Schedule is still whacked, a few thoughts, and some more pictures...

Will this be the night that we get to sleep through the night???? Ok...not likely, but we can hold out hope can't we?

We got Clarissa's OHIP number today!!! Woo hoo!!!! Now let's all pray that we never, ever need it.

She's doing very well, but we learned today that we should never, ever wake her up when she's sleeping. Whoooooeeee!! She was not a happy camper. She was maaaaaaaaaad at Mommy and Daddy. With the goal of getting her schedule on track we had her take a nap this afternoon thinking that she would wake up, eat, and play for a while and then we would put her back to bed around 7pm for the night. Well she slept, and slept, and slept. At 5pm we decided that we had better wake her up to have something to eat......mistake. Well after the meltdown we got her back to sleep...and so far all is well.


Some thoughts:

If you are going to China to adopt bring Cheerios and stacking cups. They are like gold!

If you are going to China to adopt read as many (I will break my rule and use the word for this one occasion just to make sure that you know what I'm talking about) "blogs" of people who are there as you possibly can... www.chinaadoptionsites.blogspot.com is a very good source)...I found reading about what others experience before we left was soooooo helpful. It really gave us perspective as we were going through it. It made the whole thing a lot less scary...it was all still kind of scary, but at least we knew first hand that others had gone through exactly the same thing. It made a big difference for us.




We really appreciated all the emails while we were in China, it really helped us to get notes from home while we were so far away. Thanks to everyone.

Also, I finally got a chance to read all of the comments on our site. Thanks very much to each of you, especially Roberta!

Something that I don't think that I've really mentioned....we travelled with THE BEST group of people! We feel lucky to have met such awesome families. In particular, the Ottawa Crew were fantastic. From beginning of the journey to the end we travelled with Manon, Richard, Marie-Eve, Jacqueline, and Pierre; and Frances and Cat. The rest of the Ottawa Crew who we met at the pre-trip dinner at Manon and Richard's place, were Adrian and Debbie, and Victor and Sharon. These folks and all of the other families really were important parts of our journey. It made a huge difference to know, and feel that we were all in it together. The support was huge.

I also have been thinking a lot about how incredible Family Outreach International was/is. I can't even begin to express what they mean to us. They took such good care of us, it's almost hard for me to think about. I think that I've been avoiding bringing it up because I just don't think that I can say adequately what they did for us. It was sooooo much more than bringing our wonderful, beautiful little girl to us. From beginning to end (including Bob being at the airport in Ottawa when we arrived) they were....well there just aren't words. Yulin and Bob are the heart of FOI...they are so....I think that I need more time to capture my thoughts on Yulin and Bob. They care soooo much about these children and about us it's beyond description. But it's not just them, the guides working for them...Mary in Nanchang, and Vivian and Fe in Beijing....they just took such good care of us. They made what was not an easy situation (a very, very wonderful situation, but not always easy) so much better. We are so grateful to all of these wonderful people!!!

I think that I'll leave at that for now.

Oh...the pictures....family shot with the Canadian and Chinese flags, me posting from the hotel room, and the first picture with the three of us together just seconds after we first met Clarissa.