Gotcha day!!

Finally - finally! - the day arrived. In a word, it was amazing.

Here's how it went: Our agency reps drove us to the orphanage at 2 p.m. and we were taken into a very nice waiting room - the only room at this orphanage that adoptive parents ever get to see. We had to fill out more (!!) paperwork, gave our gifts to the orphanage workers and had a chance to ask some questions about our children. Most of ours had already been answered in a packet our agency gave us during orientation this morning, but we did have some new ones.

At about 3 p.m., the orphanage workers carried in the three kids in our group (our orphanage only allows 3 kids to be adopted out each day). All three were quiet and stoic, and that was the atmosphere in the room for quite a while.

At first, Quinn wasn't interested in looking at us at all. But he did clearly dug the blue chandeliers, which he kept staring at. He looked up, down, sideways, anyways but at us. However, he obviously likes to be held and didn't fight us on that one. We offered him a few toys and he showed a little bit of interest but still didn't want to interact. On the way home from the orphanage we stopped to get our photos taken and Quinn was pretty much the same.

He snoozed a little in my lap on the way home, and when he woke up started pointing at his mouth. It took me a ridiculous amount of time to realize he was hungry. I tried Cheerio's, but he was having none of it. So I gave him a bottle of water and he slurped that right down. It was about 70 degrees and he was dressed in a ski suit, a thermal shirt underneath, socks and shoes. And when we were leaving the orphanage workers put a stocking cap on him. The boy was boiling hot.

Tonight at the hotel we saw the first glimpses of his personality. Spunky, active and into everything. He isn't walking yet but is getting close and wants to stand. His shoes light up when he puts weight on them, which is, of course, a fantastic incentive.

He cried a bit when I changed his diaper and clothes and whimpered a bit when I put him in his crib, then he fell right to sleep, which is where he is now.

I'm following right behind him. What a day!