Joy upon joy

Well, for all of those that reassured us of the nervousness we felt going to pick up Carli, thank you. Your comforting words did help and in fact today was the extreme opposite. I feel an irrepressible satisfaction and joy today watching and learning about my new daughter. Although I shouldn’t be, I feel a state of awe and shock that she seems to be exactly the girl we prayed for. I truly feel blessed and lucky to have these two beautiful girls in our family.

Let me just see if I can recall some of the things I saw today:

• I am pretty sure she knows ma-ma (mommy) and ba-ba (daddy) and that she calls us by those. The same with Jenna, I think she says Jenna’s name when she wants her attention. I’m not for sure, but I think so
  
• We had our first little discipline session today. As most of you parents know, disciplining your children is a hard thing to do. Carli likes to pinch my face, and while it has been cute and she smiles, it gets a little hard and painful. This evening I told her “buyao” which is “no” in Chinese. Well, she gave a cute little cunning grin and kept doing it, even fighting through my hands and repeated no’s. So, we did a little holding time, which is where I cuddle her firmly so she cannot repeat the offending behavior. She fought strongly, laughing for a bit, then getting serious and straining hard. However, not long after that she stopped fighting and the tears started. Very slowly at first, with just a little sorrowful, tender tear. The fighting stopped and all the emotion came forth, for both of us. I felt so close to her, that she had resisted and now, with the tears, was acknowledging me as dad. She started crying harder and she let me hold her close and comfort her, stroking her head and back. She cried loudly for at least 10 minutes before quieting down, getting her breath back, and resigning to sniffles. We sat for a long time afterwards together while she recuperated. The most amazing thing about that experience was that afterwards she completely stopped the hard pinching and several times rubbed and stroked my face gently and happily.
  
• The rest of the evening was spent in the hotel room and the girls were hyper! Carli’s full sentences finally emerged and she was talking all about the books we had telling me all sorts of things about them… almost like she was trying to teach me Chinese. I would tell her the English word for some of the pictures and she did a pretty good job of imitating me, albeit with a slight Chinese inflection. This was the time when she was saying Jenna’s name the most.
  
• Jenna and Carli took their first bath together! Carli takes a bath differently than we do. She squats and spashes the water on her arms, her face, her legs, etc. It took her a while to sit down in the tub and she didn’t enjoy having water on her face. She actually yelled at me about it… didn’t really cry, just yelled.
  
• She seems to already be bonded to us. When Sara and Megan come into the room she runs at them with open arms and a smile, wanting to be picked up. It is sweet.
  
• She is ticklish
  
• She takes a while to wake up in the morning or from naps. When she gets up, she usually has a scowl on her face and just kind of grunts. She doesn’t want to eat, talk, or play during that time. You can tell when she’s done waking up because she’ll starting eating or smiling or engaging in whatever we’re doing at the time, but it takes her a while.

Today we finalized the paperwork at the office and went out to lunch. Tomorrow we are going to the Tiger Zoo… you’ll have to wait to hear about that one. And then I think Thursday we are going shopping on the longest street market in Asia… something like that. I’m not sure we understand what it is, yet.

I’ll post some pictures tomorrow. We are all doing well. Megan and Amanda have been doing their homework. We spend some of our free time just hanging out in the room together with the girls. We’ve also split up and done some things as pairs – exploring, working out, shopping, etc. Harbin is nice and even though it is cold, I’m happy to be able to spend some time here.

Thank you all again for all the encouraging comments. Although you all say this helps you feel part of the process, I think we all feel a certain connection with you, as well. Sara and Megan come over and look at the comments every day and we all talk about the emails and comments we receive.

Everyone is asleep now and I must go join them. Until next time…