Wednesday July 23

I’m writing this on Friday morning (my computer is still set for U.S., so my posts record in U.S. time). The last two days have been a whirlwind of activity. On Wednesday afternoon we went to the Civil Affairs Bureau (CAB) to meet Kate. We walked in, and there she was, playing with her caregivers. With Isabel, the last time we adopted, we had to wait in a room and they brought her in, and I thought it would be the same--so I was totally surprised. I recognized Kate immediately. She looks exactly the same as her pictures. She came right to me and was very interested in all of us. I think she is quite the little socialite. But, when it came time for her nanny to leave without her, it was a different story. She has powerful lungs and she cried for a long time.
There is just one other family traveling with us (Jen and Mike), so it all went pretty quickly. They got their little girl, Kylie, and we headed back to the hotel. Randy and Isabel headed out for some take out from the food court and Kate and I hung out in the room and played with toys and snuggled. She did really well the first night. She loves all kinds of food and is not at all picky about her bottle. Her caregivers told us she has a bottle in the morning and one before bed, so we will stick with that for a while to ease her transition. But she definitely needs to be weaned from the bottle. She is HUGE. Good thing it is summer, because it is pretty hard to get pants on her. I gave the cute capris I brought to Kylie, because I couldn’t pull them up over Kate’s legs. She’s a healthy girl.
We also found out that Kate has been part of a program called Half the Sky. It is a fantastic program started by an adoptive U.S. mom that helps orphans all over China. They go in and teach the nannies how to care for the children. We have sponsored a child through that program since January 2007, which is coincidentally when Kate was born! The nanny gave us a beautiful memory book with pictures of Kate from 10 days old to now. There are also handprints and footprints in the book. It is a wonderful gift! I feel very blessed and am so thankful.