Anyway we left the hotel yesterday about 3:15pm and headed to the Civil Affairs Office which is about a 30 minute drive from the hotel. Driving here is nuts!!! Basically they do what ever they want - I think if they have rules they must make them only to break them. They have lines on the roads but I have not figured out what they are for. Nelson says that the line in the middle is to show what side of the road you are supposed to drive on. But I have yet to see one direction of traffic stay on either side of that line. Pedestrians do not have the ride away here - however you would think they do by the way they just walk out in front of traffic - even big buses they just walk out infront of them and then the bus slams on its breaks or the person stops walking and misses the bus my mer inches. It must be some kind of art or something. We have all decided this should become a sport - it sure leaves you on the edge of your seat.
It does not help that we have determined that Madelin has a bit of motion sickness so we have to sit where she can see out - which means that Mom has to sit where she can see out. Our driver laughs at all my noises and comments now. Actually I think he might be trying to make me wet my pants or something.
We get to the Civil Affairs office and have to go to the 26th floor - the elevator is a story in itself. There is a fan on the ceiling with some kind of electrical box just hanging from the ceiling and wires everywhere. We are assuming their are no building codes here. Ha Ha. We walk into a large room where there are about 30 other families some have their children and some do not. There was a group there from Spain and then another American group. Nelson tells us where to sit and then all of sudden he says there are your babies. They were sitting off to the side of the room with their nannies. Just hanging out with no idea that their whole world was about to change. We all scramble for our cameras and camcorders all of a sudden this is starting to feel real. I look over at Allison (travel partner and good friend) and I see she is starting to cry and shake a little - so I know that is not the direction I want to be looking. It is not acceptable to cry in public for the Chinese (at least that is what they tell us). I am trying to hold myself together because I really want to see Molly for the first time but I decide to pause I realize this is the last time that it will be just me and Madelin - and all of a sudden I am already missing her. She must be feeling the same thing because I look down at her and she says Mom are you sure you want to do this? (In a smart *$% tone.) wish you could have heard the way she said it- I felt like Then I burst out with laughter. I guess that was enough to pull myself together. She grabs my hand and we start to go over. I saw Allison's baby Lea right away - so I look back and see if Allison sees her - she has the camcorder rolling but her hand was shaking so bad I will be surprised if she got any footage. Then I see the Diring's baby - oh man she is cute - reminds me totally of Madelin when we got her. There were about 7 other babies but I did not see Molly. A women was siting on one of the coffee tables with her back to me - slowly the women's head turns around and I realize it is the director - she sees me and then turns her who body around. I look in her lap and there is Molly chewing on her name tag. At first I did not thing it was her because she was very tiny. After seeing the last updated referral pictures I thought she was big for her age - mostly in length. Madelin went up to her and of course had to touch that hair - oh my it is very corse and sticking straight up - I call her my little porky pine. We could not hold them yet because of a little paperwork that needed to be done. We have to sign a 24 hour agreement to take care of this child. Once that was done she was handed to me. Now remember in her paperwork it said that she was very attached to her nanny and when strangers come around she screams!!! She did not scream - she just kind of looked at me and kept chewing on her name tag. I was shocked she is so small, complete opposite of how Madelin was. She just kind of looked at me and then would turn her head and look for someone. After awhile she realized that someone was not coming back and let me tell you this child has a set of lungs on her!!! She started SCREAMING and trying really hard to get away from me. Poor thing she was so scared. And to be honest at this point I was a little scared too. I started walking around the room with her that seemed to help for the moment but not for long. Then the next thing I know Madelin is crying - so I am trying to comfort both of them yet inside I want to cry too. Madelin looked so sad and it was the saddest cry I have ever seen come out of her. I felt like my heart was being pulled out of my chest. Greg finally picked her up and tried to comfort her but she just sobbed and was saying mommy, mommy!!! Meanwhile I have Molly who I am so excited to meet and finally see and hold and she is having none of it. All of a sudden I notice that my kids are the only ones that are crying in the whole place - so what is that about 33 kids all under 12 months old, all just meeting their parents for the first time and no one is crying. Hmmmmm. That part was a bit comical to me at that moment. So we hang out for about an hour - yes the whole time my kids are crying. Then our guide Nelson says okay now we need to get pictures. I just look at him - with a look that says are you crazy!!! I am also thinking is it about 500 degrees in here. At that point I knew I needed to get Molly out of there. So he said okay we go back to the hotel. Once on the bus both kids settled down. Madelin could sit next to me (although she was warn out - like a rag doll and staring no blinking (totally reminded me of the day we got her). I had my arm around her the whole time - I said over and over Madelin I love you. I would make her look in my eyes. I just said it over and over again and would hold her tighter. Molly was pretty interested at looking out the window so I had a few minutes that I could concentrate on Madelin. Once we got back to the hotel the screaming started all over again. My heart was aching for her too - I know she was so scared and grieving for her nanny. I would just walk her around and sing. Nelson finally came to our room and he wanted to try and feed her. But she wanted nothing to do with that. The nannies had told us that the girls were really hungry because they had been on the bus for 3.5 hours before we got there. We had brought all our own formula due to the tainted formula issues they are having in China. But we knew that she might not take to the formula. Nelson wanted us to try Chinese formula and also a Chinese bottle so he and Greg took off to the grocery store. They came back and we tried many ways to try and feed her - our bottle, a chinese bottle, spoon feed, with a dropper, on our finger - but she was not interested. He bought her cookies (which are actually crackers) but not interested. He gave her banana but not interested. I decided to go in the bedroom just the two of us and try and calm her down. I laid her on the bed and wrapped her in one of my shirts (so she could get used to my smell) and then started layering the blankets - kids here wear lots of clothes and they use lots of blankets at bed time. All of a sudden she cried herself into a coma. Ha Ha. She was asleep. Yeah. Now I could look at her - well at least her face.
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