handsful

I figured I’d give Donna a break and post some stuff for her today.  For the first time since arriving in China, we actually have a day with no tours, no trips to the CCAA, no sightseeing…just a day hanging out with my two girls here in Hefei.

I have to start with something for my boys, tho . . . your dad found a game of pickup basketball yesterday outside the market, and Jane (our guide) asked them if I could play.  It was awesome.  I finally understand what Shaquille feels like on a basketball court.  Quite a crowd gathered to watch the crazy American playing basketball with the local guys.

 

Our guide said I looked like Michael Jordan…this place is good for my ego.

No harm, no foul.

I think they all wanted to see me dunk the ball.  They were going to be waiting a LONG time.

Selling produce outside the market.  It looks good, but I’m leary of trying it.  See the weight on the end of her stick that she uses to weigh the produce?  High tech.

Below is a good picture of the hotel where we are staying in Hefei.  It’s a very nice, 5 star place, but I would avoid the Brazilian BBQ place in the lobby.  Way too confusing sitting in a hotel in China, eating chinese “bar-be-que”, listening to Latin pop music with video screens of women wearing wayyyy to little clothes jumping around on stage.

This is a picture of an arena across the street from the Lotus Center where they play soccer.  Notice how pretty the blue sky is?  Neither do we.  Jane said that the pollution only clears up enough to see the sky maybe 2-3 days in a week.  The air is really getting to me, too, and my sinuses and chest are killing me.  We purchased some Chinese prescription cough syrup at the market . . . only cost 8 Yuan (~ 10 cents), tastes horrible, and I have NO IDEA what’s in it.  Seems to be helping, tho.

O.k…enough about me and Hefei.  I know you just want to see pictures of Lainey.  She is still doing great and more of her personality is beginning to come out.  Most of it is anger, however, if you change something or do something different.  That child has a temper.  She is still not using words, but Donna and I think that might be because of her palate.  As severe as it is (we finally got a good glimpse, when she was on her back and crying), she may not yet have learned how to talk.  We’ll find out about that when we visit the orphanage on Friday.  We are also struggling to figure out exactly how much to feed the girl . . . she eats like a steam shovel.  We decided this morning at breakfast to just let her eat until she was done.  Today is the first day that she’s actually stopped eating on her own.  Wow.

Looking at the family book with Baba.

Walking with Mama, being held in the carrier.  She leaned back the whole time so she could look around . . . the girl wants to check things out.  Or, she’s wary of getting too close just yet. 

Is that a smile?  Below Lainey is chilling after a huge breakfast.

Thanks again for all your thoughts, prayers, and comments.  Makes it seem like we are not so far away.

Things we’re learning about Lainey…

* She seems to like us evenly, not preferring one over the other, at this point.

* She eats as much as we give her and gets upset when the meal is over.

* We haven’t found a food that she doesn’t like yet…her staples are rice, congee (picture a watery rice soup), and egg custard.  We found out today that she loves banana and bread.

* If we give her a cracker to eat, she savors it…taking as long as possible and as many bites as possible to make it last.  She will eat the cracker faster if she sees more food is coming.

* She doesn’t like the stroller, but does fine in the Ergo carrier…though, she leans away from me rather than hugging towards me. 

* Her favorite toys are harder objects…the musical cell phone, stacking cups, and (still) her hairbrush.  She wants nothing to do with stuffed animals or blankets.

* She has a temper.  If something happens that she doesn’t like (for instance, if you take something out of her hand), she will cry and either throw the thing she may be holding and/or arch her back.  We can only imagine the frustration she must be feeling, with her world turned upside down.

* When she gets upset, she makes a kind of hum or sigh over and over…she’s obviously learned to do this in order to try and comfort herself when there was no one else around to do it.  Again, sad.

* She loves TV.  We’ve shown her a couple of Baby Einstein DVDs from Randy’s Ipod and she’s mesmerized. Yep, she’ll fit right in.

* She sticks her tongue out quite a bit…just like her big brother Ethan does when he plays basketball ;)

More later, after Randy downloads the rest of the days pictures.

She’s ours.  We had our official appointment at the CCAA today, all the paperwork was signed and stamped, and the gifts given.  She’s our daughter. :)

No time for a long post right now, I’ll try and do that later.  For now, a few pics…

Posing with the Bengbu orphanage director…she is very nice and we will get to see her on Friday when we visit the orphanage!

From yesterday…

Our guide, Jane, and the physician helping make the red footprint stamp on her paperwork.

