we now have an American girl

We're still alive and well - sorry I haven't gotten around to blogging for a few days. It is now Monday lunchtime in China - G is just waking up from a nap (always wakes up happy!) and we are fixin' to have a cup o' noodle lunch. Shopping at the 7-eleven grocery department is so limiting. Pretty much noodles, noodles, noodles, candy bars, and shrink-wrapped meat-like things I don't recognize.

If you have followed anyone else's blog about adopting from China, you will know about the White Swan hotel. If not, let me tell you we have again landed in a pretty great spot. The room is nothing to write home about (and yet, I am) but the other amenities are great. There is a two-story waterfall in the main atrium, an inside pond filled with monster-size goldfish, a huge birdcage with little bright songbirds Grace likes to watch, lots of shops, and a terrific breakfast buffet. Still, we are both looking forward to getting home. What we miss the most are our boys.  Also the washer/dryer, kitchen, our bed, having more than one room to share, cool dry Colorado air . . . Yesterday we were missing the fellowship of our church and worshipping with our Christian family.

Sunday here was pretty quiet.  Jon went on a tour of a folk art museum, but Grace and I opted to stay "home" to watch the fish and birds then nap. Grace is a serious sleeper - two longish naps and ten or eleven hours at night.  I hope we can maintain this when we turn her body clock around in a few days. Last night we joined several other families and our guide for traditional Chinese food at a nearby restaurant.  "Not very fancy, but cheap," as our guide apologized.  Just like home, I told her. It was great and I am inspired to do new things with potatoes I had never imagined.

This morning was our all-important consulate appointment, which our guide told us about a dozen times to NOT MISS and to NOT BE LATE. We were trundled off to the American consulate where we off-loaded another heap of money, stood in various rooms and waited with other families, raised our right hands and swore to various things on behalf of our daughter, and signed some more papers. Grace is not quite a US citizen, but almost, and will be when she reaches US soil.  Or rather, the floor of O'Hare airport, our port of entry.

We have, so far, been impressed with how well this little girl travels.  Buses, planes, stroller - all good.  I am hoping this extends to the minivan. Generally, Jon and I are also good travelers. If we were here just to explore a new country, we would be loving these experiences. As it is, we are growing weary of trying to parent in hotels/restaurants/museums and are looking forward to being home. Just a few more days, and those consist mostly of free time. And there is a Starbucks here.

While I have been typing, Jon has been feeding Grace noodles.  She has eaten everything we have offered, but noodles are the biggest hit.  Jon drops them in like a mother bird dropping in worms, and she sucks them in like you wouldn't believe. She can't pick up Cheerios and get them to her mouth, but she can slurp up ramen noodles like a pro.

                                                                   shampoo time

                                                          on again off again with the hat

                                                                    slurpin' in noodles

More process, but Starbucks makes it worth it

I've received some comments that some of y'all really enjoy the pictures, so I'll take a hint that my writing isn't up to blog standards, and try to keep the writing short(er).

Today was passport photos (for Grace's US passport, which we'll get later in the week), followed by a trip to the clinic. Every adoptive family in Guangzhou was at the clinic today, so there was a lot of standing in line.

This clinic visit was to confirm that G is healthy and can go back to the US with us. We did have a little bit of a concern, but as far was we can tell we aren't being held back. On

the walk back to the hotel,

we found a Starbucks, where K was able to get her fix in--it's been a while! The brewed coffee was great, but K noted the whipped cream on her frappacino tasted a little diffe

rent than she's used to. La

ter today we'll meet with our agency guide and work through the US side of the paperwork in preparation for more meetings in the coming days. After that it's dinner at Lucy's with some from the group. We're looking forward to it. Here's some photos from today for you to enjoy.

Not shown in the pictures, we noted that there were no less than 6 different "photo shoots" going on with people taking pictures of models in fancy clothes, even wedding gowns, probably for a catalog or something, we guessed. Here's Grace obliging for someone for her own picture.

These last two shots I took for Sam, our violinist. Sam, note that even bronze statues suffer from broken bows occasionally.

Now in Guangzhou!

Today was about traveling to the next and final (official) city, Guangzhou. After breakfast, we received a copy of Grace's "finding" advertisement (newspaper ad) as a keepsake, checked out of our hotel, and headed to the airport for a 2:30pm flight to here.

