Brea said "Mama"!
Today on the tour bus Brea said Mama! It was just as plain as could be. She is like a little flower that is blooming a little each day. She is getting stronger with each passing day and her little personality is starting to shine through. She smiles and makes cooing sounds and we have even had a few belly laughs.
This morning we went to the registry to pick up the official adoption documents. It was an incredible feeling when they handed over the booklet and said "congratulations, she is your". We then went to the police department to have Brea's picture taken for Chinese passport (I believe). It will be ready on Friday and we will then fly to our last stop which is Guangzhou, China where we have an appointment with the US Embassy to do the official paperwork for Brea to become a citizen.
We've learned so much about our precious little girl over the last 2 days. She will not tell us when she is hungry. Her orphanage fed the babies on a schedule and she got 4 bottles a day so I guess she learned that no one was going to feed her a bottle if she cried so there was no need to cry. We've also learned that she likes her bottle very warm and when you do give her a bottle she likes to hold it. If she thinks you are going to take it away she will put what Danny calls the "death grip" on the bottle and her little knuckles turn white. She also likes to rock herself when she is getting tired and will rock back and forth until I pick her up and rock her. Brea does not yet eat any kind of food. She has been strictly on the bottle and won't even let us put anything in her mouth. We'll work through that with our occupational therapist but for now we are just happy that she is taking the formula that we brought with us because it is much more nutritional than what she has been on.
I know I've told you that Brea is tiny but this little peanut is really tiny. The outfits that I brought with us are all sizes 6-9 months or 6-12 months and they are all too big. She is long and fills out a 6 month sleeper nicely. Her feet are also tiny and the socks that I packed are way too big. They are for 6-12 months and she probably needs some 3-6 month socks. We went to a local children's shop yesterday and all the outfits there were split pants which means the crotch was cut out to allow the child to squat and potty since they don't wear diapers here in China. We are going to try another area today for shopping and hopefully they will have some Western style infant clothes.
We learned another interesting fact today...there are 60,000 Muslims living in this city alone. The men wear small white caps and the ladies wear the head wraps.
Enjoy the pictures!
