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Molly - Li FuXing
Lyle and Paula have a FANTASTIC website, complete with lots of pictures and complete journal of their adoption trip. Below is a copy from their website of some of their experience: Our China ExperienceChina - Day One - It's hard to believe but we really are here!We arrive at our Hotel in Wuhan and are assigned a room on the eighth floor, Thomas met us at the airport and accompanied us to the Hotel. All of us are on the same floor. Paula (and her Mother) react with giddiness upon finding that a crib has been placed in our room. We are so-o-o excited. At 5:30 PM or so Paula asks Thomas, our local guide, about the babies, he says he'll talk to us after dinner. At 6:15 he tells us that the babies will be in the hotel at 7:00 that evening and that we are to remain in our rooms and the babies will be brought to us. He went on to tell us about our schedule for the next few days and even though there were some questions from some I don't think too many heard anything else he had to say. He says he didn't want to tell us the babies would be there that evening before we ate because he was afraid we wouldn't be able to eat. What a wise man! Paula admits later that she didn't hear a word he or anyone else said after that announcement. All she could think about was getting to the room to get things ready. I don't think I've ever seen a room clear any faster than when Thomas finished talking to us that evening. Somehow, we made it to our room, the next few minutes seemed like hours rather than minutes. After being in the room for 10 minutes or so we hear voices and laughter from down the hall and decide to "check it out". It seems that no one is obeying the prime directive. No one is staying in their room. Everyone is waiting in front of the elevator for the BABIES. Of course Paula, Fran and I join them!!! Fifteen adults from the other side of the world, waiting for the elevator doors to open and caregivers to step out and deliver eight beautiful girls into open and eager arms. How terribly exciting! I couldn't help but notice a lot of nail biting going on. All of us have our new babies first toy with us. Mostly they are stuffed animals of one sort or another. Molly's first toy is to be a teddy bear that her new grandma Frances brought to China for her. We line them all up and take a picture of them. We watched the elevator floor indicators for the two elevators, as they displayed one, then two, then three and then go down to one again. When will it get to 8!!!!!! The tension in the air is electric Finally the numbers increment to eight, our floor, the doors open but it's only Thomas to tell us they they will be here soon and he will wait for them in the lobby. He disappears into the elevator and we watch the indicator drop from eight to one again. After several more starts and stops the indicator finally displays eight one more time! The doors open and reveal about a dozen adults holding eight babies dressed in many layers of very brightly colored clothes. They all step off into the foyer in front of the elevator. The routine - They call out the baby's Chinese name and the new parent/parents-to-be step forward to claim her/their child. Tears are flowing from all eyes in copious quantities. A more thrilling moment in time than most of us ever have or will experience in our life time. "Zhang Lirong" calls out Madam Wong, the chairperson of the regional adoption authority, as the first baby is offered, Cherie steps up, takes "Jessamyn" in her arms and holding her high turns her face towards Doug and smiles a very wide happy smile. The next name, "Li Fang" is called and Paula Kriner steps up and is heard to say "My Baby", as she collects "Maia". Next - "Han Li", Trish Smith has her new "Molly Kate". As Trish eagerly accepts her new daughter who is crying with many tears, Trish exclaims with a very wide smile, "She's happy". The fourth child is "Li Fuxing" and I almost drop my camera. It's our new "Molly"!!!!!! I'm sorry to say at this point I lose complete track of the remainder of the presentations as Paula, Fran and I rush to our room with Molly, our new daughter. She is crying her little heart out, she's nearly a year old but cries like an infant perhaps three months of age. We remove at least three layers of clothing, noting there are no diapers, a culture difference we had heard about. In china some infants never wear diapers but instead have slits cut in all their clothes for their bowel movements. Seems strange to us but is very normal to them. Molly continued to cry for at least an hour and finally settled in and allowed all of us to get a good night's sleep. China - Day 2We have our Baby!! Morning came early after our first night with our brand new Molly Katharin Rebekah-Lin FuXing Stults. In reality, making it through the night was much easier than I had expected, our little one slept most of the night, waking once, as I remember, and then going right back to sleep after having a bottle of formula. We had brought enough powdered formula for the whole trip. That was one of the reasons we both felt