Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!

Chris here...

Most of the time adoption feels nothing like going through a pregnanacy, but then....you wake up on Monday morning to a call at 7:35 telling you to be downstairs in 20 minutes because unlike plans for the adoption to occur on Wednesday, Monday is now the day! Labor has started in a big way.

We rushed around frantically showering and throwing everything that might be necessary in a plethora of bags...overpacking is not a problem at times like this! Chloe helped along the way to chants of "I'm going to be a big sister" and we were off. We took a three hour bus ride through the Vietnamese coutnry side up into a mountainaous region. The countryside was beautiful and the people along the way were all smiles. We will save the beauties of Vietnam in general for another post.

Upon arriving at the orphanage two things became apparent - our new daugther was a favorite of the nanny and the nanny was the favorite of our new daughter. The orphanage director held her the whole time on a 15 minute ride to the local government complex where the actual ceremony took place and throughout most of the ceremony. We learned that unlike our previous direction - Quynh is actually pronounced "Quinn" and that was the name she went by in the orphanage. It is the name we will probably keep for her if we can change Chloe's habit of refering to her nonstop as "my baby Gabrielle".

After the official ceremony, we went back to the orphanage and dropped of the babies for a nap. This was very hard on the new mommies, but allowed everyone to take a breather over a nice Vietnamese lunch of fresh fish, fried corn (best thing ever), rice noodles, and beef with rice. Washed down with the local beer the meal was perfect and in a beautiful setting - seen in the picture with Chloe below.

After that we went back to the orphanage for about 3 hours of visiting with the babies, the nannies, and the other new families. It was time well spent learning the little eccentricities of the care the children were used to and getting recommendations on their future care. We finally got to hold Quynh at this point once she fell asleep in the nanny's arms. It felt great and Chloe especially loved holding her for the first time. Speaking of that, Chloe was perfect throughout the whole day and was super enjoyable to all the couples. She talked to most of them during the bus ride as she was definitely stretching her wings in the role of big sister!

After the ride home on which Quynh, Chloe and Chris slept the whole way, Quynh and her new family settled into the apartment to get acquanted. 13 hours of labor and we are a family!

PS - She is definitely a momma's girl at this point!