Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Adoption Day…Forever Day!!!

He’s ours!!! The day began early around 6 AM. I was so surprised to awake and realize that Hudson was still asleep! He was asleep last night around 8PM. We actually had to wake him up at 7:45…almost 12 hours later so we could get him dressed for breakfast and our very important day. We dressed him in his red soccer sweatshirt, red pants and his red baseball jacket….crossing sports. Red is his color…adorable!

We loaded the bus around 8:30AM and were on our way to the Registration Office. The first thing we did was visit the Registrar. She ask if we were “pleased and happy” with him and if we wanted to keep him. We said yes and put our thumbprint in red ink over top of our signature. She then put red ink on Hudson’s foot and stamped his footprint. He became ours officially and legally just like that!!!

Next, we had our family photo taken for the Adoption Certificate. Then we visited the Notary and paid the Notary Fee. Afterwards, we met the Assistant Director and the Manager of the Nannies. They love Li Li, as they continued to call him. They talked to him in Chinese and tickled him. He laughed out loud and smiled at them for several minutes. We have not managed to create a smile yet from us but we know it will soon come. We were given the opportunity to ask the Directors a few questions. They said that Li Li is very spoiled and was always held constantly by his nannies. The nannies carried him constantly. We have discovered that this is true. I think right now, Alexis (Sissy) is his favorite Nanny and he thinks I’m a pretty cool Nanny right now as well. Daddy is not his favorite at the moment. As we all know, this will soon pass especially during baseball and soccer seasons. They also told us that he likes to sway before going to sleep. We discovered that yesterday when Sissy Alexis put him to sleep. What a blessing to have just one more piece of the puzzle of his little life.

As we now have had him a little over 24 hours at the time I am typing, we probably still have not seen his true personality. It feels like he has always been in our family and in a matter of hours or days, he will realize that we are his forever family. As I type, I’m praising God for answering our prayers for 20 months. Everyday we prayed a consistent prayer. We prayed that he (or she) would be loved, kissed, held, fed, and Alaina always added that he would have lots of toys. We believe with all that we can see, our prayers have been answered. Some times we pray specific prayers and some times God just blesses us HIS way. My friends were praying with me that our baby would learn how to sleep. I prayed this prayer daily as I knew the importance of a baby’s good sleep. Last night was so wonderful. Almost 12 hours…amazing. We are so thankful that God protected Hudson. He has a plan for his little life and we are so excited to be apart of it.

To celebrate the big day, our group had dinner in the Dolton Hotel Food Street Chinese Restaurant. Everything was very yummy. Daphne got a really large cake for the babies. Eight of our babies had their first birthdays and two babies are getting ready to celebrate their first birthdays so we had a big birthday party for them. We sang Happy Birthday…very sweet. Daphne presented an adorable Panda Bear to each baby as a gift from CCAI and a little Chinese bag…precious.

Click here for pictures of Adoption Day

I've added pictures to March 18 when we arrived in Changsha. Most of the pictures are of our beautiful hotel.

Click here to see those pictures.