Adoption Registration and
Notarization Complete!!!
Hello everyone. Today has
been a very stressful tiring day so this update is going
to be rather short.
Kiah did pretty well last
night considering she left her foster mother yesterday
morning, was delivered to the orphanage yesterday
afternoon and was then handed to us in the evening. She
had a bottle and fell asleep rather easily. She slept
for about 3 hours then woke up crying. She pretty much
woke up every 3 hours and cried for a little bit. We
all woke up around 6am. The morning started with a call
from Katelyn. Evidently Jacob's temperature had spiked
and it was necessary to take him to the hospital. I was
so scared!!! Here we are all the way in China and our
son is in the emergency room. After several hours of
calls back and forth it was discovered that Jacob has
strep throat and that was why his fever had spiked and
he was restless. They gave him some medicine and we
were told that his fever went down and he started
feeling a lot better. We are SO HAPPY for this. All I
could do during this time was kneel on the ground and
pray to the Lord that he would place his healing hands
on Jacob and make him better. The tears were streaming
down my face. I am so so happy that he is feeling
better. I can't tell you how wonderful it has been to
have a Panda Phone. All you pre-adoptive parents.. It
is absolutely WORTH the money to have the panda phone to
communicate back home.
Kiah has been great today.
We had a nice breakfast at the hotel restaurant. She
ate watermelon and bread. She is very reserved when she
is in a crowd of people however she is really starting
to open up with us. Around 11am today we decided to go
to the local Wal-mart. Yes, you heard me right.
Nanchang has a WALMART!!! It was crazy to hear the
Wal-Mart greeter say "Welcome to Wal-Mart" in Chinese.
It was evidently a "super Wal-Mart" or whatever it is
called because it had a ton of food as well. The food
was NOTHING that we would eat!!! NOTHING!!! Duck heads
and some sort of intestines and innards and goodness
knows what else. PLUS it stunk!!! I'm sorry but I am
so sensitive to smells so it wasn't a good scene.
Wal-Mart here is the same as Wal-Mart at home. Crowded
and cheap. We then got KFC and walked back to the
hotel. We had some downtime and during that time James
(our wonderful CCAI Rep) knocked on the door and
introduced the Yingtan SWI Director and Asst. Director.
We had a chance to ask questions however since Kiah has
been in foster care and we have received very through
updates on her we didn't really have any questions. We
did ask 1 though. When we received Kiah she came to us
with a handmade necklace filled with some sort of seeds
and what appeared to be a note. We opened it this
morning and it was a note from her foster mother, some
money and the bag was filled with dried tea, rice and
seeds. We asked the orphanage director and evidently
the foster mother had written her address and phone
number on the paper. The tea, rice and seeds were for
good luck!!! We were also told we would be able to keep
the clothes she arrived in. We were able to view the
note her birth mother left with her. It was a red piece
of paper (very symbolic here in China) with 1 sentence
written on it: This girl was born on 2/21/05 at 9pm.
That was it. We could not keep it and we were told that
it must be kept on file for 80 YEARS!!! 80 YEARS!!!
GEEZ!!! We were able to take a picture of it though so
we do have it for our records for Kiah.
This afternoon we finished
up the city adoption process by registering the adoption
and then notarizing the documents. We had to be
interviewed again. We are essentially asked the same
questions each time.. Do we promise not to harm or abuse
her and do we promise to give her a good education.
CCAI has had EVERYTHING absolutely organized to a "T" so
we have had to do no thinking about this process at
all. They tell you how, when, where, etc. They bought
formula and rice cereal for all the families and they
give us bottled water for free every time we turn
around. We paid all of our adoption fees today which
was a relief for us and for all the other families. It
is very stressful to carry around a ton of money all the
time. After the official meetings were complete we
headed back to the hotel and we have been here ever
since. We ordered room service and now we are hoping
for an early bed time.
We miss Katelyn and Jacob so
much and we can't wait to come home now. We will be in
Nanchang until Sunday and then we travel to Guangzhou to
complete the Visa processing. Less than 2 weeks now!!!
WOO HOO!!!
JAKE AND KATELYN.. WE LOVE
YOU FOREVER!!!
Love from Nanchang,
-Nicole, Brandon and Kiah!!!
.. Guess this turned into a
novel anyways!!!
