I know I say this with every adoption day anniversary, for all the children - but it seems like just yesterday that we met her...and at the same time it seems like years ago that she joined our family. It's hard to remember life without her!
Since the beginning of January I've been working - a little at a time - on a project to bring all four of the children's travel journals over from the website they were hosted on, to our family blog. I started with Lily Kay's, since her Adoption Day was coming up.
And then Mr. Gabriel came.
I have not quite finished Lily's Kay's, I'm about 2/3 done. If I purpose to re-post her trip here one day at a time, I'm hoping it will prompt me to get it done within the next couple weeks!
So, here is a re-post of that wonderful day in China, two years ago today, when we met our precious Lily Kay:
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At about 4 p.m. our guide came to the door of our hotel and escorted us to a room 10 floors above us in our hotel. Although there were about 10 or 15 assorted people in the room, we could see our precious Lily Kay right away, and I had to fight bawling immediately! She was not the only child there for the purposes of of being adopted, but she was the only one who was not still a baby.
And that explains the fun we then had for the next 1 ½ hours.
While she looked very scared from the moment we first saw, she didn't actually start crying until we touched her. And then she didn't stop for 1 ½ hours. It was heart. breaking. It was pitiful. She was scared and upset...and mad! And she let everyone on the 18th floor (and probably 17th and 19th too) know about it!
The officials suggested that we take her back to our room for an hour to see if we could get her calmed down, so that we could proceed with the paperwork and taking the family picture for the “Red Book” (the adoption registration book that signifies the Chinese Government has allowed us to adopt Lily Kay – a very important document). Good idea.
It didn't work.
First, getting to the room was not easy. She refused to walk. Do you know how hard it is to carry a 35-40 pound child who is not helping (stretched out straight as a board)? But we finally got there. And I just knew someone was going to call the police. She continued wailing. During most of her crying bout, she kept her eyes squeezed and her head thrown back. She also began saying something in Chinese during her crying. Just one word. Over and over. I'm assuming it was a name (a special friend or caregiver), but I could be wrong. During the entire time we were in our room she was leaned against the door, usually trying to open it and get the heck out of here! (And she is smart, she totally figured out the multi-step process to get the door open!)
I pulled out all the goodies from her backpack – she was not impressed. If I held something out to her she pushed it away.
And then an hour was up and the officials called our room to tell us to come back and try again. So we walked set out for the 18th floor again. And somewhere between the 8th floor and the 18th floor – a miracle happened...
She stopped crying. She opened her eyes. We finished our business and took the family picture.
I was sure she was going to start again when she realized that we were leaving the 18th floor. But she didn't.
And within a few minutes, we'd seen our first smile...and then heard our first laugh!
Back in our room again: she loves balloons (especially when you partly blow it up and then let it fly around the room while it deflates), she loves her necklace, she LOVES her sunglasses (once when I was taking a picture of her, she made me wait while she ran to put her glasses on first!). She loves taking pictures with our digital camera. She is quite the comedienne too. Making silly faces and doing things that she know will get a laugh out of us.
She is talking up a storm and probably thinks we're dense since we can't understand what she is saying. But, as with our other children, body language is great and while we don't speak the same language (yet), we really can communicate fairly well.
Elisabeth and Lily Kay have hit. it. off. Lily Kay is already calling her Jie-Jie (older sister) and it is so sweet to hear her say it! She has something she calls Jas (sounds like shu-shu), we'll have to figure out what it means. (Just figured out it means “uncle” specifically father's younger brother)
While she was loud and crazy playing in the room with Elisabeth – she calmed down when we all started putting on jammies and getting in bed. She, however, would have no part of getting changed, or getting into a bed. She wasn't ugly about it at all. She just made it clear, in a sweet, funny way, that she was NOT taking off her clothes and she was not going to get into a bed. Maybe we've chilled out in the 5 ½ years since we first became parents, or maybe we were just too tired to battle last night. No, I think it really is the first – after what she'd been through (and then what we'd been through with her) getting changed and actually sleeping in a bed were just not that important. We'll definitely have to pick our battles during this transition...and those just weren't hills we needed to die on last night.
While we knew going into yesterday that she was our forever daughter and we were her forever family...she didn't know that. While we chose to adopt, and then specifically chose her...she's had no choice in anything that has happened in her short life. All she knows is that everything she's ever known (language, “home”, caregivers, etc.) changed yesterday. All things considered, I think she handled it pretty well.
