Well - what an amazing transition over the first 18 hours! All glory to God! Let's get you filled in...
Gotcha moment happened on Monday afternoon at about 4:00 and it was an unorganized, crazy 10 minutes of the following:
- Scrambling to get the right paperwork to give to the orphanage officials before we could get Sophie
- Sophie gets handed off to Beth
- We had to retrieve the gifts and orphanage donation and battle our way through the other 14 families to give them to Sophie's orphanage representatives
- We find out that we were supposed to have given the cash donation BEFORE we received Sophie, but had not done this yet
- Sophie realizes that she is not going back to someone she knows - and starts to "physically demonstrate" this realization (i.e. - lots of crying and screaming)
And this is all within the first 10 minutes - which occurred about 45 minutes after we arrived at the hotel from the airport! A little stressful, needless to say. But, about 2 hours later back in our hotel room, Sophie turned a big corner and we could see God answering prayers. She started to eat some eggs, french fries, and congee (rice porridge), then started interacting with her new Mama and Daddy, and even smiled a time or two!
So, by 8:00 pm, Sophie had had enough fun for Day 1, and as soon as we got her jammies on and laid her down in her crib, she was out! Except for a few coughing spurts during the night, Sophie slept pretty soundly until 6:30 am this morning. What a huge blessing this was for Mom & Dad as this allowed us to get some sleep too! (With all her respiratory congestion, we think that Sophie may have a sinus infection. Her skin is VERY dry, especially her cheeks, hence the redness in the photos.)
This morning, Sophie woke up and decided she needed some snuggle time with Mama, then it was off to breakfast. YUMMY! The food has no end at our hotel's buffet, and this is quite a new concept for a little girl who has spent all her life in an orphanage. After getting a very full belly, and having a little play time while Mama and Daddy ate their breakfast. it was nap time. She is still sleeping soundly in her crib at about 11:00 am local time, Tuesday morning.
Thank you so much for all your prayers - they are felt very powerfully here in China. We love you all and will keep updating, so stay tuned.