Category: China Trip

Well, I’ve used my new and “interesting” Chinese laptop to put up more pictures of Nadia. I have a lot of other pictures of China…really (the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, and so on) and I’ll put them up eventually. For now, however, Nadia is all I’m really interested in. Besides, when you’ve seen one 2000 year old wall built across mountains, you’ve seen them all.

Mike

Nadia likes:

1) Daddy to hold her and rock her to sleep. Also Daddy holding her while she watches Mommy be silly.
2) Anything with holes that she can poke her fingers in.
3) Anything with a different texture that she can feel and scratch.
4) Anything Plastic, especially if she can make crinkly sounds with it.
5) White washclothes. She likes to suck on this while falling asleep. Mike bought a 10 pack of soft baby diapers at Walmart and we have been using the ones in the hotel rooms for when she spits up or whatever on them. Thank goodness they are white and not tie dye purple or something hard to find 🙂
6) The photo album we sent to the orphange in her care package.
7) STACKING CUPS
8 ) Her feet and toes.
9) Looking at other babies.
10) The other baby in the mirror. That baby keeps showing up in any mirror Nadia checks out 😉
11) She likes to lick cold Water Bottles with condensation on them.

Nadia doesn’t like:

1) Changing clothes.
2) Lying down on her back – like for a diaper change.

Day 4 was fairly uneventful as we had a fussy baby who was teething and who was spitting up a lot. We decided not to go on the tour with the rest of the group and just hang out around the hotel. We headed over to Tiffani’s to pick up Nadia’s clean laundry and to get some more Diet Coke. In Nanchang we have been having our laundry done by the Elephant King and they really do a great job. Our clothes come back clean and pressed and they smell very good. I recommend them as they pick up and drop off at your hotel.

For dinner we met with a bunch of the other families in the “play room” at the Jin Feng (note – it’s just a big room with seats around the edge and 2 plastic horses) for a pizza party. It was fun to have the babies check each other out and for the parents to have a chance to compare notes. It was also good for the older siblings to be able to play together and burn off some of their energy. They are all doing really great and seem to be enjoying the adventure to their new baby sisters. After dinner we headed back to our room for more play time with Nadia.

She just laughs and babbles to us constantly now. The giant smile of hers when she laughs is enough to melt my heart. And she is getting used to being kissed now and when she sees me coming at her, she moves her head towards me to let me kiss her. She really thinks that I am silly and I sing songs to her and goof off and she just laughs and laughs. More than anything she wants to be held by Mike and in position to watch whatever I am doing. She likes to know that we are both there. More often than not, she wants Mike to rock her to sleep. She doesn’t really want any part of Mommy putting her to sleep, but that’s okay because Daddy and daughter are so cute together.

An interesting thing that happened to me in the morning was that I went down for breakfast by myself while Mike took care of Nadia. As I was riding down in the elevator, there was a nicely dressed woman who was my age and she asked me if I was from America. I said yes and she said where? I said from Texas and she said, “Oh, like your shirt.” Then she asked me why I was in China and I told her we were here to adopt. She asked me what that meant and I explained it all to her. She said she had never heard of that and didn’t know that her county adopted about babies. She asked if she could sit with me and talk at breakfast and she was really interested in everything. She said that our baby was lucky because the Chinese don’t care about girls and that they only want boys, so she was going to have a better life. It was really sweet. She told me at the end that she wanted to exchange emails so she could see the baby and that maybe she should adopt one of the abandoned babies from her country. It was a really cool conversation.
————————————————————————————————————————–

Full Day #5
Nadia was up at 10 pm, 12 am and 4 am once again overnight. She likes a bottle at 4 am and to play with Mommy and Daddy some more. We got up and tried to go down for breakfast together. Nadia started to spit up again all over Mike and then she knocked his plate off the table. So Mike was covered in syrup from his pancakes. He had his crocs on and it went through the holes. 🙂 So back to the room we went so Mike could change clothes since she managed to completely dirty him up. Our guide Michael was going to take everyone to the porcelain shop near the hotel. Mike decided to stay back with Nadia and told me to buy whatever I wanted.

