"Everything changes, nothing stays the same. Make peace with that and all will be well."

Buddah really knew what he was talking about. It's 6:30 am on our last day here. Mia has been up and bouncing around since 5. And I haven't had any coffee yet. And I was playing with her until I handed her to Evan so I could look at email. Evan can't believe my transformation into a "morning person". He's wondering how long it's going to last. Very funny, in a sick joke kind of way. Hey, it's not so bad being up this early. You can get so much more packed into your day.

It's our last full day here, and I think I've spent most of these long letters home talking about our experiences here. But let me tell you a little bit about our baby girl. Her likes: stacking cups, drooling, peeing on mom, making that rasberry sound with her mouth,babbling, Cheerios, and playing with everything that is not a toy. Her dislikes: Not being fed IMMEDIATELY on demand, being put down to sleep, things on her head (doesn't like hats), yogurt and mashed prunes.

She is an extremely squirmy baby. I think I may have mentioned that she is constantly moving. I mean CONSTANTLY. Her favorite thing is to stand on my stomach and bounce and down. She tries to walk on me but can't quite get it together. She's like her mom in that she has ants in her pants. But, like me too, she has an incredible ablility to sit and focus on what she's doing. She's calm like her dad and she's also incredibly silly. She does an amazing Stevie Wonder imitation. She's babbling a lot, is incredibly alert and interested in whatever is going on around her. She also sits quietly and plays by herself for short periods of time.

And she likes attention. She loves to be held and walked. We haven't used a stroller here and have been carrying her in a hip carrier. She loves it and we have been dragging her everywhere. Babies who come from orphanages here, although mostly well cared for, don't get the individual attention that is so vital in their early months of development. I couldn't imagine sticking her in a stroller and pushing her around not facing me or not being near us in these first days together. There will be plenty of time for her to become independent. Carrying her around has been great for all of us. She mostly seems secure and engaged with us. And my arms and back are really strong now (and not even too sore!)

She likes jewelry (always playing with my earrings), and when I handed my passport and credit card to the hotel clerk when we checked in, she grabbed the credit card, NOT the passport to play with.

For a little girl with a mild case of rickets, I'm struck by how strong she is. Most of her strength is in her lower body - her arms and upper body not so much. She can't pull herself up yet, and while she can sit on her own, she's often kind of bent over. Her gross motor skills seem pretty good, but her fine motor skills need work.

It's amazing how much we know about her in the little over a week that she's been with us. OK, got to get ready for breakfast. Wow, it's already 7:15 am!

Now it's 10:30pm.

We're staying in the White Swan Hotel, well known here to be THE place where adoptive families stay on the last leg on their trip to China. This place is overrun by families adopting little Chinese girls. It's an extraordinary site. I've included a picture of us and our new friend Suzanne and her little girl Elizabeth. She's the only other New Yorker we met. A lot of folks from the South and midwest here adopting their third, fourth or fifth child. People we meet here ask me if Mia is our first. I say "she is our first together, and probably the only". I hinted to Evan that maybe we could come back sometime and adopt another. The resounding "klunk" you may have heard sometime this week was Evan's head hitting the breakfast table.

We're just about packed and ready to go. Our wake up call is at 4:30 tomorrow (Thurs 6/15) morning. As I'm writing this, it's Wednesday morning where you are. Although we're arriving home on Thursday afternoon, it will really be Friday at 5:30 in the morning for us. (did you follow that one?) We'll still be on China time. And so will Mia. Looking forward to being home, but not looking forward to the transition of the time change.

Tonight was the first night that Mia would not go to sleep. Ever since we got her, she's been going to sleep mostly without too much difficulty. But tonight, she shrieked the most awful blood curdling screams. And they didn't stop. Well eventually they did, but it took a really long while. I feel like she knows what's happening tomorrow...that we're uprooting her and taking her away from her home.

Today we went to the American Consulate to get her visa. We were there with about 75 other folks and their little girls to pick up the papers (yes, even more papers in addition to the visa). We also had to take an oath stating that all the statements we've made in the adoption papers were true. So, after we were all gathered together in this huge room, the Consulate Official came in and spoke the oath via microphone. As a group, we raised our right hands and our voices together and "swore or affirmed" that all of our adoption paperwork statements were true. I have to say, aside from holding Mia for the first time and her official adoption in Jiangsu, this was my next favorite moment. It was awesome, really. Our last official act, courtesy of the good 'ol USA, allowing us finally to bring home our baby girl.

It's been so much fun recording our trip here. Thank you to everyone who figured out how to post comments and sent us emails along the way. It's made us feel much closer to home. So, zai jian from us here in China. And looking forward to saying ni hao to you all very soon.

