What Happened today!? The 18th.

This one is really long!!!! 4 pages in Word! :) sorry people!

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Today was one wild day!!! We had to be re-packed and be ready to go at 8am! First… we acquired more stuff than would fit in our suitcase with this little baby girl… so we had to carry around all the bags from yesterday that we thought we could get rid of after giving the gifts away! Ha! So we will HAVE to find another suitcase to stick stuff in. I hate carrying a million small bags! But that is what we did today!

Maria woke up to Jerry this morning… and that was scary!!! I heard all the screaming from the shower (which was so hot I was sure I was going to be scalded, needless to say, that was one quick shower). By the time I got out to the room, she was just fuss crying. He was trying his best to soothe her, but she was a mess. Sniffling and trying to catch her breath. She must not cry much at the orphanage… she can’t scream for very long and she will be out of breath like she just ran a HUGE marathon!!! She has NO stamina! Haha! I was obviously a better option! Ha! So I held her for a few minutes and then brought her into the bathroom with me so I could finish getting dressed and all. I gave her baby doll to her and she sat on top of the toilet and just watched me. I am sure she thinks we are loco!

So then I dressed her for the day and we tried to pack everything up before breakfast. She looked so cute in her Gymboree panda shirt from our JulyDTC secret pal… after all these years! :) Jerry gave her a bottle of formula before breakfast. She is so funny… no independence whatsoever! So much like Anthony was… when you hand her something she expects you to put it in her mouth, she doesn’t even reach for it… like the bottle. We enjoy giving her the bottle, but she is the same way with the sippy cup and snacks, too. She apparently still takes a bottle before bed at night, but we decided we are going to try to work in some more, because she is just too small and young acting. She doesn’t chew some things very well, and she is just plain tiny. Anthony’s hands are about 3 times the size of hers! She is the size of a 9-12 moth old, but mentally in a lot of ways she is probably 18 months or so, at least. Her fine motor skills are amazing, but her gross motor skills are terrible. Her Lagging Motor Development diagnosis is right on! She is very flabby. No muscular tone at all. When you lay her down she doesn’t even hold her head up, it just flops, as do her arms and legs. We make her walk a bunch, everyday so she can work on her muscles. This morning, she did not want to walk toward breakfast. Ha! Jerry left the room about a minute before me. He was holding her hand and about 15 feet down the hall (remember 7 am) I hear her starting to SCREAM! Oh dear… I rush out to see what was the problem and I just see them standing there… she screaming. I asked… Jerry said she just did’t want to walk… Of course, I am laughing to myself, because she IS going to walk. I grab her hand and start pulling her along, I lean over and tell her NO, we are not going to throw a fit and she needs to walk (like she understands – well she does understand no already), and off we go, that was the end of that. Apparently she had thrown herself on the floor to begin with! Haha! Jerry must have taken her arm and pulled her back up before I got there! Oh she’s funny! If there’s one thing we don’t really tolerate in our family, it is throwing yourself on the floor fit throwing!!! Hahaha! Anthony used to do that even as a tiny baby! No more!

So breakfast was fine, I fed her puffs wile Jerry found her some food. I forgot the spoon so I fed her congee (rice soup) with a fork! Ha! But she also had noodles and fried rice as well as some chunked canned peaches. She eats like the boys – a lot! She sometimes out of the blue thinks she doesn’t want something… not sure why, but usually we keep trying until she takes it and then she realizes its not so bad…

Then at 8 we left the hotel with all of our stuff and headed for the office where we would sign all the final papers and put our finger prints and a take a small “family” picture with her. Can you believe I forgot to take pictures there… It was so complicated, with all our bags and coats and baby… so weird, but anyways we did it all! She is ours. Period. They asked Jerry why we choose to adopt Maria, to which he answered that we wanted a daughter under two and we love China and she was available so… it was cute. Our full answer is SOOOOO much more than that, you all know, but they were satisfied. :) The nice lady in charge at the orphanage was there again to oversee the signing. She is young, I would say my age, but I am getting older than I realize, so maybe she is younger than me these days… haha! They asked Jerry how old I was and he thought I was 35, I had to reassure them all that I was 34. Ha! It was then that I realized that we started this process when I had just turned 30, which is the required minimum age to adopt in China! Goodness!

