More About Day 2WM

But first, some photos, in no particular chronological order.
Sometime during Day 1

Day 2 at the hotel, doing paperwork.

Walking out of the White Rose Hotel after we had just made each others' acquaintances.

Paul, Staci and Anna Mae finalizing the adoption at the White Rose hotel. Turns out we were just considered guardians for 24 hours when we first picked up our girls. We went back yesterday, signed the official papers, and put our red-inked index fingerprints above each signature.

Emma with firm possession of teething necklace (transitional object of choice) and half of a pineapple cookie.

It's seven o'clock Wednesday morning and Emma is still asleep. She went down at 9:30 last night and made but a few peeps during the night. I call that championship-level sleeping and doff my cap to her.

Andi -- As to your question re: potty training, here's what happened. For those of you less interested in details of poop 'n' pee, feel free to skip to the next paragraph. Having been convinced by Judy that Emma just may well be completely trained and would possibly scoff at diapers, I dutifully placed her on the pot several times that first morning (she sat contentedly and looked bewildered, but nothing else). In between potty placings, she wet her undiapered pants. Oops. Accident #1. I chalked it up to maternal inexperience, changed her clothes and thought we'd give it another whirl. Multiple trips to potty chair as the day wore on....nothing doing....and as I picked her up to try it once more, I noticed she had wet again (sorry about the pee stain on the carpet, Best Western Premier!) So the diapers are on her, and on her they will stay. Plenty of time to potty train somewhere down that long toddler road. Was especially grateful for diapers after she pooped twice within 10 minutes yesterday morning after breakfast.

But enough poopy talk! When we finalized the adoption at the hotel yesterday, we were able to meet with orphanage personnel and ask some questions about our girls' recent histories, the answers to which were translated by the amazing Judy Wu. Turns out Emma was in a foster family that had another foster daughter a little younger than Emma. They also had a 10-year-old biological son, so she's been used to having a big brother. Foster mom said Emma loves to be with people and likes big crowds. She can be obstinate sometimes ("sometimes when you tell her to do something, she won't do it. Or if you ask her to stop doing something, she won't stop". What? Not perfectly well-behaved?) She also would sometimes exert supremacy over little sister and commandeer toys, with no apology. Her favorite activity is "unpacking things". We found this out yesterday when we bought a bin of blocks for her at the Walmart. Came home, dumped them on the bed, and Emma attacked them with fever-eyed, drooling intensity. Dump them out, plop them back in the can, take them out again, back in they go, dump 'em out, plop 'em in. She did this for almost an hour, until it seemed like she wasn't so much playing as trying to work out the solution to some kind of problem and she started to get frustrated. That's when we decided it was naptime. There's a lot going on in that little head.

Will write more later, but we're off to a mandated museum visit for a couple hours.

Thanks, everyone, for all your comments. If you love our posts, we love your comments more!!

Love to you all,
Denny