The adoption was finalized today at 1100! Emma Mei Aishan is officially ours.
“ Gotcha” day was yesterday. Our appointment to pick up Emma was moved to 3:00 so we actually first saw her at about 3:15. You can see the back of my head and her face in the pic as she walked out the door.
That was a very exciting moment which very quickly turned into a heart wrenching moment. The nanny who brought her to us had picked her up directly from her foster home. The nanny then told her that she was going to meet her “mama and baba (father)”. When they started telling her that we were the mama and baba, she was very upset and cried and clung to the nanny, asking for her real mama and baba (her foster parents).
When I realized what was going on I asked them (through an interpreter) to stop telling her that and tell her we are mommy and daddy. It was too late, she wanted no part of us or anything we offered- food drink, etc. She cried the whole way home (to the hotel). She was so red and hot. Then we realized that she was wearing 3 layers of shirts, 3 layers of pants, and a long coat on top of it all. But absolutely refused to remove any clothing, including shoes and coat.
In the room we just comforted her with a cool washcloth on her face, tissues to wipe her tears, and lots of soothing hugs and sounds. About 5 hours later she was willing to take some water and a few crackers. As the night went on she was crying less and looking around more. Thank you Mike for the “Signing Time” video idea. She loves them. It has been a great distraction and we know it will help us teach her English.
This morning when we woke up she cried a little, then she was fine! (except that she still refuses to remove any article of clothing!) It was really nice to see her face looking relaxed. I wouldn’t say she was happy, but she wasn’t extremely upset either! We were all worried though because today we had to go back to the building that we had collected her from yesterday. It turned out to be a bit of a set back. She recognized the place and got upset when she saw the nanny who had dropped her off. Crying times are very short today though. Progress.
We are not yet seeing the delay in fine motor skills that they had reported. So far we have seen her pick up many small objects, screw the lid on to a small water bottle, and feed herself with a spoon this morning. She also seems quite bright. She is very observant. She’s always watching everything. Also, she is definitely tall and solid- She reminds me a lot of Kaden.
As Jen was writing this, Emma was napping. When she woke up, we decided to give her a bath. She fussed a little, but now she is clean and happy wearing her clean purple outfit.

More and better pics to follow.