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She is 5 years old and has been with us for 4 years. Do you have any specific questions? I'd be happy to answer them. Other than that, the process was fairly cut and dried - by that I mean there were papers you had to provide, like birth certificates and marriage certificates, things you had to do, like be fingerprinted, interviewed by a social worker and have complete physicals, and inspections that had to be completed, we had to have our house certified by the fire department as being able to provide hot and cold running water, a refrigerator, a bathroom and a minimum of (IIRC) 80 square feet that would be for the use of the kid. Then there were the forms to fill out, photos of the house and the neighborhood to be provided, letters to the government of China explaining why we wanted to adopt a child and that we would take good care of her and arranging for references from friends and colleagues. We just worked away at it methodically and got it done. All in all, it took us 3 years. It could have been done in less time than that, but my husband, after getting all the paperwork done and submitted, bulked at meeting with the social worker. It was the last item on the list, having the home study done, but he had had a bad experience with social workers during his divorce that he refused to meet with one. Then he got back in touch with his children from his first marriage and he was able to meet with the social worker. He had been afraid of how it would look that he was not in contact with the kids. Once that problem was solved, he went ahead. Our portfolio was submitted to the Chinese government on October 7, 2002. We got our referral on September 7, 2003 and got our daughter on November 4, 2003. She is from Hubei province in the southern part of China. According to the information provided by the children's agency, she was found abandoned on a door step in Wuzhou, a small city in Hubei province. We were told that she was one day old when she was found. We have also been told that her birth date is June 22, 2002, which may be true or may not be. But that's what's on her birth certificate. She was walking when we got her, but not really talking. When we got home and she saw the dogs for the first time she got very excited and screamed "gow, gow". One of my colleagues is Chinese and she told me that the word for dog is gau. So she apparently knew the word for dog. She also knew the words for mom and dad (mama and baba in chinese) and used them for my husband and I from the 2nd day we had here. One thing I wasn't prepared for was the rapidity with which we bonded. The agency we used very carefully prepared us for the experience by explaining that if you were expecting the kid to take one look at you and everything would be fine and dandy, you could forget about it. So I went prepared to work at establishing a relationship with my daughter. What happened was that I was handed her by one of the children's officials. She was crying so hard that she could barely breathe. I held for for a while, patting her back. Then I asked my husband to hold her because I was afraid that I might be doing something wrong. So he took her for a minute or two then handed her back to me saying that he wanted to take photos of the room (7 other families were with us getting their daughters too). So I took her back. Bethan stopped crying, looked at me for a minute, then snuggled her head into my neck and went to sleep. That afternoon, at lunch, I was trying to feed her with chopsticks while balancing her on my lap. It was somewhat difficult so my husband offered to hold her so that I could feed her more easily. She was not happy. For the first 2 or3 days, my husband's roles in her life were to keep her bottle filled and turn the tv on. Then she decided he was ok and would let him hold her for a few minutes without crying. I on the other hand could not get out of her sight. If I went to the bathroom, I had a companion. The first afternoon we had her, my husband wanted a soda. The hotel was expensive, but there was a small convenience store next door. He asked me to go get some soda, some snacks and some juice for the kidlet because I speak a few words of Chinese. I walked out of the room and Bethan started to cry. When I got back 20 minutes later, she was still crying - I could hear her the moment I stepped out of the elevator and our room wasn't that close to the elevator block - but she stopped the minute I picked her up. It's been a trip, let me tell you.
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