China - Part 10 - Got'cha! day

Got'cha! day. The day this whole thing was about. The tourism in Beijing was fun and very interesting but after a few days of being that far away from home and STILL waiting for your little person to enter your life gets a little trying. By Saturday afternoon, we were ready to get to Changchun and meet our boy.

On Monday, December 5th, we finally got our wish.

On Monday morning when we woke up as a family of three for the last time (and hopefully for a VERY long time), I felt really bad. Headache on top of being light headed and sick to my stomach. I would be brave enough to say that it wasn't nerves because I really didn't feel nervous at all, excited? Yes, but not nervous.

Regardless we were all up early that morning, shaved, showered, fed and ready to go get our boy!!

In the older post, Gotcha! He's Real... and He's Spectacular!, I made the comment that the Federal building was just in the middle of all of your ordinary shops and buildings in Changchun.  The only thing that set it apart, was the Chinese flag flying in the front.

Here is that building.  The shot of the boys dancing in that old post, and appearing again here later, was in the lobby of this building just behind those gold doors that you can see.  Our little boy was up on the ninth floor of this building and at this point, it was kind of surreal that we finally made it to this point.  And, it was cold...

Here's the hallway that I spoke of too, with the doors that had paint so thick on some of them that they didn't close correctly.  Our guide, Echo, is the person way up front by the elevator lobby and whose pony-tail you can kind of see. We had been down the hallway to the big metal door and turned around and went back because there was confusion about where the three boys were at.

Here we are in the same hallway turned around and going back the other direction after Echo made a quick phone call. The big door down at the end is the heavy metal door that I spoke of that could be closed to seal off the hallway. The boys were in a tiny room just past that big steel door.  First door on the left.

And here we are first meeting our little duder, as well as the other two families all jammed into that little room!  If memory serves me correctly, there were 20 people total in that room.  It was crowded, hot, noisy and very exciting. Calebs careperson, who shall remain nameless for no other reason than the fact that we never knew her name, was showing him the little photo book that we had shipped to him back in the summer time after we were matched with him.  I think he knew what was up and I KNOW that he wasn't happy about it.  He was just quiet and reserved at this point. 

This was momma's first attempt to physically touch him.  He tolerated it, but I'm not sure he enjoyed it.  It was at this picture when I was going through building this post where I started crying all over again (I'm welling up now again at this photo...).  The emotions at this point were so intense that I thought my head might pop off. Heck just seeing seeing his face for the first time when Echo opened the correct door caused the biggest jolt of adrenalin that I've ever experienced.  It was that precise moment when he was "really real", if that makes any sense.

Calebs holding the booklet with a picture of his and Robby's bedroom showing.  Robby is looking like, "Hmmmm... I wonder if this was as good of an idea as I was thinking it was 3 hours ago at breakfast?".  Just kidding, of course, he was happy and most of the time still is.  As I was typing this caption, Robby just yelled at Caleb, "Caleb! Not funny! Don't make me kick you into the middle of next week!".  Now Caleb is sobbing and Robby's telling him that everything is okay.  And so it goes.

That's my hand with a panda pupper we bought him at the Changchun Wally Mart.  At this point, they were starting to usher us out of the room to go up to the 12th floor to the courtroom where we'll process piles of paperwork and sign our names more times than we can count.  Caleb's just hoping that we all go away...

This is where the sobbing got started and you could really tell how bad he was hurting. The photo is in black and white because it was more than a bit blurry and it looked better this way.  Sadly, it tends to capture the emotions of the moment quite nicely too.

Here's little Caleb, upset and clutching his bag of corn candy. We've tried to play with his trucks, plush soccer ball and the panda puppet that we bought him.  The only thing that kind of worked was the soccer ball and kicking it back and forth with us.

I included this shot just so everybody could see my huge beak!!  That nose gave him a HUGE target for his rather adept right hook that he would connect with several times over the next 10 minutes.  This was one of the happier moments when big brother Robby was being goofy and falling down to entertain Caleb. Caleb would do good during these times but as soon as he realized that he wasn't upset, he'd get upset again.  Note that his caregiver is still there (the boots to Calebs right are here) and so his real fireworks have not started yet. It's probably for the best, but the fireworks were not captured on film because as the caregiver left, momma had to go over and start paper work so there was no one to take pictures while I tried to console a the little bugger.

This is after momma had her paperwork done and I had to take Caleb over to do his fingerprints which is how they have the little kids "sign" their names.  He's warmed up to me at this point and actually let me carry him, but not before punching me for my efforts.

Here we are doing the paperwork at the desk with the Federal workers.

This is the process of paperwork. There are two Federal workers behind the desk and then Echo and another helper would help flip through the pages.  One would help Caleb put his finger print down and the other would tell me where to sign and put the papers back in order after I did.  He was upset at first because he had to take his glove off.  You can see his bright striped glove laying right by the pad of red ink.

After paperwork, we went back to our chair to wait for the others to finish up.  Caleb is still sobbing at this point but doing much better.  He lets me hold him, but not too tightly as you can clearly see his hand on mine so it's in the proper position to throw it off should I get to "daddy-like" with him.

We were not ready to leave yet, but Caleb wanted his gloves on. I took another shot to the nose at first when I tried to help get them on because he thought I was taking them. Once he learned that I was simply helping him put them on, he allowed it.

Progress!!!  He's standing between my legs at this point, settling in and even allowed me to hug him!  In this photo and the one after it, notice how wet the front of his coat is from all of his tears!  By this point, we've all done plenty of crying and have easily burned through the supply of tissues we armed ourselves with.

Here's the three boys with the two in the back looking noticeably happier than the one in the front!

He FINALLY crawled into my lap and within about 5 or 6 minutes, was out.  He's still clutching his corn candies that his caregiver gave him before she left and would hold onto them for quite some time.  Poppa is very proud here and a little exhausted from the last how ever many hours have passed.

Here we are back down in the lobby.  We got seperated from our group when I had to take Caleb to the bathroom so we made it down to the lobby before the other families. By the time the rest of the folks got down there, I had been dancing with the boys and they were still dancing.  Echo, right behind Caleb was very happy to see him gettin' down with his big brother so soon after the turmoil upstairs.  I think we all were.

Another dancing shot.  Probably overkill but they make me smile and it was all part of a flood of emotions that was this morning.

Here's the critters dancing that was in the original blog post.  I included the full shot again because you can see the guards desk (behind Robby) and elevators of where we ascended and descended. The gold doors you can see in the first picture of this post are immediately behind Robby.  The people in the background were another family with us and I put butterflies over their faces as it weirds me out to put peoples pictures on the fancy hi-tech world wide interweb without their permission.

Here are the boys on the bus ride to the photo shoot where they take the adoptee's photo with their newly adopting parents.  Robby and the other boy with his family had to stay in the bus with the other lads grandma and grandpa.

Another shot of just the critters.  After we got the photo taken, we went to a notary's office to do another blast of paperwork. It was at that office where the orphanage director told us that Calebs foster mom had called him, bawling, asking how Caleb was doing.  The director was very happy to see Caleb sitting on my lap and playing with me by this point.  I didn't take any photos of that room and I wish I would have for memories sake...

So that's all for this post.  In the next one, I'll post some photos of that first day/night back in our hotel room.