First Bath and Leo Bloom's Blue Blanket

Abigail has been down for her morning nap for over 2.5 hours. Larry is passed out with her: they both had a rough night last night.

I really want to organize our stuff into suitcases again for our flight this evening (each time I have to do this, it is harder- apparently our stuff is multiplying), but don't want to make noise and wake them up, but blogging is pretty quiet.

Thanks for all of the advice from everyone on what to do about Abigail not letting us sit down. We appreciated your help, even though it was all variations of "hang in there" while we are dead exhausted and living in a hotel with a sick baby and all we want to do is prove to Abigail that we love her sitting down as well as standing. We still have to stand up most of the time when she is awake, but yesterday she did start to let us play with her while sitting, so that was a start. Maybe she will let us sit and play with her a little more today.

Attached are pics from our first successful bath with Abigail. She was standing in the hotel sink. As Steph pointed out to me, we have no idea what we are doing, and our first attempt at a bath was not successful. Apparently, kids don't like to be in chest-deep, skin-blanching water in a full-sized bathtub. (Larry's idea.) Our second attempt, holding her over the tub while pouring water over her was also a failure. (My idea.) We tried to convince her that we are actually a pretty intelligent duo, but she doesn't believe us.

If anyone has ever seen The Producers (movie or musical or movie musical) you know that there is a scene in which Leo Bloom becomes stressed out and he reaches for his blue blanket, holds it over his nose, and breathes deeply into it. We have discovered that Abigail has taught herself this same stress-relieving technique. When something really stresses her out, often she won't scream (only sitting down makes her scream). Instead, if she is stressed (such as when one of us leaves the room, she is fighting sleep, she dirties her diaper, there are too many people around her, etc.) she holds her blanket over her face and hyperventilates into it until her breathing slows down or the situation is made right again. We think she is an amazing adaptor-- this has to be a behavior she developed at the orphanage. Again, we are impressed at the depth of her intellect, instinct and emotions.

"How is it possible to love someone THIS much?" -- Larry

This will be a quick post, but today was the most incredible day so far! Mostly, the day was indescribable, because Abigail was really interacting with us. Not just letting us change her and feed her and hold her, but really *playing* with us. She started giving hugs, not just hanging onto us for dear life. For example, she was standing on my lap and then suddenly looked into my eyes, smiled, threw her arms around my neck and hugged me and started giggling. It was the best noise in the whole world.

Larry got her to sing this evening. She repeated his "la la la"s in a sort of little song.

Also, she didn't make us stand all day today either. She trusted us enough to let go of our necks and play. For almost an hour, we sat together and played little games. Larry was the silly one who high-fived her, pretended to steal her toy, and tickled her ribs while I was "base" and she giggled and hid in my arms.

We also took her to the park, but since she is still a litte sick, we bundled her up very well and were only out about 20 minutes.

Tomorrow we fly to Guangzhou for a week in tropical paradise.

Happy New Year!

How do the Chinese stay so skinny with so much good food?

When Lar and I went to Japan for a month, we wrote emails to our friends about our experiences, but I was criticized for writing too much about food. If you aren't interested in food, don't read this entry. But it is nearly impossible to go to a country with such a vastly different culture and ignore the importance of interesting and new food and the depth it brings to your experience in that country. When we traveled to Ontario for our anniversary this past summer, we did not write home about the food there because, aside from ice wine and Tim Horton's, there is not a lot of difference. But in Asia, the food is part of the experience. It is a huge part, actually, considering it is something you think about at least 3 times per day.

In response to my title, I know that a typical Chinese person is not wealthy and can't afford to eat the way that Lar and I have been eating on this trip. Also, we are staying in international hotels that have buffets for breakfast that represent food diversity of several continents. (This buffet, BTW, is something that our agency worked into the cost of the trip, which Lar and I are glad about because we would have balked at the price and gone out onto the street to forage for some food from a vendor every morning, but instead, we get to think of it as "free" and really enjoy it.)

Our breakfasts have consisted of fresh squeezed juices, coffee any style (latte, espresso, American, Brazilian, etc), fresh fruit, any type of pastry that you could find in America (hard rolls, toast on 20 different breads, Danish, Chinese donuts- think funnel cake without the powdered sugar, muffins, etc) and bacon and eggs.

