Ni Hao from the South of China

We made it to Guangzhou, where we spend our final week.  Getting through the Lanzhou airport and onto the plane with 4 kids was quite a, um, new experience for us.  The smallest one has decided that she is very comfortable with us now, let us finally put her down, and hasn't stopped since.  I'm not kidding.  I remarked to Nathan yesterday that I think this little girl is our boy (even moreso than Camille is!).  She has realized that she has freedom now and is using her boundless energy to explore every single inch of her world.  I love it.  The baby Bjorn carrier has become nothing but a useless appendage these past couple of days.  When I try to put her in it, she uses her legs to stand up against my body and halfway launches herself out.  Stop laughing.

Yesterday was her first flight and she hates flying like her Mommy does.  She was terrified during take off (as I always am!) and screamed herself to sleep finally.  I felt so bad for her.  I read this book called "Room" about a year ago about a little boy who was captive in a room until he was five or six.  The author did a great job researching sensory issues because she included vivid details about the boy's first sensory experiences with things we take for granted everyday: stairs, new foods, etc and how disorienting they can be when introduced later in life and all at once.  I'm sure this is exactly what Tallulah is going through right now.  She's lived almost 2 years in a crib.  That would do a number on anyone's head, but for a baby who really needs all that sensory input, it can leave them with lifelong sensory problems.  For the most part, she has fully embraced new sensory experiences, but some things still really scare her.  Like the feeling of being in an airplane. 

First flight, post scream fest.  The guy next to her was stoked, I'm sure.

But we made it.  And it was all worth it.  When we walked through the doors of the Garden Hotel and smelled the fresh flowers and saw all the glistening surfaces (ok, they may not have been glistening, that could've been the tears of joy in my eyes), I turned around to Regina, another travel partner and said, "Do you miss the Zugong Hotel yet?"  She said, "Wow, you don't realize how bad it was until you're out of there, do you?"  Well said, my friend.  I couldn't agree more.  I've stayed at my fair share of not so nice places (hostels) (tents) (ok the tent was once, but once was enough) and I can put on my big girl panties when I need to, but when you are on a trip as exhausting as this one, it really is nice to be pampered a little bit.  Tallulah was pretty nervous for the first few hours we were here as expected, but she got comfortable quickly and is now unstoppable.  Again.  :)

Watch out world!  Here I come!

Poor Gianna wasn't feeling so well on the plane either.  When we got in the van to come to the hotel, she started looking a little green.  When she announced she was going to puke, I quickly dumped the contents of the bottle warming bag and it got one final use.  When we got to the hotel, Nathan spent some quality time with the toilet too.  All I have to say is, if they were going to get sick, here is a nice place to recover.  So we skipped dinner with our group last night, went to bed early and everyone woke up feeling better today.     

Tallulah had medical exam required for her US immigrant visa this morning.  When we had Evie's 3 years ago, it was in a tiny, cramped, old, HOT building.  And all the kids had to get 7 or 8 shots back then.  This wreaked havoc on their underweight, malnourished, sick bodies.  When we got home, I wrote a long letter to my agency about it and apparently, so did a lot of other families.  So now, we can sign a waiver to waive the vaccines here and just promise to do them once we get to the US.  So thankfully, all the babies were spared that horrible ordeal this time.  The medical exam is also now done in a new, clean, air conditioned building.  It was so nice and relaxing, I kept waiting for someone to come around and take my drink order or maybe feed me grapes off the vine.  It took about an hour and we were done.

 

This was in the lobby of the medical exam building for parents whose children did not do so well. 

 

 

We only have one more appointment left on Tuesday where we have to go to the US consulate and swear her in as a US citizen.  Other than that, we are free to sightsee and just relax.  The weather is warm, the beds are soft(er), our hair no longer smells like "an old lady's dried up diaper" after our showers (eloquent and accurate phrase courtesy of my aunt), and Guangzhou has tons to see and do.  I'm looking forward to spending our last week here in this beautiful city.

 

Leaving Lanzhou

We leave early tomorrow for Guangzhou, and I'm high on cold meds, so just a quick (likely incoherent) post with pictures tonight.

Today was another great day of progress.  Tallulah had more smiles than tears.  Her crazy sisters start their morning entertainment session for her at breakfast, and it sets the mood for the whole day.  She is completely in love with all of them.

