And Then There Were Four

Today was the day that the DeVall family became a family of four. Dang Hong Xiang became Kendall Hongxiang DeVall. The adoption was finalized this morning and she is now stuck with us forever. Poor kid. Here's what we know about her so far:1. She loves to be tickled and she giggles and giggles when you are doing so.2. When she smiles its with her entire face, not just her mouth.3. She will eat anything and ususally lots of it.4. She is basiclly potty trained (thank god for that!). No accidents yet...5. She loves playing with toys that make noise and light up. Boy will she LOVE our house...6. She likes taking baths and playing with her plastic ducks we bought her.7. She has learned how to "give high five".8. She likes to drink juice out of her sippy cup. 9. She's sweet, smart, adorable, and we are totally in love with her (just like we are with her big brother). The actual adoption ceremony, if you can call it that, was nothing. We basically gave our money to the guides and they took it into the registration office. The woman in charge of the registration office came out and presented us with our adoption certificates, said a few words to us and that was that. All the families had their photos taken with her and we got on the bus and went to the notary office to apply for who knows what. Again, we filled out 4 sheets of paper, which our guide Yisha told us everything to say, and we again had our photos taken with the notary official in front of a Chinese flag. No interview, no face to face meeting with the officials. Oh well, who cares...she's ours!The rest of the day was free time, although many of us did go to the Lotus Center, which Rob would have described as a Walmart on Crack. Big food section like a grocery store, but the other parts were not nearly as big. We had pretty many supplies, but Kendall came to us with a cough, that seems to have gotten worse today, so Yisha our guide took me to a pharmacy and got her cough medicine. I paid a whopping $1.25 or so for a bottle of cough medicine. She took it willingly tonight (she will need to teach her brother how this is done...) even though it smelled horrible. I got her a blamket too for the plane ride home, since it was pretty cool on the way over and I couldn't find a jacket or sweather for her. We went to the resturaunt downstairs in the hotel, where she had spaghetti with meat sauce for dinner. She ate about 1/2 the bowl and I ate the rest. Rob had the buffet for the first and only time once I saw the bill. He tried to eat raw chicken on a stick until one of the waitresses came rushing over and told him it needed to be cooked. They probably laughed and thought "Dumb American". Tomorrow is a free day and I think we might try to walk to a park just down the road from us a bit, if it is not too stinkin' humid. The pool here at the hotel looks good too for tomorrow. Until then....