But then there are the options for smelly cheeses and cold cuts of meat (European style), yoghurt type something (in the style of Turkish or Greek food), Chinese foods like eggplant, vegetables we don't have in America, familiar fruit and also fruits we don't have in America (like Fire Dragon Fruit- a white kiwi/pineapple thing), and various noodle dishes (my favorite breakfast here).

There are also a variety of soups (including Mutton, which Jim and Steph would enjoy given their love of mutton tacos), fresh made sushi, sashimi (the cuts of fish you can get in Asia put anything we have ever had in America to shame).

Lunches with our tour group have been family style, with 8 or 10 of us passing around bowls of noodles, unidentified meats, soups, rice, and many slimy (but good tasting) green vegetables. Lunches on our own, Lar and I find little shops that serve bentos (bento is the Japanese word for it; I don't know the Chinese word for it) which are small boxes of food with several partitions in them, each partition housing rice or noodles, meat, some type of Chinese style vegetable, and various other things we can't identify but taste new and interesting. One way our lunches fall short of our expectations are that, unlike in Japan where every block had several convenience stores to get take out sushi and bentos, we cannot find any such place here, so everything is a sit-down ordeal.

I'd also like to say a word about snacks in Asia. We experienced this in Japan as well as China, but there are the best snacks here, particularly crackers/cookies. They are not sweet and overloaded with high fructose corn syrup as everything is in America (inconvenient for me since I can't eat HFCS due to a health issue). In Asia, amazing things are done with with sesame seeds, almond flavoring, salt, or maybe a pinch of sugar in small but satisfying portions of individually wrapped crackers.

Bon Appétit

I guess every woman has mother's instincts AND fun on shopping excursion (entry by Larry)

Guest writer Larry here. I had to write about two experiences that I have had here in Zhengzhou.

Back home in the states we have a little dog named Jedi. Sometimes Jedi needs to go outside in the middle of the night or she might get scared as a storm approaches (she is a sissy dog). I would always hear Jedi when she needed help, whether it was a little yip, a bark, or even her sleeping chair creaking as she prepared to jump down from it to come let us know that there is a problem in her world. Erin would always sleep through all of that (and more, including when thunder would make the house shake - "What, it rained last night?") I had assumed that the same situation would play out with Abigail, however here in China there is quite a different story. It seems that having a baby brings out an unknown sonar ability in Erin. We have now had two straight nights where Abigail woke up and Erin heard her and I did not. This morning Erin actually had to wake me up to help her. I didn't know that Erin was up out of bed or that Abigail was awake! I am glad that one of us can hear this little monster when she needs us.

We (the adoption group minus Erin and Abigail) went shopping at the Lotus store the other day. I had a shopping list ready to go and was excited about seeing what the CCAI people deemed the "Chinese Wal-Mart" (there are actual Wal-Marts here in China, but I guess the Chinese don't really like them.) When we went in the CCAI guide told us that the first floor of the building was all little self-owned shops, like a market. The second and third floors were the Lotus store. The second floor was all food and the third floor had everything else (clothes, electronics, sporting goods, etc.) They gave us 1.5 hours to complete our shopping. I thought that was too long as this amount of shopping would take me about 15 minutes back home. I tried to get started on my list and immediately found Abigail's formula. I had assumed that all the baby stuff would be together, but sadly, that was not the case. The formula was at the front of the 2nd floor, the diapers were at the front of the 3rd floor, the pacifier was in the middle of the third floor, and the baby snacks were with the crackers on the 2nd floor. I would never have been able to find all of this stuff without our CCAI guide, Rita. I had to accuse her of slipping a tracking chip onto my shirt somewhere because every time that I felt lost or couldn't find what I wanted Rita would show up next to me out of thin air. She would take me to the zone I needed to be in and then disappear to go help somebody else. I would probably still be shopping now if not for her help. Even with her help it took me 70 minutes to shop, look through the meat and veggie section of the store, and check out. The store was full of people in the veggie and meat section. I was surprised as to how crowded it was, however Yisha, another CCAI guide, later said that she was really happy that the store was empty! I guess it is all relative. The only downside to the store was that I couldn't find any Toppo for snacks for Erin and me (and gifts for some O'Broktas back home) and had to settle for Pocky instead.

Back at the hotel now (at 5:30 AM) we are really happy because Abigail doesn't seem to have anywhere near the runny nose problem that she has had since we got her AND Abigail's digestive system is totally working properly now (she was going #1 fine, but we had to wait a while for #2 to happen). She seems much happier now.

