We tried to keep ourselves busy all day. Candy told us the Leah should be here at our hotel at 4:30, but that they might be late.
Our room is very small, and we were worried that we wouldn’t all fit and that it would be a little overwhelming for Leah, because by the time we got the four of us, Wen Ling and Ling Jia, Candy, the two orphanage workers, and Leah, it would be pretty close quarters.
It was decided that Candy would wait for the orphanage workers in the lobby and call us when they arrived, and then, after we met Leah, we would use Wen Ling’s room, which, although it wasn’t any bigger, it didn’t have all of the Cotter stuff strewn all around.
We met the Bowens in the lobby in the morning and talked to them again for a little bit. Then we walked about 15 minutes to McDonald’s for lunch. McDonald’s was pretty much the same, except it had to be about 85 degrees inside. No one seemed to be sweating except us.
On the way, Logan displayed some more of the attitude he’d had earlier in the morning. After he got in trouble - again - I took him aside. I asked him if was sad, and he said yes and burst into tears. He and I talked for a while and, between the two of us, figured out that he was afraid that Mommy and I wouldn’t have enough time for him once Leah arrived. We had a good talk, and then Molly talked to him, and he’s been fine since. Definitely a big adjustment for him and all of us, and it will continue to be.
On the way back we walked through a park which pretty much ran the entire distance back to the hotel. It included the trails we could see from our hotel windows. It looks like a great place to explore later in the week.
We got back to the hotel about 3:00, and the boys decided they wanted to watch for Leah out the hallway window.
As 4:30 got closer and closer, neither Molly nor I could sit still, so we paced.
The phone rang at 4:45, and Candy said, “They are here!”
We got off the elevator, and Candy said the workers had taken Leah to the bathroom because she had gotten carsick on the ride from Luoyang.
Then, around the corner she came, holding the hands of the two orphanage workers. She was dressed in a beautiful Chinese dress and sparkly sandals, which we found out later had been purchased for her by her foster mother just for Gotcha Day. The workers and Candy spoke to her in Chinese, and we knelt down to meet her. She looked intently at all four of us, with not much of an expression on her face. She let Molly hug her but not me.
After a couple of minutes we went upstairs to the room. Molly asked the orphanage workers, one of which was one of Leah’s teachers, a bunch of questions about her.
They told us that she was at the orphanage during the day and with her foster mother at night. She was used to sleeping with her foster mother, and she took a nap after lunch. They said she would eat anything. They told us that she had seen many of her friends from the orphanage leave to be adopted.
Leah started to cry on Molly’s lap during all of this, so she went to her teacher. Luke and Logan gave her some chocolate and stickers, which she liked. Pretty soon she and Luke were playing with the stickers, putting them on the stuffed bunny we had given her, and putting them on each other.
Soon the orphanage workers said it was time to go, and they left. I don’t think Leah realized they had gone, and we took her next door to our room. We decided that it was probably getting to be her dinner time, so we changed her out of her dress. The shoes looked like they hurt her feet, and we decided that getting her some shoes would be the plan after dinner.
We walked downstairs and out into the parking lot, and that’s when I think she realized what had happened, and she started to cry. It broke our hearts.
She cried as we walked about a block to the restaurant. We were able to distract her once the food arrived, and true to the Cotter form (Auntie Susan: you would be proud), she’s an eater. She is perfectly capable of feeding herself, but we took turns feeding her and sharing our Sprite, and she started to warm up to us. We even got a smile.
We had called Candy, and she and our driver met us after dinner to take us to a mall where we could get Leah some shoes. Leah was the star - she was waited on by several girls at once, in addition to her own entourage. She was very good, and she was excited about the sandals with lights in them.
She and Daddy had a minor test of wills when, toward the end, she wanted to get down and Daddy wouldn’t let her. We quickly came to an understanding, though, and all was well.
We got her back to the hotel, got her into her princess jammies, and we all climbed into bed. It had been a big day.
I cried when each of the boys were born, and I cried today. Luke said before bed, “We’ve never seen Daddy cry before, but he did today because he was happy that Leah was here.”
Oh, and Zhengzhou had been really smoggy since we’d been here - REALLY smoggy. But walking through the park on the way back to the hotel to meet Leah, we saw blue sky.
Some random observations about the newest member of the Cotter family:
- She’s not used to being held - she doesn’t mind but she doesn’t wrap her legs around us like most kids do.
- She is familiar with cars - she climbed in and out of the van by herself, and she knew about seatbelts.
- She is not used to holding hands.
- She is solid - not fat, but healthy. (See #1 - we’ll be getting a workout.)
- She has beautiful eyes.
- She goes potty just fine, and we learned the word that she uses when she needs to go. (When all else fails, there’s always the grabbing the bottom and dancing that is the universal sign.)
- She’s not used to being read to. She’ll look at the pictures in a book, but she doesn’t really know how to turn the pages without wrinkling them, and she loses interest quickly.
- She weighs 35 pounds.
- She does smile, despite the referral pictures to the contrary. (Grandma is relieved.)
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