Lila Day 7

What an amazing first week we have had with our little Lila. She has come leaps and bounds from just a few short days ago. Her hand and eye coordination is improving daily and she seems to be a little more stable when sitting alone. What a sweet little girl she is. We feel so lucky and blessed to have her in our lives. We love her so much and we can't wait to introduce her to all our friends and family.

Today we went to the Six Banyon Buddhist Temple. Lila was blessed by a Buddhist monk! It was very touching. We also went to an outdoor art museum. It was scorching hot today. The humidity was horrible. We were all a little crabby within hours. Daddy took Lila to the pool again after lunch. She is a little fish. We may have to look into getting a pool in Knoxville!

We also took some group pictures on the famous red couch with all the babies. As you can see they are all gorgeous. Especially our little Lila!!!

As much as we are loving China, we are missing Owen something terrible. I can't even think about him for very long because I get upset. I'm ready to leave and get our life started as a family. I am so excited to hold my little man again and introduce him to his baby sister. I have no doubt that they will be fast friends.

Tommorrow we will get Lila's visa and Tuesday is our US consulate appointment. We're getting to the end!!! We will leave for home at 5:30am Wednesday morning and we arrive in Milwaukee on Wednesday at 4:45 pm or so. We can't wait to get home.

Lila Day 6

Sunday June 24, 2007

Lila had her picture taken for her visa today. She also had her medical examination. She is 17 lbs. She seems like such a little peanut compared to some of the other babies that we have seen here at the White Swan and around the island. She seems to have gained a little weight since Monday. Her face seems a bit rounder and her legs actually look chunky near the top!

The most exciting part of our day was swimming!!! Lila loves the water. Daddy took her to the pool for the afternoon and she absolutely loved it. We found a little swim suit in one of the shops for around $4 USD.

We went as a group to a Thai restaurant for dinner. It was some of the best food that we have. I came away with a tummy ache from eating so much.

Lila is making up for lost time with her father. She is very quickly becoming a Daddy's girl.

Lila Day 5

We are here at the White Swan hotel in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province. It is beautiful here! We are on Shamian Island. It was once a British colony so it has beautiful buildings all around. It feels a little like a resort town.

Lila's first flight here was pretty good. We flew on Shenzhou Airlines out of Changsha into Guangzhou. The flight was packed and we were not sitting together. Lila was on my lap for the 1 hour flight. She was OK. She was fussy for a bit but settled down when they brought the snack around. Lychee fruit, an onion type roll, and wasabi peas. Much different than the tiny bag of peanuts on most flight in the USA!

The White Swan is a very nice hotel that caters to adoptive families. There must be hundreds of families here from around the country! We are looking forward to the next few days. Tommorrow we get Lila's picture taken for her visa and she has her medical examination.
Here are a few gorgeous pictures of Lila!

Lila Day 4

Thursday June 21, 2007

Today was very relaxing. We went as a group to a local park before heading to the Hunan Embroidery Factory. This province is known for textiles. Silk and embroidered goods mainly. I bought a beautiful piece with a lotus flower on it for Lila. My goal for shopping during this trip is to purchase 18 gifts for Lila; one for each of her birthdays.

We had some paperwork to do in the afternoon, we hung out in the playroom for a bit and ended the evening with some room service. Tomorrow we head to the airport for a flight to Guangzhou. Lila’s first plane ride!!! It’s a short one, 45 minutes or so. We will spend the remainder of our trip in Guangzhou. We will do more paperwork, apply for Lila’s visa, and attend our consulate appointment on Tuesday.

I'm having a hard time posting pictures today. I will try again later.

Lila Day 3

Wednesday June 20, 2007

Today was a day that will never be erased from my memory bank.
We are traveling with 2 other families from our agency. For one family, this is their second adoption and for the other family it is their third. Both families have brought along these beautiful little girls so we have 3 young adopted children traveling with us along with the 3 new babies. The 2 families now share a common orphanage between them. They each have a daughter that is from the Yueyang City SWI. Today we were given permission to visit this orphanage.

Our guide Daphne arranged the visit for the afternoon so we rented the hotel bus and drove north for about 2 hours to the city of Yueyang. Located in the middle of the city, this orphanage is considered a model example and is open for visits. Daphne warned us that the visit would be emotional. She wanted us to remember that most of the children that we see will be placed with families. Emotional was an understatement.

