Civil Affairs

Logan had frequent nightmares when he was younger, and up until not too long ago he would frequently come and crawl into bed with us in the middle of the night. He is a very restless sleeper, and Molly and I often got an elbow in the nose.

However, Logan doesn’t hold a candle to Leah, although she isn’t as big so the elbows aren’t so hard. I couldn’t tell for sure when she fell asleep because she pretty much moved all night. One time she had ahold of my ear and had her foot on Molly’s neck. We had been fully prepared for her to cry when it came time to go to bed, or to be up with her most of the night, but she seemed to sleep fine.

We had to meet Candy in the lobby at 8 am to go to the Civil Affairs office, so we were up early and went to breakfast in the restaurant downstairs, which, incidentally, has a great buffet.

We walked about 20 minutes to a photo shop, where we had a photo taken with Leah for her adoption certificate. Then we walked back to the Civil Affairs Office, which really wasn’t too far from the hotel. I still really don’t understand the system, but there seemed to be two ladies in a small office in a pretty dingy government building who handled adoption affairs for Henan Province. It really wasn’t kid friendly at all, which seemed kind of funny, but all of the kids were very good.

Which was good, because we were so flustered about everything that we didn’t bring any toys, and we forgot the gifts for the adoption officials. Fortunately, we learned that we would be coming back in the afternoon to pick up the adoption certificate.

We spent about an hour or so filling out paperwork, and I think we stressed Candy out because I was supposed to bring four copies of each of our passports, and I had inadvertently brought copies of Molly’s visa instead. She hadn’t known or told us that we actually needed copies of our passports and visas both, so we were all wrong anyway - we were missing Molly’s passport copies and my visa copies. Fortunately, there was apparently a copy machine somewhere in the building, because Candy disappeared briefly and then returned with the copies we needed.

There was some brief anxiety when we were told that the orphanage worker would be taking Leah to get her passport. We were not crazy about letting her out of our sight, but we didn’t have much of a choice. As near as we could tell, she had to go appear in person before somebody to verify that her photo was her so her passport could be issued. She was only gone about 10 minutes, but we felt a lot better when she was back with us.

Soon we were handed Leah’s passport for the People’s Republic of China. Then, somebody handed me a red ink pad and Candy told me that I needed to put my thumbprint over my signatures on all of the papers I had just filled out.

When I was done, they needed Leah’s palm print. Molly had chosen this time to find a squatty potty (nerves, she said), so I was scrambling to find something to get my thumb cleaned off so I could hopefully keep Leah from getting red ink all over her new clothes. Fortunately I found a package of flushable wipes in the backpack - very versatile, those flushable wipes.

And then we were done.

We came back to the hotel, and found an Italian restaurant in the hotel next door for lunch - Leah had her first pizza. (She liked it; so far there’s nothing that she doesn’t like.)

The orphanage workers had told us that Leah naps after lunch, so I laid down with her while Molly took the boys swimming. She was very good, and obviously is used to being made to lie down after lunch, but there wasn’t any sleeping going on, at least on her part. She played with her hair and played with her bunny; at one point I woke up to find the bunny giving me kisses.

We met Candy at 3:00 and walked back to the Civil Affairs office. Some sort of paperwork was finished up, and then Candy had us stand up, and the adoption worker gave us our adoption certificate and told us that we were now legally Leah’s parents, and she smiled and said “Congratulations” in Chinese. I tried not to cry again.

Molly gave Leah her first bath that evening. AGCI had warned us that orphans frequently don’t like baths in bath tubs, because they aren’t used to it. Leah was great, though, and helped Molly wash her hair.

We decided that Molly would sleep with the boys (in a bed that is somewhere between a twin and a full), and I would sleep with Leah. And so ended our first full day together.