official

hey, i think this might actually work. maybe. sorry if the formatting is all screwy on this post but i can't view it from here. but i can get your comments! thanks so much! we love you guys. and, there's more like that chicken one. i almost took a picture of a dried pig face - for buying and eating - but didn't get up the nerve. won't make that mistake again. amy said she saw tonight a street meat market where they are selling live alligators. cool, eh? for now, check flickr often. that seems to work well enough. here are my thoughts from the last couple days. much love:

a few finger prints, a few signatures, and one foot print later and it is finished. she is our daughter. now we're just waiting for the papers and permission to bring her back to the US. next week in guangzhou we start the process for her to become a US citizen. the last several days have been insane. it feels odd to be sitting still. just being a family. don't let that fool you. it's still exhausting.

after 2 days of no love from joy and the non stop go-go-go amy had maxed out on emotional overload. more on that In a second, did i mention the hotel is swank!? in each of our rooms are cribs and strollers and they've converted the conference room at the middle of the floor to a massive play room. i'll post a picture, eventually. and when we checked in they only gave us 2 towels. the day we got back with our girls there was a note and a flower saying congratulations and now they bring 3 towels. so it's been nice to have this place to decompress. but i think the reason it's so attuned to us is because they have plenty of practice serving folks from the west adopting from china. at first i thought our ten families were the only ones they had done all this for. but breakfast monday morning revealed a whole new batch of folks on their way to the same place we were, to the provincial office to get their girls. and people we met at the office also going through their "gotcha" day suddenly appear on our floor of the hotel in the play room. the realization of what is going on here sinks in a bit more for me when i noticed that.

amy is far more advanced then i am in most every way but especially in emotional awareness. at the office where we officially were given our girls there was another family adopting a 2 or so year old girl with a club foot. and watching this happen just made amy bawl. it wasn't until after all the paperwork and etc. was done and it was the three of us in our room and amy is still pretty undone by the events of the last several days do i at least get a bit more of a clue. and to top it all off here is this dream we have had for over a year, this hope, this joy we've been waiting for and amy can't play with her. can't hold her. can't get her dressed. the trauma for our daughter is so acute she is terrorized and in shock. and, for whatever reason, she chose me to be her "transition person". it's tiring for me but absolutely rewarding. isaac and amy had their special thing going on the first several months of his life since amy was his lifeline. so for me it's great to have a baby who falls asleep on me, wants to cuddle with me, always wants me close, who needs me. and it's that much harder for amy. and i'm so proud of my wife. she's amazing. i can't imagine life without her, let alone being on this journey. she's doing really great In the midst of the chaos. she's definitely holding the ship afloat.

so last night the three of us found ourselves in our little home and some of the greater truths going on here sink further in. that this is the third time someone has named my daughter, assuming her birth parents at least called her something. they did have nine months to think about it. but it's the first time she's been given a personal last name. a family name. and since before she was born she had this name. before she ever was she was known. and the reality of being an orphan became more real to me. in a culture where personhood can be withheld (they won't give birth certificates to second born children unless a fine is paid. without that there are few jobs, no schooling, etc.) our daughter was being thrust into a world where nothing was familiar. so we found ourselves all weeping. i wept for my daughter and how what she was born into wasn't fair, wasn't right. and how i can't explain or understand that if she hadn't been born that way she would never be in our arms. i wept for amy for how hard it is to love someone so dearly and have so little to show for it, as temporary as it may be, it still hurts. and joy just cried. for things she can't express or explain but feels intensely deep within her - to the very center of her heart she hurts. and we had an unplanned ceremony right then and there. we professed our love for this girl. out loud, even though she doesn't understand our words, we confessed our devotion to this girl and taking her into our family. we told her we were sorry. that we loved her. and always will. and we held tight to each other and cried together. and prayed. it felt right. it felt good. and something shifted with that. joy is warmer toward amy now. amy held joy on our little shopping excursion this afternoon. joy laughs more. she's playing with toys. she's eating (and pooping, which is a big deal because they can be stopped up for a week or so). still not out of the woods but today has been really nice.

It helps knowing that the boy Is doing well back home. he sounds so grown up on the phone. we miss him tons but It's good he stayed behind. and he Is just thriving at paw and bew's house.

tomorrow we tour the city in the morning. the girls went out for a foot massage tonight. the guys go thursday night. and i think i found a massive theater right next to the hotel. there was a poster, in chinese, for war of the worlds. maybe i'll hit that? nah.

i'm sure there's more i could be putting down for everyone but it escapes me at the moment. i'm going to go down to the business center and get this posted before i pass out for the night.