GZ day 3 part 2

The kids are still asleep and I just got back from shopping!! Starting in left upper corner, I got a tea set which is sitting on top of a box that is a really nice Mahjong set but it was taped up, a toy drum with a pig on it (Rachel was born in the year of the pig), 2 cloisinine ?sp ornaments, a handpainted fan, postcard set, book, jade (green) little pig, pink lion (dances on strings), butterfly kite, traditional Chinese outfit for Rachel, the meimei and gege shirts are for Taylor and Rachel (lil sister and big brother) and a little tamberine. The mahjong set was my most expensive purchase at 120 yuan. My total was 530 yuan which equals about $80. We want Rachel to have some things from China and I hope as she gets older she will enjoy them. I will try to post a video of Rachel (we are still using her Chinese name You Yi pronounced YoYi) saying TayTay. Also, stay tuned for part 3 for the day as I will try to post a picture of her in her cute new outfit.

Guangzhou day 3

At this last hotel we have a suite, so in the bedroom we have Taylor a blow up bed, a crib and our bed. In the other two hotels, we ended up with a king size bed and Taylor just slept with us. The great thing about this bed is it is actually pretty soft. China beds are like sleeping on boards, so this one is nice!!

Taylor eating a pb&j



Pretty girl!

No sundrop in China, but we did manage to find a mountain dew. It was a little different than mountain dew back home, maybe better!

OK so the shots are over with....poor baby had to get 5!!! One in each leg, 2 in one arm and one in the other. It was horrible!! She actually recovered from the whole event better than I expected and is watching Wall-E on our bed as I type. She is saying 'TayTay' for Taylor now and most of the time if we are not in the room with them he ends up crying out. I think he tries to touch her or play with her while we aren't in there and gets too far into her space and she gets him. He also likes telling on her. During nap time, I am going to do a little shopping. So I'll post more later. I have emailed a couple of people, and just a update, no more 'come aparts', we are now paying very close attention and finding ways to avoid them. We had a good day yesterday, and other than the shots today, things are going good! Thanks for all the prayers and comments and emails!

Guangzhou day 2

No pictures today...I am so tired...so I am going to bed soon. It's only 8:20 and I've already slept through a movie the kids were watching. Today was a better day. Yesterday was a little hard on Rachel, which made it hard on us. I think with the all the changes, of hotel rooms, new faces and all that, she was out of sorts. Today especially this evening she seems to be happier. Today James got a haircut, we found this little barber shop, no one could speak English, he just showed her Taylors hair and she gave James a cut. We went with the group to the electronic market, basically a big mall with all electronics and bought dvd's. We bought 15 dvd's for 140 yuan and I haven't done the math yet, but 65 yuan is $10, so it was roughly low 20's. We spent $15 for the ride over, so I figure for less than $40 we got 15 dvd's, not bad. They are basically all kid movies, so tonight we watched Madagascar 2 and Bolt. Rachel became more talkative than we have seen during the movies. She was making all kinds of noises, it was cute. Tonight we had Thai food and it was delicious, and for lunch Sub-way which was so-so, not quite the same, but OK. Our poor Rachel has to get immunization shots before we can leave the country and they are doing them all tomorrow morning at 8am and it seems she is behind, so we are expecting 4 or 5 shots all at once.....I am dreading it so bad!! We have no choice in the matter but I am not going to be a happy momma!! I have basically not been able to do any shopping, since I have a fussy 23 month old attached to me at all times while we are out, so I am planning on shopping at naptime tomorrow and hopefully I will be able to show off my finds in tomorrows post! Good night for now. Please pray for Rachel for tomorrow, poor thing! Only 4 more nights and we can come home, we are definitely ready to be in our home!

Guangzhou Day 1

Rachel's first flight!

We are officially on the countdown. We flew out from Nanjing at around noon for a 2 hour flight. It was a great flight. Rachel slept pretty much the whole flight and Taylor needed to but didn't :)) We got to our hotel in GZ and had a little time to unpack and then we met up with the 4 other families from our agency. There are 2- 9 month olds, then Rachel who is basically 2, then a 4 year old boy and a 4 yr old girl being adopted. There are also like Taylor a total of 4 big brothers or sisters that came along and they are all adopted, not all from China. We enjoyed dinner. The group actually was meeting at the one place we said we would not eat at this trip....Lucy's. Alot of people rave over Lucy's as the only place to really get western foods, but when we went last time we were here it just wasn't that good. We did enjoy it tonight and had great company to share it with. The weather her is very warm and very humid. I will probably be breaking out my flip flops in the next day or two.

Nanjing Day 6

See video of James making her laugh at the bottom!

This was the mall I mentioned a couple of times, fancy, fancy!!

Thank goodness, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, but thank goodness that I do not have to write Nanjing Day 7 because at 10 am in the morning we will fly to Guangzhou which is where the US Consulate is. Up til now we have been satisfying the Chinese portion of the adoption and when we got to Guangzhou it will be to satisfy the US side. Basically we will do a medical appointment, apply for her visa and have a swearing in ceremony at the consulate. Once those things are completed we will be able to leave Guangzhou, which we in the adoption community abbreviate as GZ. To say we are all ready to be home is a understatement. At this point it will be a relief just to be in Guangzhou though. We got Rachel's passport today, which was the last thing we were waiting on here.