Jiangxi province is the birthplace of porcelain and the hand painted items are so amazing. I really had a good time shopping in there and looking at all the ornate items that they had for sale. Our guide told us that this was one of the stores that had certified items and they place was very nice and the staff was very friendly. The walk over there was interesting and I got a bunch of photos on my way back. This was more traditional inside the city China living. The people with food stands and men picking up trash on their bikes. Men playing cards in smoky little restaurants. We got a ton of really curious looks. On the way back the Hatchers had bags of Smarties candies and they were handing them out to all the kids along the way. The kids didn’t open them in front of the Hatchers, but I was dragging behind taking photos and got to see the kids all excited eating the candies and showing them to their moms. It was really cute and I was glad that I could tell the Hatchers that the Chinese children really loved their candy.

I went back to the hotel and by then Mike had done a ton of research on baby spit up and we changed tactics for her feedings and things seem to be much better now. I showed Mike all the cool stuff I got at the porcelain shop and we decided to go back and pick up one more thing for Nadia for when she is older. I wasn’t sure and I wanted Mike to see it first. Then we went over to the little baby store close to the hotel to pick up a couple different pacifiers and some teething husks because Nadia is trying to chew everything in sight up. We tried the pacifiers and Nadia wasn’t having any part of it, so we are just letting her chew her fingers and our fingers. She does seem to like the teething husks, but they are messy!!

We got back to the hotel and we had to book it to get all of our stuff packed and ready to set out by 2:30 pm to be taken to the airport. Our laundry came back at 1:30 and we finished as they were knocking on the door. We had to be checked out and ready to leave by 3:30, so we got our carry on situated and headed down to the lobby. All the families were on the bus and we headed for the airport to take our flight from Nanchang to GZ. It was a long and bumpy road back to the airport and I was glad that we didn’t have to contend with our luggage too.

We got checked in and went through security and they took my scissors and made me taste the water that we had to make the baby bottles with. We got on the flight and we were getting some serious stares from all the Chinese on board. We of course seemed to hold everything up – Americans with babies can’t seem to move as fast as the Chinese getting on and off planes. The flight was about an hour and a half and they gave us these awesome milk cookies and we got extra packages from the flight attendant who was flirting with Nadia.

Nadia DID NOT like the flight. She just became inconsolable and Mike had to get up and stand in the aisle rocking back and forth. Most of the babies cried uncontrollably at some point during the flight. I am trying not to think about the 12 hour flight home, but at least we will be with 3 other Great Wall Families instead of being alone. It took about an hour by bus to get to the hotel. Once there we were behind another large group on adoptive families checking in so the wait took a while. Our guide Michael got to the desk and he called our names and one other families names and told us to head to the 22nd floor to check in. We had decided to upgrade to the Executive Level, so we got a private check in. It was worth it to just be able to get in our room. But the room is swank and huge. We have a very large sitting area, a powder bath, the bedroom and a very big master bath room.

We got Nadia in the room and stripped down to her diaper and she became a different child. She was the happiest, smile filled and laughing girl! She played climbing all around Daddy on the bed for at least 45 minutes. We ordered room service and she was trying so hard to get to the french fries on our plates. She was pulling herself along on her tummy and it was SO CUTE!!! This girl could not sit up on her own when we got her and now she is just a little monkey. I think she takes so many naps because she is working all these muscles that she never has before. She started to get fussy and sleepy and her over-tiredness caught up to her. It caught up to me too, I was just so tired I thought I was going to fall asleep standing up.

This is an amazing experience, but I know we are going to be grateful to get home and sleep in our own beds and be done with paperwork!! It seems to be never-ending, but we are getting to the end of the road and Nadia will be an American. We got her Chinese passport in Nanchang and will finish up with her visa here.

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