He's Finally Ours!

Well, it's been a wonderful 24 hours (and of course - very exhausting too.) What a great way to spend our 3rd wedding anniversary.

Yesterday, we left around 1pm for the Giving and Receiving ceremony. It was held at a government office in a pretty small room. There were 4 families (16 people total with the babies), plus two gov't officials, a judge, the orphanage director and Quoc from VORF. It was a very tight squeeze.

It was essentially just lots of paperwork we needed to sign to complete the process and make everything official. The nannies from the orphanage brought the babies in and we could see it was tough for them. They've been caring for the babies for 6-7 months so they have really bonded with these babies.

I'm so glad we were able to meet Kieran the day before - it would have been nearly impossible to concentrate if this had been the first time we met him. Luckily all the babies were really easy going. Kieran loved the toys we brought and Santosh secured the teething toy to Kieran with the strap from the camera (so we didn't have to keep washing everything he threw or dropped.)

The ceremony ended with us all sitting around for a long time staring at each other and eating fruit. Not really what I expected but the language barrier makes it a bit tough to do much more than that. It's hard not being able to ask the nannies what they fed Kieran or what his routine is. We just didn't have anyone to translate for us. Lots of pointing and smiling. Quoc is way too busy handling the paperwork and he was serving as the official translator. We do have one person on our trip who is Vietnamese and she is a great help to us since very few of the people we encouner at the hotel or orphanage speak English.

Santosh and Kieran both snoozed on the way back. Kieran fell asleep again as soon as we got to the hotel. We went for a swim after Kieran's nap yesterday and Kieran really loved the pool. It is heated (to the point of being too warm) and is very relaxing. So far, Kieran seemed fine and all was going well. He was even excited for his bath. Soon after, it became obvious that his teething problems were more serious than we thought. (I'm still wondering what the heck the nannies gave Kieran to keep him so calm during the G&R. He was clearly suffering.) He had a high fever and was in a lot of pain last night. We gave him teething gel and Motrin and it helped a bit but he was just so miserable. He had these sad little cries and just wouldn't settle down unless we were carrying him around the room.
He refused to take a bottle but was very excited for some baby food that I had so I guess that's his introduction to baby food. So far - it's a hit.

Today was also pretty tough - Kieran napped a bit but has been pretty sick. Motrin, Tylenol and teething gel just wasn't enough and his fever was very high.

When we decided to add the Tylenol, we realized that we didn't know how much to give without his weight. Santosh ran out to weigh him and I stayed here to find a dosage chart online. Thank God for Google.

Santosh came back 20 minutes later. Apparently 7 people from the hotel were running around with him trying to help. People from the spa found people from the bar who brought people from the gift shop to translate and then someone had a vegetable scale!

So he's 16.5 pounds - a bit bigger than we thought. As far as length - he seems to be OK but he definitely needs to gain some weight. I think he lost some weight in the hospital last month and probably more during these teething episodes.

In the end, the fever just wouldn't break and he was screaming way too much. A doctor came to the hotel to examine him and it appears it probably is just teething and he'll have to tough it out with what we've been giving him. Strangely, his fever didn't go down until we went in the pool today for a little while (even though the pool is very heated!) He of course wouldn't sleep in the room but was out like a light once he hit the pool. Trust me - we are ready to go back at 3am to the pool if necessary to get him to sleep tonight too.

Well, we are leaving the Sandy Beach Hotel tomorrow. I will miss the pool and the beach but not the hotel (more on that later and why I think the South Beach diet is dead. The Sandy Beach diet is where it's at. Four days here and our clothes are falling off of us. Luckily, Kieran distracts us from the hunger. The hotel is the ONLY game in town it seems so we can eat their stale food or go without. We've mostly gone without.)

I'm trying to post photos but since my view of all of this is only in Vietnamese - I don't know if I can figure it out. Last time we guessed, we deleted our posts.

Tomorrow we head to the Duxton in Ho Chi Minh. We hear it's pretty average BUT is the best location. I'll do anything right now just to be able to eat something. We hear Vietnamese food is great but the Sandy Beach hotel is desperately trying to keep that a secret.