The original flight was cancelled a week ago, so we were taking an earlier flight. That flight then was delayed after we got to the airport. When we heard that there was an hour and a half until boarding, two families went up a floor to find lunch. Not ten minutes later, they announced something in Chinese, and all the waiting people literally scrambled over to the bus-boarding area! We got the hint that the flight had just been "un-delayed", and then the announcement came in English. The families upstairs had just ordered, but luckily got their money back as the order hadn't yet been put in. Thank goodness they made it onto the flight.
Grace slept through the entire flight with the help of a bottle and her mommy's tender arms. If she does that on the long flight I just might put this girl through college! :)
We've heard many things about the famous-in-China-adoption-circles "White Swan" hotel. It is indeed very nice. All three hotels we've stayed in are pretty swanky. I can only imagine what we Americans (not just westerners) are thought of by our hosts. We stay in 5-star hotels, apparently are pushy and demanding (a funny idea to me, based on what I've experienced here), make interesting observations about the way people drive (I should tjavascript:void(0)ell you sometime), and the first "american food" restaurants that come recommended are Mickey-D's and KFC. But I digress.
As K and G are both asleep, I'll just cut it short. Actually, that's about all there is to report today.
More appointments tomorrow, and several throughout the week.
More later! Hope you're all doing well.

another day in the life...

I think today is Wednesday.  Activity-wise, things have slowed down quite a bit and we are enjoying some rest and some quiet time with Grace. Jon and I are pretty much over any effects of jet lag, we're healthy and sleeping well, and we're getting the hang of taking care of Grace. 

Right now she is sitting on our hotel bed and crying - a mix of ready-to-go-to-bed and the fact that Jon stepped out of her line of sight. She is getting more comfortable with Mommy but when she's tired, she just needs Daddy. It's a bit tough on me, but not like it would have been if I had not read and heard about this happening often.  I have no doubt she will come around.

The three of us visited the hotel coffee shop this afternoon - ordered a mocha and a caramel machiato and played cards.  Grace is not good at cards, but very interested in holding them.  The Chinese apparently have a vastly different concept of mochas and caramel machiatos than Starbucks has. Still, it was fun and nice to chalk up as one more experience here.

Also today, we visited another pavillion - the TengWang, I think.  It had lovely paintings created by one of the emporers and featured a famous poem by one of the ancient poets. It made me think of the Longfellow park near my brother's home. From the balcony, we could also see a good view of an enormous digging project, which turns out to be the construction of a city subway system. Maybe the most interesting aspect of these Chinese citiesto me  is the juxtaposition of modern and ancient. I had an interesting chat with our guide about ancient vs. modern religious beliefs, and apparently this juxtaposition extends beyond just the architecture. (Say that five times fast.)

Four families in our group in Nanchang

Teng Wang Pavillion, 9 stories tall, built in 653 AD, rebuilt in 1980's.

I would write more, but we are loaning this computer to another family for the evening so they can talk to their relatives. The families (three of us have been together since day one) really meld into one big family, looking out for each other and swapping/giving things supplies we need. This family borrowing our computer gave us a package of laundry soap earlier. More blogging later...

Late Breaking Video

This just in, live video of Happy-Sad Girl caught in a rare happy moment, just before swing back to sad. This was shot just before bedtime last night.

http://vimeo.com/upham/gku1

Settling In

[By now you might be able to tell when Kathy's writing and when Jon's writing, even though it always says Kathy. I just added myself as an author to her blog, so now you can tell for sure!]

Yesterday was a day of settling in. It was a morning just as packed and odd to the western mind as the others, and it was followed by--break time. The first real break since before we left, to be sure. And we and our group just about fell over when we were told that we wouldn't need to do anything until an OPTIONAL walk the next day (today now) at 1630, and if not that, until 0930 the NEXT morning. Just hearing those words was like the feeling you get when being served a wonderful dessert--you haven't had a bite, but you just know it's going to be good!

After a tasty hotel restaurant breakfast, we piled into a small toyota bus (large van) and drove to the local government office where the main Chinese portion of the adoption proceedings would be done. After loading up kids and strollers (three other families with us), we moved out into some pretty heavy traffic (which our guide says was light) and immediately drove down the street and got stuck. Our creative driver (who will be tipped generously at the end of this trip!) "made it happen" by, with one hand on the wheel and another on the horn, cut onto the sidewalk, wove through some sidewalk-planted trees and people for about 30 yards, into a parking lot, back onto the street and into the next intersection where he did a U-turn! We then went back one block in the other direction. He pulled over, and we all got out--we were there. So the entire bus trip was about 3 blocks, but as the crow flies, it was about one block and across the street. We all cracked up! Probably not a bad thing the way traffic is here, especially with the new babies.

I just realized that getting to the office took a whole paragraph, so I'll try to speed it up a bit for those of you with non-vicarious lives to live.

