Home Sweet Home

Zzzzzzz..... Sorry that's the sound of me sleeping. We've been home about a week now and we're feeling like the jet lag and time zone difference is out of our system but Jade likes to wake up about 3 times a night. We're tired! We haven't figured out what the deal is with that. I know it is really common to have sleep problems with adoption, especially at her age. Just 'cause I know, doesn't make it fun.

The 27 hours of travel home was surprisingly doable. She slept quite a bit. On the ride from Beijing to San Fransisco, she slept like 6 or 7 hours. That's very good. She was taking up at least one seat and sometimes both seats for a good part of that time. That's not so good. Matt and I both had lots of time to wander around that very large plane. Reading while standing up has never felt so good. I was very willing to give up my seat if it meant that she'd sleep. It was a sacrifice for the good of my co-passengers that I was willing to make. I hope they appreciated it. We had a lot of older American travelers around us that gave us sympathetic looks through the whole ride. They tried their best to entertain Jade for us. One nice lady thought that a sleeping mask would be just the thing to really make the plan ride fun. I wish Jade had thought so too. Maybe she would've slept even longer if she would've just tried it out. We'll never know. San Fransisco to Phoenix, she was asleep within 5 minutes of boarding the plane and we had a hard time waking her up once we landed. So all the prayers worked. Thanks!

You might have noticed that I'm calling her Jade instead of Molly. I know what your thinking. Wishy Washy. My family pretty much refused to call her Molly. Matt's family has heard the name Jade for so long that that's what they call her. We gave in and now we are back to Jade. She adores the kids - any kids really. She's surprisingly patient with Aimee, who - not surprisingly, is not completely thrilled with her. The first few days we were impressed with how nice Aimee was being about it all. She got over that. We know what she really thinks now. I'm pretty sure Jade does to. The other kids think she's awesome. I don't feel like I've really seen her personality yet. Not being able to communicate makes it hard. So much of our personalities is shown through the words we say. That's something to look forward to. She's figuring out American food. I think the food she's been most enthusiastic over so far has been spaghetti. She licked the bowl last night. She hates mac and cheese. Not a surprise there. Of course, all things sweet are appreciated.

She can walk, although she really only likes to when she's on carpet. We take her to the pediatric orthopedic next week. We originally thought we'd wait until she'd been home for about a month before taking her in but it literally breaks our heart to watch her try to keep up with the other kids. Her leg slows her down too much. I also think that we must encourage her to use it more than her foster family did, because by bed time, there's a spot on her leg that looks like maybe it hurts from using it as much as she is now. She's so heavy that we can't hold her all day and she'd hate being held that much anyways. So we'll know soon what the plan is for her. I want her to be healthy, happy and to be able to physically do what she wants.

That's all for now.

Melissa

Molly Jade Gotcha Day!

As you may know, we got home late Wednesday night and are glad to be off those planes. Molly slept for a good portion of the way home, but unfortunately she used both seats for most of that time. Melissa and I spent a fair amount of time standing in the aisles.

The title sounds weird, but that is the common term for the day you get your baby. As you can see it was exciting, stressful, and emotional for all involved. My days and nights are still mixed up so I thought I'd get this file up on the blog now that we are back in the U.S. and can fully use the internet again. Enjoy!

Our new friend!

Getting ready to eat Portugese Cantoese food

Killing time on a dead bus

Wall of bulk pearls at one of the shops in the pearl market.

