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Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Originally posted on Monday, November 7, 2005
Monday, November 07, 2005 4:44 AM CST
Subject: Gotcha Day!
Emilie, you have a little sister!!! ;)
We started out this morning by meeting our new guide, Annie. We met her at 8:30 am this morning in the lobby of the hotel. She first took us to the Bank of China, to exchange money since all of our fees today needed to be paid in Chinese Yuan instead of U.S. dollars like our last adoption.
From there we proceeded to the Beijing Childrens Welfare Institute where we were taken into a meeting room and Xue Zheng (Nikole) was brought into the room. She is beautiful!! She looks just like her pictures that we have been looking at for the last few months. (Including the shaved head)
We then spent the rest of the day going from office to office doing paperwork to complete the adoption. It has made for a very long day for Xue Zheng, as she didn't even have time for a nap this afternoon.
When Xue Zheng was first brought into us she was a little bit shy and quiet to start out with, but immediately latched on to the little chinese doll we brought for her. Once she realized she was leaving with us, the expected melt down started. She has had moments on and off all day of crying, but we have also had a few smiles and laughs as well. The crying mostly came when the chinese officials or our guide would leave us But through it all, she continued to clutch her new doll.
Today Xue Zheng has let both mommy and daddy hold her and does not seem to show a preforance. When Steve got up from the lunch table to use the restroom, she even asked our guide where her baba (daddy) was
going? We have been showing her pictures of our family and she has been extremely excited to see pictures of her jie jie (big sister), Emilie. She has even squealed in excitement a couple of times when looking at the pictures. :) She has even been extremely excited to see the pictures of our Yorkshire terrier, Gizmo. And has taken to calling her Mo, just like Emilie did.
When we got back to the room today around 4:00 pm, she began to cry once our guide left the room. She was pretty much inconsolable until we got out the potato chips. Snacks have worked wonders for her all day. :) We knew she needed to sleep and after about 20 minutes of trying we remembered they told she slept with a bathroom towel as her comfort object at night. That did the trick. Once we gave her a towel, she went right to sleep and is still sleeping now. Our guide has had dinner delivered to our room, and we plan on just taking it
easy and relaxing in the room this evening.
Tomorrow, we meet our guide at 9:30 am and she is taking us to Wal-Mart to do a little shopping. We were orinally scheduled to go to the Forbidden City, but asked if we could bow out of that one since we have been there before and thought it would be a bit long and boring for Xue Zheng. Then on Wednesday we are going to the Beijing Zoo to see the Panda bears.
All in all, so far the transition for this adoption seems to be going pretty well. I'm sure we will still have some moments of tears, but hopefully a good nights sleep will help.
Just in case many of you are wondering, we have named her Nikole as planned, but since she is older, speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese, all she knows right now is her Chinese name. So for now, we will be calling her Xue Zheng or Zheng Zheng (her nickname here) and will transition to Nikole when the time is right.
Thanks to one of the families in our travel group, we do now have our laptop up and running. So hopefully, either later tonight or sometime tomorrow, we will be able to post a few photos.
Emilie, mommy and daddy love you and miss you very much. And your little sister can not wait to meet you!!!
Best wishes from Beijing,
Steve, Lisa and Xue Zheng
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