Day 6...Zheng Zhou..ADOPTION DAY!

Annabella slept through the night last night. We got her up and dressed and headed to breakfast around 7:30 this morning. She is really beginning to open up more today. She finally let us put her down and walked a little. She also sat in the floor and played for just a few minutes, and we were really pleased to see her doing some problem solving in trying to determine which nesting cups fit together. She kept trying different ones until she fit 4 perfectly. We got to see her dance a little to a musical toy we brought too.

She is a good eater, and we've been finding many things she likes to eat. We haven't been able to get her to eat any fruit, but she did eat a variety of things for breakfast this morning. She had plain congee, some sort of cold oatmeal like food, kidney beans, chick peas, corn, and a bit of steamed bun.

After breakfast we loaded up and headed out to the registration office again to receive the official adoption certificate. There was a very brief ceremony where we all received our certificates, then took pictures, then we headed off to the notary office. Just before the adoption certificates were handed out, we had our first REAL meltdown. It was MAJOR! One family is adopting two boys, who are both 4-5. They had suckers and one dropped his on the ground. Annabella found it and grabbed it before we could. We took it immediately from her and she went into a nuclear meltdown. We are talking Chernobyl here. Finally we were told we HAD to do anything to calm her, the officials were getting antsy, so we succumbed to a sucker form the other family....but a clean, non eaten, non dropped on the floor one! That dried the tears up and we spent the next 30 minutes wiping sticky from everything she touched.

At the notary office, there were no stairs and we had to climb to the 6th floor to sign more paperwork. After the signing and official picture taking there we headed back to the hotel. Annabella was soooo tired as it is her normal nap time, but she can not soothe herself to sleep when we are out, so she was extremely fussy. Most of the kids were getting very fussy in the notary office and on the way back. We have just an hour and a half before we leave to drive to LuoHe, where she is from.

 We decided to visit her orphanage, and they have agreed to allow us to come for 30 minutes. After the visit we will go to the local public security bureau where we will get her passport application, and we've been told, her actual passport. There is one other family traveling with us to LuoHe, the one who is adopting two boys. One is from our orphanage, but not the Lily orphan care center, and the other is from an orphanage in the south of the Henan province. They will be making that trip tomorrow. I'm not looking forward to the trip this afternoon. It is going to be a 2 hour drive at least, then at least 2 hours there and two hours back. It will be late when we get back, and I know Annabella is going to most likely have a difficult time with such a short little nap. Hopefully I will be able to update again tonight and upload some pictures of the orphanage, but with such a tedious day, please bear with us if we can't.

In the hotel room after breakfast

She was facinated with the crinkle sound of the plastic on the house shoes. She fiddled with it until she finally got it opened, then she kept trying to put the shoes back into the bag

Playing with a musical toy

Niki, Gigi, Annabella and I at the registration office

Sweet smiles

She loved playing with these plastic bowling pins

It's official! She is 100% our child!

Notary paperwork

Outside the notary office