Category: Adoption

If you are looking for photos, go to the post before this 🙂

Wedensday started with Nadia getting up at 10 pm, 12 am and 4 am. This appears to be a routine she likes. Get some food and some play and make sure that we are still here. She went back to sleep after the 4 am feeding and then got back up around 7 am. The plans for the day included a half day tour of the Teng Wen Pavillion. We barely had time to grab some food off the breakfast buffet before we had to get on the bus. All the babies in the group appeared to be doing well and ready for adventure.

We took the bus over to the pavillion and worked our way up the steps (there were a lot of them) and took an elevator to the top floor to watch a traditional Chinese show. The girls from the performance were out front and you could pay 10 yuan for a photo with them. We got a pretty good shot which in included in the slideshow. The show was very cool and Mike got some great video, but this cheap little laptop doesn’t play it very well, so we will put those up when we get home. Nadia didn’t really like the music, I don’t know if it was too loud or too high pitched, but I missed most of the show to keep her in the back away from the speakers.

After the show we walked down one level and were able to go outside around the edges and the view of Nanchang was so great. The pavillion faces the river and you could see all the ships going past and a bunch of skyscrapers on the other side of the river. Mike got some great shots from up there. It was very hot and it was really nice to be up at the top with breeze blowing. I had Nadia in the carrier and she promptly fell asleep. We did some more sightseeing and then worked our way down the steps. It was really beautiful there, but so darn hot for the babies, especially in the carriers.

We walked over to a traditional Chinese Nanchang restaurant and the food was FANTASTIC. Once again we were able to eat for about $5 a person and once again I got sick about 12 hours later. So we have decided that the spices in Nanchang disagree with me. Mike says he could eat that food all the time. The pepper beef has been his favorite at each restaurant. One of the grandma’s on the trip is Chinese and lives in Hong Kong and she told me that Nanchang food is hard on a lot of people and that I should stick with things that I know until we move on to GZ. She is originally from a village outside GZ and she said the food should be easier to eat there. Yeah for instant oatmeal and Wonderbars!!!

Back on the bus and to the hotel with all the hot and tired babies for nap time. (Okay, it was nap time for all the parents too) Once we woke up it was play time again. Yeah for cute babies! Nadia likes to check up out and make sure we are around still. When one of us holds her, she looks for the other one and tried to watch what they are doing. It’s really cute. Nadia’s dresses were going to be ready at 4 pm and our guide said he would take Mike on the hunt for a computer and as soon as Mike got his shoes on Nadia tried to go to him. It was the first time she reached out to either of us and we both teared up. This was when we really felt that she thinks, “They are MINE!”

Nadia and I made the trip to Tiffanies to pick up the dresses and to buy more cookies and water at the grocery store while Mike was on the adventrue of his life in “real” China, not adoption tour group China. (the wafer cookies here RULE and they come in all these crazy flavors like Cantelope and stuff) YUM! I also picked up more Diet Coke from Tiffani. She said that it’s not really popular with the Chinese, so it’s hard to find at the regular stores. I dropped off a bag of baby clothes with Tiffani also because she does baby laundry as a free service.

We headed back to the hotel to wait for Mike and just played. She really started to get fussy quickly after she realized that Mike wasn’t there. She would point to other rooms in the suite and she would look all around and then get more ticked off that Mike wasn’t around. Fussy city in room 2003!

Mike came back, told me his story which totally had me rolling laughing and Nadia was a happy girl to see her Daddy. We had dinner in the room and played some more. We also gave the cutie another bath and she seems to think it’s okay. She doens’t fuss, just looks at everything and thinks about it like everything else she checks out.

Sleepy time came and she was up again overnight at 10 pm, 12 am and 4 am. I was starting to think that we were going to get sleep deprived as this goes on and we try to sleep when she sleeps. Mike says she is getting on American time early for us and I just think she faked us out the first night by sleeping the whole night through.

A little part of me thinks that we should be out wandering around taking in the sights, but another part of me just wants to look at and play with our baby. She is a sweet wonderful girl and seems so calm and peaceful. We are so in love and even more we are grateful to God that He allowed this precious girl to become a part of our family.

We love all the comments and emails we have received and we keep telling her that she is going to get loved up when she gets home to make up for the 9 months without a family. Love, Louanne

Hi all. I am going to post in detail in the morning about the last couple of days. I will say that we now have an interesting souvenier of the trip- a HASEE Chinese laptop that Mike picked up at the electronics market in Nanchung. He will have to blog about that adventure.