Abigail's Favorite Game: Advice Needed

Abigail has invented a game. Here are the only two rules: if you aren't holding her, you lose and if you sit down, you also lose. Larry said that game is like "Heads I win, Tails you lose."

You don't always have to be moving to win, but you may not sit under any circumstances. For example, you might be standing perfectly still, Abigail over one shoulder, and then slowly try to sit straight down in a tall chair behind you. She screams, you stand back up, and she wins the game.

Luckily there are two of us so we can take turns playing the game. And if she is asleep, you can sometimes not play the game and transfer her to her crib or to the bed. Last night at 3 o'clock AM she wanted to be held while sleeping. I let her sleep on my chest, curled up in a ball, my arm around her. When she was sound asleep, I tried to transfer her ("hug and roll") but she woke up and clung for dear life like a baby monkey to its mother. So I let her sleep on my chest for another hour. When I thought she was sound asleep again, I tried to transfer her to the bed next to me. She woke up a minute later, took matters into her own hands, and crawled up onto my chest again and fell asleep for the rest of the night.

Adoption Finalized (Just in time for this tax year!)

Yesterday I was holding Abigail while brushing my teeth and she wanted to have a toothbrush too. So I gave her the one from the hotel to play with. It is her new favorite toy. We went to the local registration office, where the adoption was finalized and they had to take an "official" picture for their records, and there is Abigail, holding her toothbrush.

Anyhow, here is a picture of the three of us, right after the adoption was made official.

And a picture of Abigail with her toothbrush, just because it is cute.

Attachment Issues and the Grieving Process

We have one really amazing kid here. We love her so much and she wants to trust us, because we are the ones here taking care of her, feeding her, changing her and even sometimes, making her laugh. When we went through our mandated 10 hours of parent classes to be able to adopt from China, we were told that children attach in different ways. Some kids are so neglected in the orphanage that they have already shut down and given up and are very slow to attach. Others, after experiencing the same neglect, realize suddenly that someone will tend to their every need and desire and quickly attach and become clingy. Some kids attach only to mom and others only to dad. This made sense to us. We were also told that kids go through a grieving process when they are adopted. The grieve for the foster home they lost, the birth mom they will never know, the familiarity of their orphanage or for a worker they may have attached to. Larry and I sort of ignored that part of the course, thinking that since Abigail would only be 13 months, she would not be old enough to grieve.

We did not give her enough credit. The depth of her emotion is beyond what we can understand and what she is going through right now is breaking our hearts.

She seems to have attached to both of us pretty well. When one of us is gone from the room, she will often become very stressed out. Larry went through this yesterday when I had to go for an hour to a paperwork meeting. Twenty-four hours of love, attention, and bonding later, Abigail is a very conflicted little girl. Today Larry had to leave for 2.5 hours to run errands. One hour into the separation Abigail became inconsolable. She was in my arms and we were sitting in a chair. She crawled onto her knees on my lap, facing me and began to go through a type of comfort ritual that we have noticed she does when she becomes stressed. She stuffed a corner of her blanket into her mouth and sucked on it, silent tears ran down her face, she started hyperventilating, and buried her face in my chest for about 5 minutes, sobbing silently and sucking on her blanket and gripping my shirt th

e whole time. Then her breath would slow down, she would sit up, look into my eyes, find a dry spot on her blanket, and repeat the process.

This little human being has been through 2 abandonments (as she sees it) so far in her life and seems terrified that it will happen again. We talked to the social worker with us here, worried that something is really wrong with her because all of the other kids are playing on the floor with their new families and our kid can't be out of our arms for 2 seconds. Apparently, this is just another version of "normal", although it seems like the most cruel and heart wrenching thing in the world to us right now. We have no way to tell her "We are never going to abandon you: this is it, Kid, you are stuck with us!" except to just keep holding her, letting the tears fall, and letting her work through it.

Sleeping Monkey

On the first night with Abigail, when she fell asleep Lar said she was a "ticking time bomb" because she would go off in 8 hours and our time to rest would be over. But now that we are a few days into the experience, he doesn't feel that way any more. We love to watch her sleep. Check out the pics to see why.

When she is in her crib, she is like a rolley-polley all over the place with her blanket.

She is also a champion bus-sleeper.

