Asa's Giggle

Watch this and be delighted.  This is my son, Asa, shortly before his adoption was finalized today.  He is hilarious, smart and charming with a healthy dose of naughty thrown in.  We love him to pieces!

Long Flights and Little Brothers

I'll try to catch everyone up on our trip so far.  The flight was the easiest international flight I've taken.  We flew out of Las Vegas at midnight, and, as a result, slept for about half of the longest leg of the journey.  We breezed through customs and immigration and as we walked out of the airport were met with a throng of people all holding up signs and yelling.  We found a sign with our name on it and went with our guide, Bob, a jovial man probably in his mid-twenties who learned English by watching TV--Friends and Desperate Housewives are his two favorites.

Our hotel is above a pedestrian thoroughfare called Up and Down Number Nine Street, and after we checked in, we wandered through the shops.  Guangzhou City is home to thirteen million people, and to a gal from rural Southern Utah, (The entire state of Utah has a population of not quite three million) it seemed like nearly all of them were on the thoroughfare that evening.  I forget how much my family--two Anglo women and two Chinese girls--stands out here.  People are intensely and openly curious about us and point, stare and converse about us.  Last night, we ate at the Guangzhou Restaurant which is right across the street from our hotel, and at one point we had four members of the waitstaff standing about ten feet away from our table all ogling us, pointing and laughing.  We are a novelty for sure!

Anyway, we wandered the shops, ate food from street vendors--strawberries skewered and dipped in boiling sugar syrup, fish ball, and corn on the cob.  They were all pretty tasty, but I'm sure the corn had been dried and reconstituted.  It was chewy.  We forewent the squid on a stick, sweet and sour water snakes, and something that I'm nearly certain involved entrails.

We met Asa yesterday afternoon at the Civil Affairs office.  Every single picture I have of Asa up to this point shows a sad, forlorn little boy, so I wasn't expecting the boy that walked over to me with the Cars backpack that I'd sent and some kind of mangled treat in his hands.  We sat on the floor, and I started blowing bubbles that I'd brought with me.  Yeah, they were a huge hit!  He first smiled and tried to pop them and progressed quickly to full-on belly laughs within probably five minutes of meeting him.  The orphanage worker told me that he's very smart, outgoing, happy, and everyone who meets him loves him.  That's for sure!  He's charming, busy and mischievous to the core!  He also speaks both Cantonese and Mandarin and not a word of English.  When I asked what kind of food he preferred, they said candy.  They're not kidding there; he absconded with his treat bag that was supposed to last for the whole trip and started going down on the more sugary bits.  He also put the hurt to a foot-long piece of sugar cane.  He did eat eggs, rice and veggies for dinner though.

By the time the day was over yesterday, he was testing his boundaries pretty seriously.  (That couldn't have had anything to do with the amount of sugar he consumed.)  He threw his chopsticks (which he uses fairly proficiently) across the restaurant and pitched a screaming, kicking, no-holds-barred fit on the sidewalk of the pedestrian street when I wouldn't let him bring home a yapping electronic dog with glowing eyes from one of the shops.  Yes, people stared.  A lot.  It's all good; we are pros at being intensely examined by now.

Now he's asleep in bed.  It's 6:40 a.m. here right now, 4:40 p.m. MST.  Today we complete the adoption--I fork over some more money, sign some papers, and he is no longer a ward of the Chinese government but a Davis instead.  Yeah, that paperwork was definitely worth it!

(More pictures later.  We're having some downloading issues.)

How We Got Here

A year ago, my friend, Stefani Ellison, turned my world on its ear when she told me that China was soon opening their adoptions to single parents again.  She even had the file of the boy that she thought would be perfect for our family.  Oh, he was a cute little guy, and I fell in love with him.  Obstacles that I thought would make another adoption impossible became non-issues.  I was on board.  Ready to go.  Then, days before China made the official announcement so I could begin the paperwork, another family began the process to adopt this same little boy.  MY little boy.

I told Stefani I was done; I didn't want just any old boy; I wanted that boy.  She didn't listen, a fact for which I'll always be grateful.  She sent me four more files. 

I halfheartedly glanced through them, and, what do you know, looking out at me from the snapshots was the face of my son, Zhang Chuan Yi, born October 26, 2007.

I dived into the paper chase to bring him home.  It's a process best suited to people who are far more left-brained, have a longer attention span and more patience for bureaucrazy (That was a typo, but it's way too accurate to take out.) than I.  Don't get me wrong.  I understand that the multitudinous steps in this process are ultimately to keep kids safe and get them placed in suitable homes, and I am grateful for that.  I appreciate that chaos would reign and kids would suffer if this process were not in place.  However, it's still at times reduced me to a state of wild-eyed hysterical giggling or left me ready to hurl large objects around the room/through windows.

Here's an example of what completely addled my poor right brain:  A couple of months into the process, I had to send in a completed form to a government entity.  In looking at two different sets of instructions from two different sources, I found that one said I was *only* to use black ink in filling out said form.  The other was just as adamant about using blue ink.  I called the 1-800 "help line."  Had a lively conversation about ink colors; talked to two different "helpers" and their supervisors.  No one could agree on ink colors, but they did agree that if I didn't do it correctly, it would be sent back for me to redo.  Got off the phone and spent an hour or so huddled in the corner humming, giggling and biting my fingernails.

Ultimately, what made the paperwork process doable and well worth every application and form and phone call was the fact that it wasn't about ink colors; it was about a little boy who needs a family, a little boy who looks entirely too sad in every single picture that I have of him.

If you're thinking of adopting internationally, and it sounds too daunting, trust me, if I can do it, you can too.  Oh, yes you can.  I'll even help you.  Just don't ask me what color of ink to use.

We're on the last stretch now.  We--Mom, my girls and I-- leave Las Vegas bound for Guangzhou, China on Friday, March 23 to bring home my son, Asa David Chuanyi Davis.  Asa, you'll soon have a mom, two wildly-excited older sisters and two grandparents who can't wait to love you.  See you soon!