Our second day together

Zao shang hao!  (Good early morning!)  It is 5 AM.  Tim and Esther are in the bathroom eating a banana and trying to be quiet, and I'm done sleeping.  At least we haven't woken up Huang-huang yet.  I was worried that he wouldn't be able to fall asleep at nine last night after taking a long nap, but he lay down while I was finishing up some business on the internet, and he was out cold by the time I finished.  I made it until 4 AM this morning.  I was still sleeping soundly when Esther suddenly woke up and announced that she couldn't sleep anymore because it's too dark and she's scared of the dark.  So she went and lay down with Tim.  He managed to keep her in bed until 5, so hopefully we are slowly resetting her internal clock.  I am sure looking forward to the day that we can wake up at five or six in the morning!

Yesterday was our first full day as a family of four.  Our hotel's buffet breakfast is included in the price of the room, so we went down there as soon as it opened.  Over breakfast, Huang-huang started showing off his English.  He doesn't know very many words, but he told us "banana," "apple," "yellow" and "blue," as well as the names of some letters and numbers that he saw written on signs.  He also knows "stop."  Between him and Esther, we have heard that quite a bit.  It was a really fun breakfast getting to interact with him.  I think he got a little bored, though, with how long it took me to finish up!  I am a slow eater at the best of times, and yesterday I first got Esther's plate and then went back to get some egg and tomato soup for Huang-huang (because he had said that tomatoes are one of his favorite foods) before I got my own plate.  It is nice to be able to see something that I know he will like and provide it for him. 

After breakfast, I prepared the appropriate number of gifts to give to the officials who would be processing our adoption paperwork, and then we met our guide  in the lobby and got started on our tour of governmental offices.  When we adopted  Esther all of the paperwork was accomplished in one place, but yesterday we had to go to the Civil Affairs office, back to the hotel (because we discovered that we should have a nicer gift for the police station), then to the police station, and then to the notary's office.  We almost made a stop at the bank as well, because our guide hadn't told Tim how much money he would need for the notary fee and we didn't have enough in Chinese currency, but then the guide decided to pay the fee himself and have Tim pay him back in a mix of RMB and US dollars.  I must confess to wondering if he knows a way of parlaying US currency into more money than he could get by exchanging at the bank, but if he does, that's not my concern!  Both kids fell asleep during all the shuttling back and forth, although neither one got a very long nap.

At the Civil Affairs office, a very momentous event passed by without much fanfare: Huang-huang signed a paper stating that he wants to be adopted by us!  Nobody actually thought to tell us what he was doing, but I knew how the process worked, so when I saw him signing and fingerprinting an official-looking document  I grabbed the camera and we got some photos.  He didn't act particularly impressed with what he was doing, just wrote what he was told where he was told.  He had to ask our guide for help "spelling" one of the Chinese characters.  We came out of the office with our official adoption decree in hand.  Huang-huang is now legally our son!  In the eyes of the laws of China and the U.S., he is no longer Fu Huang, but Daniel Huang [our last name].

We are still calling him Huang-huang.  He never got the letter that I sent him introducing his English name, so he doesn't yet know all the deep and meaningful reasons why we chose it for him.  But on our first afternoon together when we were talking about some of his friends who had already been adopted, I happened to tell him the English names of a couple of them that I'm familiar with.  He was very intrigued and asked, "What's my English name?"  So I showed him where it was written in the letter and pronounced it for him.  He seemed to be fine with it.

And one more thought before I take over Esther duty from Tim: our boy seems to be funny!  While we were waiting around in the Civil Affairs office, he was cracking up the Chinese adults with what appeared to be smart-aleck comebacks.  (I didn't understand what was said, unfortunately.)  Our guide told us later that he is very smart.  But we knew that already!  :-)

On tap for this morning: the zoo!