3 Lloyd Boys and Our Journey To Mayleigh Wei: Gotcha Day!!

We have Mayleigh!! She is absolutely beautiful!!! Ok, let me back up to this morning. Our group of 6 families from our agency met in the hotel lobby at 930 this morning. We were all extremely nervous and checking and double checking to make sure we had all the documents and money we needed! As we headed over to the Civil Affairs building our guide was giving us a lowdown on how some kids react and how these things are normal. I dont know if CCAI pays her more to be funny and lighthearted because honestly she really helped ease the tension. Just cracking jokes about how if your child only connects to Dad then she will book us ladies massages and shopping trips! She definitely had us laughing and we all needed it.
As we are walking into the building she yells to one of the ladies in our group, your daughter is here. Stephanie starts crying and then all 6 of us moms are crying! Each child gets there at a different time. Just depends on if they are running late or in traffic. Stephanie's little girl was pretty scared and cried pretty hard when she tried to hold her. I think watching that made us all very nervous!! And one by one every 10 or 20 min. another chid would show up. There were also about 4 other families there from different agencies. The room was nuts!! Babies crying, cameras flashing, pacing, so much noise and it was freezing!! So we watched out the window for the next van hoping it would be Mayleigh. And we waited, and we watched, and we waited some more!!! The fun part was during this time we got to take pictures of everyone else's first moments meeting their child. Finally after about an hour or so and everyone had their child but us...Mayleigh came!!
When she came in we showed her the doll we made and she was pointing at it. We gave her the light up wand (thanks Heidi for that gift...what a savior that was!!!!!) and then I took her from her nanny. I dont think she was very attached to this nanny that brought her because we found out that she had been moved out of Marias Big House of Hope a month ago. So we are assuming she was more attached to the nannies that cared for her at MBHOH and not the orphanage she was at for a short time.
When I held her she didnt make a peep. She looked very stoic and her eyes just looked very sad. She clutched on to that wand for dear life! She was happy as long as I didnt put her down or give her to Jeff. We looked at pictures of our family that I had brought and we gave her some cheerios. She at least took the cheerios from Jeff. We felt like that was a good start! :) After about 45 min. and a few papers were signed we loaded up on the bus to head back to the hotel. Mayleigh fell asleep a few min into the drive. She had to have been emotionally exhausted. She stayed asleep as I carried her up to our room and then I was able to lay her down on the bed and she slept maybe 10 min. in the room. When she woke up she just wimpered a little but as soon as I picked her up she was fine. We played for a little bit and she even smiled a half smile. oh, I forgot we did get a great smile while we were playing at the Civil Affairs building. And the best part is Jeff caught it on camera!! :)