More Maisie

Yesterday afternoon we took a bus over to the Registration office where we received the babies around 2PM. On the way over we were told in which order the babies would be presented and it worked out that we were alphabetically last,
thus the last to receive our child. I had thought that the babies would be in a different room from us and brought in one by one, but when we got off the elevator on the fourth floor, right there were all the babies dressed identically, tooling
around in their walkers. Two babies were being held by the Nannies, one was asleep and the other wide awake, was Maisie. Well that's when I started crying, seeing her holding on to her Nanny. We watched as all the babies were presented and then it was finally our turn and Maisie just looked at us like she knew us and seemed OK with things. She didn't cry, whimper or make any noises at all, but she kept watching us and snuggling in close to us.

Wan Chun Miao's Chinese citizenship was revoked, a family picture was taken, we each put our fingerprints in red to seal the adoption and it was official, she is Maisie Miao Shanahan, our daughter.

We returned to the hotel, got her diaper changed, put on a new outfit and fed her a bottle as we waited for the doctor to come check on her. We knew it already, but the doctor confirmed that she is perfect. Currently her ears and chest are clear, no sign of congestion or a cold and her heart sounded good. She has good muscle strength, her hearing and vision seem good too.

We decided to go down to the hotel restaurant for dinner so I put Maisie in the hip hammock and we were off. I was pretty wiped out from the day as emotionally it was draining and though feeling much better, I'm still physically quite weak, so going downstairs for whatever they had sounded good. Eammon decided that he was going to try every item on the buffet including dog, yes dog!! I wasn't at all adventurous and stuck to grilled salmon, fruit and dessert. We fed Maisie her last bottle of the night at 9PM and then all of us went to bed. It took Maisie less than a minute to settle down in her crib with Eammon rubbing her back and she slept straight through until 7:30 this morning. Eammon and I though tossed and turned, were up for a couple of hours during the night talking, but Maisie slept like a champ.

She awoke this morning a very happy girl and wanted to be held and held and held. For her morning bottle, knowing that she'd be quite hungry, I tried out the U.S. bottles with the drop in liners and she was fine with them and drank down her entire bottle. Breakfast this morning was difficult to say the least. She was not going to sit in the highchair and only wanted her Mama. Needless to say, I ended up bring my plate to the room to have later in the day.

Today a tour of Chongqing was planned but I keep spiking a fever and it still hurts a lot when I breath so I decided to spend the day at the hotel with Maisie and sent Eammon off to see the sites. It was good that I didn't go as Maisie had a rough morning. She's starting to come out of her shell and showing a bit of her personality, but she's grieving. She'll be playing, playing, playing and then it's as though she gets a memory and starts to whimper and cry just a little. Once you hug her she stops, but the look, the whimper and the little bit of crying just come out of the blue. Today she's also being more vocal, making noises and she loves when we copy her and she'll look to both Eammon and I to mimic her. She also is starting to play with her toys, the favorite being an empty water bottle. She also likes these rings that are linked together, which she can hit the water bottle with, or her stuffed doll which has a rattle and makes noise when she hits the water bottle with it. She can stand and walk with help and she's a champ at crawling having us chasing after her at speed.

She just woke from her nap, and she's so cute how she sleeps with her bottom in the air. She's also a lot smaller than I had anticipated so tomorrow we'll probably go out and get her some clothes. Last night I had her in a 6 month sleeper which
she'll very soon outgrow and the outfit she's in today is a 6-9 mo. and it's almost a perfect fit, just a wee bit big. I think she's going to be a petite little girl. Her 12-18 mo. socks are huge but work well as knee socks. She'll probably be wearing 12 mo. shoes in the next month.

So far she's happy to go to both Eammon and I, with no real preference even when she's upset. Eammon still has yet to change a diaper but soon. She had her first poopy diaper this afternoon and Eammon realized that he won't have to go with a full biohazard suit and mask, it's just not that bad.

Thanks again for all the comments and emails, we've loved reading them all.