Sleeping

And finally the promised sleeping with Dad photo. It really has been a long day and now that I've finished this up, I've got to get some rest and with any luck at all Julia will sleep in at least a little bit in the morning.

He's waited so long for this....

Hunan Countryside

The country has a completely different look and feel than any of the cities, and I mean this on more than a level of difference between rural or cities back home. The differences here seem even more pronounced.

Either way the view from the bus was beautiful. I'll also add a photo of our show off playing with Ms. Donna at the back of the bus! She's got personality this child of mine!

I forgot to mention that it seems like pretty much anything with wheels is allowed on the roads here and we've seen some truly different uses for vehicles here than I've ever seen anywhere. We were moving too fast to get many pictures of that, but trust me when I say it was completely different!

Zhuzhou SWI steps, gate and outside of the building...

These will give you an idea of the size of the SWI. You'll notice that it looks very different once you are through the gate and looking directly at the buildings. Most things feel crowded here at least in the cities. The country side is another story all together. I'll post a few pics of the bus ride from Changsha to Zhuzhou next.

More Pictures from Zhuzhou

As you can see all of the caregivers on her floor were very happy to see us. I also added pics of the different play areas.

Zhuzhou SWI

We visited Julia's orphange this morning. It's taken me all day to be able to write about it, one because it was hard, and also because even before we left today Julia was very clingy to Mama all day. And even when I thought she was asleep for the night she woke as soon as I started to type, but Daddy finally got her to settle for him tonight and now they are both passed out on the bed. Too sweet. He'll kill me for posting this picture but I just have to, even more so because she was so clingy to me all day. Not that she doesn't love Daddy too, he is the only other person she will willingly go to besides me, she just prefers to have me in sight the whole time if she can. She fell asleep on the bus on the way to Zhuzhou, so she woke happy and refreshed by the time we got there. Isn't she beautiful when she's sleeping?? of course, we think she's beautiful all of the time, she's just extra sweet when she's asleep:)

We debated back and forth a lot before taking her back to the orphanage today and I know it was hard, but I am very glad we went. Her caregivers very obviously loved her and it was so good to see that. We saw the bed she slept in and found out that one of the other babies in our group slept next to her! We could tell she recognized her nannies, but she did not want to go to any of them at first. She'd smile for them and laugh with them, and put her head back on Mama's shoulder so I would venture to say that the bonding process is going well. She did eventually go to a couple of her nannies and give some hugs and kisses, she loves to cuddle by the way! We saw some of the play rooms and like I said where she slept.

The SWI (social welfare institute) was very large and we only saw a small piece of it. They also have a little store set up where they sell items made by the special needs children, we bought several items for Julia to have later on. These are probably the most special things we have gotten on our trip so far. The money goes back into the special needs program at her SWI. I am grateful for the way the CCAA referral program works. We never would have been able to walk in there and pick out a child to take home . They were all beautiful and it was a very emotional day.

Our initial letter from the director of the SWI said that Julia was found on the steps of the orphanage, we are not sure if this is accurate or not as it didn't seem like they would have been able to get past the gate. But either way we have pictures of the steps and the gate area.

*Edited to say that Mama must have been extremely tired at this point, our letter from Zhuzhou actually says that Julia was left by the gate, so it's good that we took pictures of it, as it really was her finding spot! Just goes to show how easy it is to get the details confused. :)

Embroidery Factory

As I mentioned we also went to the embroidery factory yesterday. Hunan is very famous for it's embroidery and they do "double sided embroidery" here. It's truly amazing. On one side is a tiger and on the other is a panda! The detail work is incredible. I'll post just a few examples.

Adventures in China

Well everyone I only have a minute, Julia is playing with her little drum I bought her at Walmart and Ray is fixing her lunch. But I just had to take a second and tell you of our adventures this afternoon.

We started with the embroidery factory and then to Walmart. Well the Walmart they wanted to take us to would have taken too long, so Peter wanted to wait until tomorrow, we said we'd go to the old one, didn't matter to us! So to Walmart we went. We had an hour. So we all rushed through looking for the baby department, baby food, etc...you get the picture. When our hour is up we met Peter and he tells us that he's treating us to McDonalds change in the schedule....GREAT!!!! So there we are all enjoying Mickey D's....Julia fell asleep about 10 minutes into Walmart and didn't wake up until we left. So she slept through her first McDonald's trip.

