handsful

Here we are, posing in front of the Pearl River at our hotel.  We had just come back from the US Consulate office, where we took our official oath…the last stop on this adoption journey.  It is amazing to think back on all the tiny steps that it took to get here.  We are so thankful!!  We leave the hotel tomorrow morning at 5:45 and our flights take us from Guangzhou to Hong Kong to New Jersey, and finally back home to Florida.  We very much appreciate your prayers for safe (and uneventful) travel!

See you in the States!

Does this look comfy to you?  This is Lainey, during her nap yesterday!

Well, we are really down to the wire now, today is our last full day in China.  We have mixed feelings really…VERY anxious to get home to our kids, family, friends, dog, house, my red chair, Randy’s big TV, Mountain Dew, potable water, and drinks with ice!  But, we have found that we do love it here.  The people, especially. Most of them are just as nice as can be. The others don’t really say anything, but don’t exactly smile either :) But, all in all we love these people and will have wonderful memories of living among them for this short while. And, of course, we will be forever indebted to this country for giving us our precious Lainey.  We had to come a long ways to find our daughter, but she couldn’t be more perfect for our family.

Here is the view from our hotel window on this glorious day…blue skys and warm, just a little breeze.  The city goes on and on.

Lucy’s restaurant is a very popular eating place for us mis-placed Westerners. American food!  We’ve been here twice.  We’ve noticed even more of us adoptive families come to Lucy’s near the end of our trip, ready for comfort food.

Donna and Jenn (friend from the CCAIWC yahoo board) and our daughters Lainey and Kenzie at Lucy’s last night. They look a bit suspicious of each other, hmmm??

Randy took this shot from the river side of the hotel last night.  Beautiful!!  See on the far left building, one of the Olympic characters is displayed.

Back to Jordon’s today for our last bit of shopping.  Would you believe Randy is getting into shopping even more than I am??

All the store ladies dote on Lainey, saying how beautiful she is, giving her toys and crackers.  She looks pretty happy to get the attention, huh?

Lainey loves shoes…here we are finding just ONE more pair.

Randy thought you might like a picture of one of the markets on the street here in Guangzhou.  Not sure about the top 2 bins, but the next one is sandworms and the close one is water beetles.  There were also all kinds of fish, silk worms, and snakes. Lunch, anyone?

A shot of the nice sales ladies, wrapping up one of Randy’s chosen treasures.  Pray that it makes it home in one piece.

We must now wake Lainey from her nap (oh no…) so we can board the bus for our oath taking at the US consulate.  We’ll try and post a pic of that later.  Thanks again for all the comments!!!  Hugs and love to all!

Sorry for the lack of post yesterday, we just ran out of time to post.

So, where did I leave off last time?  Red couch photos, right?  The next day was 2/26, Tuesday and the only thing on our agenda was a visit to the Pearl Market in the afternoon.  It was a nice, un-rushed morning, allowing us time to have a Skype computer/video session with our 4 kids back home.  This was the first time that Abbey, Marley, Payton, and Ethan saw Lainey in action and not just asleep in her crib.  It was wonderful, seeing their faces as they saw their baby sister!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We had a very busy day today in Guangzhou!  After another scrumptious breakfast, we headed to the Physical Examination building.

 

More pictures, less words today!  Above was our first glimpse of what a smile from Lainey would look like. This was taken on Wednesday.  You can compare a more recent one down farther in the post…

You know how EVERY packing list mentions bringing stacking cups for your child to play with?  LISTEN TO THEM…they have been her very favorite toy.  Especially the large green one, her most favorite.

See what I mean?  She loves the green one!  This was taken on Thursday.

THIS is a happy girl!  We were playing on the floor, and we could see her changing, becoming more relaxed and happy.  Ahhhh….

Here is a picture of me posing with the news woman from yesterday…She told Randy that he had a very beautiful wife…I like this girl.

1st french fry!  We had stopped at KFC and brought food back to the hotel room to eat after our garden excursion.  She’s checking it out here, but let me just say the girl is gonna love american food…

This was taken on Thursday night, the last day of Chinese New Year.  Oh, and the fireworks started that day at 6AM!  Yes, we awoke to what sounded like gunfire.  Quite a wake-up call.  This is a shot from our hotel room window.

This was taken on Thursday night…now, that’s the true Lainey smile.  Her eyes disappear when she smiles, just like her momma.

No chance she’ll have a bad hair day.  Double brushing is the way to go!