"Everything changes. Nothing stays the same. Make peace with that and all will be well"

A Trip To The Quarantine Bureau, also known as Where the #$%&@ is my Purell????

Yesterday we all went to the Quarantine Bureau so the girls could have their visa check ups. I didn't know I could bring a camera and I left mine at the hotel, which I regret because you wouldn't have believed the scene there. So, picture a clinic setting with about 75 Caucasian parents and their little Asian girls waiting for an "exam". Totally chaotic, extremely hot, (did I mention that it is really humid here in Guangzhou - like tropical humid.)Kids screaming, new parents not having a clue as to what was going on. Everyone wiping their noses. Coughs galore. A hot moist environment where all kinds of things love to flourish. Are you getting the picture? Lovely.

There were three short stops. The "ear and throat room" (the MD looked in the baby's throat and tested her hearing. She said "throat red. take care of". I'm taking care of it by bringing her back to New York and taking her to a very expensive infectious disease physician (who doesn't take my insurance) who specializes in pediatric adoption medicine. Hopefully she'll tell me how to "take care" of a red throat. On to the weighing and measuring room - Mia is about 18# and they said about 28" - although I doubt that measurement was anywhere near accurate. Then to the "physical exam" room where the MD "purelled" her hands and touched my baby. I couldn't really tell what she was doing other than checking that all her important parts were there. When we were done, I grabbed the baby and literally ran out of there. I tried to hold my breath the whole time.

Since I don't have photos of that the clinic visit, I decided to share some pictures that Evan took of Guangzhou. Even though we haven't seen the sun since we arrived here in China on June 2, Guangzhou is a lovely city - not anything like Beijing or Nanjing. Also known as Canton, it is the capital of Guangdong Province. It is the administrative center of the Pearl River delta. The pace seems slow here, and there are many parks and lush vegetation, and 19th century buildings, the kind which make you feel like you are in the South. We are actually on Shaiman Island which, in the 19th century, was a trading hub for foreign merchants.

Just some history for your information. The pictures you are looking at are from Sunday morning, very early, when we were taking a stroll in the park. I thought that China had a population crisis because people were having too many children. But here in Guangzhou, it seems like if there is a crisis, it is in part because the elderly live so long and are out, dancing around, doing tai chi, and playing maj jong when the rest us(well, some of us)are drinking coffee and eating McDonalds breakfast sandwiches and Krispy Kremes. No judgments, just an observation.

Tomorrow is our last full day here in China. We go to the Consulate and take our oath, get Mia's passport back with her visa and pack to come home.

Papers, papers, applications, photocopies and more papers...

I think I mentioned it is here in Guangzhou where the US Consulate resides. Now that we have our baby girl, being here is the most important part of our trip to China. Without permission from the US government and her visa, we can't bring her home.

Several months ago, we received our first "official" approval from the US government to adopt a Chinese orphan. That form is known as an "I-171H". To acquire that permission, we had to file our homestudy with the Department of Homeland Security, paid a ridiculous fee and ALSO had the unique and lovely opportunity to be fingerprinted by that Department and cleared by the FBI. (That fingerprinting was in addition to two other unrelated fingerprint events - one by our local police precinct, and one downtown at Police Headquarters for State Child Abuse Clearances.)

In the forms I filled out today, we petition the US government to classify our foreign orphan (the one they gave us approval to adopt in the I-171H - i.e. Lian Kaixin - on all the offical US documents)as an immediate relative. In addition, there is her visa application, and her application for a medical exam at the quarantine bureau (can't get a US visa w/o a medical exam). We need to provide the US gov't with her Chinese passport, her original abandonment certificate,(the one with the cute picture of all three of us from a couple of posts ago, along with it's translation, her birth certificate, and her visa photos (we're going in a couple of hours to take those and get her medical exam at the quarantine bureau). Our consulate appointment is tomorrow 6/13. We don't go to this appointment, but rather our facilitator here in Guangzhou, Li, takes all of our documents there. If all goes well, we go to the US Consulate on Wed morning 6/14 and take "the" oath, i.e. everything we said in the papers is true (or as Li said, "just raise your right hand and say whatever they tell you to say"). We get her Chinese passport back with her U.S. visa on Wed. afternoon, and then Thurs morning, (at 5:30am mind you...) leave Guangzhou to catch our 8:30 flight to Beijing, and then later on in the afternoon, fly home. Whew!

