Welcome to Emmaline Anne Ding's adoption website. This blog details our family's adoption of this beautiful little girl from China in 2005. While the focus of the blog is to record our trip to China, you can also find more about her adoption by clicking on the links to the right.

More pictures, the latest happenings

I've gotten some comments about the lack of pictures in two recent posts. Part of the reason is that we've more or less stayed in the hotel for the past couple of days, so we haven't taken that many new photos. But you ask, we provide, so here are photos not necessarily from the past two days.

First, here are some photos from the building which houses the Adoption Registry Center of Guangdong Province (where we applies for Emmaline's adoption decree). We took these on our second trip there, when we were meeting with the public notary officials.

This first one is the outside of the building, which also houses other businesses as well as a hotel:



This is the building directory (the registry center is on the 5th floor):



These next three are of the actual adoption registry center.







The photo to the right is of Lois standing with Emmaline's primary caretaker / nanny at the orphanage. On Gotcha Day, after getting Emmaline, we brought her back into the room where the nannies were sitting (they had ridden a bus about 5 hours that morning to drop the babies off). We wanted to find out some details about Emmaline's habits, schedule, personality, etc. As we walked in, a bunch of of the ladies immediately recognized her and called out with affection, "Mi mi, mi mi" (her Chinese name). But this one in particular seemed most familiar with her. Lois had a chance to talk with her and because we speak different Chinese dialects, their conversation was limited (though another nanny did speak both Mandarin and Cantonese and served as a go-between). The nanny told us that she’s very fond of Emmaline and kept telling Lois that our little girl was very beautiful. She could tell that the nanny was a bit choked up. The nanny also suggested that we should bring Emmaline back when she’s older so she could see her. Maybe someday... Trivia point: when I asked our translator/guide how to ask who her nanny was, he said, "a yi". That also happens to be the generic word for "auntie".

This morning we went for the basic medical examination for all the babies. In short, she's healthy -- and we got more comments on her being a beautiful girl! Who are we to argue? =-) In addition, we learned that she only weighs 13 lbs (at 9 months old)! Considering that 3 months ago she was only a pound lighter, and looking at how scrawny her body is; we're pretty sure she was somewhat malnourished. Against an American pediatric weight percentile chart she comes in at under 3%!!!Some other girls from other orphanages that arrived in Guangzhou yesterday appeared much chubbier -- so we think orphan care is definitely dependent on each orphanage. So again, we have some work to do to get her up to "normal" weight percentiles. Despite her low weight, though, her motor skills and development seems normal. She can turn over, grab things, and also scoot on the floor.

Hopefully, we'll have more photos later on this evening from our visit to the medical clinic this morning. If not tonight, then tomorrow. Thanks for visiting! Here's a couple more photos for those of you who hung in there to read all of the above. The first is of Matthew holding up a drawing he mostly by himself while we were in Hong Kong. The second is of him helping to feed Emmaline after we brought her back with us to hotel.