Friday morning…We have breakfast in the hotel dining room everyday, and this is our favorite waitress.  Her name is Kathy (they all take on American names for their work).  She always comes up to Lainey to talk to her, even though Lainey never looks at her…until, that is, Kathy walks away and then she looks at her.  Shy little thing.  Even though Lainey is opening up with us, becoming more comfortable, she is still very reserved with all strangers.  On the first morning we were here, Kathy brought Lainey a small pink rose.  If you’re ever at the Sofitel hotel in Hefei, Anhui, you should find Kathy!

Today, we had our orphanage visit.  It was a 2hr drive there, in a van that sounded as if it had 4 bolts holding it together in the craziest traffic we’ve ever been in.  Oh, and no seatbelts.

This is the orphanage.  It’s new, having been built in August, 2007.  Lainey would have been in the old one for about a year, and here about 6 months.  It also houses a senior citizens hospital.  The orphanage is on the 4th floor.

This is (we’ve been told) Lainey’s favorite nanny, Miss Jun.  She is the head nanny of her room.  If you remember the pictures that we received from another traveling family a while back, it was Jun who was in the pictures with Lainey.  They do rotate nannies every few months, so I’m not sure how long she’d been in Lainey’s room.  They do that, I’m told, so that the children don’t get too attached to a particular nanny.  Lainey was content to be held by several of the nannies, but did not reach out for them.

This was her room.  The bed closest in the picture was Lainey’s and she shared it with the child farthest from the camera.  The other child must be new.  Can you see the ropes that are tied around the children’s waists and tethered to the crib?  They are there to keep them from falling out.  It’s wrapped around their middles, where there is much padded clothes and doesn’t hurt them.  I’m told that they pull out a carpet on the floor during playtime and let them play.  We arrived close to lunch time and they were waiting to be fed.

This was at the end of our visit.  The orphanage director is far left, then Jane our guide, Lainey and I, and a few other nannies coming to see Lainey.  The director is so very nice…we asked if anything was left with Lainey when she was abandoned and she said no, but then went back to a room and came back with a couple of toys that had been in her baby room for us to keep.  How sweet is that?  We brought a special book for the director and her nannies to sign.  Jane has translated these for us, I’ll try and remember to post their sweet wishes for Lainey in another post.

Lainey’s police report said that she was found on Nanhu Road.  The old orphanage was on this road, so we can be just about positive that she was left at the gate, so she would be easily found.  Here we are, in her finding spot.  Yes, Lainey, we’ve found you and we’re never letting go.

A shot of Bengbu city…it’s a very poor town.

On the way home from Bengbu…has a saltine cracker ever made YOU this happy?

Took this from the backseat on our ride home…she’s sitting on Randy’s lap.  I’m sorry, but she’s just beautiful.  We’re biased, we know.

I bet you’d like an explanation for this pic, huh?  Well, today is the day after the last day of the Chinese New Year.  Which makes it the 16th day after CNY began and Jane told us that is a very lucky day to be married. In fact, we must have seen 3 different wedding processions during our drive to and from Bengbu today.  We noticed that they were decorating for a wedding at our hotel this morning, and I told Randy I’d love to see the bride and groom.  When we were headed to the dining room to order dinner, we saw the couple standing at a receiving line just outside of the reception hall.  Randy and I stood way back, out of sight (we thought) and he aimed for a picture.  An official looking guy in a suit with a pink corsage motioned for us to leave. Just then, the groom rushes over and says no, it’s okay and asks us where we’re from.  He then walks us over and poses us with them for a picture!  Randy gave some guy our camera and then cameras started flashing…ours, theirs, the official photographer, etc.  It was amazing and funny at the same time.  I’m sure the bride thought “what in the world is my new husband doing??”. :)

Well, that does a pretty good job of catching you up.  We are in absolute awe of how Lainey is doing, she has blossomed in these last 2 days.  Granted, with the giggles and smiles we’re getting (tons of them, by the way) we’re also seeing a bit more “fits” and anger at times, but we’re learning ways to help her deal with this and know that in time she’ll get a grasp on her emotions.  It’s still so early in her time with us, and we couldn’t be happier with her than we are right now.

In the morning, we head to Guangzhou!

Let me start by saying I have zero pictures to share.  The internet isn’t working well today and not allowing us to download pictures.  We will try again in a few hours and hopefully I can add some pics to this post then.  Once you get past the dissapointment, please read on.

