Meeting Grace

Well, we met Xiao yesterday... she is a riot! It was so surreal meeting her after seeing pictures of her for the past few months. She is absolutely beautiful and quite the firecracker. She was all over the place the entire time that we were with her.

We took a tour of New Day Foster home and got to meet her foster parents. When we walked into the room, her foster mom told her "mama" and "baba" and pointed to us. Grace pointed and mimicked right along with her foster mom. Then she pointed to the foster family director and yelled "yeye" (Take note dad's, that means grandpa). She was delighted when everyone around her started laughing. Her voice and laugh are so beautiful. We gave her the present that we brought for her- a "zhu" (pig) that her cousin Izzy and Aunt Liz picked out for her. She was not sure what it was so she looked at it and hugged it and started her animals- "gao" (dog), "mao" (cat)- I told her "zhu" and she pointed and pulled the squiggly tail out and laughed. Then her foster mom told her to give me a kiss. Folks, all I can say about that is, I'm a goner. I am 100% in love with that little one!

The orphanage/school is very nice. Again, it was surreal seeing all of the surroundings from the pictures we have so studiously examined. It snowed last week in Beijing and in the last pictures we saw of the kids before leaving the US they had built a giant snowman. We were walking over to where Xiao has school and Brian stopped dead in his tracks and said "this is so weird", I looked outside and there was the giant snowman...

When we went back to the room where Xiao was we got to meet with New Day Foster Care staff and her foster parents. They went through her medical file and let us ask her foster parents questions about likes and dislikes. The entire time, Xiao was playing with her zhu and rearranging furniture. Good thing there are a lot of chairs in our house. She is like an ant, we are pretty sure she can lift a lot more than she weighs. :)

New Day Foster Care gave us all the pictures that they have of her and her foster parents gave us a journal that her mom has been keeping about Xiao for the last 18 months. They also gave us pictures of themselves with Xiao and their 4 1/2 year old son. These insights about her life until now are invaluable.

We then had the opportunity to give gifts to the foster parents and exchange words through a translator. So- the question is this: How do you thank somebody for raising you child for the first two years of her little life? They clearly love her like their own child and are heartbroken at saying goodbye. For all those who had a bet going on....this is the point where I started to cry. I said something insignificant compared to the love they have given Xiao, Brian said something slightly more significant and then we had a group picture. Not a lot of detail about this because I am still overwhelmed by the moment. I will say this, after the picture was taken her foster mom said "mama" and pointed at me again and handed her over. That was the first time I held my little girl. For about five seconds....then she was off to play some more and hand out candies.

Today we have a free day. We are going to Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, and to buy some size 2 underwear. That's right! Our genius daughter is potty trained!!!!! Ha! We are skipping diapers folks... :)

We will write more later...maybe much later, we fly to Fuzhou tomorrow EARLY morning with Xiao at which point we will take custody. This may be tough to update for a little while.