Kai is Officially a Marten!

Today, the China portion of the adoption was finalized which means that ShaoShao is officially our son. I have been referring to him as ShaoShao in the last couple of posts because we found out that this is the name that his foster family used to refer to him. We have been calling him ShaoShao to help ease his transition. Our first stop today was the notary office where we needed to answer a couple of questions and sign some papers. We then headed to the same governement office building as yesterday to meet with the registry official. As we were waiting for our meeting, Shao and Maya had a great time playing in the play room at this building. They rocked on the rocking toys, pushed big balls, and slid down the slide. Afterwards, we were led to a small room where we met with the registry official. Shao's orphange director was also present. We again answered a series of questions and then placed our thumb prints in red ink on multiple papers along with our signatures. Shao also got to leave his right foot print in red ink on some papers. We had our first "official" family picture taken in this room. Shao's orphanage director gave us a gift from his foster family which contained a beautiful photo album with pictures of Shao from the age of 6 months to present. The family also sent some of Shao's outfits, his favorite ball, stuffed animal, and a beautiful note writen from his foster mom. I can only imagine the great loss that they must be feeling right now. We are so grateful to them for all they have done for Shao. He is clearly a well-adjusted 22 month old boy who was very loved and well taken care of.

Shao has really come out of his shell today. He has been imitating everything...especially Maya and has even come up with a few funny facial expressions of his own. He seems to have a wonderful sense of humor and pleasant demeanor. I can't believe how well he is able to communicate with us. He is already singing and saying "more". He also says happy", "papa", "bye-bye" and a couple of chinese words. Our biggest surprise is that he appears to be completely potty trained. He has let me know consistently today when he has needed to go and has gone each time. Now, getting him to go in a "western" toilet was quite the feat considering he has only ever used the "squat" toilet which is basically a hole in the floor. He did not feel comfortable sitting on the toilet or standing in front of it, so after tyring just about everything, he now stands on the toilet seat facing backwards(with assistance of course), squats, and then goes. So far, no accidents and it's been 2 days.

Maya and Shao really hit it off today. They started to hold hands and actually are playing together. We'll see how long this sibling bliss lasts! This morning, I took Maya and Shao down to the hotel store. Shao walked directly to the balls and picked a particular spikey ball. He then pointed to a deck of playing cards and made some unfamiliar sounds. When we looked through his photo album later today, sure enough, there was a picture of him playing with cards. Dom immediately went back to the store to buy him a deck of cards. There was also a ball enclosed in the gift from his foster family that was the same exact kind of ball that we bought at the store this morning. I guess he really knows what he likes!

I'm going to post a couple of pics. The first is our adoption day photo, and the rest are just random photos from the day.

By the way, Maya and Shao were both fast asleep by 8:00 tonight. Let's hope this sleep thing lasts.

We look forward to seeing what tomorrow has to bring as today seemed to be a great breakthrough for Shao.