joy comes in the morning

Warning - this is a very long post!!  As you can see from the pictures, after a difficult night, joy came this morning.  We arrived at the Civil Affairs office at 10 am.  We walked into a small room where we were going to meet Lili.  There were already 2 other families in the room with their new little ones - one with a little girl around Lili's age and the other with a little boy who looked a bit younger.  Both, I believe, were from the same orphanage as Lili.  As my eyes searched the room, I didn't even see Lili, but she was already there, waiting for us.  I didn't expect that - I thought for sure we would beat her there.  She had had to travel at least an hour to get from the orphanage to the Civil Affairs office, and we had been told that there was a lot of construction on the roads there, so she might be delayed.  A woman called her name, and brought her over to us.  I didn't recognize her - she has had her hair cut since the last pictures we received.  We both kneeled down on the floor and the woman told her that we were "Mama" and "Baba," and Lili repeated, "Mama, Baba."  Ed reached out to hug her, and she willingly went right to him and gave him a hug, and then gave me one as well.  We gave her the backpack we'd brought for her, full of little toys and gifts.  She immediately got excited about the light-up ball that Kegan picked out for her.  We played with that for a few minutes, and then got out her little photo album of family pictures and looked at that with her.  She seemed to get excited about each thing we brought out for her, and enjoyed pulling each item out and playing with it, then putting it back and finding another item to explore.  While she played with Ed, our escort, Tracy, helped me fill out paperwork, answering questions about why we wanted to adopt her, how we would take care of her, and lots of other basic information such as our occupations, address, birth dates, etc.  We sat on the floor and filled in the blanks while Ed played with Lili.  She has such a ready smile and the sweetest little giggle!  There were no tears and she didn't seem apprehensive at all!  What an answer to prayer!  I realized about 15 minutes into our meeting that my stomach wasn't tied in knots anymore.  Another woman from the orphanage - Mrs. Yan or Tan - I wasn't sure which - brought us Lili's special items.  She gave us 2 CD's of pictures of Lili as she was growing up in the orphanage, a couple of memory books containing progress reports and photos from the Half the Sky program that works with Lili's orphanage, the photo book we sent to Lili of our family, a beautiful photo album of photos of Lili taken by a local photo studio, and a copy of the finding report placed in the newspaper when Lili was originally found.  Our escort was amazed that we got so many special items from Lili's life up till now, and needless to say, we were too! 

We played with Lili for a while longer, signing papers and waiting for our escort to translate them, and then we moved on to another room to have our family picture taken.  Lili was so cooperative and cheerful!  Our escort said several times how amazed she was that Lili seemed so comfortable with us already!  She seems to like to have her picture taken - she flashes her beautiful smile every time and then wants to see the picture right away.  She is obviously no stranger to the camera!  After the family picture, we were ready to leave.  Lili slipped her little hands into ours - one in Ed's hand and one in mine - and confidently walked right out of the building with us.  As we climbed into the van, the driver commented that he was surprised that she didn't seem upset at all.  She sat on my lap and continued to go through the items in her backpack as we drove back to the hotel.  We went up to our room to change her clothes (she had gotten a bit wet in a little squatty potty incident at the Civil Affairs office - I won't go into any embarrassing details).  I didn't know if she would be uncomfortable with being changed, but as soon as I took her into the walk-in closet and showed her some of the clothes in the suitcase, she immediately started pulling her shirt off to change.  She picked a cute little flowered sundress and let me change her willingly, then went back into the room, grinning proudly.  We played in the room for a few minutes, and then went out for some lunch with our escort.  We had dumplings and sweet and sour fish.  It was really tasty and she wolfed everything down as soon as we put it onto her plate.  After lunch we said goodbye to our escort and headed back to the hotel for a nap.  She laid down willingly, but took a little while to settle down.  She fidgeted and played for a while, and I wasn't sure she was ever going to fall asleep, but it was such fun to cuddle with her I really didn't care if she did or not.  Finally, she settled down and started sucking her thumb, and she was out.  And Ed and I fell asleep too.  Not such an amazing thing for Ed - he's been sleeping like a baby since we got here, but a real relief for me!

She slept a solid 2 hours - maybe more - I can't remember what time we finally settled down.  nvnz.,msm,a,.a  msw (That was a contribution from Lili.)  After she woke up, we looked at books for a while.  Eddie wasn't feeling very well - lunch didn't agree with him, poor guy.  So I gave Lili a bath and then we went out to explore the hotel so that Ed could rest a while longer.  We went to the hotel's "kids' room" which is pretty tiny, but Lili had a wonderful time playing on the slide that went into a ball pit.  She laughed and laughed - it was such fun to watch her!  She seemed intrigued by the hotel pool, so maybe we'll try that tomorrow.  After that we went back to the room and ordered a big bowl of beef noodle soup from room service for us to share (since Ed wasn't feeling up to eating).  After dinner, we played a bit more.  She even started giving me kisses this evening!  Then I got her ready for bed.  I laid down with her for about 45 minutes, but she still isn't asleep, so I decided I'd better quickly finish this post before I fall asleep waiting for her to get to sleep!  Praise the Lord, I think that might actually be a possibility tonight! 

Please pray for Ed, that he wake up feeling better.  And for a good night's sleep for all 3 of us.  It's been a wonderful day - so much smoother than I could have ever dreamed of!  Thank you so much for your continued prayers!!