Saturday and Sunday

Let's face it. You're just here for the pictures. I could tell you the places that we visited on Saturday and Sunday, and you'd just scan it and get to the pictures. So, I'll just throw in a few lines as we go.

The first picture is for my Phoebe girl. For those who can't see it, the bear says "I love my sister". P has a bear like this at home, too. We took a picture of her with it and we're showing it to Josie every day.
Josie with her toys.
The next few pics are from Saturday at the Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall. Revolutionary leader. Pretty gardens. The whole place smells like flowers. Very nice.


Saturday night we were approached by a university student. We assumed she wanted to practice her English. She asked why we were in China and we told her we were adopting J. She got a bit verklempt. She asked if she could take "moving pictures" of us. We found out she and a couple of other students were sent out by their teacher with a camera and told to find a story. They interviewed us about adopting from China. They had NEVER HEARD of people coming to China to adopt babies. As we walked with them toward our hotel, they kept seeing more and more families and saying "there's another one!"
Sunday we went to the zoo. It was a bit rainy, but that just made it a little cooler than it has been for the past few days.
This picture is for Tate. He told me to be sure to look for pandas in China and take pictures of them. Here you go buddy. He wasn't drinking out of the water fountain though. He was just resting.

Josie seems to be doing really well. She makes all kinds of noises. Guess I'll be the only quiet one in the family. Unlike most babies her age, she doesn't put anything in her mouth. Well, besides her fingers and her bottle. We can't get her to eat any baby food off of a spoon, or any other way. So, it goes into the bottle too. We are only giving her a little. The last couple of days she's spit up a few times. Today we decided to not spike her bottle with fruit, etc. and see if that helped. We'll get there. We can work on eating from a spoon when we get home.

The girl LOVES being on the bus, unlike a lot of the other babies. She just stares out the window the whole time and bounces and hits the window with her hands. The highlight of my day on Saturday was when we were on the bus on the way to the memorial. She actually leaned over, while looking out the window, and started sucking on my arm. This is the first thing she's put her mouth on. Later in the day, she actually picked up her soft rattle and put it on her mouth, but not in it. We're not sure why she has this aversion. Our guide suggested to another family whose child is the same way that maybe the orphanage wouldn't let her put things in her mouth.

She is sleeping well. The first few days, she slept for 11 hours each night. Then, Thursday night and Friday night she woke up several times. A lady in our travel group said she'd heard that was normal. Apparently, after the babies start getting used to the new parents and bonding with them, they wake up in the middle of the night to make sure they are still there. I guess I can't get too cranky about that. [Wouldn't you know it, as soon as I started typing about J being a good sleeper, she woke up about an hour early from her afternoon nap! Oh well. Guess we'll go wander around.]

Our Days Thursday and Friday

On Thursday, we went to the Chen Family Temple. It was once a place where all members of the Chen clan went to pray to their ancestors. It then became a school, and is now a folk art museum.

This is the entrance to the temple.

Dad and J just inside the doors. She slept through most of the tour.
This is a panel of embroidery. You can see it's multiple layers of translucent fabric. I really want to find a small panel of fish embroidery. There is also one in the hotel that is transparent fabric, so you can look at the embroidery from both sides. Where do they hide their knots?
Dad and J watching a puppet show. The sign out front said "Approaching Puppet". It kind of seemed like a warning. We assume they meant something like "the puppets are coming." Which also seems kind of ominous.

One of the lion statues outside the gate. The lion has a ball in its mouth representing a pearl. This is done to stop the river from flooding.

After our tour of the temple, we went shopping at a place that had jade, pearls, embroidery and other things. We picked up a few gifts for J and others.

On Thursday we went to Six Banyan Tree Temple. This is an active Buddhist temple. We couldn't take pictures inside the building, but you can see the giant Buddhas through the doorways.

We were among some of the families who took their babies inside the temple for a blessing from a monk. We did it to honor part of her culture and to allow her culture to wish a happy life for her. Incense and sprinkled water - just like home. Here's a pic of J with her head still moist from the sprinkling. She slept through that, too.

After our tour, we went to a "toy market". It was a 6 floor building full of everything under the sun, not just toys. I was looking for a baby doll for J to play with that looks like her. Oddly, I didn't find anything. Plenty of blond haired, blue eyed dolls, though.