We were taken into a room with about 30 blue painted cribs all lined up in rows. There were 3 babies sleeping in the room in various cribs. They were bundled in a ridiculous amount of clothes with huge blankets on top of them. Orphanages in China are not air-conditioned so you can image how warm it was in the room. Two of the babies that we saw were very young, maybe 3 months old. The other looked to be a boy who was much older. I was holding my emotion in pretty well until the director pointed out to our one family, the crib that their little baby slept in during her stay. Her name card was actually still on the crib because she there just a few short days earlier. I lost it. I had to turn away and stare out the windows while biting my bottom lip. It was too much to take in. To look around the room and think of her life in such a place was so overwhelming. The orphanage director was very nice and remembered the other girl in our group who is now 4. She said she remembered her because of her big beautiful eyes.

Next, we were led into the “play room”. It was a room with a padded floor, some toys and about 15 babies and maybe 4 nannies. The babies appeared to all be under a year or so. There were some special needs children as well. The nannies were all smiling when our group walked in. Most of them had a baby in their lap. Some of the babies were playing; some were just lying on the mat. I think that the thing that struck me the most was their little faces. Not many were smiling and their eyes just looked empty. Sean took some pictures but I just stood there kind of frozen. I saw a toy on the floor that Owen has at home. Lila had fallen asleep in my arms and I just held her tight and tried not to cry. So many thoughts were racing through my mind.

Lila is from an orphanage that is not open to visitors. We sent a disposable camera to the orphanage when we mailed Lila a care package. It was returned unused. I will never see the crib that she slept in. I felt very fortunate to be able to visit today but it really just left me with more wondering.

Lila Day 2

It’s actually the early morning hours of Day 3 for us right now but I’m working on getting caught up on our posts. I’ve been up since about 4:15. This time change has been kicking my butt. Top that with being on such a wonderful high since getting Lila – it makes for very little sleep.

So, yesterday was Day 2 (Tuesday) and we had a very nice day together. Lila had a rough night (which meant I had a rough night). She didn’t want anything to do with her crib so she ended up in bed with me. Our room here at the Dolton Hotel in Changsha has 2 beds but they are tiny. I would say they are in between a twin and a full. Not big enough comfortably for 2 adults so we have been sleeping separately. Lila woke probably every hour scared and crying. I would pick her up and walk for a bit and she would fall back to sleep. According to our paperwork the nannies would have to do this sometimes to help her sleep. It works!

We went back to the Civil Affairs Bureau for all the official paperwork here in the Hunan Province. We had 2 short interviews asking us questions about our intentions adopting her. They asked us if we were happy with her and made us promise to never abandon her. Then we were able to meet briefly with the 2 orphanage directors. One is a man and the other is a woman. Right after we walked into the room, before our actual meeting he came over to us. He was smiling and calling Lila by her nickname: Chen Chen. It was very sweet. He took our picture with Lila. When we did actually meet, they were both very nice. She reached out for Lila and started to speak to her in Mandarin. Lila reached right out for her. She held her for a few minutes while we were asking them some questions about her orphanage and the town that she is from. Our guide Daphne was interpreting for us. I couldn’t believe it when they told me that there are only 20 children in the orphanage right now. I knew that it was small but I didn’t realize that it was that small. We asked a few more questions and then we thanked them both for taking such good care of Lila and for loving her. It was emotional for me to see the orphanage director hold Lila. Lila was obviously very loved and when she handed her back to me we both had huge tears in our eyes. I cannot imagine what a difficult job it would be to take care of these sweet babies and then let them go.

The rest of our day was very low-key. We hung out in the room and then went out on a little shopping excursion in the afternoon. We bought a few more dresses for Lila and 3 pairs of shoes. The prices are insanely cheap. The shoes were like $3-5USD per pair. I have a strong feeling that my shoe addiction will be passed down to little Lila.

One of the best parts of the day was the evening. She let Daddy hold her for a few minutes! It was so good to see. I was teary (of course). I had to snap some pictures. I wonder if she’ll be a Daddy’s girl. They say that things really turn around by the end of Day 3. I’m praying that her heart remains open to us and that Daddy gets to experience her in the way I have.

Lila Day 1

Lila Day 1

I thought one gorgeous picture of little Lila is a perfect way to start finally posting on our blog. China was restricting blogger. I don’t know what’s going on with it.

We have our little Lila and she is an absolute dream! Monday was “Gotcha Day”. I was up at 3 in the morning giddy with excitement and nervousness. We are traveling with 3 other families from our agency and we all met downstairs at 8:30 so we could make a quick stop at the grocery store before our appointment at the Civil Affairs Bureau at 9:30.

I was a wreck and Sean was cool and collected as usual. I wanted to throw up from the anxiety and he’s walking around with a huge smile on his face. We head up the elevator and gather in a conference type room. We have to pass through another smaller room where out of the corner of my eye I see a few babies. We are the second family presented with our baby. Suddenly, I see Lila come in the room in the arms of a woman I recognize as one of the orphanage directors. She’s crying and looking around; holding tight to this woman. The notary officer takes our passports; looks at us and looks at Lila’s photo on some paperwork. The next thing I know I’m reaching out for Lila; she’s crying very hard.

