Introducing Juliet Stetson Young

We started at 2 today with a very mild bit of paperwork: signing and thumbprinting our adoption forms for the Chinese government. Our thumbprints were done in red ink over our signatures, which makes me wonder whether, if I were more Chinese, I would have brought my chop and used that in lieu of both signature and thumbprint.

Around 3:30 we, our facilitators, and the two other families piled into a bus for the ten-minute drive to the government offices where we would meet our daughters. In the offices, once we had reached the fourth floor, it became clear that we were just one of many sets of families who were meeting their daughters that day. There were families with Chinese babies exiting the room we entered, and by the time we were done, other sets of families, not yet with their daughters, were walking into our room.

An official gave us a very short speech thanking us for coming to China and being willing to provide a home for the babies we were about to adopt, requesting that we be take care of them for the next 24 hours, and asking us to return the next day if we wished to adopt these children (yeah, try and stop us!). And then, suddenly, three women came through the door, bringing our three daughters. We took lots of photos, and we spoke briefly with the director of the orphanage and the three staff members who came with him, and they gave us a couple of bags of Nestle formula, which is what the kids are used to. Then it was back to the bus and the hotel.

We hung out for about two hours in the hotel room, getting to change diapers (twice, thankfully not captured on videotape for posterity), and try out various teething toys (verdict: the butterfly is best, especially chilled; the plastic set of keys is second best, and my G-Shock watch is third best, albeit the best of the three to lick). Then we headed to the Cantonese restaurant in front of the hotel, where we had a very tasty dim sum dinner for about $7 (RMB Y52), and Joyce and I made our first attempts at spoon-feeding beef congee to our daughter (messy, very messy, but ultimately successful). After dinner, Juliet contented herself with rolling around on our bed, tossing her various toys and then crawling to get to them (I wonder if she learned to amuse herself at the orphanage). Then she fell dead asleep around 9:30. We're wondering whether to wake her for her normal midnight bottle feeding, or whether she'll wake herself.