SO, our new precious daughter slept, fully dressed (she finally did take off her pretty red shoes, though), on the floor last night.
Stay tuned...and please pray!
At about 4 p.m. our guide came to the door of our hotel and escorted us to a room 10 floors above us in our hotel. Although there were about 10 or 15 assorted people in the room, we could see our precious Lily Kay right away, and I had to fight bawling immediately! She was not the only child there for the purposes of of being adopted, but she was the only one who was not still a baby.
And that explains the fun we then had for the next 1 ½ hours.
While she looked very scared from the moment we first saw, she didn't actually start crying until we touched her. And then she didn't stop for 1 ½ hours. It was heart. breaking. It was pitiful. She was scared and upset...and mad! And she let everyone on the 18th floor (and probably 17th and 19th too) know about it!
The officials suggested that we take her back to our room for an hour to see if we could get her calmed down, so that we could proceed with the paperwork and taking the family picture for the “Red Book” (the adoption registration book that signifies the Chinese Government has allowed us to adopt Lily Kay – a very important document). Good idea.
It didn't work.
First, getting to the room was not easy. She refused to walk. Do you know how hard it is to carry a 35-40 pound child who is not helping (stretched out straight as a board)? But we finally got there. And I just knew someone was going to call the police. She continued wailing. During most of her crying bout, she kept her eyes squeezed and her head thrown back. She also began saying something in Chinese during her crying. Just one word. Over and over. I'm assuming it was a name (a special friend or caregiver), but I could be wrong. During the entire time we were in our room she was leaned against the door, usually trying to open it and get the heck out of here! (And she is smart, she totally figured out the multi-step process to get the door open!)
I pulled out all the goodies from her backpack – she was not impressed. If I held something out to her she pushed it away.
And then an hour was up and the officials called our room to tell us to come back and try again. So we walked set out for the 18th floor again. And somewhere between the 8th floor and the 18th floor – a miracle happened...
She stopped crying. She opened her eyes. We finished our business and took the family picture.
I was sure she was going to start again when she realized that we were leaving the 18th floor. But she didn't.
And within a few minutes, we'd seen our first smile...and then heard our first laugh!
Back in our room again: she loves balloons (especially when you partly blow it up and then let it fly around the room while it deflates), she loves her necklace, she LOVES her sunglasses (once when I was taking a picture of her, she made me wait while she ran to put her glasses on first!). She loves taking pictures with our digital camera. She is quite the comedienne too. Making silly faces and doing things that she know will get a laugh out of us.
She is talking up a storm and probably thinks we're dense since we can't understand what she is saying. But, as with our other children, body language is great and while we don't speak the same language (yet), we really can communicate fairly well.
Elisabeth and Lily Kay have hit. it. off. Lily Kay is already calling her Jie-Jie (older sister) and it is so sweet to hear her say it! She has something she calls Jas (sounds like shu-shu), we'll have to figure out what it means. (Just figured out it means “uncle” specifically father's younger brother)
While she was loud and crazy playing in the room with Elisabeth – she calmed down when we all started putting on jammies and getting in bed. She, however, would have no part of getting changed, or getting into a bed. She wasn't ugly about it at all. She just made it clear, in a sweet, funny way, that she was NOT taking off her clothes and she was not going to get into a bed. Maybe we've chilled out in the 5 ½ years since we first became parents, or maybe we were just too tired to battle last night. No, I think it really is the first – after what she'd been through (and then what we'd been through with her) getting changed and actually sleeping in a bed were just not that important. We'll definitely have to pick our battles during this transition...and those just weren't hills we needed to die on last night.
While we knew going into yesterday that she was our forever daughter and we were her forever family...she didn't know that. While we chose to adopt, and then specifically chose her...she's had no choice in anything that has happened in her short life. All she knows is that everything she's ever known (language, “home”, caregivers, etc.) changed yesterday. All things considered, I think she handled it pretty well.
SO, our new precious daughter slept, fully dressed (she finally did take off her pretty red shoes, though), on the floor last night.
Stay tuned...and please pray!
Happy 2nd Anniversary Miss Lily Kay. We were looking back at travel pictures of Elijah's adoption journey and happened to see a few of you and your sweet family. What a time! To be there at your "birth" time to your new mama and baba is just priceless to us! What a long way you and Elijah have come - what a miracle God has done in all of our lives!!
ReplyDeleteHugs from Indiana,
janet, kevin, ted, sophia, philip, and elijah