Three years ago today....

Today is a special day for us---three years ago today, we met Allison for the first time. In the adoption world, it is known as “Gotcha Day” or “Metcha Day”. Regardless of what it’s called, it’s the day we became a family of four. I thought I’d try to share some of the emotions and memories from that day in China, three years ago.
It was on a Sunday and the day started with us leaving Beijing to fly to Allison’s Provincial capital of Nanchang, which is located in Jiangxi Province. It’s located in the mid- western portion of China. Allison is actually from a very rural mountain town called Tonggu that is 5 hours away by bus from Nanchang.
While we flew in a few hours to meet her, she rode on a bus with Nannies and several other little girls to meet us and our travel mates at the Civil Affairs Office in Nanchang. We had time to check into our hotel, and freshen up a little before loading on a bus for the short drive to the Civil Affairs Office. It was just enough time to be completely excited and apprehensive all at the same time.
Allison would turn 9 mo. old while we were in China and I was worried that it would take a lot of time for her to adjust to us. I was worried that she would grieve for the loss of her foster family since I had read that can sometimes happen. After all, we were strangers taking her away from the only life she had ever known.
Russ was extremely excited and was tired of waiting. He was ready to go and get her. We had completed months of paperwork and waited—not so patiently—for her. To put it into perspective to what current adoptive families are facing with wait times, we waited a total of 7 months from the time we submitted our paperwork to China. Let me pause for a second and let any other current adoptive families that may be currently waiting and reading this pick themselves up off the floor. It is very sad and hard to believe that families are now waiting longer than 2 ½ years for their referral.
We began our paperchase in April 2004 and finally completed it and saved enough money to submit it to China in December 04. We received our referral July 05 and we traveled in September 05.
When we arrived at the Civil Affairs Office, we were ushered into a large room and looked anxiously to see if the babies were already there. Our guide had warned us that some babies would be dubbed as either happy babies or sad babies because they would just cry and scream. We had to wait a only a short time before the girls arrived--it was a good thing because it was hot. Most of the buildings in China do not have air conditioning. When the nannies filed in with the babies, we quickly spotted Allison. We didn't know if we would be called first or last and all of us parents were trying to juggle our cameras and video cameras to capture the first moment together. As luck would have it, we were called first. Russ sprinted in front of me and grabbed her from the nanny's hands as I handed our camera off to another parent in our group. Immediately there was a commotion about Russ grabbing Allison and our translator rushed over to see what was going on. Apparently in his excitement, Russ failed to present his ID and our paperwork showing we were the right people to be taking Allison. He.did.not.want.to.hand.her.back. while they checked her paperwork and ours. She was finally ours!
We waited for the tears and watched her reaction of us very carefully. She was quiet and curious, and did not cry or utter a sound at all. She went to either one of us without a fuss and just calmly took in everything around her. It quickly became a chaotic scene in that room with each set of parents being called up one by one to collect their girls. Some of the girls wailed at the top of their lungs as they were handed off to these new, strange people.
We took a lot of pictures and tried to find a spot to sit and wait our turn to ask the orphanage director questions about Allison. When did she eat last? When did she nap? How much did she eat? What time did she go to bed?
We were all given some formula for each of the girls which made it easier for them to switch to different formula since we could slowly combine the two. The orphanage director tried to answer our questions as best as possible, but I got the feeling that he really didn't know. It didn't really matter everything would change now. Everything would be just fine.