Tuesday Update..

Hello all, this is Rob typing this message. Sorry the message did not go through yesterday.

It is about 2:30 p.m. here on Tuesday, all of you at home are sleeping right now as it is 2:30 a.m. on Tuesday EST in the USA. As you can imagine, the last 22 hours have been crazy, but great! Piper is an amazing little girl. We have bonded so quickly to her and she seems to really like us a lot. She is laughing and giggling and loves to be held.

Last night, Laurie put her to sleep at about 8:00 p.m. (I had to go to a paperwork meeting Monday night for what we did today back at the Civil Affairs office) because we really did not get back to the hotel until about 7:15 after dinner. We gave her her first bath as daddy and mommy. She really liked it okay, no crying at all really. She slept well last night. She makes a sucking sound like the Simpson baby when she sleeps. We both slept with one ear and one eye open since we are paranoid new parents! She slept until about 5:15 a.m. That was very good for new conditions!

She was tired. On Sunday night here, the babies were taken to Changsha via train with some of the caretakers from her orphanage. The train ride was about 7 hours from what we were told.

At 5:30 we gave her a bottle and she sucked it down no problem. We all went to breakfast today at 7:00 a.m. Piper eats a lot of rice pourridge, steamed eggs, rice, bread, vegetables, and chicken or pork. I think for now we will give her a bottle of milk / formula in the morning and right before bedtime.

The hotel here in Changsha is VERY nice! It is the Huaitian hotel and is in the busy part of downtown Changsha.

We had to go to back to the Civil affairs office today at 9:00 a.m. and we were there as a whole group unitl 12:00 p.m. We had to turn in more paperwork and get her adoption registration, notarization, apply for her passport, pay fees, ... the list goes on and on. We also got to meet the director of her orphanage and have an question and answer session which was very helpful.

She is full of life and has a cute personality. Being a dad has been a lot of fun so far. Right now, I am in the business center of the hotel using the internet access, the two princesses in my life are napping. Laurie wanted a baby that naps in the afternoon and she got one!

Piper is not walking yet. She has crawled some, but we will have more time to let her crawl around beginning tonight. We have a lot of down time for the next few days. It takes 5 days to get a passport for her and that is why we will stay here in Changsha until Monday, April 11. On Monday we will fly to Guangzhou so we can go to the U.S. Consulate to get her travel visa.

Well, that is all for now. We are really enjoying China. Changsha feels a lot more like China than Beijing did. Nobody here speaks English, many in Beijing did. There are no signs in English on the street and bulidings here, most in Beijing had it in both.

We have gotten close with many of our travel mates since we are together all the time. I know we will make some lifetime friends out of this bunch.

That's all for now. I hope all of you have a good day at work on Tuesday.

Take care.

Rob / Daddy

P.S. We hope to get some photos on the site. The internet connection here is a little different than it is at home.