Then we had to take strollers down the escalator...fun. Ray is very good at that and took a trip back up to help Gloria out. I tried but it was moving too fast. LOL. It was at this point that we find out we are NOT getting back on our bus where we had left all of our stuff! Apparently our driver had parked illegally, lost his license and our bus was TOWED!!!! So this is when Peter tells us we need about 10yuan to take a taxi back to the hotel! It was hysterical....you really need to see how people drive here to understand what an adventure this really is. I'm convinced that the lanes are "really more like guidelines" There is no rhyme or reason to traffic what so ever!!!! Very scary!!! Fortunately it was like a 10 minute ride if that and our driver got us here safely. And Peter had our stuff off of the bus and returned to us within minutes of getting back to our rooms.

I guess that's what we get for being so very american and wanting to go to Walmart! LOL. Well I need to help Ray with lunch, though he seems to have a very good handle on things. :)

I'll try to post more pictures later tonight after she's gone to bed.

Finally getting a chance to add some photos. The McDonald's is the one we had lunch at and I posted the pictures of the street to give you an idea of how wide they are and yet people are still constantly in competition for space! It's amazing.

More Pictures I hope!


Here are a few more pictures from Family Day, I honestly can not tell if any of the Civil Affairs Office published or not. But these ones are from last evening as Julia was settling in with Daddy too, too touching and playing on the floor before we went down for dinner.

She does have her two bottom teeth and the two top ones coming in as well! Grandma she is in size 12 months exactly right now! I think she is taller than they told us, she is the tallest in the group I think, except for maybe Hannah who is about 6 weeks older.

Her favorite toys so far are her compact and cell phone rattle from Grammy Hall and the peek a boo blocks I bought her. She is getting upset now so I need to close this out as quickly as possible I'll write when I can!

FAMILY DAY!!!!!

We are a family at last! I'm sorry I couldn't post yesterday things were very hectic and it was a draining but very happy day:) And we were having trouble getting online at this hotel but it's up and running now. It seems like pictures are posting only when they feel like it but I will try to publish them too!

We landed in Changsha around 2 yesterday afternoon and came to the hotel to freshen up, get our things in order and at 3:45 we were off to the Civil Affairs Office to pick up our babies! You can imagine the excitement on the bus.

When we walked into the office we were NOT expecting the babies to be in the room waiting for us but there they were!!! It was a whirlwind of 15 minutes of all of us getting our babies and babies crying, mommies crying and daddy's taking pictures! And then it was back on the bus with them and back to the hotel! Seriously it was that fast. LOL

Julia cried right at first but she settled right in with Mom very quickly and was very quiet on the ride home. She still doesn't like Mama out of her sight very much at all. Daddy took a bit longer but she came around okay. We feel more blessed than I could ever put into words! She is the playful baby of my dream back in January. There is no question. She loves Mama's laugh and responds with one of her own. She is a very good eater and so is definitely the right child for Daddy!

She is on Amoxicillin for a sore throat and some congestion but it doesn't seem to be affecting her very much at all. She is a very happy baby. She loves to play, and she slept from 8 last night to 7 this morning and had a 3 hour nap this afternoon, so in this respect is definitely the right baby for Mama! :)

I'm going to try one more time to put pictures on this, could someone PLEASE email and let me know if they are working or not? Our cell phone has not worked here in China despite Verizon adding the service but we are going to Walmart tomorrow and we'll get a calling card to call the grandparents!

Bejing Day 2

Our second day in Beijing included the Great Wall, the Jade factory, lunch at the Cloisonne factory, a Hutong Tour taken by "rickshaws" finally a short break at the hotel and then a walk to dinner. The rest of the night was spent organizing and repacking and with me getting up early to update you all on here. :) It's okay "I'm too excited to sleep!" We leave in a couple of hours and head to Changsha! I'm not sure how these pictures are coming out or even if some of them published at all, but I'm trying. Trust me we have many more pictures but they load very slowly so I'm only putting about 5 per blog on the website. Once we get home I'll put them all online and let you all catch up!

Summer Palace

We also went to the Summer Palace our first afternoon. I knew there was more walking, as all I could think of every time Tom wanted to get us moving was "and we're walking".....probably the exhaustion kicking in there. At least it was a few degrees cooler out at the Summer Palace thanks to the lake. It was very pretty there.


And yes, we tried the duck! Each meal is an adventure and Ray has become the group guinea pig since he'll try anything, though there's no guarentee that even after he's tried the dish that the rest of us will!