Li said that this part of the adoption process is the most complicated because you deal with the U.S. government. She said they are very fussy about the paperwork. We also have to pay a visa fee of $380 US dollars, which has to be paid in cash with "clean" bills. Yes, you read that correctly. No markings on the bills at all. Li checked all of our money. One of my hundred's had some markings on it, so one of the women in my group gave me two "clean" $50 dollar bills instead. Sounds crazy, but it's true.

Given all the recent immigration bruhaha at home, I find the notion that they are fussing over the quality of the USD kind of funny (in a ridiculous, not an amusing way) - but I digress....

Hoping it hasn't been to boring reading some of the details of the adoption. I've actually shared but a tiny piece of the paperwork maze we negotiated. But I wanted to give you a flavor of what it's been like since December,2004, when we started gathering together all of the seemingly endless pieces of paper we needed to come here to bring our baby home. As you can see by her photos, we think it was worth it.

A couple of the pictures you're looking at are of Mia's first time ever in a swimming pool.

China's one child rule and other random thoughts about being here

Well, we're here in Guangzhou, the last leg of our journey. It is here that we get Mia's visa from the US government and permission to bring her home. This is where the paperwork I've been collecting for the last year or so and have been carrying around since we got here, finally gets filled out and filed. But, let me take one step back and finish up our days in Nanjing.

Last night, we had a celebration dinner with our facilitators and their families and the other members of our travel group (we are 5 families in all). After dinner, we were each given our daughters' Chinese passports along with the last of the documents about her from the orphanage. (She come home with a Chinese passport and a US visa, just like we came here with a US passport and a Chinese visa) We received a beautiful handwritten growth report, with pictures of Mia glued in. Unfortunately, there was not time to have it translated, so here I'm making my official request to anyone who reads Mandarin to help us out (David?? are you out there?) I've included a couple of photos of the growth report, one of which has a picture of Mia at 2 months old.

The photo of the 4 beauties are of Mia and her Lianyungang "sisters". These are the other baby girls who were adopted by the other parents in our travel group. At 10 months old, Mia is the eldest, the others being 7,8 and 9 months old.

This morning we all loaded our stuff together and flew to Guangzhou. I felt sad to leave Jiangsu Province since it is our baby's first home. I felt sad for her. The people there were lovely and warm and gracious and friendly. And they love babies. When we walked along the street carrying her, we were stopped numerous times by (mostly)women wanting to know about her. Since no one we met spoke English, and my Mandarin is limited to the most simple greetings, there was not much we could say with words. But looks tell all as you can see from the photo of the woman with Mia and Evan. That says everything.

Before we left Nanjing, I wrote Mia a letter about our experiences here so far, what it was like to see her for the first time, and how I imagined her birthparents to be. I won't tell you all the details because those are just between my baby girl and me, but I will tell you that I think her birthparents must have been extraordiary people because she really is an extraordinary baby. And you only get to be that way if someone loves you to pieces from the moment you are born. I am sure that they loved her as much as we do (if that's possible). I mean, they wrapped her in red and took her right to the orphanage door. Need I say more?

I mailed the letter from Nanjing to her at our home in New York. And I'm going to save it to give to her when she's old enough to begin to understand the monumental events that began her life.

Just as an aside, I have been referring to our baby girl in the posts by the name that we gave her, Mia. But I have not been able to call her by that name here. I call her by her Chinese name, Kai Xin. It is the name that she recognizes and to which she responds. And to me, she doesn't feel like Mia yet. She is Kai Xin from Jiangsu Province. You can see in the special way she perks up when Chinese women speak to her in the language she recognizes, that this is her home. I don't want to take that from her. I feel like she's lost so much already.

Which brings me to China's one child policy. I'm embarrassed to admit that I had been kind of fuzzy on the specifics of why there were so many babies in the orphanages, particularly girls. But finally, I picked our facilitator's brains and she gave me a really clear explanation. Essentially, she said that China instituted a one child rule for population control. (ok, this we all knew) To have a boy to carry on the family name is very important for Chinese families. So, if the first child is a boy, often families will stop there. But if the first child is a girl, families may decide to give her away in hopes of having another child which will be a male. Sometimes, she said, families try multiple times to have boys and when they have girls, they don't keep them.

The penalties here for having more that one child are very steep. There is a fine. Also,the second (or third, or fourth...)child is not entitled to a free education. And private schools are very costly. In addition if you are employed by the government, you are not allowed to keep your job if you have more than one child. This last penalty is a particularly severe one because up until a few years ago, the government ran almost all of the industry here. So, pretty much everyone was employed by the government.

Our facilitator explained that as China has been allowing more non-government owned businesses, there are some people who may choose to have more than one child and not have to forfeit the opportunity for employment. These people may also be able to afford private education and pay the fine for having more than one child. But these folks are clearly in the very small minority.

