On Tuesday, we went back to the Chongqing adoption center to make things official. We officially are Jude's parents now. They had a ceremony, too, unlike when we adopted Jake. A woman conducted the ceremony while a man took photos. She handed us our adoption certificate, then we posed for a family photo, our first official photo of us as a family of 4.
After that, we spent a little time in a park on top of a mountain around a pagoda. Jake and I were the adventurous ones, we climbed the eight flights of stairs to the top of the pagoda and looked down on those below. Jude wanted to go, too, Violet said, but his little legs would have given out, mine just about did.
On Wednesday, we spent the day going to the two orphanages where Jude stayed. Both are quite a drive from our hotel and in opposite directions. We visited Love Manor first. It's atop a mountain in a forest park. It's a pretty setting. We got to walk around and see the places where Jude stayed. We also found out he was not always with a foster family there, like we had thought. We got to see the crib where he slept until the end of his stay there.
After Love Manor, we drove the other way to Jiangjin Social Welfare Institute, where Jude first stayed. We got to see the new facility, which opened last year. Jude never stayed there, as he moved to Love Manor in 2011. We then drove to the old Jiangjin SWI, which was abandoned last year and is scheduled to be demolished. The director of the orphanage pointed out Jude's finding spot, which was just outside the gate to the old orphanage. We took some photos and posed as a family on the spot, and we toured the old facility. As we were when we visited Jake's orphanage and finding spot, we're not ready to post photos. It was a pretty emotional day, and seeing all that hit me hard.
It was interesting, Jude got upset as Violet was carrying him up the stairs at the old orphanage, so she took him out of the building to calm him down. He refused to go back into it, but came running to me when I came out of the building. We're making strides in our attachment, but it's going to be a slow process as he accepts us as parents and not just as two more caretakers. ... Kevin
Here we are, officially a family of 4.
Jude loves to ride on escalators.
Hi everyone!
The pagoda.
See how high we were!
This was breakfast Wednesday. He can get messy. He was being a fussy eater but decided he liked the chocolate-covered doughnut.
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