Then we hauled all our stuff to the next office… a Notary office. Where we signed some more things and they notarized them apparently, we haven’t seen them yet. I guess they will pick that stuff up the day they pick up her passport. It is customary to give this woman a gift, but we forgot, since we had all our stuff with us, and we left it with the Orphanage lady to watch in the waiting area. We were a mess, I tell you, a mess! It was all that JUNK we were dragging around with us. It was here we said goodbye and a final thank you to the sweet lady running the orphanage! We have her 1000 yuan as a gift for the orphanage to buy diapers that are so desperately needed there every day. That is about 150-60 dollars, not much, but will buy them a bunch of diapers to help out. They made sure we knew that it was not necessary, but we wanted to help.

Finally we went to the Passport office. A really cute Chinese young man ( I say cute, because he was different, obviously cute, I mean he’s Chinese, :), but he was happy and smiley and friendly, most don’t smile all the time) met us there to apply for it for us. I just had to go along with him to the desk, with Maria. That is it, Jerry stayed in the waiting area with all our stuff. Like I have said before, we do nothing the normal way in our family! Haha! Then I gave him a small gift, of chocolates, by the way, and we were DONE!

We asked Belinda about seeing her finding-spot and she had asked the other lady, but as we found out… Maria was found on the Bullet train from Beijing to Tianjin. SO it is highly likely that she is from Beijing, not Tianjin after all! So I guess it is appropriate that we are spending more time in Beijing than Tianjin, go figure. We thought she was found just at the station… but no, ON the train! She was certain to be found that way. So glad her Chinese momma loved her enough. We are SOO glad to have her!!! We adore her already and can’t wait to find out more about her.

At each office she was different… some places she was chatty and made lots of little noises, little grunts and mmmms. So cute. Sometimes I even get smiles out of her and they are so cute. Then she would be quiet and docile, then she would be noisy and making noises loud! When we were waiting for a taxi, once a truck went by with a siren, made us all jump, I said “whoa!!” she copied! Haha! “woooo” she said! So we said a that quite a few more times the rest of the day! Ha! She also says “that” in Chinese over and over and over sometimes… not sure what that is about, but it is cute. She also said, mama, baba, and baby today!! Remember, she turns two in less than a month, so she should have some language already anyways, she just seems like such a little baby because she is so small! It will be fun to see her turn into a two year old. I love two years old! It is one of my favorites… they suddenly develop so much then! They start understanding so much and comprehending what you tell them and remembering!

At 11:30 we were getting back on the bullet (with all our stuff) and heading back to Beijing. Sad to say, we did not do anything special in Tianjin, as far as touristy stuff, and as soon as we realized Maria is from Beijing most likely anyways we were happy that we had chose to spend some time in Beijing anyway. The orphanage is a very special place and we are glad that we got to take so many pictures there and see it so much. Wish we could have spent more time there… hopefully someday we will be able to visit and help out there more.

We had to rush to get on the train, but once on we settled in and fed Maria some puffs and some apple juice. Such a nice train, and such a perfect place to leave a sweet little baby in the middle of December, (if you have to leave one somewhere) it would be warm and full of people. She laid back on Jerry and his pillow (did I tell you that Jerry thought he had to bring a pillow all the way from home, dumb pillow) and relaxed while I put puffs in her mouth! Haha! A life of luxury! We arrived back to our old hotel, the Wangfujing and checked in, then we went to eat lunch at the Chinese restaurant on the 2^nd floor. We ordered a bunch of things, kind of. We ordered some dumplings (leek and egg), some home made bean curd, (which looked like wet scrambled eggs), a noodle dish and a “grain” basket. We weren’t sure what Maria could eat so… Oh! Jerry also ordered a fruit salad… haha! it came out first… chopped up fruit with mayonnaise, or miracle whip on it!!! Hahaha!!! So funny!! Jerry was horrified! We did eat some of it, and Maria didn’t want any after the first bite, but after I got the mayo off, she was ok with it! Ha! They have pears here, very good and the texture of an apple! The dumplings were very yummy! The noodles were very yummy and Maria ate a bunch of those, but I had to cut them all up with her little plastic fork! She gags a little if the noodle is too long, you see she doesn’t chew them… sound familiar? Yep. Anthony! We mixed the bean curd into the noodles since it didn’t come with rice… The bean curd was a tiny bit spicy and SOOO good. Then they brought out the “grain” basket! So funny. It had baked sweet potatoes, corn bread with raisins on top, corn on the cob, some other roots that were baked and some cool round blue colored bread rolls. Maria ate some sweet potato, the other root and some blue roll. The blue roll was the coolest bread roll I have ever seen. It was so dense, but yet very soft and tasted good too. It was also so smooth on the top that it looked like a mushroom or something! I forgot to take a picture. Sorry people. Food pales in comparison to a baby sometimes… :)

