March 24th, 2009 Gottcha Day!

What a long day filled with a ton of different emotions! We left the hotel in Beijing at 5:30 this morning and headed to the airport. Our first situation that we encountered wastthat our luggage was over the limit of 44lbs. per person. We had to pay extra money and then we couldn't check all of the bags we had. When we got to the x-ray machine the people saw medicine in the suitcase and they decided to take some of it out and left some as well. I kept telling them that it was for the orphanage but that didn't seem to matter. Then when we were about to board the plane, they took that one piece of luggage and ended up putting it in the bottom of the plane because the plane was filled. We got to Nanning about 11:30am and we met our new escort. We got situated in our rooms, well everyone except us because the room was a smoking room and totally filthy. They moved us into another room that smelled better but it was not made up at that point. We decided to let our escort handle it while 3 families all went to get some lunch. In Nanning we do not have as many choices of food- it is Chinese. We got back from lunch and we ended up in a 3rd room that is a little bit bigger. We then headed to another hotel where all the children were waiting for us. We could hear crying from the time we got off the elevator. Guess who it was? Yep, Mikenna. We took a sneak into the hall and there was a caregiver walking the hall with her. Well, that started me crying. There are 5 families here in Nanning adopting. All our children came from foster care. 4 little girls and 1 boy. All the girls came in crying and little Emmett did really good until he realized his caregiver left the room. Mikenna was not happy at all. We needed to hold her so that she wouldn't run off to the nanny. It was a hard moment for all the parents in the room. Finally after 20 minutes, Mikenna fell asleep on Paul's shoulder. After 30 minutes we all boarded a bus again and headed back to our hotel. Mikenna slept the whole time until we got up to our room. She initially would only let Paul hold her for about the first 2 hours and then she warmed up to me. She has been pretty mellow the rest of the afternoon and evening. When I tried to change her, she really didn't like that. She has been trying to put her shoes on over her p.j.'s and she is very frustrated. We are exhausted and so is Mikenna. She hasn't gone to the bathroom this whole time and she only has takes about 3 oz of a bottle. Pray that she will have a good nights rest and tomorrow will be a better day for all. I can hear all the children on this floor and they are having a hard time because we parents don't know their routine.