up. . . . . screaming her head off!
We couldn't get her to stop crying so we took her down stairs to the restaurant and had a late lunch. She loves french fries and mashed potatoes. Oh by the way she now has 4 teeth. Two on the top and two on the bottom. The rest of the day we spent going to a grocery/department store and spending time in our room.
Anna is a daddy's girl . . . . . she has really taking a liking to Ken. I am so happy about that. Some of the babies have a hard time with the men at first and will only let their mommy's hold them. Anna goes to both of us easily but tonight when she was really tired she wanted Ken. Everytime she couldn't see him she would start crying. . . . he would then lay on the bed next to her and she would just stare at him and touch his face. I think it is because of the dancing he did earlier and that he showed her Mickey Mouse cartoons on the laptop when I took a shower! Oh yeah . . . .and I'm sure he scored some points for that great "catch" earlier!
Anna is now down for the evening . . . . we are praying for a good nights rest for all three of us. The last four nights Ken and I have been averaging about 3-4 hours of sleep and it is truly catching up to us.
We are so in love with our daughter. Can't wait to spend another day with her tomorrow!
Ken & Sharon
Rice cereal with bananas and apples! I think I'm going to like it here!
