Adoption Day!

It's official! Matthew is ours forever and ever!!! 

Today was adoption day! This morning we went back to the same building we were at yesterday and finalized his adoption. We were all brought back to the same room we met our children in and waited for a bit while the registration office finalized all of the adoption documents. 

Matthew loved this picture on the wall. 

This kid stole my camera again...

He is so small compared to his Baba...

When everyone's adoptions were complete the officials came out and presented each family with their adoption certificate. Then they thanked us for adopting their children. It was a very short but incredibly sweet presentation. We left afterward and drove to the notary office. 

We set Joseph up with the iPad since past notary visit experience shows this is necessity...

Yesterday, Matthew did not nap once. Today, thankfully, he did. Right in my arms! 

After completing our portion of the paperwork we all took a picture with the notary and then headed back to the hotel. 

When we got back to the room we decided we needed a few more necessities so we headed to lunch followed by another trip to Walmart. The trip to Walmart is somewhat of a trek. Not so bad on the way there but definitely more labor intensive on the way home with all of the groceries in hand. There is also the smog to contend with. It is way worse than I ever thought it could be. Even the lobby of our hotel and the hallways are hazy. Lastly, there is some major traffic here. There are at least 4 lanes on every road and then the sidewalks are FULL of motorcycles, scooters and bicyclists. You always have to be watching out around you because pedestrians definitely do not have the right of way here! 

One of my shopping must-haves here is complete with the purchase of a stuffed pleasant goat! We found him at Walmart. Yesterday, Matthew struggled to be out down for a nap and the only thing that broke him of his crying was watching an episode of pleasant goat I had downloaded on the iPad. In most of the pictures of him we had before we met he was playing with a plastic pleasant goat toy. So it was something familiar for him in the chaos of all of this new stuff. 

And who wants to see some cute baby tummy :) 

You would never know it but soon after this picture was taken Matthew had his first real meltdown. He was practically inconsolable for an hour or so. No amount of food or bottles or hugs or kisses could make him feel better. He had his eyes closed so tight and when he would open them he would focus in on us and cry harder. It was such a helpless feeling not being able to console him. Since there was no real obvious cause to his crying we realized he was just grieving hard for all of the things he once knew that he no longer had. I can't even tell you what brought him out of it. I had been holding him the whole time and he just stopped, giving way to more silent sniffs and deep breaths. Since we knew he loved his bath time I put him in the tub and Ronnie took Joseph to get dinner. He sniffled the entire way through the bath. When it was done we got his PJs on him and gave him a bottle. The rest of he night he has seemed fine. He is definitely starting to show a preference to me over Ronnie now though. But he is still allowing me to put him down so that is good. I am praying tomorrow is a better day for him. 

Tomorrow we drive out to his local passport office in Zhoukou City. We thought we were able to go all the way to Taikang, where he is from, but the guides explained to us that it is even a greater distance past Zhoukou city, which is already 2.5 hours away from here. They also told us we cannot get an orphanage tour, which we suspected, but I was still hoping to see some of the city he has lived in his life so far and maybe go by where his finding spot was, or the general vicinity of it since we really don't know the specific spot. Maybe some day in the future we'll get to come back!