It’s another free day for us in Hefei.  Our guide is taking the other 2 families to visit their daughters orphanage, so we’ve had nothing scheduled today.  We went to the hotel dining area for breakfast, like we’ve done every morning since we’ve been here.  The ladies know us well by now, seat us in the same area and then rush about to find us a high chair.  The breakfast here is good, lots of choices…some western (bacon, poached eggs, cereals, lots of breads and pastries) and lots of Chinese (fried rice, noodles, and many unidentifiable selections….such as “grow eggs”).  Lainey’s breakfast includes banana bread, fried rice, mandarin oranges, congee with oatmeal, and bites of daddy’s poached egg.  My favorite is the sugared donuts.  And, this sort of cheerio-like cereal that’s denser and has a brown sugar taste to it.

After breakfast, we went upstairs for some play time and a diaper change and then we headed to a garden that’s a short distance from our hotel.  We borrowed a stroller, which Lainey wasn’t thrilled with at first, but she finally settled in (it helped that she had a cracker in both hands).  Our guide told us that we would attract a lot of attention here in Hefei, as there just aren’t foreigners here.  Hefei isn’t exactly a tourist trap.  Everyone looks at us, all in friendly curiosity.  They look at us, and then down to Lainey.  Hmmm…American couple, Chinese baby.  We’re supposed to wear our CCAI lanyards that explain in Chinese “our names are…we’re here to adopt this child, etc.”  We forgot them today.  There was a very nice young man who we ended up walking beside, and he desperately wanted to talk with us but knew no English at all.  We were able to fumble ourselves around explaining that we were Americans and Randy tried to introduce himself.  We think he told us his name too, but we’re not sure.  We THINK he went by Ping Liang, or something similar.  We’d love to be able to talk more with the people here, they are so nice.  With all the attention, I joked with Randy today that this must be a little what it feels like to be a celebrity.  I can honestly say I’ve never turned heads at a KFC until today when the WHOLE restaurant turned to watch us as we walked up to the counter.  (Yes, there is a KFC here, right beside the Lotus Center…does it taste like KFC?  Not exactly, it was spicier and the potatoes had more pepper.  We are pretty sure it was chicken. :)

While at the garden, we saw several small groups of children who were obviously at the park on sort of a “field trip”.  Lots of boys and only a few girls, which only makes sense with the way their population control works.  We also saw a very attractive newswoman and her camera man looking for a story at the park . . . apparently we were her best option.  She came up and asked Randy, through pretty broken English, who we were, where we were from, why we were at the park, etc.  Then she asked if he could do the interview again on camera.  Who were we to say “no”?  We didn’t read in our CCAI guide book that it would be bad to wind up on the 6:30 news, so I hope that was o.k.

After exploring the garden (not sure why it’s called that, I saw no evidence of anything living…though, everything here is dead either from the weather or the polution – could be both), we went back to the Lotus Center for more bread (PB&J in the hotel is becoming a staple meal for us) and a few more items.  We attracted more attention there too.  Randy loves waving at the teenagers, and he had this group of girls giggling their heads off.  Michael Jordan and Tom Cruise, all wrapped up in one guy.  He might decide to live here.

Back at the hotel, we ate lunch and put Lainey down for a nap.  She fought this one hard, but we think it’s because she was off schedule due to our lazy outing today.  She’s snoozing away now.

Let me back up to the playtime after breakfast today.  Lainey made some MAJOR strides in warming up and letting her guard down today.  She had much better explorative play…checking out more toys, crawling after toys, throwing them under her crib, climbing under to get them, etc.  She decided today was the day to start walking, too, and when we put on her coat to go get breakfast (it’s always quite cold in the lobby), she stood up and quickly walked to the door.  Unreal.  Oh, and did I mention we got MAJOR smiles today?!  Real, honest to goodness smiles.  Her whole face lights up.  Oh….and she LAUGHED!  A short giggle, as I was playing with her.  We are beside ourselves with joy and thankfulness to see this true side of our daughter. We were a little down yesterday, and boy did today make up for that.

Tomorrow, we leave at 8:30 for our visit to the orphanage.  We’re both excited and a little apprehensive about it.  We realize it will be hard seeing where she spent the first part of her life, not to mention seeing all the little ones still waiting for their chance.  We would appreciate prayers…and we are still amazed and humbled by the comments and prayers that are being said for us.  We feel very covered by you!