My India Journal part 8 of 8

She had on a cute yellow and green outfit with a little hat and bright red Christmas booties. She didn’t have much of an expression on her face, but looked at us with HUGE black eyes. I just looked for a couple of moments because I didn’t want to scare her by taking her out of the ayah’s arms. I cooed at her for a few moments and then the ayah held her out to me. I took her in my arms and was blown away by how light she felt! It was like lifting a feather! She came to me, but remained without expression. She didn’t fight to go back to the ayah, but stayed in my arms until I turned her over to Byron for a few minutes. While he held her, I turned my attention to the other babies and Bruce, Sherry, and Ashley interacting with them and taking video. Jansen was in the corner charming everyone within sight! He had a stuffed animal that he was playing with, and Bruce was playing with him. Ashley was filming the kids, and Sherry was talking to them and to the ayahs with what little Bengali she knows. All this time, Elizabeth has not made a sound or showed any kind of preference at all. She was just allowing anyone and everyone to hold her without comment. Finally, while Byron was holding her, she made a sound. It wasn’t a happy or sad sound, just a funny little grunting sound. The ayahs went nuts praising her! I thought that maybe she had some kind of speech problem, but now I know that she only babbles when she is comfortable, and that when she is completely relaxed she is impossible to keep quiet! J They must have known that, too, and understood that she was relaxing in our arms enough to talk a little bit. To be honest, the rest is a blur of taking video and pictures of the other kids and making sure that I got my time in holding Elizabeth. When we left the nursery, the doctor was also there to talk to us. I think she must have gotten there while we were busy with the other kids, because I don’t remember talking to her before going into the nursery. She had a few comments for us, like the fact that she was sleeping through the night and we wouldn’t have to do anything like pat her or rock her to get her to go to sleep. They also gave us a box of cereal, a box of formula, and a couple of packages of teething glucose biscuits for us to take with us. We asked as many questions as we could think of, and then she left. They suggested that we have a seat and wait for a while since our appointment at the Consulate wasn’t until 2:00 and it was only 1:00. We’d need to leave around 1:20 to get there a little early, so we just sat down and tried playing with our new daughter. The other staff took our suitcases of donations into another room, emptied them and brought them back, and then our friends took them back to the hotel for us and we made plans to hook up after we finished with the Consulate.