At last, Phoebe!

Here she is-- Ling Qian Yang, born on my Grandma Connelly's birthday, February 26, 2008. She is thirteen months old, and has been living in the Shangrao Children's Welfare Center (also called the Ling Orphanage) in Jiangxi Province since she was one week old. At ten months old when her survey was filled out, she could crawl, look for a dropped toy, roll over, and eat biscuits without help. She knows her name and turns when called. And, inspite of her grumpy look in the pictures, she laughs aloud and smiles readily. She is "active" and "fond of playing games." The box for "quiet" is not checked, and the box for "obstinate sometimes" is. That's our baby!

Funny, I've been glued on-line for days now, hoping that each day would be the real one, until this morning, when I gave up hope on this week, for the complete lack of on-line rumors. I had the day off-- and actually slept well on-call last night. I spent the morning at the Children's Museum with Miranda, had lunch, and put M down for a nap. I thought I would check just once, just in case, and my heart stopped when I found a posting from just 5 minutes earlier from a fellow parent in our group that said, "We have a daughter!" There we all were, the expectant parents from our agency, sitting at our computers hitting "refresh" as we got the news one by one, waiting for our own phones to ring.

I drove in to the city, and Mark left work early to meet me at our agency. And suddenly we were handed a few photographs-- there she is, this little person who will change our lives forever.
So good to know who she is, and yet so strange to know so little about this little human being who will be with us for the rest of our lives.

I heard somewhere that this orphanage has an old folks home within its walls, and many of the "Grannies" take a baby into their room and into their lives. I hope that's true with Phoebe, that someone has been snuggling her and singing to her and kissing her goodnight. I can't wait to get this little one home and make her smile.