Here we are back at the hotel after a long day. J is practicing standing with Dad's help.

Josie In Action

This is what we saw before we went to bed Thursday night and wanted to share it with you. Before you play the video, go down to the bottom of the blog page and pause the music.

Our Day Wednesday - It's Official

On Wednesday, we had a couple of outings.

In the morning, we went to a supermarket to buy things for J, like baby food and such. It was quite an experience. It was like Wal-Mart on steroids. It was (at least) 3 floors. They had what was basically a combination moving sidewalk/escalator between floors so we could take our carts from floor to floor. We didn't venture too far into the "butchery" section (sorry Sam), but we did see tanks and tanks of fish just waiting to be pulled out and, uh, sent home in a bag. But not in a nice "I just got a new goldfish" kind of way. Hey, at least it's fresh, right? Very fresh.

While we were waiting for our bus to take us back to the hotel after shopping, an elderly woman approached our group and asked questions. She told us, through our guide, that we have generous hearts and thanked us and bowed. She said she was 83 and used to teach kindergarten. She would like to adopt, too, but said she was too old. It was actually a very touching experience.
I love how this picture shows her (in the middle) in motion bowing and the rest of the people still. The baby in the foreground is not Josie, but the other girl from the same orphanage as J.

In the afternoon, we went by the Civil Affairs office, but only our guide went in. When she came back, she said, "Congratulations. You are all officially your baby's parents" and passed out the official, Chinese adoption certificate. After we left the Civil Affairs building, we went to a police bureau to have Josie's passport photo taken. And with that, our appointments on the Chinese side of things were completed.

And now the payoff for reading through the whole post:

I think this girl is figuring out that she quite likes being held. And we are perfectly happy to oblige her.

Our Day on Tuesday

Monday night, we put Josie to bed about 9pm. We had to wake her up at 8am Tuesday.

Yesterday morning, we went back to the Civil Affairs office to get a family picture taken and to have interviews saying that yes we wanted to adopt Josie and that we would never torture or abandon her. Here are some pictures of our day :

Sleeping J

Eating breakfast. The way the orphanage told us to make the bottle is with formula and rice cereal and very hot. She sucked down the bottle in no time, so I guess I made it well enough.
Back at Civil Affairs with Dad. She fell asleep shortly after this.
Hanging with mom at Civil Affairs. She loves the carrier. Thanks Sarah.

Bath time! Oh my gosh. She loved her bath. She splashed and splashed and got water everywhere. It was great.

More Pictures

These are more pictures from yesterday when we got Josie. We have taken more pictures today, but they are not on the computer yet. Hope these will tide you over until those are downloaded.

Toys come and go, but the lid rocks.

I don't know if you can tell, but in the pictures where it looks like she's sucking her thumb, it's actually her thumb AND index finger.

Our Time at the Civil Affairs Office

Yesterday afternoon was amazing. We all left the hotel about 3:30.

We arrived at the building and waited in a hallway until it was our time to go in. We went into the waiting room, and there were other families in another room who had already met their babies. I figured we'd be going into that room after they came out.

Nope. We received our babies in the waiting room. I think we were the last group of the day. It was so amazing. Watching the people we've become friends with over the last few days receive their girls. We were 6th to receive our baby. We all traded videotaping and taking pictures for each other.

The room was pretty hot. Josie, even though she was dressed lighter than most, was so sweaty. When she cried her face just got even redder.

We were able to talk to the caretakers about her. I gave one of them the book that I purchased that had all of the questions in Chinese and English. I'd circled about 20, but was planning to just point out 5 or 6 for her to answer. She answered all of them. I need to translate them, but our guide Rui is going to do that for me.

We got back to the hotel and had dinner in our room. Josie fell asleep around 9pm and she is still asleep now at 6:50am. I think there may be some trauma and tears when she wakes up and sees that she's still with these strangers.

And now, more pics from yesterday:

Anticipation:
Joy:
Tears:

More tears:

Calm:

Wonder:

The Moment We've All Been Waiting For

She's Wonderful! She's Beautiful!

She cried a little bit but seems to be doing well and loves being outside.

We'll post more later but wanted to get the first pictures up.

Wandering Around Shamian Island

This afternoon, we went for a foot massage. Well, not just a foot massage, they also massaged our backs while our feet were soaking. It was the perfect thing to do the day after climbing the Wall. And after traveling for so many hours.

