And Just Like That, Now I'm a Dad!

  It’s definitely a unique experience, adopting my first child. I was pretty nervous as we were going to pick her up. Being the video nerd that I am, I had no less than 4 cameras ready to document this time, in the hopes that she will someday appreciate my efforts to capture our first encounter. I’ve already missed the opportunity to witness her birth, first words, first steps… so for me, this was kind of like all those things wrapped up into one event. It was impossible to know how she would react to us—two strangers that she just met who don’t even speak her language (and surprisingly, she speaks and understands quite a bit… in Chinese), but I was determined to make sure I could remember every moment.

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.