Adoption Day!!

Today, at 8:30am, Chang Lu Ping officially became Mariah Claire Lu Ping Kaminski! I can hardly believe I just typed that! What a blessing this trip has been. I have had the wonderful opportunity to spend quality time with my hubby and my parents. It has been really nice. I am homesick though. I miss my kids! Three of them are sick and I just want to be home to give them love. Aunts and uncles are terrific, but mom and dad just make things different. 

The above picture is truly not painful. We had to put our thumbprints over our signatures and then put Mariah's over her name. She was unimpressed!!!


My mom was the photographer for these pics. The below picture is all of our official paperwork. Our guide pointed out to us that Mariah is the 99th child from the Jiangsu province to be adopted this year. Kind of neat!

Our facilitator came to our hotel this morning and we made our trip to the Civil Affairs Office for the adoption of Mariah. Yesterday we were just the legal guardians and we had to decide if we wanted to complete the process. Well, that answer was YES!

We had one last picture taken at the Civil Affairs office with the assistant director of Mariah's orphanage.


Today, Mariah seems to have attached to Jeremy. I know this can happen and I truly am okay with that. I knew to expect that. All of our training tells us this is possible. The school of thought on that is that Mariah has been abandoned by all the women in her life...birth mom and nannies. So, she is guarding her own heart. For that, I grieve as well.

After we finished the adoption paperwork, we went to the Nanjing Brocade Museum. It was pretty neat there. We saw how they make silk tapestries etc. It was fascinating. While there we were stopped by two grandmothers with their chubby grandsons. They were fascinated that we had a Chinese baby! They were sweet about it. The one woman loved Mariah's hair! This picture below shows these sweet grandmas holding their grandsons.

We were fascinated with the entire museum. They had people working on making silk brocades while we were there. It was amazing. The physical labor involved in that helps me to understand why it is so expensive.

I also wanted to share a picture of our guide, Nancy. She has taken such good care of us while here. She meets us after breakfast and we go touring until lunchtime. Then she brings us back and we are free for the rest of the day. She makes sure we have our groceries needed and wrote in Mandarin for the Chinese restaurants to understand what we want. It has been interesting. There is a HUGE language barrier! But, we have managed with gestures and a calculator. Here is "Nancy".......

This evening was spent in the Confucius Temple area right outside the front door of our hotel. This was a really neat experience! We were able to barter prices on several things there. Jeremy was hilarious to watch. We seemed to be the center of attention as well. Many, many people looked at us and stared once they saw Mariah. 


Mariah has tested the waters a bit more today. That is a good thing! She is still just confused with our language. I certainly can see how she perks up when hearing Chinese. Jeremy did get her to repeat bye-bye a couple of times. She is a sweet baby! We love her so much.

One interesting thing we found out today. We have a thumb sucker! She is the first of our kids to suck a thumb. Rebecca sucked two fingers but Mariah is the only thumb-sucker.


Please continue to pray for her as she adjusts. I think the  food is bothering her tummy too.  It has been a terrific time here in Ch*na! She has such a rich heritage to share.


Here are a few more pictures to end with. This one is with my parents at the Brocade museum.

This last picture is Mariah's registration for adoption!! We were told to guard this with our lives. I guess it is pretty important.

I will try to update you all again on our visit today (Wednesday in China) as we visited a section of the Nanjing City gate. It was pretty neat to see how the city gate/wall is still standing from the 1400's when Nanjing was the capital of the Ming Dynasty. 

We have been blessed to be able to Skype with our other four kids each day. I miss them so much. They are having fun going to the pool. I guess my boys thought helping Uncle Don split wood was fantastic. That ended the second day. 

Kyle is trying not to get too sick with a cold and he is being a great oldest brother. I'm sure he is a comfort to the other three kids. 

Micah is struggling with a yucky cold. He barely speaks to me on Skype. I know he does not feel well. When we call, all we hear is coughing. Some are my sister's kids, and some of the coughing is my kids.

Rebecca seems pretty excited about Mariah. She keeps asking us to take the camera over to her so she can see what she looks like. Then we hear her googling over what she sees! She is going to be a terrific big sister!

Ben is being Ben. He is missing me terribly. He keeps telling the kids and my sister that he just wishes he could hug me. He seems great while we Skype but he also is congested. Aunt Tammy made him eat what everyone else was eating.....tortellini. He was not very happy. We also make him eat what we eat but I will honestly tell you that pasta is not his favorite meal. 

Thanks to my sister for watching our kids and to both of our families for supporting us in many different ways. I love you all!