I guess I somehow failed to picture how things would actually
happen. We were in a big room with maybe a dozen other families, and all of the
sudden there she was in front of us. At first, she was obviously overwhelmed by
the whole situation. A couple of women from the orphanage were with her, and I
could tell they were struggling a little with letting her go. We just had to
wait patiently for our daughter to warm up to us enough to be willing to let us
hold her. We had heard a lot from other families about using food to help a
child start to connect with her new parents, so we had brought small bags of
Cheerios and Goldfish. That was definitely the trick to winning her over. Once
we started making a game of feeding her snacks, she was laughing and smiling
and perfectly content to sit in my lap. I was afraid that the happiness would
end as soon as the women from the orphanage started to leave, but she was much
more interested in the snacks.
For the next hour or so, I just carried Elise (who, for now,
we are still calling by her Chinese name: Ping Chang) around everywhere. She
clung to the bag of snacks and made it clear that any attempt to take them from
her would not be tolerated. We went to a grocery store, and rather than stick
her in the shopping cart, I preferred to carry her for as long as she would let
me – and she didn’t seem to mind that at all. She made no attempt to leave my
arms at any point, so it’s fortunate that she’s so small. I was able to carry
her until we got back to our hotel.
We spent the rest of the evening playing with her in our
room. She was entertained for hours with a set of stacking cups Catherine’s
mother had given us, and a zoo book with little opening panels that our
neighbors Heidi and Dustin had given us. She laughed and played and seemed
completely satisfied with her new surroundings… until it was time to go to bed.
I’m not sure if it was because the room was too warm (we
were told that the orphanages aren’t heated), or if the air was too dry, or if
she suddenly realized that everything was different; but soon after Elise laid
down to go to bed, she suddenly popped up and started screaming her head off.
Any attempt to console her only fueled her anger, until after a few minutes she
started to settle down and focus on the pop-up book again. She was completely
unwilling to move from the spot we had coaxed her into on the bed, so we just
shut of the lights and let her sit there and play with her book in the dark.
Eventually, I felt her slump over against my leg, and a little while later, I
carefully shifted her to a spot in between us, where she slept through the rest
of the night. I woke up the next morning to find she had curled herself around
my left arm, and was not at all interested in getting out of bed.
I had come to China completely prepared for this first day
to be filled with crying and screaming and an inconsolable child, so I’m very
satisfied that she’s doing so well at this point. We still have to stay two
more weeks in China with her, but both Catherine and I are wishing we could
just take her home tomorrow.
