Thank You

Thank you for following along during this very busy time of year.  Thank you for praying.  And thank you for sharing our joy with us.  We’ve been very blessed.

In my first post I said that I’m glad we did this at Christmastime.  Two millennia ago another child came to us.  He was adopted by his earthly father putting him in the line of King David to fulfill the prophecy that a Messiah would come from that line. He lived and died for us and was resurrected from the dead.  That sacrifice allows us who believe in him also to be adopted into his family.

Susan came to us an orphan who had been left in a park on the side of a road on the day of her birth. But she now has an equal status with her brothers as our child and an equal share in any earthly inheritance.  In the same way, we who were dead in our sins, now have an inheritance from our heavenly father because of Christ.

This will be the last blog post. I realize that I’ve got nothing more interesting to talk about at this point than potty training and sleep deprivation.  Thank you again for following along.  We still appreciate your prayers - for sleep, for bonding, for family unity...  If you want to email or call to check in with us, we’d love that too.

I’m closing out with a couple more pictures from Gotcha Day and a few more recent ones to show the difference two weeks makes.

Heartbroken Girl on Gotcha Day

Totally Comfortable with Her New Family 

New Things

Hong Kong Airport

A couple of new things today.  First of all, we're still really messed up on sleep.  But we're making progress.

Susan went to church with us.  She loved the music and was "singing" away.

We also tried her on the potty.  Success!  Awesome.  We'll see how that goes over time.  She came to us without a diaper but when we asked the orphanage staff what words they used to have her go, they said that she had a diaper on that morning but soiled it on the way to meet us so they took it off.  But she was with a foster family for several months so the staff didn't really know what was normal for her.

Today's Christmas Gift - She knew exactly what to do

Now that we're home and have better internet access, I'm trying to include a little video that I took of her while in we were in China.  Fun giggles.

I'm also including our Christmas day photo from the Hong Kong airport which I must have been too tired to upload at the time.

Slow Day

Laughing at animal sounds from a book

We're just trying to get over jet lag.  So far it's winning.  We're all so tired.

Susan is slowly opening her Christmas gifts.  She gets only one or two a day so she doesn't get overwhelmed.  Today she opened a Little People airplane.  It plays music and she loved it!  It was so hard to take a picture since she would sway back and forth.

We've had really warm weather here so I took her for a walk this afternoon.  So far she loves the stroller.

Swaying to the music

Happy Boxing Day

Here’s the expanded version of yesterday since I did such a short post last night.  Boy were we ever tired (Sawyer stayed awake for 30 straight hours)! But it was a good travel day.  It went just as I described on Christmas Eve: Guangzhou to Hong Kong to Newark to Boston.  We counted that we had to show our passports eleven times yesterday through borders and airport check points.

Loving Ivan

It was interesting to travel into Hong Kong – there was an exit point from China and an entry point into Hong Kong where we got our temperatures taken (no SARS or Ebola for them!)  Then we switched over to driving on the left side of the road.  Fun.

As we drove into our neighborhood it felt so strange to think that we’d been in China and Hong Kong that same morning.  Once at home Susan did some exploring around.  She squealed with delight over the balloons that some of our neighbors put in our house.  More squealing over the puzzle that makes animal sounds.  She has such a fun personality.  She dances when she hears music.  She shares her food.  She’ll take a bite then offer some to us.  This makes me so happy because I think it means that she never had to go hungry (some newly adopted kids hoard their food for this reason, we understand). 

Hamming it up with the balloon ribbon

We’re so thankful to our various neighbors who looked after our house while we were away, picked up mail, left packages of goodies, and also brought over food so we wouldn’t need to go grocery shopping for a few days.

We’re so messed up on time.  My watch broke before boarding our flight in Hong Kong.  We got home and the power had gone out at some point so all our clocks were off. And our home phones have never allowed me to change the time from New Mexico to Boston time since we moved in the summer – I change them and a few hours later they’ve changed themselves back.  I’ve given up.  Our body clocks are messed up too.  We woke up early this morning and I was planning on giving Susan a nice nap this afternoon.  But we both fell asleep at 8am and slept until 1pm!

I’m planning on blogging for a few more days in case you are wondering.  I’ll let you know when my last post is but I’m expecting to be done by New Years.

First Present Opening (ever?)

Home - Merry Christmas

We made it home! Looong day. Tired now. Everything went smoothly. Wonderful friends picked us up from the airport. Thankful.

More later.

Thank you so much for praying us through this whole trip. If you want to keep praying, we'd appreciate it as we settle in at home and recover from jetlag.

Our New American Citizen

Christmas Eve

At the Zoo

Merry Christmas!  That’s what we hear from all of the hotel staff.  We love that even though they don’t celebrate Christmas here, they have no problem wishing us a Merry Christmas.