Enjoy these photos, she is just a cutie pie!

Hello everyone. We will get some photos posted as soon as we can – she’s the cutest thing!

Nadia woke up at 5:30 (for real Karen 🙂 ) She had a bottle, took a nap and we got her up and dressed. We met everyone downstairs at 8:15 and headed back to the Civil Affairs office to pay assorted fees like for her passport and orphanage donation. While there we were interviewed and asked our profession, age, year we got married, if we had any other kids and why we wanted to adopt from China. We were also asked if we were never going to abuse or abandon Nadia and what our education plans were for her future. They gave us a gift of a porcelain vase and our registration folder. This is the folder that shows that we are her parents and shows the US Consulate everything is legit so she can get her American Visa. We gave her a bottle while all this stuff was going on. Jiangxi Province is the birthplace of Porcelain, so this is an important gift for the baby.

Next we headed to the notary’s office and were asked all the same questions as the Civil Affairs office and we had to give the guy some money for being the notary on all our Jiangxi docs. He told us he was from Suichuan County like our baby and seemed very excited about that. He asked us if we loved her and I said, “Oh yeeessssss.” He and the translator laughed at my strong reaction.

Then we all loaded back up in the bus and headed for the Security office in Jiangxi where I think they do her passport and Nadia promptly fell asleep for nap #2. We had to wake her up when it was our turn so they could take her photo. Back on the bus and we went back to the hotel. Nadia scarfed down a bottle since we missed one of her SIX feedings in the middle of all that activity and she went down for nap #3. This kid can sleep!!! As her mother, I love this because I love sleep!

Mike and I decided we needed a nap too and everything was peaceful. We got her up and introduced her to Gerber Graduate Fruit Puffs and at first she thought they were totally weird and she was moving her mouth around in funny ways to get the hang of it. She had quite a few and then we decided it was time for the first official bath. We only gave her a sponge bath before, so this was the big time. The babies are so used to being bundled up that Nadia does not like to be unclothed.

So I gave her a bath and tried to distract her with stacking cups. I could tell she liked having her back rubbed and the warm water, but by the time we got to the hair washing, so was done with bath time! I got her out and bundled her up and she calmed down. She still hasn’t had a full on crying fit and just seems to be getting used to us more and more. She started to “baby babble” after the 3rd nap and talked more and more as the night went on.

We went to dinner at a Chinese restaurant with all the other families and it was AMAZING. We got boatloads of food, more than we could eat and the total including tip was $5.33 a person!!!!! Mike said he felt a little guilty that we got all that food for that price. The food was blow your mind amazing. I got to try Peking Duck for the first time – yum. Mike really liked the Lotus Roots.

The best part was that they ordered this steamed egg dish for the babies and I thought Nadia might like to try it for her first “solid food” adventure. I was holding her with one hand and trying to feed her with the other. I gave her the first bite and she looked at me funny like, “Why are you giving me this?” Then BAM she grabbed the spoon with one hand and the bowl with the other and started trying to pull the bowl into her mouth! We couldn’t feed her the stuff fast enough. It got all over my pants when I was trying to gain control of the bowl and so Mike grabbed her to keep feeding her. The whole table was laughing and one of the grandma’s said that she had to take a photo because it was so cute. Mike and I were cracking up at her reaction and we just kept giving her more. I finally tried it myself and the stuff was FANTASTIC. I am going to learn how to make it and Lisa (another mom in the group) told me all about how to do it, since it’s a family favorite for them. The waitresses at the restaurant really liked Nadia and kept trying to come over and let them pick her up, but she was having no part of that, she was with her Daddy. But they were playing with her a lot when Mike was out in the hallway with her.

Nadia is sleeping now after her adventure out on the town. We walked from the hotel to the restaurant down the busy street in Nanchang and she was just looking at everything and taking in the sights. It was really loud out there with a lot going on, but she just watched everything very closely. She is sleeping now and seems like she might be teething. She has one little tooth showing and another looks like it was poking through and she tried to chew my finger off several times tonight. One of the other moms (Mya) stopped in a store and bought a teether for her baby and Nadia as they were both behaving in the same way. I think most of the babies are teething right now.

She is just beyond what we could have hoped for and we just thank God continually for allowing this beautiful and sweet baby to become part of our family. She just seems made to be with us always. It amazes me to think that our paperwork sat in China for a year before she was ever born. I already can’t imagine any baby being more perfect for us and the wait just melted away.

Thanks for all your sweet and funny comments so far. It’s great fun for us to wake up and see what people have had to say overnight. Love, Louanne