 

I'm cautiously optimistic that we've turned the corner with her, though it seems impossible for it to have happened so fast.  We went to Water Wheel Park today on the Yellow River, full of...water wheels.  They use them to irrigate farmland in the summer time.  It was a nice walk alongside the river.

                                    

 

Some weird guy keeps photobombing all our pictures (see right side).  We plan to alert authorities if it happens again.

 

The Yellow River, which appears in need of renaming

 

With "Sally", whom we adore

 

After the Water Wheel Park, we went to a little flea market full of lots of cool local trinkets.

 

 

I love the red lanterns hung everywhere

 

I could watch this guy write calligraphy for hours.  He gave Gianna's hair a "thumbs up".

 

Ok, I need to write about the food here so I never forget.  It's freaking delicious.  Everything is very fresh, with tons of fresh herbs and spices.  I didn't do a lot of eating out on Evie's adoption trip because I was afraid of getting sick since I was the only adult here.  But since we've got four adults this time, I'm trying everything in sight!  Sally has taken us to a few places to eat showcasing local foods and every single thing has been delicious.  A crowd favorite so far has been one of Lanzhou's local specialties: Beef Noodle Soup.  Sounds about as boring as a peanut butter sandwich, right?  But it's SOOOOO good.  Sally told us it's the local specialty because it combines the 3 local cultures in one bowl: Tibetan yak meat, Chinese wheat, and Muslim recipe for noodles.  It's made to order with fresh, hand-stretched noodles, then you add vinegar and a chili oil that also has other herbs and spices in it.  Nathan, the girls and I have had it everyday for breakfast.  When I have to go home and eat cereal for breakfast, I may lose the will to live. 

 

 

 

Lanzhou's cuisine gets five stars from me.  I will seriously miss it and wish I'd taken more photos of local vendors with their food.  However, their accomodations leave something(s) to be desired.  I already detailed the smell of the shower water.  The beds here are also something I won't be sad to leave behind.  We all think the "mattresses" are actually made of plywood with only this 1/4" thick pad on the top.

 

 

The other day, we were sitting in the room watching the cranes outside across the street construct a new high rise.  One of them was lowering a large square item.  Melonie (one of our travel partners) asked innocently (and perhaps deliriously after several nights of no sleep), "Hey, is that a mattress?"  My aunt said, "WHAT?!  A mattress?!  Where?!?", as we started looking out the window to see it.  We all busted up laughing, realizing that it could only be a mirage, much like an oasis in a desert.  Surely, no mattress could actually exist in this city because if one did, I would have sniffed it out and paid any amount of money for it by now.

 

Alright, one funny then I'm off to bed to have nightmares about our flights during what little dozing time my slab of plywood actually affords me.  Tonight, Camille was in the shower talking to herself and said, "I am washing my arms, my belly, (etc etc) because I want to be all fresh and clean for the airport.  I'm about sick of all these people here touching me and I need to wash their germs off."  We didn't have the heart to tell her that Guangzhou has 10 times the population of Lanzhou, so she's about to get 10 times more people wanting to caress her hair and face and hold her hands.

 

The last night in the province is always bittersweet for me.  It's one more step closer to home and to getting on with living our lives together as a family of six.  But it's also very sad to be leaving the place and people our daughter came from, not knowing if and when we'll ever be back. 

 

Goodbye Lanzhou and Gansu Province.  Despite being so large and populated, you have an amazing sense of community and togetherness that I'll always remember.  Thank you for sharing your city, your people, and your Beef Noodle Soup with us.  We are so grateful and humbled to be taking the absolute best part home forever.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Life in the Fast Lane

Today was another pretty great day for Tallulah. 

I woke up sick (think I caught Gianna's cold), so I stayed in bed this morning for a few hours.  But Nathan said she did well at breakfast and had a great time playing with the girls.  I could hear them all laughing like crazy out in the hallway.  The first couple of times she tried to laugh yesterday, it was almost a grunting sound.  It was like she didn't know what to do with that feeling and hadn't done a whole lot of laughing before.  Mei did the same thing.  And if anyone remembers when we adopted Camille, she also did the same thing.  I don't think there's a whole lot to laugh at in an orphanage and so these kids just don't really know what to do at first when they feel that sensation to laugh.  But, as we all know, Camille now has the most robust laugh in the Northern Hemisphere, and Tallulah is well on her way to perfecting hers as well.