Gee, my hair smells terrific!

I like my stacking cups!

Nighttime snuggle with Baba

Eating a cheerio and watching Baby Einstein…happy girl

I’ll post more later, right now we’re headed to the Lotus Center (a.k.a. China’s version of Walmart) for supplies.

Thanks for the all the wonderful comments, they are giving us strength…we feel covered in prayer!!

She’s here!  We are truly blessed, and so thankful to our God for Lainey.  Here is how this morning unfolded…

We left the hotel about 9:15, arriving at the CCAA offices about 9:35.  We unloaded and stepped into the very cold (they don’t heat the buildings much at all) lobby and stood, waiting for the elevator.  Suddenly, our guide announces “here is the baby from Bengbu”.  What?  We turn to look at the door and there they are…a  couple of women and girls and a nanny holding a very bundled up Lainey.  Randy starts scrambling for his camera and thankfully, another dad in our group takes pictures for us. 

Lainey with one of her nannies, Song.  She’s telling Lainey “mama” “baba” and I’m holding her hand.

We all load onto the elevator…how weird it felt to be in the same elevator as our daughter that we just met and not be holding her!  We go to the office where all the other families (there were 5 total) were meeting their daughters.  We put our things down and then walk up to Song and Lainey.  After a few minutes of Song telling her it’s okay and nudging her towards me, the hand-off is made.

Baba gets a turn, too.  Notice the very tight lipped expression?  She kept it the whole time in the office.

Forever Family

Prior to this picture, the nanny had come up and given Lainey a small piece of hard candy (yep, hard candy for a 19 month old?) and she kept it sitting in her mouth the whole time, not sucking it, just drooling candy juice :)

After a few minutes and a diaper change, we were all back in the van and on the way back to the hotel.

I gave her this ball on the van, and she held it very tightly.  She still has the candy in her mouth.  A few minutes later, she decides to take the candy out with her fingers so I grab it gently with a tissue.  She didn’t like this idea of mine, and she started to softly cry, so we gave her a Gerber puff.  She again, just held it in her mouth and whimpered a little for the rest of the ride home, once or twice putting her head on my shoulder.  Loved that.  She’s wearing Abbey’s old winter hat.

Back in the hotel room, still clutching that ball.  Notice her mouth isn’t clenched so tightly here.

We took off her jacket (her red outfit has the 2008 Beijing Olympic figures on it) and gave her a phone with lights and sounds.  It instantly became her favorite, and she began to become so much more relaxed and comfortable.  I go to our guide’s room to do a bit of paperwork and leave daddy in charge.  Well, after I take a few pics of them together.

Randy offers her a cookie…

I think she likes it!  She savored it, taking very, very tiny bites around the edges and finally giving in to putting the last crumb in. 

Very first reading of Pat the Bunny!  The guide has told us to keep our room fairly warm, because she’s so used to being bundled up.  Randy, therefore, is sweating.  We’ll have to find a happy medium there!

She’s becoming even more comfortable, and starts taking some walks around the room.  Notice the split pants?  These are very common in China for all babies/toddlers…usually there are no undies or diaper underneath so the child can just squat and go when needed.

First meal with mama.  Our guide helped us order her lunch…rice and egg.  The rice was plain, but the egg looked like a solid scrambled piece, sort of like custard, heavily soaked in soy sauce.  Randy tried it and wasn’t impressed.  She, however, loved it.  She’s taking water from a special bottle that we have to basically squirt into her mouth (since she can’t suck with her cleft).  Notice the ice-breaking phone is right there.

Tummy full…time for a nap.  She went down easily, no fussing.  Just laid where we put her and eventually closed her eyes. 

It’s 2:20 here and she’s been asleep for an hour.  The pediatrician comes to see her at 3:30 to give her a quick check up.  We hear some congestion, so we’ll see what the doctor says.  The rest of our day is free, to continue getting to know Miss Lainey.  We’re calling her what the orphanage called her, QingQing, for now and will slowly add Lainey as the days go by.  We had envisioned all the different ways this day could go, and I don’t think ANY of them went this well.  Lainey is taking food from us, playing with her toys, making eye contact, and went to sleep very easily.

God is very good.

First, a few pics from our last night in Beijing…

Happy Year of the Rat! This display was set up on the Walking Street last night, as we were on our way to dinner.  Quite an interesting photo op, huh??

Here is Randy with Karen…her and her husband Bruce are adopting an adorable little boy named Micah tomorrow!  The guy in the middle?  He was pacing back and forth in front of a dept store when we decided to nab him for a picture.  See the eyes in the mask!?

