Welcome to Guangzhou!

This is my favorite of my baby/daddy photos so far.  I took this one of Mike and Leila looking out our hotel window yesterday shortly after we arrived in Guangzhou.

Leila was so good on the airplane.  She slept for the first hour of the flight, then ate both of our dinners during the 2nd hour.  I was expecting the usual kid airplane stuff like kicking and screaming and pooping, but she was awesome the whole trip.  Her diaper did spring a leak by the time we got on the bus to ride from the airport to the hotel, though.  Mike and I were laundry bound soon for sure.

Late afternoon we headed out with our other Atlanta buddies Gwen, Jason, and Julia for some dinner.  We ate at a nice restaurant which opens up to a neat park with statues of people all over the place.  We will have to take more photos there.  The Shamen (sp?) Island part of Guangzhou is very westernized, and I enjoyed a grilled cheese sandwich with french fries for dinner.  Leila had the noodle soup.  She loved feeding the soup to herself, but by the end of the meal I'm not sure if there weren't more noodles on the outside of Leila than the inside.  Wish I had brought my camera for that one.  Noodles are slippery and seem to have a mind of their own as to where they will end up.

  

Here's a photo I took of Baba watching the beautiful view of the river out our hotel room while Leila sleeps in the background.

The view from our room really was spectacular!

The following are some photos I took the previous day at the hotel of Leila in the baby pool with Baba (Daddy).  She sure loves the water.
Just look at that smile...

Happy as a clam...

Throwing water out of the pool is serious business.

Throwing water on Baba is even more serious.

Is that drool... or snot... oh well, baby is happy, so who cares.

This photo was taken earlier in the week just before I got sick.  We took a trip to see Leila's orphanage.  Of course she didn't live in the orphanage, since she was in foster care, but she did stay here a bit when she was first found.  The mother and baby on the right side of the photo is Gwen and Julia, our friends from Atlanta.

A rare photo of all three of us together.  Leila was still quite fussy this day, but I kind of think this visit also put some of her fears to rest.  She used to come here for check-ups and periodic visits from time to time, and I think going to visit a semi-familiar environment helped her through some of her grief.  She needed a place to say goodbye.  There was a really nice man there, that was there when Leila was brought to us a couple of days before.  He really took to Leila, and Leila to him.  On this day when we saw him at the orphanage she also smiled at him and enjoyed listening to him talk to her in Mandarin.  However, when he offered to hold her, she pulled away and hugged me.  It felt kind of like she made her choice that day to stay with us, and I think it helped her figure things out a bit too.

Love this photo Mike took of us walking around the orphanage together.

Just for fun, here are a couple of shots of "firsts"...
This is Baba on his very first solo poopy diaper change.  He gagged a bit, but I think he even impressed himself that he could do it.  Mike is the kind of guy that can't even clean up dog poop from the living room floor, so this was quite something to behold.

First smile.  This was taken the very first day with Leila.  She finally smiled when I gave her some milk for the first time.  It was before she realized that she would not be going to her old home, so she was actually content for an hour or two before the grieving started.  Gotta love the first smile, though.

Guangzhou is beautiful, and warm.  Everything here is green and blooming.  I will need to take some photos and post them tomorrow.

Kelly