Good Golly Miss Molly! Oh Boy Baby Brother!: Gotcha Baby!

Family Day, Metcha, Day, Adoption Day. There are a lot of different names for it. For us, it’s Gotcha Day.

What ever you call it, this is the day that our beautiful baby girl was first placed into our waiting arms. The first time that we saw her in person. For two months prior, we stared at, kissed, talked to and loved a picture. But on Gotcha Day it became real. We became a family.

March 29, 2007 was a joyous day, but it was also a difficult day. We were madly in love with Molly, but Molly, not so much in love with us. Molly was grieving hard. She screamed and screamed. We could do little to comfort her. We were also the parents of a one-year-old, not a newborn. She was used to her routine and we had no clue what that was. She was frustrated, to say the least.

Flash forward four years (FOUR YEARS! How did that happen?) and things are much different. We have a confident, secure, loving daughter who doesn’t look at us and scream, but instead showers us with kisses and hugs .

Although 3/29/2007 will forever be one of the best days of my life, 3/29/2011 was filled with much more mutual love. I don’t know how it is even possible, but each day I love my little girl more than the day before. She is amazing and her Daddy and I are the luckiest parents on earth.

Instead of screaming, crying, mourning,and stressing out, here is how we spent Gotcha Day #4.

Molly started out with a little dress up time.

And then it was time for soccer practice.

Molly requested Chinese for dinner. Anything that I didn’t have to cook was okay with me. I was knee deep in pneumonia

Here’s my little girl showing us how to use chopsticks. This is a skill she taught herself. When she is determined, she can do just about anything. ….and she finishes up with a cute face, just to let us know that she is showing off.

When Molly and I went to China last November, we finally downloaded the video off of the camcorder and onto the computer. Now we can actually watch it. What a novel idea.

I like my memories sanitized. All of the unpleasant parts, like bad hair and pants that make my butt look big quietly forgotten, and only the pleasant warm-fuzzy moments remaining.

I am not a huge fan of video. Video shows bad hair, big behinds and a variety of other unpleasant things that I would rather not remember. There is no hiding from the truth.

Anyway, Molly wanted to watch her Gotcha Day video for the very first time. How could I say no? I even managed to dig up some yummy leftover Chinese Birthday Cake in the freezer.

Molly was enthralled with the video. She wanted to watch every last minute of our trip to China.

And I must say that the video turned out better than my sanitized memory. It all seemed so calm and peaceful. I don’t remember it feeling that way at all. In actuality, it probably wasn’t. But apparently, when the camera was on we all fell into this Zen-like state.