Smirnoff the Chinese baby

This morning we went back to the adoption affairs office and completed some paperwork, then went on to the notary for even more. It was all pretty straightforward, and as of about noon we are officially Chloë's adoptive parents as far as the Jiangxi Province officials are concerned. By the end of the week the Chinese bureaucratic wheels will continue to turn (without any direct involvement from us) and by the time we leave Nanchang on Saturday we should have a full set of paperwork, the most important items being a birth certificate and Chinese passport for Chloë.

Chloë is taking her lunchtime nap now, as is Stacy, giving me time for this longer post. She is doing very well. She seems to prefer me to hold her rather than Stacy, but the important thing is that she is happy to be held at all. The director of the welfare institute told us at placement that Chloë eats adult food and doesn't care for congee. She ate eggs, steamed bread, watermelon and rice at breakfast, and has been snacking on Cheerios all day. Given the problems we have been warned to expect, we couldn't be happier with the way everything has turned out so far.

The other families in our group are mostly doing well. A couple of the babies have some health issues, but these are being dealt with locally and we expect that they will all soon be well.

We are staying at the Gloria Plaza Hotel in Nanchang, which is brand new and very comfortable. There's even free high speed internet in the room, so it's easy to post these updates. The hotel phone number is +86 791-673-8855 and we are in room 1024. Everyone in the hotel seems to speak English so you should be able to get through the switchboard. (Please remember the time difference: see the end of the "Telephones" post.)

There's plenty more to tell, and we'll try to fill in some of the gaps over the next few days.

// posted by John @ 2:05 PM