So, for us, we're not just bringing a baby girl home from a far away place. We're in some way, a part of this culture now - the last piece of China's population explosion puzzle.

From the little I've seen of this country, I can tell you it is a fascinating place with incredibly rich and beautiful traditions. It is also in so many ways, caught between the old and the new. When I went to the post office the other day, it was modern and all of the clerks had computers. Each one of them also had an abacus. I thought that was a great metaphor to describe what I've observed in the short time we've been here.

Hope you can follow the pictures.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention! I was able to get on the blog and read the comments. Thank you to everyone. I wish I had been able to respond along the way... Janet, you're right, Guangzhou is lovely, and just so you know, your suggestion to bring Cheerios was a godsend! They're her favorite food. And Uncle Peter, I've already got her eating eggs, so eggsalad can't be far behind. And I swear, the other morning when she woke up, she babbled something about One Life to Live.... And also, my friend Jennifer definitely needs a cosmo, so email me, I'll give you her # so you can take her out for one!

Ahhh, Nanjing....

Nanjing is one of the most crowded places I've ever seen. Even moreso than Beijing, and different than New York City. You are just as likely to be run over by a bicycle as you are by a car. There is movement everywhere. Cars, bikes, motorbikes, people riding bikes dragging these huge loads (like you think you would see out in the countryside except it's the middle of the city),pedestrians, buses - you name it. There are also traffic lights and crosswalks, but to the untrained eye, you would never know it. Every time I walk out into the street, I feel like I'm taking my life in my hands. I kid you not. There is traffic chaos everywhere. And I'm an experienced jaywalker. It's like all these people and vehicles have some kind of secret radar. It doesn't seem like anyone is looking where they're going, yet no one runs into each other.

And the pollution is phenomenal. We haven't seen the sun since we've been here. The air is like soup - a thick, grey, humid soup that doesn't smell very good.
And the noise -- did I mention the noise? Noisier than midtown on a Saturday afternoon in Times Square.

And it's really humid. I mean, REALLY. I was speaking to one of our facilitators today who lives in Nanjing and was asking her about the weather. She said that this time of year is one of the most pleasant here. In July and August, it gets 'very humid'. I wouldn't describe this weather as pleasant. It's certainly bearable, cause we're here and that's it. But not pleasant.

And did I mention that I got my wallet stolen in Walmart? Yes, there is a Walmart in Nanjing. We had to go there to get some extra baby food and some clothes for Mia because most all of the clothes we brought with us are too big on her. Not like "too big, but we can get by for two weeks-kind of big", but rather, "the pants I have on her keep falling off - kind of big". Anyway, of course there's a story that goes along with this petty theft that brought us to the local police station, but that's for another entry. Serves me right for shopping at Walmart.

And of course, Nanjing is the city where we got our baby girl. It's the major city in Jiangsu Province, our baby's first home. Ahhhh Nanjing. Did I mention how much I adore this city? I mean, really adore it. It is THE most beautiful city in the world. I'm feeling sad about leaving here, and taking our baby away from the province where she was born. :(

You're looking at some pics of our sightseeing trip today. The Sun Yat Sen Mausoleum (392 steps to the top- the 3 of us did it together, although Evan and I did all of the walking!) and also the Nanjing Museum. For fun, I threw some others in of our sweet baby girl.

Finally a family

Yesterday, 6/6 was adoption day. When we picked Mia up the day before, we signed a paper essentially agreeing to keep her for 24 hours. On adoption day, we would then be able to tell the Chinese officials we were satisfied that she was healthy and that we wanted her to be ours. In essence, they give you a day to change your mind. Yeah, right.

At 8:30 on the 6th, we drove back to the Civil Affairs Office, and we were fingerprinted with red ink for the official adoption paperwork. The woman holding Mia's hand for fingerprinting in the picture is one of Mia's caregivers from the orphanage. She was the one who gave Mia over to me the day before. Then, each family was called before the Registration Official and we were asked some of the same questions we had been asked many times before. How old are you? Do you have any other children? What is your combined income? Why do you want to adopt this baby? (at which point, there were many tears from me). Do you promise never to abandon or abuse her and promise to educate her?(more crying...). And then it was done. Our facilitator said, "ok you're finished, please move down the table to the notary". We signed our names in front of her on another document, and that was the end. Or rather, the beginning. Some words, some signatures, some red fingerprints and everything changed. And as for Mia, well, she slept through the whole thing. And snored.

Everyone is sleeping except mom

Tomorrow (Tues, 6/6) is adoption day, so it's time even for me to go to bed. But here are a few more pictures of our first day together.

....you may see a stranger...across a crowded room.....