In the afternoon, I was feeling a little better, so we all went for a walk to Lanzhou University.  It was very...brown.  This place is just so dry and arid.  I'm sure spring and summer look a little different but for now, it's kind of dismal.  But it was nice to go for a walk on the grounds since there were no cars and the kids could just run around.  Tallulah LOVED it.  She was smiling, laughing and kicking her legs the whole time.  I thought she might burst out of that Bjorn.  She loves to point to things and for me to tell her the name.  Today, she loved the trees.  We pointed to lots of trees and touched them.

 

 

After our walk, we just decided to make life easy and order room service.  The items on the menu were hilarious, but this one was the best.  Grandmother Drunk Fish?  Maybe tomorrow.

 



 

A few more details about her:  She is TEENY TINY.  They say the camera adds 10 pounds, and that is certainly the case for her. Seeing her pictures before we got her, she looked great, so I couldn't fathom that she was only 16 pounds.  But she really is just a miniature little thing.  The size 12 month clothes seem to fit best.  And none of the shoes I brought fit.  The smallest size 3 falls off, so my aunt and uncle had to go buy her some that fit.  She totally loves them by the way.  She's an accessory girl.

Evie used to be our tiny girl, but she looks so big now.

She's adjusting really well for the most part.  She slept through the night last night up until about 5am, then I just held her so she could doze for another hour.  She seems to really hate our hotel room though.  She has a great time when we go out or play in another room or the forbidden hallway, but coming back into our room makes her brow furrow and her eyes well up every time.  I remember this with Evie.  I think that all the trauma happened in the hotel room, so it's just a bad association.  Things got better with Evie and the hotel room when we went to Guangzhou, and I'm sure it will be the same with Tallulah.

The biggest issue we have right now is her eating.  The funny part is that I was most worried about bottle feeding, but she's got that down no problem.  Her reports from the orphanage indicated that she ate all kinds of solid foods and she seems to want to eat them, but when we try to give them to her, she chokes a lot, scaring the heck out of her and us!  (However, strangely, she can manage Cheerios and Gerber Puffs with no problems.)  She seems to dislike purees, period.  When I try to feed them to her, she looks at me like, "Are you kidding?  I am NOT a baby!"  I think we've devised a decent method of giving her teeny bites followed by a sip of liquid to help get it down, but that takes so long, I seriously doubt she would ever get enough calories even if we fed her all day long.  If any of you reading have cleft-affected kids, I'm all eyes for advice.  It's really kind of stressing me out.  I've checked out the inside of her mouth and the roof is...well....missing.  Clefts come in various sizes and hers seems really huge to me.  I have NO idea how these kids have survived this long in the conditions they have.  It's really a miracle.

I know you are concerned about my child's bowel health, so let me share with you that the other issue we are having is massive diaper blow outs.  I'm really hoping we aren't dealing with a parasite here.  But everyday at around 2pm, she has a huge movement.  I've ended up throwing away the outfits every time because it's that bad.  I think we're going to have to go to the store and buy her some cheap 2pm pants because I don't want to keep tossing all her cute stuff.

Camille and Evie are doing better with her now that she's coming out of her shell more and being playful.  The both love to try to make her laugh.  She has definitely become a Daddy's girl...she loves being held and snuggled by Nathan.  Last night, he left to take some clothes to the laundry place and she freaked out!  Gianna and Evie are both definitely Mommy's girls, and Camille is both, so it was time to try to even the score.

 

 

I hope reading about our wild adventures today didn't leave you too exhausted.  Good night from Lanzhou.

 



Zoo Day

Today was a great day of progress for Tallulah!  She had some rough spots, but overall, she had a pretty good day.

We have actually finished all the legal business we need to do in Lanzhou (we are just now waiting for her passport to come in on Thursday before we can leave).  So today was a free day.  Our guide gave us some choices of things to do in the city and we chose to go to the zoo.  It is in the middle of the city up a hillside, so our driver dropped us off at the bottom and we walked up.

