The Civil Affairs office is only about 10 minutes away from our hotel and we left around 2:30 for our scheduled appointment time of 3:00. We packed Heidi's backpack full of toys, suckers, rice cookies, purse, stuffed animal, etc--anything to try to coax her to us. She wasn't there when we arrived at the Civil Affairs office, but we saw her walk in through the front door with the orphanage assistant director and one of the orphanage staff members. We were called back to an office to sign some paperwork and then Heidi was brought in. We interacted with her for a little while even getting on the floor with her to play. For the most part she was fine with us palying with her and took the rice cookie to eat, but once the members of the orphanage left and I picked her up she started immediately crying, kicking, desparately trying to get out of my arms. Our first family photo that the office takes and then prints to put in her adoption book (red book) is not a pretty one!
Once we left the office and got in the van to head back to the hotel though she had calmed down by then. She wasn't happy but she wasn't crying anymore either. Our guide, David, came back to our hotel room with us and translated some information he was able to get from the orphanage director. We learned that although Heidi is almost three, she still drinks formula from a bottle every night before bed. We were told she loves to shop and doesn't like "old toys"--haha--Brian thought that was funny. She is potty trained, but she learned on a squatty potty so she has been quite fascinated witht the western style toilets. She wanted to go sit on the potty about every 30 mintues yesterday once we got to the hotel because she loves grabbing the toilet paper and flushing the toilet. She is also a huge fan of the hair dryer and can dry her own hair, but then she wants to dry everyone else's hair too whether it is wet or not. :)
Heidi's foster mother was not able to make the trip to Nanning to take Heidi to the Civil Affairs office, but she made some homemade snacks for Heidi to take with her and made two beautiful peices for Heidi to wear (one which she wants us to give her when she is a little older). Although we did not have the opportunity to meet her foster parents, we can tell she was definitely loved.
We took Heidi shopping in the mall that connects to our hotel and bought a small umbrella stroller for her since we ended up leaving our large stroller at home. She loves going for rides in the stroller and later that night while Brian took a shower and had some down time, I walked Heidi around our hotel floor for about 30 minutes. When we returned to our room, I took her shoes back off and she immediately put them back on and took her stroller back to the door. We did a lot of walking the floors last night!
Olivia and Heidi are doing great together so far. Heidi follows Olivia around and tries to do everything she does. For instance, Olivia had capri leggings on so Heidi pulled her pants up too. Heidi loves to get in Olivia's face and smile really big and giggle.
Heidi does have a cough so we have started her on some children's cold medicine and hope it doesn't get any worse while we are in China. We do have an antibiotic prescription for her just in case we need it, but we hope we don't have to use it.
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