Beach Baby Blog: Chloe is Officially a Beach

After walking to the bank this morning to exchange money for Chloe's registration, Dad and I went to a grocery store in the basement of the hotel. There is an underground world underneath this block where our hotel is located. We can get to it from inside our hotel and there are restaurants, stores, internet cafe', etc. I was looking for some juice for Chloe. (lets just say we're looking for that first stinky diaper - with all the changes, this is a big milestone) Chongqing, unlike Beijing, does not have English everywhere, so going to the grocery store can be a challenge. First let me say, have you ever been to Walmart the week before Christmas? Well, that's pretty much how it was accept you don't speak the language and can't read any labels. I was surprised to find labels I recognized. (Crest, Huggies, Oreo, Pringles, even Johnston & Johnston) After asking a clerk where to find juice and she took me to the coffee, I decided to go searching on my own. Sure enough - apple juice. Just what we needed.

This afternoon, we went as a group the registration office (the building next to ours) to officially adopt the babies. Chloe had only been asleep about 45 minutes and we had to wake her up. Let's just say that she made it obvious that she likes her sleep. At the registration office , which was full of other adoption groups also, Chloe first had to denounce her Chinese citizenship. We then paid the registration fee to an official to get her adoption certificate and had a family photo taken. While we waited for everyone else to finish, we had a chance to talk to the orphanage associate director from Qian Jiang Orphanage. We got some great information about the orphanage and Chloe. There are about 50 babies at the orphanage and the oldest is 6 years old. Some of the older kids play with the babies (this explains why Chloe has been babbling jei jei - big sister). Chloe did have 1 specific nanny that she was attached to and is shy and afraid of strangers. The babies are allowed to watch TV at the orphanage, so that explains her interest in the computer. There are 2 other babies in our group that were crib neighbors to Chloe and it's obvious that they used to look at each other by the way they strain to look around while in the crib. Chloe seems to be looking for someone. You can tell she spent a lot of time in her crib. The back of her head is pretty flat, and she's pretty happy just lay there and talk to herself. She has a habit of rhythmically hitting herself in the head and sucking on her left palm to sooth herself. She seems to quickly be understanding that crying will actually get her something now, so I suspect we'll hearing more of it. It's great though, cause we can prove to her that we really are here to stay by meeting her needs.

The final step today was to declare that we would never abandon or harm Chloe and then put a red fingerprint on Chloe's adoption paperwork for each of us. That means that in the eyes of China, Chloe is officially our baby! We were given a beautiful gold plated plate with a picture from Chongqing on it as a gift from the city. By the time it was all said and done, it had taken us 2 1/2 hours to complete the process. This was way too much for both babies and parents. We decided to head back to the hotel and the guys went to get some KFC and a McDonald's milkshakes.

A doctor came to visit our room tonight and gave Chloe a check. A few of the babies have been running a temp and coughing, so Marie brought a doctor in for us. He said Chloe looked good, heart, lungs, liver, throat, ears, muscle tone. She just needs to practice sitting up. All the babies seem to be having a runny nose, but all looks good.

Chloe seemed much more willing to allow us to comfort her by this afternoon. I hope you can see the difference on her expression already. We even got a few giggles. She has this cute little dimple on her left cheek when she smiles really big.

Enjoy the pictures, tomorrow we're off to shop for a while.

Chloe on a video call to the girls.