....and that's how it happened.

We went with the other families to the Provincial Civil Affairs Office, and soon after our arrival, one by one, with their caregivers, the babies arrived. All dressed in the same yellow outfits. And when I saw our daughter, I told Evan, "that's her, over there". Over there, was across the room, about 15 feet away, along with several other babies. But I recognized her immediately and she was staring right at us! Really!! A fixed,dead on gazing stare. And it wasn't just the two of us standing on the other side of the room, but also several other families gathered together watching the parade of scared little ones coming in. One of the mom's standing next to me saw her staring and asked if that was our baby 'cause she was looking right at us! So, there you have it. Independent confirmation of what I saw. It wasn't my imagination. She knew her mom and dad. And in the instant I saw her staring at us, I knew she was ours.



It was hard to take her from her caregiver's arms. I stood next to the two of them for a few seconds waiting to see what Mia would do. But her caregiver motioned to me to take her, and I did. She looked completely stunned, but she was looking around, looking at me, looking at Evan, and looking and listening to all the new sounds in the room. Well at least I think that's what she was doing. I actually have no idea. But, she was extremely alert and curious.

She didn't really know what to make of Evan. When he tried to touch her or hold her, she turned away and put her head on my chest. My friend Lori and her husband Mark are here in China too, but they picked up their daughter Juliana about a week ago. Lori told me that Juliana responded the same way to Mark when she first met him. So I was expecting that Mia might likewise be apprehensive with Evan. All of the orphanage workers are female. And, our facilitator told us today that the babies are rarely taken outside the orphanage, so Mia's entire life has been spent with other babies and women.

Less than a half hour after receiving our children, we drove back to the hotel. Aside from the 5 hour drive to meet us, this was the first time Mia had ever really been outside the orphange. She looked itensely out the van window and I made sure to cover her eyes as we approached and passed McDonalds.

Evan worked really hard to gain Mia's trust. He played with her while I held her, and after a short while, she went to him. Now, either of us can hold her, but mostly I haven't been able to put her down.

They found Mia on the steps of Lianyungang Social Welfare Institute approximately 22 days after she was born wrapped in a red blanket. Weighing just under 6 lbs, her referral documents described her as thin and weak. Today, she was anything but that. Although she is a little small for her age, she is bright eyed, extremely alert and curious, has an intense gaze, big wide eyes and very strong arms and legs. For my friends and family who know yoga, she put herself in a downward dog pose, was doing little cat-cow stretches, and was pushing herself up into a baby cobra. No coaching at all from me. We just let her do her thing. That's my girl!!

She's sleeping now. So is Evan. It was a long, unbelievably beautiful day.

An uneventful eventful day

The pictures you are looking at are some more photos of Beijing. Today we flew China Air from Beijing to Nanjing. Waiting at the airport for the hour and a half flight, we met two of the other families who will be adopting their daughters using our adoption agency. One family is from Merrick and the other from Wantaugh (Long Island). When we arrived in Nanjing, two representatives from our agency met us, loaded us (and all our luggage) on to a hotel shuttle bus and began to tell us about the upcoming events. Tomorrow morning at 9:30 am, we'll all meet in the hotel lobby and we'll take a van to the Civil Affairs Bureau of Jiangsu Province. There, we'll be given our babies. The babies will have left the orphanage early in the morning (the orphanage where they're residing is about a 5 hour drive from here) and are being driven to this provincial government office. Then, after we take our babies from the only caregivers they've ever known, we go back to the hotel. That's it. We'll have our daughter. I think she'll be scared to death and screaming. I know I would be if I were her.

We'll be at that office not only with the other families we met, but also with many other families using many other adoption agencies from across the country. Pretty weird. Go to the Provincial Office and get your baby. I thought it might not sound so weird if I said it again. But it does. On Tuesday morning, after filling out the adoption paperwork, we'll go back to the Civil Affairs Bureau with the baby and officially adopt her. By Tuesday afternoon, she'll be ours legally. I'm hoping by then she will have stopped crying.

So nothing much happened today, except that we flew to Nanjing and learned how our baby would become ours....now in less than 24 hours. No big deal.

Oh, and there's a crib in our hotel room now. We unpacked all our baby junk. We have to bring food for her tomorrow 'cause she will have gotten up very early and will be hungry by the time we see her. I practiced diapering tonite. Evan helped me. He said you have to do it fast. We think our baby is going to be squirmy. It's his job to mix the formula and he decided which kind of bottle to bring.

You may have notice that I posted a picture of some of our baby stuff. Mia is coming to us with the clothes on her back, so we had to bring all the rest of baby junk from home.

Yikes. More soon