Today was a great day.  We went to a fun zoo here in Guangzhou.  The animals were very active and all the kids had a lot of fun watching them.  We were at the lion exhibit when they started to roar.  There were several of them and they kept roaring back and forth for about a minute.  I’d never heard anything like that.  Amazing.

This evening we went out for a nice Christmas Eve dinner with another family. This has certainly been the most memorable Christmas ever!

Our guide picked up the children’s Chinese passports today from the US consulate with the US visas in them.  Now we’re allowed to leave China and come to the US.  Susan will become an American citizen when she goes through immigration when we land in Newark.

We leave the hotel Christmas morning at 6am (5pm Christmas Eve on the east coast), drive to Hong Kong, board a flight at 11:15 am, cross the dateline at some point making it Christmas Eve again, keep flying east and at some point we’ll be back on Christmas day yet again.  We have a layover in Newark and then home to Boston sometime around 7pm! Pray for happy kids, and parents, sleep, smooth flights… Thank you!

Thaddeus and Ivan Feeding Giraffes

I’m including a photo of the hotel bathroom.  It’s a beautiful hotel but I’m a little confused about why they use a glass door for the toilet area.  At least in our room there’s another solid door that closes off the whole bathroom.  Another family had a room that just had the glass bathroom door.  Strange.  I’m also including a picture of the squatty potty that they had at the zoo (and all over China).  No complaints about the hotel bathroom!

Sorry if I ruined the Christmas mood.  To fix that, I’ll also include pictures from the photo shoot that we did with Susan in her Christmas dress.

Susan is chattering more to us now.  At the beginning she wasn’t making any noises other than crying, screaming for her foster mom and foster grandma, and the occasional giggle.  Now she’s making normal baby noises and is imitating sounds we make.  She called Todd ba ba once last night, which is Chinese for daddy.  So fun.

My question is Why do I bother shutting the door?

Squatty Potty! And bring your own TP!!

A Walk in the Park

Happy Stroller Kid

Today was US Consulate appointment day (no cameras allowed there).  Everything went wonderfully.  Mainly because all of the paperwork had been done ahead of time and this was the final thing they needed before issuing Susan’s visa.  Tomorrow our guide will go back to the consulate to pick up the children’s Chinese passports with the US visas in them and we’ll be all set to come home!  We’re really looking forward to getting home except we’ll miss the breakfast buffet and also having someone making all of our decisions for us.  But it’ll be nice to be able to drink the water and do laundry.

This afternoon we walked through a beautiful park right by our hotel.  Susan had fun looking at all the fish in the pond.  She also likes riding in the stroller – especially when her brothers drive her fast or all crooked.

Beautiful Park

Last night Susan had a big hysterical 2-hour crying session before falling asleep.  My heart breaks for her, as she seems so confused and panicked.  The rest of the night was fine and today she did great. 

This evening we did group photos. I’ll include one of all the babies.  A note about pictures: We pulled my nice camera out on gotcha day as we arrived at the place where we were getting our kiddos and found out that it wasn’t working.  It had a full battery as I’d put one in and tested it that morning.  It was just dead.  I can’t imagine a worse time for it to go.  And it hasn’t worked since.  Thankfully I have a decent camera on my cell phone since that’s what we’ve been using the whole time.  Crazy.

Laughing with Sawyer

Not sure what to do here

Swing time with Thaddeus

All the Babies

Fell Asleep at Dinner

Shopping and Dragon Boat Ride

Photo Shoot - Before we got the cookies

Today was a fun day.  We went this morning to the pearl market, an amazing 6-floor building full of booth after booth of pearls and other jewels.  Fun shopping experience.

This afternoon, we did a bit more souvenir shopping near our hotel.  Thaddeus wanted a chess set and drove a very hard bargain.  He ended up paying only half of the asking price.  I was impressed.

This evening we went for a dragon boat ride on the Pearl River.  It was beautiful with all of the buildings lit up and live Chinese music being played on the open air deck.

After we got the cookies - ge ge means big brother, mei mei means little sister

Susan is definitely feeling a lot better and is acting a lot more like a normal toddler.  Lots of cute curious behavior, into anything and everything, and throwing little fits when she doesn’t get what she wants.  We had the best sleep last night.  Susan only whimpered once for a couple of minutes in the middle of the night.

I need to mention our adoption agency, CCAI.  They are really amazing. For the past almost two years they’ve been wonderful, always cheerfully answering emails and phone calls within 24 hours, walking us through every step of the way through the paperwork.  But what they do for us in China is awesome.  They arrange all of the details of all our comings and goings (official and tourist stuff).  They have representatives at each destination that stay with us, take care of our needs, and make sure we are organized for all the official activities.

 

The moms at the pearl counter

After her bath

Canton Tower - the lights change every three seconds

Live Music on the Dragon Boat