Gotcha day and adoption day recap...

 View from Hotel

 

Daddy waiting for the time to finally meet his girl

We arrived at our hotel Lakeside View in Fuzhou approximately 3 hours before we were to meet our daughter. We were scheduled to meet her at 3:30 pm…We were too hyped to rest so we used that time to get gifts ready, pack a bag of goodies for our girl, unpack our belongings etc.  We noticed we had no crib in our room so we promptly order one and received a stroller instead! We explained what we wanted but kept the stroller so we were able to use it during our stay.

What a feeling, knowing that in just a few minutes our lives were going to change forever!  We finished everything we needed to do and still had approximately 30 minutes to wait…twenty minutes before our meeting we decided to just go and wait for them. We figured we would get our camera and gifts ready etc. To our surprise when we arrived at the designated area (3^rd floor) as soon as we exited the elevator our girl was right there! Right in front of us! There was no guide or translator just us, our child and the orphanage director and caregiver!  It was such a special time and the memory will stay with us forever unfortunately it all happened so fast there was no time for video or photos.

Gotcha Day pictures

 

Such an important day for us, yet it was all so disorganized and chaotic (lucky we were warned by bloggy friends, so at least we knew not to expect too much.) Unfortunately, our lifeline here in Fuzhou(our guide) is very nice but very young and inexperienced. We are her very first family!

On those days when we needed more assistance and support we felt as if we were on our own… trying to sign documents, making sure they were correct while trying to deal with our very distressed child and trying to take our own photos was difficult to say the least(couldn’t even take video with all the craziness)

Our guide was just all-over-the-place, so we just had to take matters into our own hands. It was so hectic we almost forgot to ask the questions we had prepared well in advance! We stopped the director as she was exiting the room; there was no way we were going to let her go without answering our questions!

The orphanage director was gracious to answer our questions regarding our child’s likes, dislikes, daily schedule etc. She also provided us with our child’s finding add, the note our baby had from her birth mother at the time she was found and a beautiful photo album (hard cover) with pictures from the time she arrived at the orphanage to present time, priceless!

Our daughter came back with three huge bags including her favorite snacks, and all the clothes, books and toys we sent in care packages. We were surprised to have received those… we also found out that our child never returned to the orphanage, she stayed with her foster family until the time it was time to travel to Fuzhou (the foster family went to the train station to say good bye)

The next day was adoption day...

It took longer than what we anticipated.

It took approximately an hour and a half but it felt more like three hours!

 We were surprised that the director and caregiver where there at that time just when our child was finally starting to calm down :0(

First we had to sign documents, take our fingerprints and baby’s hand prints.

I felt a little excluded as my Honey was sitting by himself  signing documents away while I tried to sign documents, took pictures and attempted to comfort our very cranky child as best as I could.

Second step, dealing with donation money- it was counted so many times I was actually getting pretty annoyed. Especially because it is done right there in front of our kid- I know she is too young to understand but it made me feel so uncomfortable, as if we were paying for her or something…

I guess I was too tired, overwhelmed and over-sensitive...

Final step, we went to the notary’s office. We were asked if we still wanted to adopt our child (um yes!)What we plan to provide for her as parents, why we wanted to adopt from China and if we had any biological children together.

 We promised we will never abuse or abandon our child, we signed more documents and we received a legal document stating that we are now legally the parents of our precious little girl!

We were relieved! So then it was time to go to the hotel to celebrate try to take a nap after all the ordeal;It was all so worth it though…

 Adoption day pictures...

Somebody was not very thrilled...

Happy adoption day!