Hello friends and family, Scott here. Renee's playing with Ivie, and I have some time to post.

It's 1:00 p.m. Tuesday afternoon in Nanchang. Ivie slept like a champ last night, a solid stretch from 9:00 p.m. to 4:30 a.m., then up for a change and a bottle, and then back down from 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. We got up and had breakfast with the rest of our group. Ivie ate watermelon, rice cereal, sticky buns, and steamed eggs. She chased it all down with a bottle of formula.

After breakfast, the entire group went to the Notary office to make our adoptions official. We met with the Notary official, answered some questions, and then received confirmation that according to the Chinese government, we are Ivie's parents. We won't receive the official paperwork to take with us until Sunday, so we are here for the rest of the week.

After the Notary office, we went as a group to Wal-Mart, where Renee and I bought bibs, diapers, outfits, baby food, bottles, formula, and rice cereal for Ivie, and gatorade, snickers, water, pringles, noodle bowls, and soda for Renee and I. All told our bill was 350 Chinese Yuan, or roughly $48 US Dollars. Unbelievably cheap. We ate lunch at one of the roughly 89 KFC's in Nanchang. That's one popular restaurant. Outside, waiting for the bus to take us back to the hotel, we were approached by a beggar. He wouldn't take, "Bu, she she" (no, thank you) for an answer, so I gave him a small coin. Then another beggar, this time a woman, came up to me pushing a bigger bill at me. It looked like she was trying to give me money. Of course, the real answer, according to our guide Evelyn, was that she was showing me the bill she wanted me to give her. Riiigghttt. That makes much more sense.

We are now in our hotel room waiting for Ivie's appointment with a local pediatrician. We are learning so much about her personality as she becomes more accustomed to us. She is so, so active, curious, serious, and playful, all at the same time. And, to close this post, something amazing just happened. Ivie smiled at us. For the very first time. For all the pictures we'd seen of our daughter, for all the time we've spent together over the last two days, I had never seen our daughter smile...until just now. We put a plastic stacking cup on her head and let it fall to the bed. I clapped and cheered for her. And there it was...a huge smile, two -teeth and all. I'm not ashamed to admit it's getting a little dusty in here. Now I have to go play with Ivie, so we'll conclude and post more later.

Thanks for your continued support. We love you all.