A Little Girl Trying to Be Strong

Each night I go to sleep quite tired at about 8pm (7am Alabama time) and yet again, here I am - up, wide awake at about 12 or 1am. Oh well, a good time to catch up on e-mail, blog and hopefully not have such a hard time when we get home. Let me take this time to say that Pat and I have turned into quite a blog posting team. I write the original draft, he fixes all my typos, grammatical mistakes, detail ommissions and downloads all the pictures. It is working quite well. He is feeling a bit under the weather so please pray for his health to return his full energy to him. He is amazingly giving his daughter comfort in conquoring numberous Chinese phrases and continually repeating them to me as I can't seem to keep them in my brain.

It was truly an amazing day. I was not nearly as nervous the morning of Gothcha Day as I was even the day before in preparing for it. I know our calmess was due to the faithfulness of family and friends bringing us before the Father. I only cried the minute I saw her and when I was putting her pajamas on at night. I don't know how much to tell of the details of this as any mother's heart just wants to rip out when you think about what these precious children must feel their first nights away from all they have known their whole life---but since you are in the deep end of the pool with me, I will tell you.

She went to sleep about 8:30 after about 30 minutes of very, very, very sad crying. She doesn't scream when she cries, it is just a heart ache cry of sadness and longing for what she is used to. Again, I don't want to betray privacy for her with a large audience but since it seems other adopted children have gone through similar things, I know this is typical. This leads me to tell you that we felt totally prepared for all that we encountered our first day with her, our first visit, her responses, her first night, the primal cries, the distant looks, the not wanting to look at of us in a mirror together, the stiff body when we held her (sometimes). This preparation is due to the Lord's prompting and the million and one conversations I have had with Jennifer Chambers, Jill Barnhart and others about their children, adopted children in general and roll playing the what-ifs. It is in no means a testimony to my skill in breaking through this incredible grief Hadley will be feeling for months (possibly years) to come. We were encouraged that she would allow herself to collapse into me at times which is something that usually happens down the road in the attachment process.

Earlier in the day, after some time in the hotel room we left to go to the outside playground. This is small basketball court size space on top of the hotel. She was more interested in walking rather than playing. We would do laps enjoing the cool early evening breeze with the wind blowing in our hair. She would let me hold her hand and she would walk with me and then stop and look up and put her sad face on as she remembered. I would grab her cheeks, kiss her, hold her tight tell her I know it is hard and that I love her and say it is going to be alright. She would never start crying. We would continue this routine for about 20 minutes. She was trying so hard to be strong and so was I. I just have to keep telling myself this is for her good...this is for her good.

We went in to get Daddy ("Ba Ba"- not the sheep) for dinner. We were a bit behind her normal eating schedule. I guess I clued in she was hungry when she tried to eat a piece of clover that I picked for her. She did hold onto that piece of clover until I took it out of her cute little fingers to wash her hands for dinner. When I asked her nanny what she liked to eat, she said, "oh, she should eat healthy things" so being a good mommy and daddy, we ordered her the fried rice and I got a hamburger and french fries (a craving since leaving the US). Of course I couldn't resist offering a french fry which she tried reluctantly but liked---that's my girl. But I definitely pushed the envelope when I added the ketchup to it. She ended up in tears and quickly downed about 3/4 of her orange juice. We will save that for another day. Baby steps.

We have a friend in the hotel restaurant named Merry. She is helping us make good selections for her. Merry said she will see us for breakfast. The people here are so sweet and so eager to help. A busboy came over to tell us in his best English we have a "darling looking daughter" we proudly said "shi shi" thank you.