On to today…

We arrived in Hefei, Anhui today at about 12:30.  There are two other families staying with us, also adopting from Anhui.  Above is us, our guide Jane, and Joe and Tammy.  The other family adopting with us is arriving tonight.

This is what we saw when we opened our hotel room…

The hotel staff also delivered a stroller to us today.  Jane, our guide, gave us a bag of formula that Lainey is used to, along with a bag of rice cereal that the nannies routinely add to the bottle.

All ready for her.  The panda bear is a gift that our agency’s founders, Josh and Lily, sent to us…our guide gave it to us today.  Lainey will love it (and so will her sisters!).

We leave tomorrow at 9am for the registration office, where the orphanage director and nannies will bring Lainey.  It will take us about 30 minutes to get there.  Randy and I had a wonderful dinner at the hotel tonight (this is a beautiful hotel!), where we reminisced about these last 2 years, preparing for this day.  We have lots of emotions, but mostly are just excited to finally meet our daughter and new sister to Abbey, Marley, Payton, and Ethan.  Big day tomorrow!  We will post pictures just as soon as we can!

Our tour guide had another PACKED day for us on Saturday . . . we decided that it’s her job to keep us so busy that we don’t realize how tired we are.  The day started with a drive out into the suburbs of Beijing (about 80km out of town).  First stop was Long Di Superior Jade Gallery, where we got to watch them carving jade and learned how to tell real jade from imitation plastic or glass.  The person below is carving a “Family Ball”, with multiple spheres representing 3 generations, all carved from a single piece of jade.

This is our bus driver in Beijing, “Master John”.  Lisa told us they call him “Master” because he is the best driver in Beijing.

Our second stop today was at (drum roll) . . . the Great Wall.  Wow.  This is one of those situations where pictures just don’t do justice.  It is simply an astounding structure, and after climbing up and down just a portion of it, I just can’t grasp how hard it must have been to build.  Here we are at the bottom of a mountain that the Wall climbs.  And yes, it was COLD.

It may not look it from this picture, but that is one long, steep climb.  The steps are all completely random, with some being a couple of feet tall and some only a couple of inches.  Only a few people in our group went all the way to the top, and naturally Randy had to be one of them . . . about a 2 hour hike.  By the end he was worn out and sweating, carrying his coat and sweatshirt, and wearing only a t-shirt and his jeans.

Check out the flags at the base of this section of the wall.  The wind was really gusting.  The picture below shows another section of the wall from high up on the mountain.

Donna on the wall, and Randy at the top.  Woo hoo !

After working our way back down the wall to the bus, and after a handful or two of Advil, we went to get lunch at a local restaurant.  It was a very nice place located in the back of a Cloisonne manufacturer, so we took some time to check it out.  Cloisonne is one of the traditional crafts of Beijing, dating back ~ 500 years, and the process involves making objects out of copper and then covering them with enamel.  Basically.

Here is a vase getting painted, and then another getting fired.  I hope you like these pictures . . . while we were taking these, the bus almost pulled off without us.  That would have been interesting.

The next stop were the Ming Tombs, a place where 13 of the emperors from the Ming Dynasty were buried (along with their concubines).  We were told that they selected this site because it has good “fung shui”, allowing the expired emperors to be at harmony with nature in their tombs.  And we have been told, by several people now, that “If you believe in fung shui it works, and if you don’t believe in fung shui it still works”.

See how “harmonious” this guy looks?

There is a walkway at the Ming Tombs lined with carvings of soldiers, animals, and dragons.  Donna made a new, big, friend.

This was the last “tour” of the day.  We left the tombs and headed back to the city, but instead of coming straight back Lisa had Master John drive the bus past the new Olympic Village and the new facility they built to hold the opening Ceremony . . . they call it the “Birds Nest”.  Wonder why?

A few interesting tidbits we have picked up on over the past two days:

– Street vendors are EVERYWHERE in Beijing, and they are very persistent when the see a group of foreigners.  If you do actually stop to talk to one, at least 2-3 more will flock around you like pigeons who have caught a glimpse of bread crumbs.

– You really have to be careful walking around in the city, especially when crossing the streets.  There is an obvious order of importance and priority, and it is directly related to size.  Buses don’t slow down for anyone.  Then cars, scooters, rickshaws, bikes, and lastly pedistrians.

– Most all of the people in Beijing who do not want to live in the old courtyards style housing move out into high rise apartments, and they are EVERYWHERE.  There are a couple of pictures of them below.

