the play-by-play version

Yesterday was such a blur of activity and emotion that I wanted to wait before describing the day. Emotionally, it felt similar to the day (July 3, 2001) that I found out I was pregnant with Ted: amazing joy and overwhelming gratitude...and disbelief too! Here's the story. I'm so glad Rachel (Elyana's mom) told me to videotape The Call. It's pretty funny but also really nice to have.

We all lazed around in bed til about 8 or so...the day had a very surreal mellowness to it. I walked Ole (as fast as I could so as not to miss any calls!) and Paul went to the basement to work til the call came. It was a gorgeous 76 degrees outside so the boys were playing outside. I was checking our Yahoo! group and the first call had come in, from Joanne in Colorado! Less than 5 minutes later ours came. 10:26am. Penny Moeller (!!) was calling from her cell phone because all of the CCAI lines were being used (all 45 employees were making the calls.) She told me our daughter's name and age and orphanage.

Then we loaded the boys into the van and headed to CCAI. Once there, we sat down with Penny and she opened her file...and we were in love! She is just so cute and sweet and adorable! Even Ted said she was cute. Then the boys disappeared under the table with candy bars and we lost them for a while. We went over her file and signed the necessary papers and saw where Huaihua, Hunan is on the map. Paul took the boys to the playground out back while I chatted with other Yahoo! families and we decided on a Chinese buffet for lunch. Lunch was really fun because we were able to see each others' beautiful babies and talk about how crazy we were all feeling. The boys were more than ready for naps, so we left fairly quickly and got them home and down for 'rest time.'

Then I ran her medical report over to Dr. Kierein (not much point really, since we had already signed the paperwork!!) and went to my meeting. We spent ALL evening scanning pics, resizing pics, emailing people and updating the webpage. Whew! An exhausting day...but so wonderful!

Turns out that Mae is actually ON the American growth chart, and is in the 50% on the Chinese Growth Chart. So, we have a little chunk...all 13 pounds of her!