We had a pretty good first night together. Hildy woke up at 11 for a bottle and then again at 5:45am. She was a little freaked out when she woke up but calmed down pretty quickly with some cuddles and a bottle. She drank a whole bottle this morning...she was hungry. We tried having a bath but she did NOT go for that... combination of being naked and the prospect of water..the bath was a no go. She loves to be bundled up and sweaty... All the babies in China have so many layers of clothes on them they look like the little brother from A Christmas Story. We get looks if we are out and about with the babies and they don't have at least 4 layers on, one a giant puffy coat. No skin can be showing... Anyway, after the non-bath wipe down we got dressed up and headed to the Civil Affairs Office for the province of Hubei. I went in and was interviewed about me and Horst, about our jobs, our levels of education, our reason for choosing China to adopt from, our plans for our daughter's future education. I was more than a little nervous... I signed another round of documents, had my piicture taken, stamped my fingerprint on each signature and then Hildy signed the document via a red food stamp! She didn't seem to mind as long as we didn't take her finger out of her mouth...
After we went to the bank to change our orphanage donation from US$ to RMB. That was the most insane experience... we had to get past a security guard to get into the money exchange area, there were little kiosks each with a teller behind glass with a microphone/speaker system. there were people everywhere, each teller was practically yelling through the microphone, every time a client came into the bank, a huge bell rang, people were shouting into cell phones, talkingto each other...Then the teller was asking us a bunch of questions, scrutinized my passport for 5 minutes, scanned it, then she took each bill from me, put it through a counterfeit scanner three times, then counted it, recounted it, entered it all into a computer, I think you get the picture. We went in to exchange and it took easily 45 minutes. Somewhere during that time a "street man" came in waving a newspaper and ran up to an American man behing me and was yelling at him and pointing at the paper... Security freaked out and ran after him and took him out the front...didn't see what happened to him... Needless to say, i was VERY glad to get out of there and get back into our van to be driven back to the hotel. Except of course for the traffic. There really are no lanes, no rules, cars,vans, bikes, pedestrians motobikes, mopeds, buses you name it, all trying to get past each other with about a cm to spare.
After we got back we decided to cancel our planned trip to Qichun tomorrow. We were going to go to the orphanage but it is 2 hours away, no car seats, no seatbelts, babies that don't even know us yet... So instead we are going to go to a Buddhist temple in the morning and if we are up for it to the Wuhan museum in the afternoon. Hildy is starting to come out of her shell just a little...we were treated to some smiles, a giggle or two and lots of playing this afternoon. She loves to lay on the bed and play with her feet, make all kinds of funny noises with her mouth and she is discovering that toys can be fun too. She loves to be carried and I love holding her so we spent a lot of time today just snuggling... its a pretty good gig. Papa is enjoying his role as babysitter and assistant to baths and eating. Hildy just sits and stares at him. She reached up and stroked his beard this afternoon...She is not afraid of him...just checking him out. They look pretty cute together. She is so tiny. She was tired tonight. I just wrapped her in a blanket, put her in her crib and put two more blankets on top of her, she cooed twice, turned over and went to sleep.... I think I will do the same... good night.
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