Well, that’s about it for today.  After a pretty good dinner of Peking Duck at a local restaurant (yes, Donna ate duck), we had to spend some time getting “re-packed”.  We are getting up early tomorrow and will be on the bus by 8:00AM to head back to the airport.  Flying to Hefei on Sunday and spending most of the time once we arrive getting things ready for Lainey.  Hard to believe we are only a couple of days and one more flight away from our daughter.  Thanks again for all your thoughts and prayers!

* I wanted to add a note that I (Randy) wrote the notes for todays excursions, while my wife caught up on some sleep.  Didn’t want Donna to get accused of any misspelled words or anything like that.  She is going to get twitchy giving up control of her website . . . LOL.

View from our hotel room window.

CCAI has an ingenius way of helping their families get over jet lag.  They keep them running all over town!We had a wonderful day, full of so many things.  Buckle up, I’m going to tell you all about them :)

We met our awesome CCAI guide, Lisa, in the lobby at 9am.  We boarded our private bus and drove to our first stop, Tiananmen Square. This is the largest city center square in the world…it can hold more than 1,000,000 people.  Yep, one million!  Today, it was full of tourists, mostly Chinese people from other parts of China.  We attracted quite a bit of attention, with some of the locals asking to have their pictures taken with us (especially the 2 adorable little blond-haired boys that are with us!).  We had a photographer take a group picture of us, in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace (the building with Chairman Mao’s picture on it).  Here we are posing with the big guy…

Countdown to the Olympics, to begin 08/08/08 – They picked that date as the number 8 is a good number in China.

Next, we started walking toward the Forbidden City.  This is the largest and best preserved imperial palace in the world.  It has many, many palaces with a total of 9,999 rooms.  9 is a very lucky number in China.  We are learning that pretty much everything . . . numbers, animals, symbols, etc, has a meaning over here.  Our guide told us that if you slept in each room from the day you were born, you’d be 27 years old before you’d have to repeat rooms.  Wow.  This is a picture of the emperor’s chair, in his inner court.  We had to walk through 5 gates and courtyards to finally reach this.

If ya’ gotta go, it might as well be in a 4 star rated toilet.  That’s what the sign said…they lied.

Our guide arranged for us to have lunch in an authentic Chinese restaurant downtown.  For those of you concerned that I might starve over here, let me just say that it was…good!  Honest!  Here is a shot from the balcony facing away from the room where we ate and looking down into the bottom of the restaurant.  They still have their Chinese New Year decorations up, it was gorgeous.

The silk factory tour was next.  We were walked through by one of the employees, and she explained every step in making silk and even had us participate in some things (I helped stretch a batting of silk!). Here they are, doing the stretching. They stretch the silk onto the table below, making layers and layers and layers until they have it thick enough to make the silk batting for the blanket.

After making a few purchases at the silk factory (fun!), we were given a rickshaw tour of a Hutong village.

Hutong means “small street or lane between two courtyards”.  It is a neighborhood where all the small homes have their own courtyards, there are no private bathrooms (they use public bathrooms in the neighborhood), and they heat their homes with a special type of coal brick.  We have felt the cold in Beijing . . . walking to the restroom at night could get VERY inconvenient.  That is the main reason why most of the “young” people move out of the Hutong’s and into high-rise apartments.

The highlight of this tour was meeting a retired couple and being invited into their home to meet them and see their living conditions.  Mrs. Tu and Mr. Wu asked us into their living room and we talked and asked questions through the guide. Their home consists of a living room, bedroom, storage room, and kitchen.  It was tiny, but warm and they are truly happy.  I was thrilled to have my picture taken with Mrs. Tu.

This is outside their home…notice the Mickey and Minney CNY decorations still up :)

Men, playing some unknown game on a Friday afternoon

Our day ended with an acrobat show at 5:15.  It was amazing, but most of us at this point were basically trying to stay awake!

We were on our own for dinner tonight, so Randy and a few of the others walked up to McDonald’s to pick up dinner and bring it back to the hotel.  Randy said the hamburger had a very spicy taste to it, very different than US McD’s.  And, rather than pickles on the burgers they put cucumbers.  Abbey, you’d love that!

Tomorrow, we go to the Great Wall…can’t wait for that, even though the high temp for tomorrow is 35.  It was just under 40 today.  Yes, we were cold!!  We also visit the Sacred Way, which is part of the Ming tombs.  Only about 2 1/2 days till Lainey!