It's nice to be here at the White Swan, because we know we don't have to pack up and go anywhere for 13 days. We can settle in.

We just had dinner here at the hotel at a Japanese restaurant. It was quite tasty. We've come back to the room to watch the Spanish F1 Grand Prix. When we walked in, I said to A, "You know, there's going to be a baby in here tomorrow night." He said, "Yeah, that'll be different."

I know I keep repeating this, but I can't believe we're finally here. Whew.

I know everyone wants to see pics of us holding Josie. So do I. I can't wait to post them.

Tick, tock.

The Swan Has Landed

It's about 1:30 pm. We've just arrived at the White Swan. The photo problem appears to be the card and not the camera, so that's something. We put the card into another family's camera and it didn't read it either. So, we still don't know if the pictures are retrievable, but hopefully if we get a new card, we won't have problems.

MIL suggested buying a camera so there are no regrets. Sounds good to me, don't know if A's wild about the idea.

The Fuji is working:

Aren't we cute. A got a bit of sun yesterday. One of these days we're going to learn to apply sunscreen when we're going to be wandering around outside for hours.

Apparently, the Fuji was taking blurry pictures because it needed batteries? Even though there was no "low battery" indicator? OK.

So, we leave to get the babies in about 26.5 hours. What to do until then...

Stare at this in the floor of my room?

Uh. Hope she can't crawl?

Touring Beijing

Hey, that's quite a picture of Tian An Men Square, huh? Can you see it? No?

Hmmmm. Maybe that's because our camera is having fits. We took about 150 pics around Tian An Men Square and the Forbidden City today. On the way to the Great Wall, our camera started flashing some code that made us believe it just needed to be charged. We bought a disposable camera at the Great Wall and snapped several pictures there. When we returned to the hotel, we discovered that the code the camera was flashing means that the card is not formatted. Huh? It's been working fine and then it just decided it didn't recognize the card.

So, I really hope the pics are still on the card and can be retrieved. Right now we have no way of knowing for sure.

The upside, if there is one, is that at least we aren't talking about "Josie Day' pictures. I would be...I don't even know how to describe how I'd feel if we lost pictures from the moment we become a family. This, of course, does make me nervous that it could happen again on Josie Day, but we'll figure something out. We do have the other, smaller camera, but it was having problems focusing at the airport last night. Then again, so was I. A put new batteries in that camera and it seems to be working just fine.

Anyhoo, our tours today were wonderful. They are refurbishing parts of the Forbidden City in preparation for the Olympics next year, so the big hall in the middle of the grounds that's always used in the movies was covered by netting. Oh well.

We climbed pretty far up the Great Wall. Far enough to get a certificate saying we climbed the Great Wall. That was cool.

Hopefully we'll get the camera situation straightened out and I won't have to start cussing. I'm really praying that God will take an interest in this little technology glitch and decide on some divine intervention.

I'm exhausted, and must get in bed. We get up at 5am to fly to Guangzhou. Luckily, most of the day is free and I can get a nap if I need to.

Phoebe: Hope you're having fun. We miss you and love you. It was nice to talk to you for a little bit this morning. Hugs and Kisses.

Beijing!

We're here in our room at the Poly Plaza. It is 11pm. We are getting up at 7 tomorrow to begin our big tour day. We'll leave the hotel at 8:30 and return at 6. THAT's how you see the Great Wall, Tian An Men Square and The Forbidden City all in one day.

Sunday, apparently, we are leaving the hotel at 6am to catch our flight to Guangzhou. Not much to do once we get there, I guess, but shop for Josie and Phoebe.

We met Krysta and Jason at the airport. Their flight arrived about 30 minutes after ours, so we were all on the same trip from the airport to the hotel. I had mentioned Krysta to others traveling with us, and they asked if I'd ever met her before. Well, not exactly. We've just been emailing for the past 2 years and have talked on the phone 2 or 3 times. Does that count? She was surprised we were still at the airport. It was nice to get to have the time to chat on the way back to the hotel. Our 2 travel groups will be touring together tomorrow, so we'll get that time to hang out as well.

It is so surreal being here. It's kind of strange. I just look around and think, "OK, Beijing. We're actually in Beijing." I can't believe it. It's almost like an out of body experience and I'm just watching.

