Here's Our Girl!

Where to begin... Words truly failed us today when we stood, stunned, as two lovely American women delivered our daughter Marin Irene into our arms. They said, "Do you know who we are?". Uh,... no. They proceeded to tell us that Marin has been with their charitable organization (True Children's Home) for special needs kids and has been in their loving care since she was four months old. They arranged for her lip AND PALATE surgery to be performed at the same time and she remained at their facility through the surgery (which was in June) for the past nine months. They proceeded to give us a special quilt made for her by some dear ladies in Phoenix, AZ and a priceless photo album that one of the staff members put together for her to have as a keepsake. To top it off, in keeping with a Chinese tradition, they had a small lock of her hair made into a special calligraphy paintbrush. Most importantly, it appears she has received excellent day-to-day care by people who love her. We were speechless, utterly speechless. When we tried to thank them, only our cracking voices could be heard through our tears. These are incredible people with such big hearts and faith in their cause. They handed Marin to us, answered all our immediate (albeit dumbfounded) questions, and gave her a big kiss on the cheek "bye bye Xi Xin!" as they left the building. We are so hopeful that we can honor their invitation and travel to see their facility sometime later this week in Dongguan, about 90 minutes south of here (Guangzhou).

Now about Marin, what an angel and what eyelashes. I have to say we were expecting a real challenge today. I thought since she was likely with foster parents, and probably returned to the orphanage for a short period of time, that she would be in a state of shock and sadness when she met us. On the contrary, she just looked up at us from her caretaker's arms so we wanted to move slowly without freaking her out. Mikel, the director (a twenty something supermodel who is fluent in Mandarin, Tyler), confidently said "Just take her, its okay". And we did, Val took her into our arms and Marin assessed us and just kept looking at us and others in the room, but she never freaked out or shut down, she only whimpered a bit at first. She didn't eat great when we got back to the room, but ate well enough (from a normal bottle) for us to breath a sigh of relief and put her to bed. She sang to herself, and I SWEAR she said "Mama", and flashed a couple smiles before drifting off to sleep. I must say, the whole day went about a thousand times better than we were expecting. Our prayers have been answered, really, and we are now excited to get to know this Baby Marin (and yes, we have called her Mimi a few times) over the next two weeks.

Helena has also been on our minds all day. We can't look out the window, get something to eat, or walk through the hotel without thinking of her and the special time we spent here together. We really miss our little Lane and that is sure to escalate over the next ten days. We can hardly wait to introduce her to her new baby sister.