like a couple of pack animals setting out on a long trek, laden with supplies. So far this experience was going pretty good, and like I inferred, the worst part so far was transporting the sheer amount of supplies, we were advised to bring, from place to place. Preparing the formula was a process we mastered by the end of the first day. We were advised NOT to drink the water from the tap. The hotel staff delivered two thermos bottles full of boiling water at the crack of dawn. This water was so hot that if you were to pour it into the plastic baby bottles we had brought along they would literally begin to melt right before your eyes! (Ask me how I know). In the room, however, there was a coffee maker! We poured the water from the thermos into the coffee server as a temporary cool down site, then after 15-20 minutes the water had cooled sufficiently to allow it to be poured into the bottle. In the meantime the empty thermos was returned to the hotel staff for another thermos of boiling water. At any given moment we had water in our room of three different temperatures:
In the meantime Molly was beginning to show signs of a fixation for her new PaPa. It seemed whenever I put her down or gave her to Paula or Grandma she would begin to cry. This seemed, at first, to be the case but we thought it would pass quickly and decided to go with the flow and if she wanted me to hold her I would, We just didn't want her to cry. Paula was having a case of "babyitis" and the baby was right there! This caused Paula to feel a growing sense of frustration. We joined the others for breakfast and from the looks of them, at least a couple of them hadn't fared as well as we had! Several eyes had dark circles under them. What a trip!!!!! Eight babies joined with their new parent/parents having breakfast together for the first time. For me, and I imagine for the others as well, it was the first time I really saw any baby other than Molly. We caused a bit of a stir when we asked for silverware. Seems like they don't get to many requests for forks and spoons. But after a lot of conversations in Chinese between many members of the kitchen staff, silverware made an appearance. Thomas, our guide, announced that we were to be in one of the hotel's conference rooms at 10:00 AM and Madame Wong, the local party official, and representatives from the various orphanages that the babies had come from would meet us there. We were to do ALL the paperwork that morning! This was really moving along. We hurried through breakfast, hurried back to our room and hurried to the conference room. We gathered around eight long tables arranged in a large square. Madame Wong and her entourage was on one side of the square and the eight babies with their new parents were around the other three sides of the square. They allowed us to ask a few questions of the people from the orphanage so I asked if Molly's caregiver had been male, wondering if that could be the reason she was growing ever more clingy to me. They told us that her orphanage was so poor she had been placed in a foster home, that they couldn't afford to keep her at the orphanage. There was a fair amount of paperwork to go through for each baby, adoption certificates, birth certificates, and other papers. Each of us were called up one at a time. Of course the things that are different from ones own culture are the things that tend to stand out. Things like signing the documents in red ink. That's different! Things like putting a right index fingerprint (red ink again) over your signature. And of course Molly had to sign things by putting her foot print on them, again in red ink. Finally we were all done. Once again we were allowed to ask questions so once again I wanted to know about Molly's caregiver, so I asked if there were an older male in the foster home that Molly had been placed in. The question was translated into Chinese and there was a bit of a commotion between Madame Wong and the orphanage people. At this point they denied that Molly was in a foster home. It appeared to us, as we discussed later, Madame Wong had decided in her mind that admitting to placing a child in a foster home was somehow a bad thing. To this day Paula and I have a strong feeling that our little girl was indeed cared for in a foster home and may have escaped some of the trauma that can come from an orphanage experience. But nervous or not, we made it through the afternoon. I remember looking at the questioner as he said "Occupation?" and I returned "Teacher". "Any children?" "No". It was over, Molly was ours. Our second full day in China and we had finished half the process, the half that dealt with the Chinese government. The second half was still ahead - getting permission from our own government to bring her home. In the meantime we had some free days ahead of us to play tourist. By now it was very obvious, Molly would cry if anyone other than I held her. At first this seemed a real ego builder but it was quickly growing into a real pain. I couldn't even make a trip to the bathroom without her beginning to cry.
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