Gottcha Day

Nous avons maintenant Samuel avec nous. Ce matin, nous sommes arrive au bureau des affaires civils vers 10:15 et Sam est arrive vers 10:40.
Ils n'a pas pleurer et semblait assez joyeux. Nous lui avons donne du jus avec quelques bonbons et un sac a dos avec une voiture et telephone. Nous avons signer quelques papiers et pris une photos officielle. Demain nous retournons pour finaliser les papiers.
Une fois dans la chambre, nous avons donner Sam et Eva un peu de nourriture et c'est par la suite que Samuel a commencer a pleurer. Il accepte d'etre consoler par Dawn ou moi. Lors du repas du souper, il appelait baba (papa) a chaque fois que j'allait chercher de la nouriture au buffet. Il demande pour faire un pipi (quatre fois deja).
J'aime vraiment pouvoir etre pres de lui. Eva va bien, elle semble aimer avoir un frere et prends ca assez bien.
En tout cas, ils sont au lit tout les deux. Eva dort bien tandis que Samuel regarde un peu partout encore. On vous donnera d'autres nouvelles.


It’s 2:15 pm and our two babies are finally asleep so I have a few minutes to write. I plan to write the entries in Microsoft Word whenever I get a moment and then we’ll publish to the blog once the kiddies are in bed for the night. So, although I wrote this entry at 2:15, it won’t be published on the blog until tonight. Sorry guys, two kids doesn’t leave much time for writing!

Gottcha was truly a dream come true. More beautiful and calm then I ever dare hope for. We arrived at the Civil Affairs office about 30 minutes before the children. We signed paperwork and waited for our children (there is one other family travelling with us here in the province). We were on the ground floor of the building, in a room that had large windows facing the parking lot. As we watched anxiously out the windows, Jean-Pierre suddenly said, ‘Here they come’. Ming Jie was being carried by his nanny and the other little girl was being carried by the orphanage director. My first thought was, ‘He is so gorgeous’. There was NO doubt that it was our Samuel. I was so excited to actually see all those people live that we have been studying in pictures for so long that I couldn’t help but wave to them. They came around to the door and put Ming Jie down.

We sent Eva to him right away and she gave him the little backpack we had brought. He took the truck out right away and began to check it out. Jean-Pierre was beside him right away and Ming Jie was fine. We lured him away from his nanny with candy and a drink, which he sucked up like there was no tomorrow, and we began to play with his truck. He was quiet, but he laughed several times and did not seem bothered that his caregivers were on the other side of the room. He let us touch him and finally Jean-Pierre picked him up. He was fine with that.

We went upstairs and had our picture taken with him (it is needed for the adoption paperwork) and he was fine with all that. Jie-Jie started to get upset at one point when Jean-Pierre tried to take his coat off of him. Jie-Jie didn’t like that, so we left it on.

We left and rode back to the hotel. Jie-Jie was so intrigued by all the buses, cars and bicycles. He was bright eyed and curious about everything. In the hotel room he still didn’t want us to remove any of his clothing and we obliged, but it was starting to cause a bit of a problem because he has SO MANY clothes on that he was getting overheated. On top he’s wearing a coat, a padded cotton vest, two v-neck sweaters, a heavy wool turtle neck and a t-shirt. On the bottom he has two pair of wool pants and a pair of long johns. He was cooking, but he didn’t want us to take anything off. He was fascinated with the view outside our hotel room and stood at the window pointing buses, cars, bikes, etc out to us.

We decided that both kiddies needed to get some lunch into them so they could have their naps. We sat them on the floor of the hotel room and fed them some eggs. Ming-Jie ate quite a bit and then he started to cry. It was so heartbreaking. He looked out the window and little tears began to roll down his face. I don’t know what the trigger was, but he sobbed his heart out for the next hour or so until he finally fell asleep. I held him for a while and then Jean-Pierre held him. I imagine he will still be quite upset when he wakes up. On the very positive side, Jie-Jie accepts either one of us and seems to understand (in theory anyway) that we are Mama and Baba. He accepts comfort from either of us. Jean-Pierre is thrilled about that and I’ll be lucky if I get to touch the kid more than two or three times during the next six months! Seeing the glow on Jean-Pierre face will make it worth it though.

As usual, Eva did very well through the whole processes. She is a little jealous, she was seeking some attention by jumping around the hotel room more vigorously than she usually does and she cries whenever one of us leaves the room for any reason (of course she was doing that before Jie-Jie arrived too). She is a least a head taller than him. We’ll have our work cut out for us over the next two weeks, but we’re off to a good start.

Thank god my mom is with us though. At the Civil Affairs office she looked after all the stuff, videoed the entire Gotcha moment and kept an eye on Eva while we talked to the orphanage staff. Right at this moment Eva is napping in my mom’s room because Jie-Jie didn’t like the curtains closed in ours.

So, even though he is upset now and is likely beginning to shut down, we feel so lucky to have been given a long glimpse at Civil Affairs as to who our son is. We’ll now just need to wait for him to re-emerge as he gets more comfortable with his new situation.
72 hours, 72 hours, 72 hours from now.

Little Update:

Jie-Jie cried a little on and off during the afternoon today. He laughed alot too. He has started attaching very strongly to Jean-Pierre. At supper tonight Jie-Jie called 'Baba' and looked for Jean-Pierre each time he went to the buffet for more food. In fact, I'm not sure that Jean-Pierre will be able to write tonight because he is holding Jie-Jie until he falls asleep. Our little man ate like a real champ and seemed to enjoy everything going on around him at the restaurant. At one point he thought it was super funny to spit his food onto the table. He smiled and laughed like a little devil each time we told him to stop. Once we decided to ignore it, he stopped. We have been successful in getting his clothes off him and some pajamas on. Feety Pj's seem to be something new for him. He kept picking up his feet as if trying to see if the feet would come off. So cute.
We are totally in love with this little charmer already.