China - Day 6 (Wednesday)

Yea - I made it back onto blogspot. And I have no clue why now it works. Today is a "free" day. And we have not done much, which is good. After naps we plan to walk to the city wall, about a 20 minute walk from the hotel. Below are some highlights backtracking over the last few days. Monday, May 20, our appointment at the Civil Affairs office was at 2 pm. Melody, our guide, picked us up at 1:45 for the short drive over to the offices. Libby and her nannies were already there waiting for us. A few other families were also waiting to receive their children. Libby was with her regular nanny, at least 2 other nannies from the orphanage and the orphanage director. She was dressed in a very fancy pink dress with lacy trim. I have a long video of meeting her, but not really any good pictures so I'll have to share the video later. She did not want to leave her nanny to go to us and cried. She was willing for us to hold her and was distracted by all the activities. We were able to ask the nannies a lot of questions with translation help from our guide. We got information about her usual daily schedule and some likes and dislikes. Our general sense after a few days is that she has had lots of attention and love and was very attached to her nanny. The first day with us Libby stared (glared?) at us quite a bit and did not show much emotion. She does not like to have her shoes removed and would screech if we tried to remove them. She would also make very clear any other things that we were doing wrong. But mostly we just got the stare. She took a nice nap with David and was quite willing for us to hold her and walk around. But general indifference to our existence. She has not wanted anything to do with the bottle. We talked to the nannies about that on Tuesday morning when we were back there. Our unanimous consensus is to forget the bottle and move on to a cup - but it is messy since she didn't really have any prior experience with that. She likes the snack cup we brought and is not willing to let go of it or any other things once they are "hers". She is a bit of a collector of things at this point. The first night she put a few food things in her mouth, but we figured out she was not swallowing - her version of a hunger strike. She was very thirsty by that night and drank water pretty well from a cup. Tuesday morning we went back to the Civil Affairs office and finalized the adoption proceedings - with red ink finger prints. Then Melody took us to the China Wal-Mart to get a stroller, diapers and other food supplies to get us through Friday - when we all leave for our next destinations. Today she is much better so we are making progress. She is quite enamored with Matthew and Grace and Grace had her giggling and laughing this morning. She slips a bit back into the glaring indifference but we can tell she definitely has a sweet side.