It Is Official

Today we finished the paperwork required, and we are officially Kate's parents.

Kate does have a bit of a cold and some chest congestion, but she's doing fine. Doctor Joe Fowler from Oklahoma, who is here with another Childrens Hope International group, came by to look at her this afternoon. He said she was developmentally way ahead of the curve, and he recommended which of the many medications we brought with us she should be taking to get better. That's emblematic of the kindness and support we have had from all the adoptive families here.

We went back to the Adoption Center this morning to finish the paperwork. We also met with the director of Kate's orphanage, who answered several questions for us, and shared that Kate was probably the most spoiled child at the orphanage. We're beginning to see a little bit of that. Not feeling so well has led to a couple of meltdowns on her part, one of which was during the interview with the registrar this morning. Our new friends Ken and April Brown were smart enough to bring along some Childrens' Motrin and kind enough to share it with us, which helped Kate feel much better.

The strange thing right now is that changing her diaper or her clothes invariably leads to a crying (shrieking) spell. Anyone out there ever had that problem before?

(We just found out that several of the children from our orphanage are freaking out when their diapers and/or clothes are changed, so we're going to see if we can get some info from the orphanage that might explain this.)

Our friend Grace Gordon has asked us what Kate is like and what is her favorite thing to do. The short answer is that we are still learning that ourselves, but she has a pretty even dispositon (with the exceptions cited.) She likes to play with her teething key ring and her colorful stacking cups. She's done some things today that have really surprised us. She stood up on her own, with nothing to pull up on. She's been clapping her hands and sort-of maybe dancing to the Kate mix we brought on our laptop. (She does seem to like music a lot. We've got her on a steady dose of the Beatles and Mason Williams and Roger Miller and Jack Johnson and the Mills Brothers and Sweet Honey in the Rock and Perry Como, among others.) She's crawling all over the place and talking (babbling) all the time.

Mother and Child the first morning:



Simon, one of our CHI coordinators, with the director of Kate's orphanage:



Eddie and Kate at the Adoption Center, post meltdown:



Christi and Kate playing in the room: