She's here!

Da and I are blessed by the Lord. It is by His favour and grace that He has blessed us with a beautiful baby girl. Nothing that we do would have earned us this wonderful addition to our family. We are truly highly favoured, deeply loved and greatly blessed by the Lord.

I could barely sleep a wink last night. This morning, I woke up early and made preparations for the arrival of Princess.

We bought a tin of Nan-1 milk powder. We also bought several B-Free milk bottles, several milk powder canisters, a thermos flask and a pacifier. We have been advised not to give Princess the pacifier each time she cries, that is, to limit the use of the pacifier to when she needs it to sleep. The Chinese belief is that if a baby uses the pacifier excessively, the baby will pout all the time. Regardless whether we believe this or not, it is better to be safe than sorry. In any event, on a more practical level, it would not be advisable for the baby to be over reliant on the pacifier anyway.

I set our Scooby-Doo to work this morning, cleaning the entire apartment unit. In case you are wondering, Scobby-Doo is the nickname for our robotic vacuum cleaner. It is the yellow spaceship-looking equipment that you see in the photograph below.

We opened up the foldable mattress and placed the fitted sheet on it. My mother can rest on this mattress when she is babysitting Princess at our home. The mattress can also double-up as a "changing table" for Princess.

As the baby cot had not yet arrived, we placed Princess' mattress on our bed. We thought of letting Princess sleep directly on our bed but we decided that we should let her sleep on her mattress from Day 1, so that when her cot arrives, she would have gotten used to sleeping on her mattress and would have no difficulty adjusting to the baby cot.

Shortly after 1 pm, Princess arrived. Words cannot adequately describe how I felt when she arrived. It felt like homecoming for me. We have waited so long for this day and now that it had arrived, I felt such a lump in my throat. Our precious gift from the Lord was here.

Princess was as smiley as I remembered from our first face-to-face meeting with her on 11 September 2009 (friday). She is well behaved and very good natured. She does not even cry when her diapers are wet. She only frets when she is hungry or what she is tired and sleepy. I am so thankful to the Lord that He has blessed us with such a wonderful baby.

We lay Princess on her mattress. She adjusted well and was more than happy to pose for photographs.

In the late afternoon, our friends (NN and SF) arrived with their 19-month-old daughter, IL. When they arrived, Princess was asleep. IL placed one finger on her lips and told me, "shhh... 妹妹" (which means "younger sister").

A short while after our friends arrived, Princess woke up. The two girls had fun getting acquainted with each other.

In the evening, we were supposed to go to my mother's home for dinner. I bathed Princess and dressed her in one of the new dresses that we bought for her. It has been a long day for Princess and hence, she fell asleep in her "watching television chair" almost as soon as she lay on it.

In the end, we did not go to my mother's home for dinner. As Princess was a little unsettled (trying to get used to a new environment), my family came over to our home after dinner, bringing leftovers. Well, "leftovers" is an understatement because the so-called leftovers that they bought were enough to feed an army.

The new grandmother (that is, my mother) posed for some photographs with Princess. Ah, the two of them have started bonding already.

We will be bringing Princess to the pediatrician for some medication examination/tests tomorrow. I thank the Lord that everything will go smoothly tomorrow, in the name of Jesus.