So today we went to the Ming Tomb here in Nanjing. It was another opportunity to get out and walk around and it was a beautiful day today. We have had 65-80 degree weather here and it will be hotter in the next city we got to. The Ming Tomb located at the foot of Zi Jin Shan (Purple & Golden Mountain) it is a joint burial tomb of the first Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang and Empress Ma in Ming Dynasty. Being one of the largest imperial tombs in the ancient times, it has a more than 600 years history. We enjoyed it so much and are very glad we went.

Rachel has just had 24 hours fever free!!! Yeah! She still has this yucky congested cough but she is eating and actually she eats more than Taylor and better than him. She is sleeping good. She is pretty serious most of the time, but she loves to play with James. We are all starting to get more used to each other, and having four in our family and I have noticed positive differences in us all in the last couple of days. Today we purchased a pearl bracelet for Rachel, maybe to have when she gets married one day. We also purchased a rainflower stone (which James called a polished rock), which is something special to Nanjing.

Nanjing Day 5

Rachel crying because she wants to go.....we had just come back to the room after being out.

Xuanwu Lake

Beautiful tree at lake the blooms looked like white irises.

Taylor at Xuanwu lake

This is a large loom, at the brocade institution, with two people working, one up high who is in charge of the pattern, which they have a copy of sitting in front of them. They second person operates the loom. It takes them all day to do 6cm of brocade!!! Yes.....6cm!! They use silk, gold thread, silver thread and also peacock feathers.

Cutie!


Steamed egg (the sauce was like soy sauce)

This morning we met our guide at 9am and headed out to a beautiful large lake here in Nanjing, Xuanwu Lake. It has 5 islands within the lake with access through bridges to them. They have little amusement parks at different parts of the lake. It was really pretty and nice to get out and just walk around. We left the lake and went to the brocade institute. There they have like a little museum set up explaining the history of brocade, they also have large looms set up where they make brocade and also, of course, a store where you make a purchase. It was really neat. And being that Nanjing is known for it's brocade we did buy a small framed piece for sister to have one day. We then came back to the room where James, Taylor and myself had pb&j sandwiches, because we took 4 pieces of bread from the breakfast buffet this morning. Lil sis had steamed egg. It was part of her diet at the orphanage and our guide offered to place an order for us. I was expecting a boiled egg and that is not what it is, see picture. James tried it and said it had a great flavor and if he had some white rice it would have been great. Rachel slept better again last night and did wake up with a low grade fever of 99. Yesterday, afternoon we got out the stroller and as soon as she saw it she pointed to the front seat and wanted in. Now we are in trouble because every time we open the hotel room door she starts screaming. She likes to go and she doesn't want to be in this room anymore. Last night, she stood by the stroller crying for at least 20 minutes, then James put the stroller up and she went to the door and cried for another 20. Then when she quit crying she stood there and blew kisses and said "by-bye", her way of saying, please can we go.

Thanks for all the prayers for Rachel. I know alot of people have prayed for us and it means so much. She is doing so much better. She still is congested, but we have seen a big difference in the last three days. I actually got 6 hours straight of sleep last night and it has made me feel better today. Our fan did wonders for my sleep!

After nap is just free time. We may get out and do a little shopping. There are tons of little shops close by.

Nanjing Day 4

Qinhuai River above and Confucius temple below

Rachel and our wonderful guide Susan

So it is nap time and we have just finished some very good sweet and sour pork, which we have now eaten three times since we have been here. None of the menu's are in English or have pictures so it is very hard to try Chinese meals. At the hotel our Chinese meal just wasn't as good. Tonight we are going to venture to a local really nice mall and go to their food court. They have Mexican, Japanese and Korean along with all the Chinese food. That is also where James went and got our pizza the other night.

This morning we went to the local Confucius park area. There is some historical places to see about Nanjing. It is pretty hot and humid here today and when you are carrying either your 23lb new baby who is like a little oven, or your 4.5 year old first baby who is jealous and tired then site-seeing of historical places was not so fun. I was sweating. My back was hurting. Taylor was whining, and needing to poo-poo and you know it is not like US with bathrooms you would want to use while out, so we made a short trip of it and came back to room. The things we saw were all a very short walk and Rachel believe it or not was ready to G-O this morning.

We had a rough afternoon and night yesterday. She ran a fever from 2pm yesterday until probably 4am when it completely broke and she slept so soundly after say 2:30 or so. She drank 2.5 cups of water between midnight and 8am and when we went to breakfast she at like a little piggy!! She ate 2 steamed eggs (like boiled egg), congee, carrots, cucumber, and some other little things. She wanted to walk down to restaurant and back up and when we got to room she did not want to go back in, she was ready to go. So the trip out was good, although I noticed she got more rattly as we went maybe cause it was so humid. She is sleeping soundly again, which has not been the norm. So even though she is definitely not well, I think we have turned a corner today and she seems to be headed in the right direction. Thanks for all the advice and prayers, we appreciate it all.

Our hotel doesn't have air, like many places in China, only heat. So as the days have warmed up our hotel room, by our standards is hot!! Last night, we slept with no covers and were miserable hot all night. I can't imagine what it would be like in July or August. Glad we are here in March. We did manage to get a fan brought to our room this morning. As we went to leave this morning our guide said I didn't have on enough clothes. I have on a tank top and a short sleeve shirt over it, with pants and tennis shoes. It is 70's. All the Chinese people still probably have on 2-4 layers on a day like today. We told her back home, you would see no one with a jacket on a day like today and James would've been in shorts. Tomorrow we are going to do a little morning trip to a local lake and a brocade institution (maybe factory). Nanjing is known for it's brocade and we hope to find something to purchase for Rachel.

I am hoping this video works of Rachel blowing kisses and saying by-bye. Too cute!