Christmas time in China

Though not a Christian nation, China has been recently embracing the secular side of the Christmas holiday. There is Christmas music playing in stores and hotels and lobbys. There are trees and lights and decorations everywhere. One thing Lar and I both particularly liked was that all of the decorations didn't disappear on December 26th, like they do in America. We both wish that in America the Christmas music and decorations would start a little later (after Thanksgiving) but go until New Year's Day. But in China, everything is still decorated nicely.

One of our favorite decorations is a mounted deer head, as you would see proudly displayed on the wall of a hunter in America. But if you look closely, the deer is actually Rudolph!! As Jim and Steph know, some things don't translate well into Asian culture and I guess this is one of them.

Pictures are of poor Rudolph, Abigail examining some lobby decorations, and of Lar and Abigail in front of the hotel lobby tree. Abigail LOVES the hotel lobby. We hang out there and she looks at all the marble staircases and floors and the 3 story ceilings and the grand piano and the lights and the snow flakes and chandeliers and just stares at it all. We had to explain to her that our house in America is not so fancy!!

OMG!!! We are equal parts "love her to death" and "exhausted"

We are sorry that we haven't posted for a day or two: we got Abigail and we have been quite busy. We are exhausted and we ache - babies are exercise! We were also unaware that new parents do not get to eat, but when presented with the choice between "eat" and "sleep", the latter is chosen.

Here are some details about getting her ("Gotcha Day" in adoption slang) that you may find interesting.

All the families were driven to the registration office and we walked in and some kids were already there waiting to be adopted and their parents were matched with them really quickly. Moms were crying, Dads were crying, newly adopted kids were looking, playing with new presents and the rest of us were snapping pictures of everything. Then the next rush of kids were brought into the room by their orphanage workers. Abigail was among them. We recognized her when she came through the door. She was carried by a young orphanage worker or "nanny". When the nanny handed Abigail over to us, she began to scream. And cry. Huge tears streamed down her face as she reached for her nanny. Lar and I had assumed months ago that when we finally got to hold her for the first time, we would both be crying, but luckily, Abigail took care of that for all three of us. The nanny also handed us a photo album, full of pictures from Abigail's first year! It was so special and not a very usual gift to receive.

The whole time we were at the registration office, whenever Abigail caught sight of her nanny, she would try to throw herself to the ground, climb rock climber style over Larry's shoulder to get to her, reach out to her and wail. It was heartbreaking. And ours was the only kid crying (she is also one of the 2 youngest).

What we found out later, after the nanny left, was that the nanny had loved Abigail so much, she called her "daughter" and Abigail had been calling her "mama" and sometimes the orphanage worker even took her home at night instead of making her stay in the orphanage. She took pictures of her, some in the orphanage, some in her home that we love so much: she is wearing funny costumes, hats, playing on the floor, opening our care packages, celebrating her birthday... this little girl was so very taken care of by this woman and hadn't been just another mouth in a line of cribs to feed on schedule!!! And we couldn't even thank her.

We are very grateful for this attention and love she had in her first year, even though it made our first day(s) together heart wrenching. While other new adoptees are playing on the floor with their parents, toddling down the hall, etc, ours is clinging to us for dear life.

Lar is amazed (as am I) that a 13 month old has such complex emotions. She has already realized that we are here to take care of her and love her, but that means if one of us leaves the room, she screams. She must be scared to death of being "abandoned" again. In addition to this challenge, she has chest congestion and a cough. We took her to the doctor and she is on 2 medicines (we don't know what), but she is not too interested in taking them.

A few pics are posted, but we plan to post many more, as well as a video, as our little monkey gets adjusted and we have more time to do such things. This has already taken 10 minutes of my sleeping time, so good night and happy viewing!

How to flip out a Chinese bell boy and Abigail update

As everyone in America is finishing the last of their Christmas pie, knocking back another eggnog, and my Dad is falling asleep on the couch after sampling Jim and Steph's latest wine, we arrived at Zhengzhou. We love it a million and a half times more than Beijing.

