November 19, 2001

Nanning, China

Our first "Gotcha" day was picture-perfect. We arrived at the office first thing in the morning. I was wearing makeup and my hair was combed.

A tiny, cute, cooing infant was placed in our arms. She was clean, healthy, and happy. We took her back to the motel and she slept for 6 hours. Life was beautiful.

That was 1999--and this was 2001.

The "wait" had gone from 6 months to 16 months. Therefore, the babies were older. Instead of a tiny happy 8 month old, we were presented with a 14 month old with definite preferences and a defined personality.

But that was ok, because I knew I had this motherhood thing down pat. Why, we were so awesome that we had managed to schlep a 3 1/2 year old big sister 76,565 miles to meet her new sister.

Now that's unselfish! Well, actually I had very little choice. You see, Madeleine was still so young and still had bonding issues. She didn't like babysitters very much in those days. My mom was one of the few she'd tolerate. We went to a movie that summer of 2001 and mom reported that while we were gone Madeleine had gone into our dirty clothes hamper and smelled our clothes.

That won her a free trip to China.

Anyway, so we arrived in Nanning on Sat. night. Our luggage was, unfortunately, in Hong Kong. The luggage in Hong Kong contained the camera battery charger, my makeup, all of our clothing except what we were wearing, diapers, formula, and bottles. Nothing that important.

We crashed and slept, all three of us, all day Sunday, pausing only to make a run to a local supermarket to pick up some clothes and diapers. We then slept all day Monday. The only thing on TV was Band Of Brothers on HBO--just delightful, lighthearted entertainment. I'd wake up and hear "Boom! Well, Tony just bought the farm."....and then drift back to sleep

The children arrived at 9:00 PM Monday night.

I ran down the hall to borrow some facial makeup from a new friend and of course they arrived while I was smearing it on my face. Mad and Roger had new outfits. Sadly, an American size 12 is classified as morbidly obese in China and not worthy of any new clothes. So I was wearing the same clothes I had donned three days earlier. And they smelled.

The nannies stepped off of the elevators, holding the kids. One by one, our names were called and the kids were distributed like Oscars. I quickly yanked off my glasses and handed the videocamera to Roger.

I saw a baby, through the haze of legal blindness, that I thought looked sort of like Madeleine, i.e. really adorable. I waited to receive her, but it wasn't ours. The next baby was announced and I stepped forward to receive her.

We looked at each other. She started to scream. And I wanted to.

She smelled awful.
She was covered in scabies scars.
She had a fresh scar over her nose, where she had taken a spill while walking.
She had a huge, protruding stomach. (Later I found that was from Giardia--an intestinal bug)
Her hair looked like it had been chopped off with a weed whacker and was dirty and greasy.
She was filthy.
She was exhausted and crabby.
She hated us.
And she wasn't cute.

We posed for the camera here, but we were faking it. The girls are glaring at each other. This is not going well.

More to come.