Sunday - July 1st GOTCHA DAY!!!

Today we left Beijing and flew to Nanchang.  We flew on China Eastern Airlines.  Was a very nice 2 hour flight.  We are traveling with one FTIA family from Chicago.  We met a nice family from Louisiana who is staying at the same hotel in Nanchang and adopting their 2nd daughter from China - they also have 2 older biological girls - 18 & 15 yrs old.  They said they are traveling with a group of 19 other families so when we arrive in Guangzhou, it sounds like it there will be a TON of children. 

We had an easy transit to the hotel, the Galactic Peace International Hotel.  The hotel is very nice.  They cater to English speakers and adopting parents.  Mary, our FTIA contact, invited us to hang out and relax in our hotel room until the babies arrived.  We got the call about 4:30 pm.  Jumped into the elevators to meet her in the lobby.  As we walked to the meeting spot, we saw someone carrying a baby in front of us and thought it might be Elise.  It was! 

She seemed a little timid.  The caretaker handed her to Jen.  She was afraid.  Just looked at us, not sure what to think.  Puckered a few times.  We hesitated to take many photos as she was scared of the flash. The caretaker called her by her nickname "Song Song" - pronounced Soon Soon, which caused her to stop.  After a few minutes we moved to the couches.  She cried a little.  As she was more comfortable, everybody was able to hold her...and we have some cute pix of this.

She's a LOT smaller than expected.  While she's long, she's very skinny.   She's not chubby at all, except in her cheeks.  Developmentally, I think she's more like 3-4 month old.  She can hold her head up.  She can also roll over and stay on her forearms.

Once we took her to our room, we tried to encourage her to nap because she missed it.  She was not a happy camper....screamed a good solid hour (sounding like a 7 month old lungs vs 3 month old).  We bathed her, fed her (formula & rice cereal in the same bottle), and put her to bed.  She woke up twice in the middle of the night. We expect Monday will be better  :)