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

Sleeping with Shrimp Fries

My first image of Leila just before the nanny handed her to me.  I was so flustered I didn't get a clear shot, but this photo pretty well describes what was going on in my brain when I received Leila.

Before the children arrived, we waited for just a few minutes (seeming like an eternity) in the office of the province adoption affairs.  See the guy out in the hall?  He was our look out to make sure we were all ready with the cameras when the babies arrived.  My heart skipped a beat when he said "they're here".  But it was a false alarm.  There were two babies coming, but those were from another orphanage for another group.  Finally, our Kaifeng babies did all arrive.  They were all dressed alike in puffy blue snow pants and puffy orange coat.  The pants were the split pants, so her little bootie was hanging out.  I was worried when we put her in the carrier that she was going to mess it up with out a diaper on, but she didn't.  Turns out she is almost potty trained.

I, Kelly, am feeling much better today.  Mike told me it was time for the blog master to take back the blog and put up some posts.  

This morning I woke up feeling something scratchy under my legs in the bed.  It was one of those darn shrimp fries.  On the evening of Leila Day we received a list of things she liked to eat, and the list said she liked 'shrimp fries' as a snack.  Of course Mike and I had no idea what a shrimp fry was, but we knew we had to learn quick.  Evelyn, one of our agency guides, arranged for Mike to go to a store to buy some milk and some other things she would like.  He found these awesome single-serving milk containers that don't need to be refrigerated until after they are opened, and he also got to ask what a shrimp fry was.  Our guide pointed them out, and Leila has been chowing down on those things ever since.  This morning she even fed some to Uncle Earl on Skype.  They are all over the floor of the hotel room, and apparently even under the covers of the bed.

I had been too busy or too sick to post much about our time since we got Leila, so here's a little bit.  The first 2 to 3 days she was so sad.  She would pull my hand begging me to take her to her nai nai (that's the Chinese word for grandmother, but is also a common word used to call a foster mom, especially if its an older foster mom).  I found myself questioning if we were doing the right thing taking her away.  I talked a bit to Evelyn about this, and she reassured us that she really would have a better life with permanent parents instead a transitional foster home.  I felt a little better then, but it still hurts to see our girl in so much pain.

She is doing much better now.  This morning she was actually having a nice quiet and happy morning playing with her toys in the room.  It was the first time she had been in the room for any length of time when she wasn't crying or asleep.  She still asked for us to take her to nai nai, but it wasn't the desperate request it once was, and she seemed to forget what she asked after while.  She seems to call for nai nai mostly when she needs something and we don't understand what she is asking for - diaper change, to go to the toilet, food, etc.  She is re-teaching us all our Chinese that we learned a year ago at our class.  She is so cute when we hand her something and she says "bu dou".  In Chinese 'bu you' means 'don't want', and her little 'bu dou' is cute baby talk.

A little about her spina bifida.  Its amazed me that she doesn't seem to have any ill effects what so ever.  The other day she was playing with her little music bear (thanks Gwen and Jason for that!) and was pushing the buttons with her toes.  She has great control of her feet.  I was worried that she may have some mental delays from the mild hydrocephalous, but at less than 2 years old she is talking up a storm and she knows exactly what she wants and doesn't want.

Well that's all the time I have for tonight.  We need to go finish packing and will leave for Guangzhou tomorrow.  Our stay in Henan has completed our China adoption, now its on to the US consulate to do our US adoption.  Then she will be ours forever!

Kelly 

The best day ever

Sorry it has been so long since our last post, but I'm sure you'll understand when I tell you that we have been kinda busy to start with I (Mike) am writing this post because our regularly scheduled blogmaster has gone down pretty hard with a cold,I don't even know where to start because so much has happened in the last few days and it's kind of a blur. First of all we went to the orphanage and received the most precious thing ever except for my sweet baby who by the way happens to like me now. I think she might even be a daddies girl,we were given the note left with her from her birth mother I won't post it here because it's very personal and we want to leave that stuff for her to share when she gets older if she wants, but I will say it was unbelievably sweet and she was loved very much by her birth parents.We are so thankful for the blessings they have given us   Today I had my first Daddy date. Kelly wasn't feeling well so I took Leila to dinner at pretty fancy Chinese restaurant we walked to the hotel next door with one of the other couples and their 4 kids, the older kids were a huge help to me. we ate rice,shrimp and dragon fruit from my fingers and she fed herself green tea with a porcelain spoon and only spilled a few drops, we had a great time did a whole lot of laughing and giggling then we walked all over the hotel,first to the pool and splashed our hands in the kiddy pool and then fed the Koi in the pond of the fancy restaurant in the lobby (it has a glass floor and you can see the fish swimming past under the table) it was very cool  

A very long day

Well we got our precious little girl today,and she is not one bit happy about how things are going for her . the grieving process is hitting her really hard .....bless her little heart.  She was pretty cool and collected at the gotcha day festivities and then her new daddy tried to hold her so Kelly could put her coat on to walk back to the hotel (cue China Syndrome music now), and the first meltdown hit. Poor little thing misses her nai nai soooo much, and she felt very strongly that it was her sworn duty to inform us of this for the next 12 hours or so. Sorry to all you guys that we haven't contacted like we said we would but that will come soon, and I feel very strongly that tomorrow will be a lot easier, and a million thanks to Guppa and Nanna for the Ergo Pack it was really a lifesaver.

