Late November 2002(4th in the series)

Hmmm...I was only able to find one of our albums from our trip to China for Rayna. The first three photos were taken as Grant, seven year old Darcy, and I traveled to get Rayna. Darcy was an amazing traveler. In the 19 hours or so it took us to get to Hong Kong (our port of entry), she sat in her seat so still and quiet! She happily read nearly the entire way, pausing occasionally to carry on rather grown up conversations with nearby passengers. She was a joy to travel with. She never once complained she was bored (unlike her mother!)...and she only made two trips to the bathroom. She was very excited about getting to return to China...though she wasn't too gone on the idea of getting a baby sister! That changed the MOMENT she saw Rayna, though. I have never seen two children bond as fast and as hard and as deeply as though two sisters did from the very first day.





The photos of Rayna in the pink and white snowsuit were taken moments after she was placed in our arms. Unlike our adoption with Darcy, all the waiting parents were gathered together in a conference room of the hotel and we all received our babies and completed the legal paperwork all right there all at once. No trip the following day to a government building. The government officials all met us there that day in the conference room. We were probably in that conference room for about an hour. After about half an hour, the babies were getting so hot that they gave us permission to take the snowsuits off and dress them in lighter clothing, thankfully!

The snowsuits were adorable...but so impersonal. The babies were dressed in brand-new clothing from their heads to their toes...they carried away from the orphanage no trace of their former life. Even the women holding each baby seemed to hold no specific knowledge of the individual babies. When I asked the director of the orphanage if Rayna had had a specific nanny, he had proudly informed me that he made a point of rotating the staff frequently so that none of them would become attached to any child in particular. He seemed to feel this was most efficient and something that we would find admirable. I found it heartbreaking. Rayna is the child I have the least "before us" information on. And, she, has always from the moment she could speak, been the one child of my three who genuinely wishes to know about her life before us. I guess she hasn't brought it up much in the last few years...probably finally realized that we will not know any more with the next round of questions than we knew with the first round.








I think this is a "God thing" though... Since we had already previously adopted from China, we were allowed to specify on our paperwork what province we would like the child we would be matched with to be from. There were no guarantees that this request would be honored, but it seemed it usually was when practical and possible. So, we had expected we would be matched with another child from JiangXi province. The same day we received our referral, another family with our same agency received their referral. They were first time adoptive parents and, as such, had not requested a child from any specific region. They were assigned a baby from JiangXi province. We were assigned a baby from AnHui. Meanwhile, Grant and I had befriended a young man who had arrived from China while we were going through the long process of adoption. (At that time, our adoption took nearly two years...which seemed extraordinary to us when our first adoption had taken nine months and THAT had been considered extremely lengthy--the adoptions just prior to our first one had only been taking three to four months. Now days, two years would seem like a breeze. But, back then, it was longer than most adoptions at the time were taking.) We had become quite good friends with this young man, Z. W. When our referral for Rayna came, we were surprised to see that not only had she come from the very same province as our dear friend, but even from the very same small town in that province! And the person listed as having found her was another man with the family name of Z....just like our friend. This Z. was not personally known by our friend, but still, it was amazing.

Rayna was found at the town's salt factory. That seems to fit her melodramatic temperament! No one would ever think of calling our youngest child bland!





In the next post, I will try to have photos beyond our first day with Rayna...and will tell about our dinner on Thanskgiving day with Zhang Wei's family, there in China! (How nice is that...to find an entire family who claims you as their own, living in the same town your new child is from?)