Day 2 - Gotcha Day (cont.)

Just to continue with what we did yesterday. After we got back from the orphange, we came to the room for a while. Around 2:00 we left to go to the Giving and Receiving Ceremony. This is where the orphanage gives up custody of him and we, well, receive it. The name is far more official sounding than the actual process. Basically, you sign about 6 pieces of paper, all written in Vietnamese. Then they take your picture with the group of officials and send you on your way. It took all of maybe 5 minutes.

After the G&R, it was back to the apartment for Dallas, the Moms and the babies while the rest of the Dads and I went to apply for the kids' passports. They'll all receive Vietnamese passports written with their Vietamese names. We walked into a big room that looks very similar to the DMV back home. There were people everywhere applying for passports, visas, etc. We learned at this time what a luxury it is to be an American in Vietnam. The four of us, along with Miss Chi and Sandy waltzed to the front of the line and were processed almost immediately. The people sitting in the chairs kind of just looked at us but no one said anything. Sandy told us it happens all the time here. So, at any rate, we're supposed to go back on Friday to pick them up.

We then returned to the apartment and waited for the doctor to come and have a look at Logan. It's an optional $30 American to have a local doctor examine your baby - small price to pay! You might notice in the pictures that there's a little rash under his right eye. The doc said it's eczema and gave us a prescription. He also had some mosquito bites (the orphanage has no a/c and had the windows open all the time) that he had scratched and a few other little rashy-kind of bumps. The doc told us to put the scabies lotion on him, just as a precaution. So we did that without incident. Logan also has a little case of the sniffles (his lungs are apparently clear) but he sometimes has trouble breathing through his nose and coughs a bit. We have some other medicine for that but it's oral and he doesn't seem to like the "kid friendly cherry taste" AT ALL. So, all in all, it seems like he's a pretty healthy kid. He's definitely sturdy and his legs are really strong. He's a big-time kicker. I don't mean the place-kicking kind, I mean the martial arts kind.

After all of this, we were pretty exhausted and just stayed in the rest of the night. I watched Independence Day while Dallas wrote his blog and Logan slept. A nice ending to a really busy, overwhelmingly exhausting, exhilerating, day.