It took a few minutes to get her calm. We did expect that she would be visibly upset. We received updated information that said was very afraid of strangers. She calmed down; Sean held her although she refused to look at him. She really didn’t make eye contact with me until about 20 minutes later. We ended up having to wait about an hour for the third family to receive their baby so we had a little bonding time with her right there in the conference room.

The rest of the day was spent in our hotel room. We needed and wanted time to be with Lila alone. We stripped her of the clothes she came in and put her promptly in a pink dress! Within a few hours it was clear that she was starting to attach to me and not at all to Sean. She would look at him and cry! We assume that she hasn’t had much, if any contact with men. The head orphanage director is a man but that might be it.

She’s just so sweet and curious. You can see how she’s taking everything in. She’s teething so she’s drooling a lot. Her first 2 teeth are coming in on the bottom. Developmentally, she’s definitely not where she should be or even where the orphanage said that she was. We were told that she can sit up, crawl, and pull herself up. Not even close. She sits up ok but she topples right over most of the time if she’s unbalanced. She’s not anywhere near crawling. These are all things that we expected and are confident that she will progress rapidly after we have her home a few months. I’m far from an expert but I’d say she may be about 2 months behind. She just turned 8 months old last week but I’d say she’s acting more like a 6 month old.

So, that’s day 1. It ended with another photo shoot where we got some of her first smiles and expressions. She’s so amazing. We are so blessed.

Lila Day 1 - Finally!!!

Gorgeous Hong Kong

Here are a few pictures that I meant to attach to the last post. I cannot see my own postings so I'm kind of typing blindly.

Hong Kong's skyline is SO UNBELIEVABLE!!! It just goes on forever. It's so beautiful at night. We saw the lazer light show over the buildings last night. So cool. They put it to music.

Jet lag is no fun...

We are safe and sound in Hong Kong. I'm so glad that we came in a day early because that first day was a complete fog. I have been having a difficult time adjusting. More so than Sean I think because he slept 8 out of 12 hours on the plane. I just couldn't sleep. I was enjoying business class and I just couldn't really settle in.

So much for posting everyday. I've had a difficult time accessing the blog while in Hong Kong. I think I have it figured out now.

We are 13 hours ahead of the Midwest. It's 7am right now on Sunday morning and we will soon go down for our breakfast buffet. We have to have our luggage outside of the room by 11:30 and we meet downstairs for the flight to Changsha at 12 noon. I've enjoyed Hong Kong but ready to move on. We will meet our reps from CCAI and check into the Royal Doulton Hotel in Changsha this afternoon. I have no idea after that. We should have Lila by 9:30 tommorrow morning. That would be 8:30 pm on Sunday. Father's Day!!

Here are a few pictures of Hong Kong. Yesterday we spent the day touring the city. It was really nice. We went up to Victoria Peak, toured the Aberdeen fishing village via boat and went shopping at Stanley Market. Very fun. I bought an adorable pink dress for Lila for about $5US dollars. After shopping we had a great dim sum lunch. The food has been wonderful so far. Hong Kong is so westernized. Last night we had a burger and a few beers at a British-style pub. They had kaeroke, it was so hysterical. They are very serious about their kaeroke here.

We leave for China on Wednesday!!!

This past week has been full of activity and planning and we are set to leave for Hong Kong on Wednesday. We will spend a few days in Hong Kong before we fly to Changsha, Hunan on Sunday afternoon. We will have Lila on Monday morning at 9:30!!! Because of the time change, it will actually be Sunday (Father's Day!) in the US. It doesn't seem real. I will post a few more times before we leave. SO many things left to do in the next few days.

Her name is Lila YanChen Green

Here are some new photos of our little Lila. They came via email on Friday along with some updated health information. She is almost 16 lbs. and about 25 inches. She's such a little peanut! I love the photo of her on that giant foam hand. She looks so ticked off. I am so anxious to get my hands on her. She is in dire need of some pretty dresses!

We recieved our travel approval on Thursday of last week and we are now waiting for our Consulate appointment. We need to end our trip to China in the city of Guangzhou. It is in the Guangdong province in the southern part of the country. All families end up here to get the final paperwork completed.

As soon as we receive our consulate appointment, we are able to book travel. Many families from our agency are leaving already next week! Things start to really fly now. It will be a race to get airline tickets. We are hoping to use Sean's miles to travel. It will save us so much money. Cross your fingers that things work in our favor in the next few days. I'll post as soon as we know!