When my wife and I went to China for Christmas in 2004 to bring home our adopted daughter, we were literally living out Forrest Gump’s words. The only thing we had to go by was a couple of pictures and a brief description of her. It told us that she was a little headstrong but little did we know that a mule would be considered ultra cooperative compared to this little 15 month old girl. After collecting paperwork for months, being interviewed numerous times, fingerprinted over and over, signed dozens of times (all of which had to be notarized, county certified, state authorized, signed by the US Secretary of State and authorized by the Chinese government),
waiting for months, the whole process reaches its climax in a hotel conference room in Nanchang, Jiangxi, China. There, at about 5:15 in the afternoon two days after Christmas, R is handed over to K and our lives are changed forever. R takes a look at me, then looks at her new mother, and starts crying her life is about to end within the next minute. Actually she kept on crying for about three days only stopping when she was sleeping. Numerous attempts on getting her to eat, drink, or even go potty was totally futile. At this point we get to see why it is so important to have good guides in the country you are when you are adopting. Our guide, Mary, sat R down, said something to her in Chinese in a stern voice, and voila, R was eating and drinking for us. I guess Mary told her to stop that stupid non-sense and start eating. After that R turned around and became a very happy little girl. As you can see from the pictures she has continued to thrive. She is still extremely headstrong but now she is using her stubborness in a more focused way. Isn't she beautiful?
When my wife and I went to China for Christmas in 2004 to bring home our adopted daughter, we were literally living out Forrest Gump’s words. The only thing we had to go by was a couple of pictures and a brief description of her. It told us that she was a little headstrong but little did we know that a mule would be considered ultra cooperative compared to this little 15 month old girl. After collecting paperwork for months, being interviewed numerous times, fingerprinted over and over, signed dozens of times (all of which had to be notarized, county certified, state authorized, signed by the US Secretary of State and authorized by the Chinese government), 
waiting for months, the whole process reaches its climax in a hotel conference room in Nanchang, Jiangxi, China. There, at about 5:15 in the afternoon two days after Christmas, R is handed over to K and our lives are changed forever. R takes a look at me, then looks at her new mother, and starts crying her life is about to end within the next minute. Actually she kept on crying for about three days only stopping when she was sleeping. Numerous attempts on getting her to eat, drink, or even go potty was totally futile. At this point we get to see why it is so important to have good guides in the country you are when you are adopting. Our guide, Mary, sat R down, said something to her in Chinese in a stern voice, and voila, R was eating and drinking for us. I guess Mary told her to stop that stupid non-sense and start eating. After that R turned around and became a very happy little girl. As you can see from the pictures she has continued to thrive. She is still extremely headstrong but now she is using her stubborness in a more focused way. Isn't she beautiful?
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