The irritating thing about the Chinese, though, is they love to serve you. I find this inefficient. I want to say "Bell boy, I'll still tip you just to get you out of my way, but I am going to carry my own d*mn bag because I can do it 100 times faster than you." So after we arrived at the hotel, armed with another checklist of things to complete before they hand over our daughter in a few hours and eager to get started, we were at a stand-still because the bell boy hadn't brought up our luggage. It was going on half an hour. So, I found the bell boy on the floor above ours, struggling with the inordinate amount of luggage for the ever-high-maintenance von Trapp family. I gave the bell boy a tip, grabbed our 2 suitcases and began hauling them down the hall. The guy chased after me, calling out in Chinese and trying to help. Then I picked up a 44 pound suitcase in each hand and started down the stairs. I thought he was going to have a heart attack when he saw this (probably because no Chinese woman would sling around 88 pounds of suitcases). He yanked the one out of my hand (breaking the strap) and then carried it the rest of the way to my room, saying "I sorry I sorry I sorry" the whole way. Given the language barrier, I had no way to tell him that he shouldn't be sorry, I wasn't mad at him, I just wanted to get on with my day in an efficient American fashion.

(On a similar note, yesterday Lar had a bathroom attendant follow him to a urinal, tried to help him unzip his pants, brought him an extra roll of toilet paper (I had to check- TP is not something guys usually employ when using a urinal) and got a little too close to the situation, if you know what I mean. Lar was quite shaken up about the "too much service".)

Anyhow, we are in a frenzy to update the final paperwork things and wrap the gifts for the orphanage before we get Abigail. Lar is currently at the bank and left me with some things to take care of in the room, but I figured I could post an entry before he got back and still get my work done here if I hurry.

Part of the final papers we got on her update her info to help us prepare for her drop off in a few hours:
1. she is walking on her own (I am SO upset I missed this part, but it means her orphanage is really good and didn't keep her in a crib all day)
2. she has started on soft solid food (another good sign- some orphanages keep kids on milk for 2 years to save money)
3. she is sleeping through the night (8:30 until 7:00)
4. she loves dolls (Tammy and Judi will be happy to hear this and she'll get her Asian baby as soon as she gets home)
5. (the most fun news) she LOVES little dogs!!!! Jedi will be so pleased.

Pictures coming soon!

Stupid Mongo-ri-ians, they come knock down our wall...

For those of you who are not followers of South Park, the title for this post references an episode in which the City Wok guy complains about the Mongolians breaking down the Great Wall. I'd reference the episode for you in a link or with more detail, but I can't find it right now because the Internet filter in China is more restrictive than the draconian filter in the school district where we work, if any of our colleagues can even believe that! (I am emailing my blog entries to my wonderful brother Jim who is posting them for me, BTW, so a huge thank you goes out to him for doing this!!)

Anyhow, today was the day we got to hike along the Great Wall. It was insanely awesome. Actually, it was so much fun that I didn't even notice how cold it was (18 degrees F) and Larry got so sweaty under all of his layers he spent the rest of the day freezing. He was a good sport about it: every time we got to a new station, I would say "Just one more" and he would oblige. While we hiked, we got a lot of mileage out of the "stupid mongolians" jokes from South Park because our tour guide gave a very long and impassioned speech on the bus as we arrived about how the Mongolians WERE always trying to knock down their wall! (Video forthcoming, MJ.) We hiked to 5 stations and back in the 90 minutes we were allotted and it was the first time we were somewhere that we didn't have to stay with the whole group and go the pace of the slowest person. Lar and I hiked with M, a college student/ brother to adopted girl in our group and had a very pleasant time.

Pics above include Lar and I at the wall, me looking cold but happy, and Lar on patrol spotting in-coming Mongo-ri-ans.

As I send this to Jim to be published, you are all waking up on Christmas morning. We are exhausted, but are finally flying to Abigail's capital city tomorrow (as you are all sitting down to your Christmas dinner). Our "Christmas dinner" this evening was Yaki Tori and sushi.

Tips for future adopting families:

Be prepared for "adoption tourism". It means that you will have several days of being herded like cattle from one souvenir place to another, from one tourist destination to another. It is exhausting. And all you want is to get your kid. You may not interested in going to the Jade Mall to buy a $125,000 USD jade statue of a bull or the silk factory to buy a silk comforter, etc. But be prepared to do it.

She'll see it later, honey, her eyes are frozen

Happy Christmas Eve from China. To all of my family spending time at the old farmhouse in PA: however cold Mom may have set the thermostat, just remember, we are so very much colder! (The "feels like" temperature today was 12. Nope, that is not Celsius.)

