The White Swan, Guangzhou

We LOVE LOVE LOVE Guangzhou. The 3rd largest city in China, it is warm, clean, you can walk everywhere, there is a variety of food and the Pearl River runs through here. Right by our hotel looks like The Point at Three Rivers in Pittsburgh. It is just beautiful and warm here. If anyone is interested in a south-east Asian vacation, I would suggest this as a city you see.

Our hotel is super nice. Again, we had to remind Abigail that our home isn't as fancy- we don't have a 3-story Christmas tree, a 3-story waterfall, ancient bonsai trees, a koi pond or an aviary in our lobby (nor do we have a lobby!), and our house is not made of marble. But it will do for now! (Jim, Steph, and Dad- it really reminds me of the Budget Inn we stayed in on night 3 (in Hancock) of our bike trip from Pittsburgh to DC last summer!)

There are also lots of places to buy things, both real quality things and cheap imitation things and also places to get laundry done (which we really need at this point in the trip).

See the attached pics of the White Swan and Guangzhou.

Abigail Health Update

We are now in Guangzhou, the most fabulous city on Earth we have been to besides NYC. It is tropical and beautiful.

Anyhow, this is just a quick post to tell you that Abigail had her immigration physical today.

Her lip and palate are completely repaired, although some of her teeth didn't come in on the top where the cleft was.

She is also 18.6 pounds and 30 inches!!

Baby Bird's First Flight

Above: When we thought baby bird would sleep the whole time.

Below Right: Abigail and Larry waiting to go through security

Below Left: We put the baby in charge of carrying the passports for the three of us. She did a great job. We should have given her more responsibility because on the plane we lost that darling little red hat from Norma K that she has been wearing in all of the pictures!!

In addition to calling Abigail "little monkey" we sometimes call her "baby bird" because of the way she tilts her head back and opens and closes her mouth for you to put food into it. (And btw Jim, what is Big Bird's real name?) Anyhow, last night was her first ride on an airplane. The first 20 minutes were good- she had a bottle and fell asleep. We patted ourselves on the back for being such great parents and thought the rest of the flight would be no problem. Then she woke up and we played "try to entertain an exhausted 14 month old for 70 minutes on a plane". How are we ever going to make it 17.5 hours in the air from Hong Kong to Detroit?!?!?!

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.