Gotcha Day!

What a great day! We received little Aanika into our arms right at 3 PM China time (about Midnight EST); they came to our room with one of her caretakers to give her to us. The "nurse" said to Lian Yi Mei, "This is your mama", and handed her over. She was clutching the pink elephant we had sent over 3 months ago.

She was quite calm and inquisitive. She was just as big as they had said (I had expected a bit different); I'm guessing she's all of 18 pounds and plenty chubby cheeks. After studying Cil's blue eyes for about 5 minutes, she started looking over the goofy looking guy with the camera. She didn't make a sound, and just played with the toys we gave her.

About 15 minutes later we were able to meet the "nurses" who took care of her and the director for the orphanage. On the way over to visit them, she feel asleep in Cil's arms - apparently quite tired from the 5 hour drive to the hotel. They gave us details of her schedule that she typically keeps (we still haven't figured out how she has her first feeding at 5 AM and gets up at 6 AM), and gave us some of the formula that they use. They also had used up all the pictures of the two cameras we had sent, and also gave us more pictures of themselves and the orphanage that they had taken. They were great. Then some more pictures right there - so we had to wake her up for that little event. We then went back to our room; played for a good hour, got her saying things like "da" and "ba" and giggling. At that point we saw that she has 7 teeth, with the 8th erupting on the lower left, and that she has a dimple on the right cheek.

Then it was the first bottle. Gulped that down - she had a little cough and sounded a little congested (plus pawing at her right ear); gave her a some medicine and after 1/2 hour, she's right back to playing with all the toys we give her. She's very attracted to red - we see in the pictures that the cribs that surrounded hers were almost all painted red.About an hour later, she's breathing better and slowing down; so a couple minutes of rocking, and she's asleep. She's very sweet; Cil's calling her "sugar bear" because of the outfit she was wearing. I'm working on getting the pictures uploaded. I'll post another update when I get them on board. It was quite a flurry between arriving from the flight, to going to the store, finally back just in time to prepare. It all worked out beautifully.