All the Nitty Gritty

Believe it or not, Brandon, Emerson, and I have been doing a bit more here in China besides shopping and wandering around our little island.

Fortunately, Holt (our wonderful adoption agency) has a staff here in Guangzhou to escort us to all of the various appointments we have to go to to finalize our adoption here in China. And, since Emerson has been considered contagious this past week, we have had our own personal escort. Tuesday, we went to this office:

where we answered basic questions in a short interview,

and posed for a family picture for our adoption certificate. A family picture that will never see the light of day, because I looked HORRIBLE in it, and Emerson had pulled out her cute hair bow right before the picture.

Then we hopped in our chauffeured van, braving China traffic and went to the next office, where a notary asked us more questions, and we signed a few more papers.

Brandon and I have been a little frustrated with all of the “down time” on our trip so far. It’s hard being here for over two weeks, and having only one or two short appointments a day. Monday we had “adoption related stuff” for about 2 hours, Tuesday was about 2 hours of appointments and drive time, and then Wednesday was just one quick appointment for passport application, and we were back at our hotel an hour later.

Thursday was a free day, and we found the playground at the park, where Emerson found some time to stand with her hands on her hips and watch people singing

...and Brandon has spent some time mastering the complex hacky sack game that seems so popular here.

We’ve also walked around in the White Swan Hotel, admiring their waterfall, which Emerson was terrified of the first several days that we were here.

Friday Emerson had her medical exam.

This picture didn’t turn out as well as I hoped, it is the scale when they weighed Emerson. She weighs 14 kilograms and is 96 centimeters tall. Though no bigger than an average 3 year old, it appears we are adopting the biggest 3 year old in China. Several families in our group are adopting very, very petite children (think 2 year olds in 9 month old clothes), and Emerson looks like a giant compared to them. We are so thankful that she is such a healthy little girl.

They told us at the medical exam Friday that she had 3 little chicken pox that still hadn’t healed, so we are still on quarantine until Monday. Emerson also got a TB skin test, and that will be read at the medical clinic on Monday, when she will get whatever immunizations she needs at that time too.

I’m pretty sure that if I had been in charge of our schedule, I could have crammed these past 5 days of appointments into about 2 days. As I mentioned before, this island is very small, and we’ve seen all there is to see here, without venturing off the island and putting ourselves at a very real risk of being run over by a grandma on a bicycle with a random assortment of farm animals strapped to the back.

Today (Saturday here), we have “paperwork checking” with the other families in our group and the Holt staff, and tomorrow Brandon will visit the church in the morning and I am hopefully getting off the island with our group for a bit in the afternoon to do a little shopping.

We got to skype with our boys this morning, and they got to see us and their new sister on the computer. Did this mommy good to see her big boys! The countdown is on, can’t wait to come home next weekend!