Mike and Kelly

3.5 hours to go

We have slept very little tonight.  We will sleep for a few minutes, then wake up and check the clock.  At 5:00 am we decided we would just get up.  We found a note stashed under our door from our neighbors, Jay and Gwen, a few doors down the hall saying they are up an come visit if we like.  Too funny!

We arrived on schedule yesterday in Zhengzhou.  Hope I spelled that right.  It is the provincial capital of Henan Province, where Leila is.  She is in Kaifeng, which is only an hour east of us.  

Our new agency guides met us at the airport yesterday and I can tell already that they are just awesome!!  They brought us to the hotel and then we went to the bank to exchange money for Yuan to pay all our fees.  We went to a neat restaurant with couches and pillows as the booth seats at the tables.  I had the dumplings.  Food was great!!

Last night I spent the evening preparing gifts, while Mike worked on the Skype.  He finally managed to get it going, and tried calling our family friends, the Pucketts, just to see if it worked.  It did!... and the Pucketts along with Mike's parents were actually at the computer and saw Mike calling in.  We managed to all talk and see each other on the screens.  It was pretty cool.

More later...

Great Wall and more...

Today was the day I was waiting for for so long it seems - time for a trip to the great wall!!

We started out with a quick trip to the jade factory where we got Leila a jade stamp with her Chinese name carved into it, written both in pin yin and in Chinese writing.  They were kind enough to look up her name for me in their dictionary so we were sure to get the Chinese characters and tones right for the meaning.  

Here is a beautiful piece of colored jade they had on display - amazing!

Then it was off to the wall.  Beijing is a really flat city, so it was nice to drive a little way north and see the topography start to change.  It gradually became hilly, then mountainous.

 
The part of the wall we went to had loads of tourists.  Not exactly my first choice, but hey I was at the Wall!!!  The lower parts of the wall were packed, and they had nice flags lining the walkway.

Here is some of the view out there. Can you see the wall continuing to wind around on that mountain in the back of the photo?

Not all of the wall is a nice walkway.  In fact, much of it looked like this.  We really appreciated the modern hand-rails.

At the top, we had spectacular views of the mountains and the continuing wall.

After the wall, we did a drive-by tour of the olympic aquatic center...

...and the bird nest...

Here are some neat art pieces located in a nearby park constructed for the Olympics.

We ended the day seeing a show of amazing acrobats.  We were in the 2nd row and they were incredible. No photos during the show, so we only got this one of us before the show started.

Well, tomorrow we are FINALLY off to Henan Province to where our daughter lives.  Cannot wait!!

Mike and Kelly

Beijing sights...

Today we took a great tour to see Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, a museum, the silk factory, and a local city home.  Here is the famous photo of Chairman Mao.

A general view across the square.  Our guide, Barbara, was telling us she was actually at the Square when the protesting and shooting happened back in 1989.   A very interesting story!

Here is Chairman Mao's toomb.  Every day thousands of people come to visit this place.

After a quick walk through the square, we headed for the forbidden city.  Along the route there are several elaborate buildings.  The ceilings of the buildings were painted elaborately with various dragon designs.

Here is the interior of one of the buildings where former royalty lived in Beijing.  We were not allowed to enter many of these places, but it was set up such that we could look in and see the furniture inside.

The roofs of the buildings had classical asian up-turned corners, but all of the corners also had these carvings of unicorns, dragons, and people.

Here's a general view of the Forbidden City.

One of the stairways down from one of the buildings in the City had a huge slab of granite that was carved with intricate dragons.

After the Forbidden City we all took our first turns at the Chinese potties, basically a toilet on the floor.  All those years of peeing in the woods finally paid off!

We had a quick visit of a small museum adjacent to the Forbidden City.  Many of the displays were these sculpted scenes of various aspects of ancient Chinese life.

Of course there were more bats!  Can you see how many bats there are on this ornate peace of pottery?
We exited the museum area into this beautiful little park, where we had one of our group take a photo of Mike and I together under these two hugging trees.

They brought in all this limestone from another province in China.  It seems to be a common theme to put limestone around parks.  This one has a small building on top.

Not a great photo, but we went to a great traditional Chinese lunch and were entertained by a traditional Chinese dance while there.  Food was awesome!

Then it was off to the silk factory where we learned how the silk was made from the cocoons of the silk worm.  Each of those tiny cocoons in the water had one tiny strand of silk being pulled off it.

Here some women show us how they stretch the silk to make silk comforters.

At the end of the day we took a tour of a traditional city housing complex.  Basically there are small 1-3 room homes along the streets.  Everyone shares public bathroom and showers.  Everyone was very nice, and one man gave us a tour of his house, which was more elaborate than most consisting of three bedrooms and a kitchen/dining room/living room.  The bedrooms were separated from the rest of the house by an open courtyard.

There were 32 people on our tour today with us, so it is a very large group.  I understand tomorrow will bring us about 17 more people, so it should be interesting.  Our guide, Barbara, says today we will see a jade factory, the Great Wall, and an acrobatic show.  Should be a fun time, but we can't wait until we finally fly to get our girl tomorrow.  Can't come soon enough for us!!

Mike and Kelly