With baby’s tummy full, she needed a nap… we had an hour until we needed to leave for the acrobatic show. She had fallen asleep in the taxi on the way to the hotel form the train, but she woke up when we got here. And while on the taxi ride, she wet through her clothes… haha! I forgot you have to change the diapers sometimes! Ha! I should have changed her on the train I guess. Oh well, it gave me a chance to try on yet another outfit. One from Ryleigh… 9 month size… it fit so cute!!! Also matched her cute lady bug shoes from Target… years ago! It is short on her, but with some tights, it has that cute 1950s look. SO C.U.T.E!!!

By the way, her feet are soooo small! No wonder she has a hard time walking! Before her nap, Jerry changed her diaper, he took off her shoes and WAAAAAAHHHHH! The screaming started. She does not like to take her shoes off… so then Jerry showed her that taking your shoes off is no big deal… and he took his off… then he said, “you just throw ‘em in the corner!” Hahaha! I thought it was hilarious, such a guy!

When we put her in her bed, she screamed some more, on her face… I told jerry that maybe she would run out of air and then she would have to stop, so she could breathe… finally I thought it was enough, because she just kept going and going and going, but you could tell it was faker and she was forcing it out… I flipped her over and said “no, that was enough, she was done, it was time to sleep…” she stopped, sniffled, looked at me and fell asleep in a few minutes. Oh dear.

Jerry went to explore the street a little and I checked email and responded some and the time was up! So I picked up Maria, put her shoes back on and grabbed our coats and figured we would meet Jerry downstairs. Naturally I made Maria walk to the elevator, one we are inside she likes to look at the shiny gold mirrors on the walls. Then we met Belinda and Jerry came in a few minute later, he had met some art/English student and bought a couple painting from them, they thought it was so special that we adopt that their professor painted him a family picture. I have yet to see it… I forgot about it last night. And now it is 3:30 am and its dark in here. So tomorrow.

It took us about 45 minutes to get to the show, the traffic is crazy like any big city I guess. The show was good, Maria just sat there the whole time, taking it in. I was a little afraid something would scare her, but in her true Anthony style, it never did (Anthony once fell asleep during the circus!!). I did cover her ears a couple times when the music was SO loud, but she didn’t seem to care much. The acrobats are really very amazing. I have seen at before, but if you haven’t you really must, I can’t believe they do some of those things with their bodies! Haha!

After the show we had to catch a taxi… that took a while! But we were back here around 7 and soooo tired! I could have fallen asleep in the show… but I had a baby on my lap, so I had to stay awake! Goodness.

Jerry gave her another bottle, and we put her in bed, of course more screaming came, but I held my hand over the side of the bed, and I am not sure who fell asleep faster… her or me.

Jerry woke me later when he came in… he had been next door to get a massage. He had a foot message and a back massage. And he was quite impressed. I wonder if I will have time for a foot massage too. I will have him type about his massage soon. If you remember, he also had a massage in Kazakhstan… he nearly died, so he thought, so this one should be fun to hear about. Haha! Jerry and his wild massages!

We are going to the GREAT WALL today as well as Olympic Park. So that should be fun! I am very excited about the Great Wall. And yes, Alex, I will take a picture. Heeheehee! Probably about two hundred! :)

I think I will strap Maria on Jerry in the bjorn so I can be free to photograph like a crazy woman! J