Last time we were here, the Chinese stared a lot at us, wanted to take pictures with us and definitely wanted to fondle Gianna's hair.  Here, all of the above happens, but on a larger scale.  I think they see very few foreigners here.  Today we found out if we stayed in one spot too long, it was hard to move again because a large crowd gathered around us quickly--pointing, taking pictures, shouting loudly to their friends to come over and look at the freak show of Americans adopting Chinese babies with visible special needs.  At one point on our walk to the zoo, we had stopped to fix a buckle on the stroller.  When we looked up, we were surrounded by at least 50 people.  I'm not kidding.  It was actually kind of scary.  They were all talking to us in Chinese and kindly pointing out that Tallulah had something wrong with her lip in case we hadn't noticed yet.  Sally told us that they were saying that we had big hearts and were thanking us for adopting these children.  But who knows if that's actually the case.  Somehow we freed ourselves from our fans on the red carpet without having to sign any autographs and made it to the zoo.  We learned to keep moving.

Some shots of our pretty walk up to the zoo:

 

Me taking a picture of a man taking a picture of us:

 

I loved this carving.

 

The zoo had a lot of animals--giraffes, white tigers, zebras, pandas, an angry elephant, etc--but was pretty depressing.  The animal habitats looked more like prisons.  I'll post a couple of pictures so you can share in my sadness for those poor animals.  I would've actually hated the place if...

Tallulah didn't have the BEST time of her life EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I was actually anticipating her to just nap in the Bjorn while we walked or at best, feign mild interest while being force fed Cheerios.  But she LOVED it.  Every time we walked up to an animal's cage, we would point it out to her.  She would look at the animal, look at me, look at the animal, and then look at me with her huge eyes that very clearly said, "Are you KIDDING me?!?!  This thing EXISTS?!?!?!?"  She would then get the biggest smile as she watched the animal move around.  By the end of the trip, she was laughing and waving at the animals.  I have never, ever seen a child enjoy an experience more than this one today.  We may have missed many of her "firsts", but we got to be with her for the First Zoo Visit, and it was the best.  I can't wait to take her to the Safari Park in Guangzhou where she can actually feed and touch the animals! 

Gianna taking a picture of the white tigers (see the prison-like setting referred to above)

 

What is that?

 

You're telling me that's real?

 

Oh my gosh...I LOVE it!

 

Wait...what about that?  That can't be real, right?

 

It is?!??!  I love life on the outside!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

One of the things on Evie's bucket list:  Seeing a panda in China

 

I'm adorable.

 

These two wanted to hold hands.  So precious.

 

A few photos of our walk back from the zoo:

 

There was a lot for sale on the walkway, but I was very impressed with this guy's colorful display he brought on his bike:

Despite being dehydrated and swollen as hell from all the sodium and MSG, Sally offered to take us out for another amazing lunch and we said yes.  Afterward, we just came back to the hotel.  I have a shameful little secret to confess:  We have been inadvertently perpetuating stereotypes of Americans here in China these past couple of days.   It started so innocently.  Our rooms here at the hotel are sweltering hot (and we've been told the A/C doesn't work--you may remember the various ills the Chinese believe A/C causes).  So we have all just started gathering in the hallway outside our rooms because it has better ventilation and it appears there is no one else on this floor.  So, it started with a little hallway gathering, talking and laughing.  My Californian kids, naturally, were scantily clad to the point of felony by Chinese standards (shorts and tshirts, no shoes or socks) (ok, sometimes no shorts) (or tshirts) (whatever, it's hot and no one else is here on this floor).  Today, we took it to a new level by pulling the kids' toys into the hallway to play together, poured some wine for the grown ups and my aunt had the guts (that the rest of us wish we'd had) to pull a chair up outside her door.  Ok...here's the visual:

 

 

All we needed were a few crushed beer cans strewn about, the men to be in wife beaters and maybe some Nascar gear to solidify any American stereotype out there.  Thankfully, one of the hotel staff was looking out for us.  She approached our group and asked, "What is going on?  And why is this chair out here?"  We know that she wasn't really disgusted and was just trying to help us maintain a reputable name here in Lanzhou.  So we shamefully gathered our belongings and took up residence in Frank and Meri's room.  We are deeply regretful and promise to never do it again.

 

A couple random cute shots:

 

 

Tallulah finally showing us she can stand and Mei smiling adorably at her

 

 

Gianna perfecting Peek A Boo



Tune in tomorrow for the next installment!