In the office there were several other families present with our group. New York, Maryland, and even Holland were represented. Here's what got done there: a family photo was taken, many papers in Chinese were signed by us, many fees were paid (gulp!), and a finalization interview with an official was performed. The best parts were that we finalized much of the process (still more to go) and that we got to ask more questions of the orphanage director where Grace's foster home was attached to. There are a few more interesting details, but I'll not be able to share them on an open blog. It's a real experience combining the exploration-by-immersion of another culture (if staying in a western hotel doesn't nullify that entirely) with growing your family by 25%.

Next was a trip to the notary--a really quick in-and-out meeting. That was followed by a trip to Wal-Mart (which appearantly is becoming customary for adopters to Nanchang), and that was fun.

Grace has a chest cold, so, being a little concerned, we were able to visit a doctor at the clinic inside the hotel. The doctor had no serious concerns, so we plan to suck snot from her until it clears up--hopefully nothing will prevent her from entering the U.S. (There, now that didn't sound like Kathy, did it? She would have surely described the nasal aspirator bulb thingy).

Time to keep resting. She's resting now. Night sleeping has been a major blessing--about 12 hours last night for Grace with only one bottle break. We're excited to spend the next few days settling her into our family.

There is a baby at the end of this post

The Hutong tour via rickshaw

At the end of this day (Sunday) we met our new baby. But we had a very full day before that. The itinerary listed these for Sunday: check out of hotel, Hutong Tour, Forbidden City, Tienamen Square, fly to Nanchang, receive babies.

First, a rather hurried checkout - turns out it was too hurried on our part, as we found out later in the security check at the airport. Then the Hutong Tour. It was hard to imagine what this was since we had never heard of a Hutong, but we were pleasantly surprised. Hutong used to mean "well" in ancient times (more about ancient times in a second) and the Hutong area of Beijing began as a number of public and private water wells in one ancient neighborhood. (Side note: we heard "in ancient times" from our tour guide many many times today, and it seemed to mean basically in the days of the emperors, which ended in the early 1900's.) Today the Hutong area is a grid of tightly woven streets of tiny apartments. In fact, "hutong" now means any street narrower than 9 meters (from 9 to 18 meters is a "street", wider than that is an Avenue.) Anyway, we were bussed to the Hutong neighborhood, driven around it in bicycle rickshaws, and allowed into one of the homes to visit with a family. This tour was my favorite so far - an up-close look at some Chinese people and how they live. While we were chatting with the family, the teen-aged son walked in with a new haircut, apparently, and the mom had a fit. Moms are moms the world over.

The Forbidden City is terrace upon terrace and palace upon palace of protection and ceremony, which served as the home for the emperors. There are a million of (fascinating) details, but the gist of the place is to surround the emperors with wealth, privilege, good luck charms, ritual, luxury, and countless minions. I found it hugely impressing, but also terribly sad, as an enormous temple to misplaced faith.

Our tour guide didn't go into much depth about T. Square as we walked across it. If you knew nothing else, you'd find it to be a large peaceful paved city square surrounded by government halls and other important buildings. I won't write too much here of Jon's and my opinions, but I will say I was sorry I did not know more of the square and the government's recent history.

Off to the airport (via Kentucky Fried Chicken, which was terrible) and off to Nanchang. I must have fit the security guards' profile because I was pulled out of line and busted for shaving cream, face wipe cloths, a water bottle, and a can of apple juice. Jon chugged the apple juice as I expounded on the insulin pump and received a pat-down - you know, just in case.

Very cramped two-hour flight to Nanchang; good food service, but we are too nervous about getting sick to eat Chinese airline food we don't recognize. New tour guide and driver, and more updates, schedules, and info. By now, us remaining three families traveling together were getting very anxious to meet our babies as well as rather travel weary from the marathon day. The guide said the three babies were at a different hotel from ours, so when we arrived at our hotel, we would settle into our rooms while she called the nannies to bring our babies. Something didn't work as expected, and the babies and nannies were actually sitting in the lobby waiting for us as we got off the bus and hustled our bags inside.

After waiting five years for the moment, we were all caught off-guard. None of us was prepared, no one cried, we hardly asked any questions, we just were shuffled off to our rooms, stunned, and holding stunned little kids.

There is too much to say about this sudden life-change and this incredible little person to adequately put it in a blog post, but here are a few details. Grace is absolutely darling and has lots of thick hair, cut and styled into a precious little look. She is definitely a Daddy's girl - he held her the most right at first, and she is really only happy when she is with him. The 12 month clothes I brought are going last maybe this week and next, then we'll switch up to 18 month clothes (she's built just like our boys at that age.) We are in love with this little girl. She slept very well after a bath and bottle.

I am writing this on Monday evening, so more has transpired, but I am too tired to write about today's events and too tired to post pictures (hope you like them now), so I will leave it here.