Today was spent almost entirely outside. We left the hotel later than expected (after waiting 25 minutes for the ever-self-absorbed von Trapp family) to go to the Forbidden City. The first picture was taken outside the Forbidden City, before the cold really set in. I had 5 layers on my top, but the worst part was my feet: I couldn't feel them after the first hour- just a burning sensation in the general area where my feet are located. After that, we walked (jogged really) through Tiananmen Square to get back to our tour bus.

Then we got to do a quick tour of a silk factory (and gift shop), had lunch in the freezing cold basement of some restaurant, and then had an hour tour through the Hutong. Our tour guide said "If you haven't been to Beijing, then you haven't been to China. If you haven't been to Hutong, then you haven't been to Beijing." While that seems like the logic-statements with which we challenge our geometry students in a lesson on syllogism, it wasn't too remarkable. Think of NYC's Chinatown and then make it older and poorer and put it in Beijing. We got to do this tour in pedicab. (If you look closely at the pic below you will see that my eyes actually were frozen at this point, and it was right before someone spilled tea on me so I had soaking wet jeans while it was 12 degrees.) Larry kept saying "I'm so cold I'm so cold" so that it became a sort of mantra.

For dinner, Larry and I did enjoy some Peking Duck, at Jim's suggestion. It was succulent. Unlike the Christmas Story movie, it was not smiling at us. :)

We don't want to complain or seem like we aren't having fun, but it is indescribably cold and we just want to get our daughter. We do like most of our travel group and they seem just as cold and just as eager to get their kids too. There is a precocious little boy D, and a sweet little girl K who are also excited to be getting their siblings.

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Tips for future adoption travelers:

1. When you bring the electrical converters, be sure that you bring one for your 2 prong devices (such as a man's electric razor) and also for your 3 prong devices (like a laptop). We were lucky that the nice guy working at the desk lent us a 3-prong one or blog entries were going to be short and far-between!

2. When your agency advises "This is an adoption trip not a vacation" and "please be on time" LISTEN TO THEM.

All of the families in our group have to constantly wait for one family: It isn't fair to all of us and it is going to be madness in a few days when there are a dozen babies in the mix. Please BE ON TIME!

3. Our agency said there were "laundry facilities" at the hotel. We thought this meant coin laundry and only took enough clothes for 1/3 of the trip. However, "laundry facilities" means that there is a laundry service at $3 per pair of socks,bra or underwear, $5 per t-shirt, $7 per pair of jeans, etc. You can re-wear jeans and sweaters, but...

We have arrived in Beijing. As we flew in to land, we were on the window side that got to see the whole city. It looked very flat and sprawling at night.
Flight pros: Great "Chinese" food, we slept most of it (Larry thanks Dr. Lenes for that), we met a couple from our home town that are also adopting a kid with us

Flight cons: It took forever to land and get to the gate. We taxied around for so long (28 minutes) that I thought Jim was driving the plane and trying to find a spot to park at Home Depot.

Beijing thoughts: It is decorated for Christmas. More on this later after we spend tomorrow touring.

Tips for other adopting families: Our wonderful agency, CCAI, said a million times to "pack light". They also said this is an "Adoption Trip" not a "Vacation Trip." If you have other kids, please leave them with relatives. We are, very unfortunately, traveling with Family von Trapp who have 4 kids, 9 suitcases, uncountable backpacks and duffle bags, fights with each other, tantrums, etc. We and the other couples are there for the business of adopting our child and do not like the traveling circus we are with. It is unfair to those of us who (A) did pack light and (B) are trying to focus on the adoption of a new child into our families.

In Seattle

We have made it to the Seattle Airport. Our flights so far have been smooth (Xanax helps!!) and we have actually been able to get seats together. The real challenge will be getting seats together on this final 11.5 hour leg to Beijing.

Here is what Idaho looked like from my seat.

Packing, Leaving

We are packing our suitcases. It is difficult to "pack light" when we have to take tons of stuff for the kid, when Beijing is going to be 10F-23F, Zhengzhou is going to be 30F-50F, and Guangzhou is going to be in the 70s.

To make things easier, our good friend Betty came today to pick up our dog Jedi and take her. Betty is going to dog-sit for us and we are very happy for that.

This is our Travel Blog

As we travel to China to get Abigail, this is the page where we will have updates about our experiences. With any luck, we hope to be able to update it from our hotel as there is time and internet access.