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.