Miss Lyvia XinShi Wallis!

My goodness we have SUCH a different girl than we did last night. She woke up at 5 am for a bottle, just like her papers said she would. Then she fell back asleep until 6 something. When she woke up, she spent some time looking back and forth between the two of us. I kept expecting some more drama like we had last night, but she seems to be in a groove with us.

She LOVES the fruit puffs we brought and we spent some this morning sitting with her while she nibbled on them. I was prepared that we would have to take turns going down for breakfast, but she did great and even ate some egg and congee. She is going to both of us without a problem, which is the best thing yet. We are being careful to make sure that we both spend time feeding her, holding her, etc.

This is a big day because today we officially adopted her. The Jiangxi officials asked some questions like what our occupations are, why we want to adopt from China, what are our education plans for her, etc. Then they gave us a gift of porcelain and we signed on to take care of her forever! While we were waiting, we found a dozen ways to make LYVIA smile and laugh. Eventually she got tired and easily fell asleep in my arms.

After the Civil Affairs visit and then to the notary, we stopped by a high end department store for clothes because it is cooler than most of us expected and some needed a few more warm outfits. I bought an outfit just for fun because there are salespeople everywhere and they take the item you want, write it down in a ledger, take the money, get the change and then give you a receipt. Then if you go a section over (just like Dillard's) to buy something else, the whole production starts again. There were some beautiful things there, I loved the bed linens, and I could have shopped more if I didn't have to carry it all back in a suitcase.

Some of us went to get dumplings and the other halfs took the babies back to the hotel. Those dumplings are delicious for fast food! We walked back to the hotel so now I have a better clue about where we are and where we can go wander around without getting lost. Most of the streets look the same to me since the main ones are all lined with shop after colorful shop.

LYVIA played on the floor a bit this afternoon and shook her toys about. We gave her some rice cereal and then a bath, which she loved. In the bath, she slipped backwards and got water all over her face and started to cry so I decided I would take her out. Then she really started to cry and it turned out that she wanted more bath time! After bath it was nap time and again she did a really good job of falling asleep in my arms.

Tonight we are going out for a group dinner!

We put a lot more photos on Flickr -- hopefully you can see them.