Ginger in her Elmo outfit. Her grandpa's name is Elmo!

New parents!

Ginger's first Bia Hoi!

Other than the waitresses, mine were the only girls at this beer joint. Hey, we gotta celebrate. What's better way than with beer that costs 5,500 dong? That's about 35 cents to you and me. OK, we had a nice dinner first. Well, pizza, but it was actually good, and we've had only Vietnamese food for the last week.

G&R

Not Guns and Roses, but the Giving and Receiving Ceremony. We are officially Ginger's parents in the eyes of Vietnam. Apparently it is the last in a long series of events in the whole Vietnam adoption process.
Now we have to wait for Ginger's Vietnamese passport and last but, ahem, definitely not least, her US entry visa. Here are a few shots from her ceremony. That's her BFF, Casey. He lives about an hour from us and that's pretty cool because these adoptive parents come from all over the world. We've mentioned it before, but Casey and Ginger were usually next to each other in the photos we received from the orphanage while we waited.



No longer "foster" parents, but the real thing.
Riding home from the ceremony. Don't tell Britney Spears' favorite judge!

Ginger and Mommy

A few more

Random shots

Orphanage Day 2

I went back to the orphanage with the other family that's on a similar timeline as us today to take pictures for the families we know of waiting for their little ones, and to get some more shots of the orphanage itself (for my Dad).

Ginger's doing great. She cries when she gets tired and has to sleep, and she cries when she wakes up during the night and in the morning, but Erin's online research indicates this is normal among adopted babies. So that's good -- she's not broken.

Erin had a funny joke that we haven't remembered to use yet. Common question: How's Ginger? Answer: Delicious. We're hoping we can get another one, maybe with a little more meat on her. Well, it was funny the first time anyway. Though in reality, apparently in the remote rural areas of China they think we Americans do adopt their babies to eat them.

Today after official business was taken care of we went out for an afternoon meal, and sure enough, when the food came the hostess offered to hold Ginger while we ate. She kept her eye on us the whole time though and put up a little fuss when they wandered too far out of sight. Seems like something I would have taken a picture of, but nope, I forgot. Here's a shot of us in the restaurant though.

[As an aside, FIGHTING this Blogger software is becoming a time wasting annoyance. It will not do what I want the first or even the second time around. Google, if you're listening, fix it!!]

Ok, here's just some random shots, cuz I need to get some sleep before GinGin wakes up. We gave Erin about an hour off today and wandered around the Old Quarter while she went back to the hotel. We had a good time. Her little tiny hands held on to my index fingers most of the time while we walked. It was her first time facing forward in the carrier.

Looks like maybe ginger root, sea horses and other creatures in a tincture. For drinking? Not sure, shot it from the hip without asking questions.


Well, trying to compose this and move photos around because the won' place them where I attempt to insert them is taking the fun out of tring to post interesting photos. Turn you monitor sideways if you want to view these properly. Guess I should have listened to Erin and paid 3 or 4 dollars to use TypePad or Wordpress for this blog. I have to sleep now.
-chuck

Pics from the orphanage

There are a bunch of pics from the orphanage at the following address. Not sure who all the babies are. I planned/hoped to be able to get good photos of a several people from our agency we are in contact with, but it was too hectic and rushed to do what I wanted.

At an rate, there are a lot, including many of Ginger screaming her head off with the notion of changing clothes and going home with us. Thank goodness it didn't last. She's been an angel since.

http://tinyurl.com/4ljmxu

And everyone loves Ginger!

Today Ginger practiced her balance really hard so she can walk alongside us on our way to her Giving and Receiving ceremony next week.

I tell you the nannies that took care of her in the orphanage must have loved the heck out of her. she is so smart, good-natured, well-adjusted -- simply amazing.

Among many other wonderful things she did today, toward the end of our 6 hours on the town with her today while we were sitting and talking to some other adoptive parents in town, Ginger got down off Erin's lap, crawled across the couch to me, pulled herself up by my clothes, and gave me a big smile. Then she flopped back down and continued about her business, which was putting reasonably clean (or reasonably dirty, depending on how you look at it) things in her mouth.

At the same cafe, the wait staff took an immediate liking to her and fixed up some special "congee" with cream of mushroom, and the manager (who was early in her 2nd pregnancy) just went ahead and fed a lot of fit to her while Ginger sat in Erin's lap. rom what we've heard, and will no doubt experience more of, the Vietnamese here love babies. Some of the restaurants we will go to (haven't yet), we'll sit down and the staff will take basically grab the baby and play with her, and pass her around to the other workers, to keep her entertained while we eat. (In America, I believe they use a stroller.) Sounds crazy but it's commonplace here and we've been told we really don't need to worry about anything bad happening. Though we haven't experience it yet... but so many people have stopped to look at her and wave at her, even young women riding two to a scooter point and squeal and smile when they pass.

Back to how smart Ginger is...now, I don't know much about babies yet, but from what I recall when you play peek-a-boo the adult hides her face, the baby starts to freak out a little, and the woman quickly reaveals herself and squeals Peek-a-boo! Well, Ginger never really went through the concerned, freaked out phase. She observed and smiled and laughed -- then she grabbed the pajamas next to her and covered her own face and played Peek-a-boo at Erin. Is that normal? Doesn't seem so to me. Since she's almost got walking down, I don't know what more I can even teach her myself. I figure she'll write her first symphony pretty soon, at least a few years ahead of that slowpoke Mozart that everyone's always talking about.

Ok, the pictures:

Ginger loves us, yes she does!

There's too much going on to do this right today, but we figured everyone would want to see pics. Our girl is amazing! Not only is she beautiful, she's about the smartest thing ever!

She sits, she crawls. She turns pages, she grabs her monkey and pulls it close. She chews on caterpillar antannae.

She plays with her bottle then puts it in her mouth when she's ready.

We smashed up a banana since she was reaching for our noodles, an she likes. But most crazy. She knows how to use a spoon and can feed herself!!! It was messy, but a whole lotta fun!

This girl is 8 months old!

By the time we finished eating banana she was laughing, smiling -- and gets a big grin when she gets a kiss.

She claps!

She's adorable. We would have loved her anyway, but WOW! She already seems to love us! Her nannies were wonderful. They took such good care of her; that was obvious! And she really missed them and wanted to be back in their arms. But golly, what wonders a banana can do! The little monkey.

More later. Have to get the pics ready for the other families waiting. We didn't get to all of them today, though Beth, the woman from the agency, got pics of all and is posting them to the Flickr site, so check there ASAP if you're looking for your baby.

OK, I just got bakc upstairs, and lo and behold, she even stands. She pulled herself up in the crib first. Right now, she is standing, with support from Mommy, and holding and drinking her own bottle.

That must have been some kind of Super Banana!