The Olson Zoo Weblog

We are delighted to announce that Helen Grace ZhanAn Olson has “arrived” and is part of the Olson family!!

At 3:45 this afternoon (July 15, 2007) at our hotel room in Nanchang, we got the knock on the door we’d been waiting for. All of us (Jeff, Rachel, Laura, Ross, & Karin) were in the room. Helen was put into our arms right after we answered the door. She was very quiet and cautious, and she did not cry at all (as I was expecting). We told her that we were her Mama and Dada, and that the cute red-headed girl was her new big sister (”jie jie”).

Rachel held Helen first for a few minutes, then I held her, and then Laura got a chance to sit down in a chair with her sister and hold her. Helen has good eye contact and spent a lot of time checking us out.

We talked for a while with the three workers from the orphanage…one of them was the vice-director. Usually the director makes the trip, but she was apparently sick today and couldn’t make it. Our guide, Wanda, translated for us. They showed Rachel how to make the rice cereal that Helen is used to eating, and we asked other questions about Helen’s background and her current condition. We asked about making a trip to visit the orphanage in Shangrao, but we were told that it was not being allowed by the adoption authorities at this time, so that is a disappointment. We thanked them for taking care of Helen and bringing her to us.

After the orphanage workers left, Wanda spent some more time with us getting us oriented in Nanchang and preparing us for some of the bureaucracy and paperwork we’d need to prepare for in the next few days.

Once Wanda left, Laura asked if she could go over to Grandma & Grandpa’s room, so Rachel and Helen and I spent some time together in our room alone. Rachel managed to get Helen to smile once or twice by making funny faces and tickling her, and she even giggled a little bit. Helen cried a few times, but never very loudly.

It seems a little bit like a dream so far, but there’s no mistaking that our family is now 33% bigger than before!

Here are a few pictures of Helen from today. I’ll try to get some more tomorrow, but these will give you an idea of what she looks like now. For more pictures, go to Helen’s Adoption Album.

One with Laura:

One with mama:

And one of Helen smiling:

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 15th, 2007 at 10:52 am by Jeff and is filed under Helen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.