The day is finally here. The day that we have been waiting for since the beginning of October 2004. Or more specifically since we first saw these beautiful boys pictures on December 30, 2004. We were able to sleep in until 8:00 A.M. This, in and of itself, was a miracle, seeing that we have been up at 4:00 A.M. a couple of days straight. We ate at the breakfast buffet which wasn’t as good as the one in Beijing but there was plenty of food.
We met our facilitator Nancy in the lobby of the hotel at 1:30 P.M. Along with another couple who are from Seattle WA, we headed off to the registration office to receive our children. The ride from our hotel was about 20 minutes. If I haven’t mentioned this before, driving in China is not for the faint of heart. There are no pedestrian laws…Anyway, we arrived at the registration office about 10 minutes early. When we walked in the door the other couple’s daughter was already inside. She is 27 months old and was walking like she owned the place.
We turned around and looked outside and saw 2 caregivers walking up the steps with 2 small, very upset boys. We realized that these were our boys. They had just driven 4.5 hours to get there and their whole routine was way off. The nannies handed Patrick Hao to Mary and Lucas Ming to me. These boys were screaming like they were having their arms torn off. No matter how much you prepare yourself for this possibility you are never ready. This screaming went on nonstop for the next 2 hours. They were very attached to one nanny in particular. We tried to ask her questions but the boys were screaming too loud. They were trying to get back to their nanny and she was trying to take them. At this point I said “NO”.
The boys went down for a nap out of sheer exhaustion at around 4:00 P.M. At about 5:00 P.M. the boys woke up screaming. Are you seeing the pattern here? Cindy and Nancy went to the store for us and picked up some watermelon, bananas and rice cereal. We started to feed the boys which was okay with them, thus stopping the screaming. The feeding frenzy went on for about 3 hours starting in the room and continued on to the dining room where we actually got a few bites. Talk about stuffing a 25lb turkey in a 10lb bag…
After another round of screaming, we were finally able to get the boys to sleep at around 8:45 P.M. After they fell asleep, we looked at these 2 angelic looking boys and wondered how they could have been the ones to scream all day. There is nothing that I can put in words to describe our feelings about this day. We will always remember this day with a full range of emotions. But most importantly we will remember this day as the day that we completed our family.