Time for bed to get some much needed rest. It's going to be a long, fun day tomorrow.

Phoebe: I can't wait to talk to you. We should be able to call tomorrow. We love you.

Almost There

We're almost there. We are currently in the Tokyo airport. Our plane landed about an hour ago. Our flight to Beijing leaves in just over 3 hours.

It's 12:45 am at home, and it's 2:45 pm here. The flight over was pretty uneventful, except for the lady next to me knocking her glass to the ground leaving broken glass everywhere and water somehow in my seat under me. I was sleeping until then. Ah well.

Business class was nice. I think it was probably best to have that on the way here. I guess we'll still try for the upgrade on the way back, but it almost seems like coach, with an empty seat next to us, would be more space for the 3 of us.

A family in our travel group, who is also from Dallas, was on our flight and will be on our flight to Beijing. It's nice to have already met someone that we'll be spending the next 2 weeks with. Their daughter's first birthday was yesterday, May 10. We may have to have a belated birthday celebration sometime next week.

I'm off to check out the Admiral's Club showers. Yeah, we got lucky with those upgrades. Not only did we have nice seats on the plane, they also got us into the Admiral's Club.

Phoebe: We know you are having a good time with GrandNan. Enjoy your weekend. We love you very much.

Four and a Half Hours

We set our alarms for 6am. I'm not sure why.

We both woke up a little after 4. Now, we're kinda just killing time.

P is still asleep. She'll be going to the airport with us. At first, we were going to have a friend take us to the airport and let MIL take P to school. Then we found out the friend would have to do some juggling to get her own kids to school, and A suggested that maybe it'd be OK for our kindergartner to be a few minutes late to school. That sounded great to me.

We're all packed except for things we need to use this morning. We managed to be able to use our airline miles to upgrade to business for the flight out this morning. It doesn't look like we'll be able to do that coming back, but I'm sure everything will work out fine.

I can't believe this day has finally come. We'll be landing in Beijing in about 27 hours. Wow. Maybe I shouldn't have actually written that. That seems like a lot of traveling.

I'll try to post when we are in our room. What a day this will be. I'm pretty relaxed. More than I expected. Must be all the prayer. Keep it up.

See you in Beijing.

ONE DAY!

I just had to come look at my blog today so I could see the ticker up at the top say "1 day".

Am I ready? Yep. Uh. Yes. Definitely yes.

Of course we need to finish up the packing. If I could just stop buying things to pack, I'd finish much more quickly. Oh, and I need to scrub the floors, and trim the dog's nails, and....

OK, kidding. Allen said this morning that I didn't have anything else to do today but finish packing, so it must be so.

And I got an early Mother's Day present from Sweet P this morning. Oh, yeah Sunday IS Mother's Day, isn't it?

I can't believe we are finally here. It is just unbelievable.

The Rising Moon

My friend Sarah sent me this today. It seems to be tear-inducing wherever it goes. Just be aware.

The Rising Moon

As the moon begins to rise
I catch a glimpse of almond eyes
Staring back from outer space
The moon reflects your loving face.

My heart begins to yearn for you
A love down deep that grows so true
I see the moon throughout the night
My dreams of you are taking flight.

So when you look upon the moon
Please know that we will be there soon
I pray reflected in its light
Will be our love for you this night.

The moon must now complete its course
Let’s not regret and show remorse
It soon will rise and start anew
Reflecting love meant just for you.

Tom Fisher

I Am Overwhelmed

No, not by packing. Not by the things left to do here at home before we leave.

I am overwhelmed by my church family. Unlike last week, we went to church today. We are so surrounded by love at our church.

I've actually heard people say they don't get "warm fuzzies" at our church.

Well first of all, my main reason for going to church isn't "warm fuzzies". But, that's a whole other, non-adoption related post. But, I must say I am overwhelmed by the amount of love that our church family has for us.

I had so many people tell me today that we are in their prayers daily and will be during our trip. I've jokingly told them to pray for my stomach, because I think the butterflies are doing backflips.

I've gotten hugs and kisses and so many expressions of boundless joy, I'm quite humbled and overwhelmed.

I know this trip will go smoothly. I know we will be surrounded by prayer and love for the entire time. I know there are so many people sending prayers up to heaven on our behalf that God may be overwhelmed by the love, too.