Our medical exam

It's been so strange being in another country for as long as we have without any set schedule. I've completely lost track of my days. I try to keep track of what day it is at home and once you throw in a nine hour time difference, I just can't seem to remember days and times. So at home it was conference Saturday and here it was general conference Sunday. Unfortunately we didn't watch any of it. We had a required medical appointment this morning, then more paperwork to get ready for the US consulate appointment tomorrow. I've done a lot of paperwork for this adoption and it just doesn't seem to end. After lunch, our guides took us to the pearl market. It's a wholesale market that specializes in bulk pearls, crystal, stone beads - really anything to make jewelry out of. It was a seven story building of all different jewelry supplies. Normal jewelry stores go there to buy in bulk and then mark the prices up in their own stores. I asked our guide why everybody didn't buy their jewelry here. She told me that most people don't realize that they will sell to anybody but the bulk buyers get the best price. Some people in our group dropped some serious cash on jewelry today. I wasn't one of them. What I bought was small potatoes in comparison - but I did get a bracelet. Tonight we had a group dinner at another hotel that was close by. It was a Portuguese Cantonese fusion. It was really yummy. Molly Jade was loving it. We have a funny video of her eating. If it's not too big, we'll email it and have Amanda post it for us. I forgot to mention that we flew from Zhengzhou to Guangzhou - so we went from central China to southern China. Guangzhou has a population of 13 million. This city is huge. I can't get over how big all of these cities are. Molly, unfortunately, fell asleep at the wrong time of the day and was then exhausted for the plane ride but not exhausted enough to fall asleep. It got pretty rough there towards the end of the flight. I'm not feeling optimistic about the trip home. Keep us in your prayers. The night just got better from there. The hotel was about 50 minutes away from the airport. So we loaded the luggage into van and the people (35 people) into a bus. After about 30 minutes on the road our bus broke down. Chinese drivers love to use their horns for the smallest reasons. A big dead bus full of Americans is an awesome reason to use the horn. We got dirty looks and lots of frustrated drivers. Finally the replacement bus showed up. By the time we got to the airport it was late and Molly was asleep and had been for long enough that we didn't want her waking up and then wanting to stay up but we had no luggage - which had her pajamas and her blankets. Our room was cold. It actually has air conditioning that they allow you to use. The hotel in Zhengzhou wouldn't let us turn on the AC and it was hot enough to need it. Needless to say, it wasn't our best night. The best part was that there is a McDonalds across the parking lot. I usually only get ice cream at McDonald's but that cheeseburger and strawberry mango shake was really good. And as a bonus Molly seems to adore chicken nuggets. The hotel is pretty amazing. Very nice. I saw a rolls royce in the parking lot. I've decided that high end hotels and good guides are the key to limiting culture shock. Let's face it, we are staying in 4 nd 5 star hotels. I don't live this nice in American. Almost nobody does. Guangzhou isn't as immaculately clean as Beijing or Zhengzhou but it's prettier than both of them. It's very tropical. It kind of reminds me of Cancun or Hawaii. Of the three cities, this is the one I'd pick to live in. Another plus is that scooters are outlawed and the drivers don't seem quite as focused on running pedestrians over. Both good reasons to like this city. We met a nice Chinese man on the plane ride in. He spoke very good English. He had lot's of questions for us about the adoption. He invited us to visit him at his business or even to come visit at his house. Our schedule won't let us but I think we'll be penpals. He asked us to keep him posted about Molly. Molly really liked him. He's the first person that she was tempted to leave us for so far. :-) That's all that's happening on this side of the world.M & M

Finally some pictures!

Matt and Melissa are still having a hard time posting. So I will be doing their posting for them. I am not nearly as good at it as they are, so you will have to forgive me for that. I am probably not doing it how they want it done. But since they most likely will not see it until they get home...oh well! I figure everybody would just be happy to see some pictures.

Amanda

Friday

Hello All! We are so sorry about the sporadic blog posts. We've actually written something everyday but it's been really difficult to get them to actually post on the blog so we've decided to send them as email and have Amanda post them for us. Today (Saturday) was the first day we didn't have anything scheduled. We are killing time waiting to get Jade's passport from the provincial government. We took a taxi (my first taxi ride ever) about twelve blocks or so away looking for a shop that would make a Chinese name stamp jor us. We thought we'd found a shop that could do it but after waiting for 45 minutes we came back to pick it up and she gave us our money back. She tried to explain why she could't do it but we don't understand Chinese. That tends to be a problem in China. We did get an interesting 45 minute walk out of it. The thing I'm learning about China is that on main roads that tourists and wealthy people hangout in it's super clean - like not even a cigarette in the gutter. Shop owners are constantly cleaning their area of side walk. If you get very far off the beaten path you get into how the normal Chinese live. It's crowded, sometimes clean, sometimes dirty and chaotic. We'll add some pictures to show you all some of the things we saw. We didn't do much this afternoon. Matt's stomach isn't feeling too hot today so we're sticking close to the hotel. He started on an antibiotic so I'm hoping that helps or the rest of this trip could be really long. We saw the sun today which was a first since being in Zhenzhou. The haze ( is it pollution ?) Is so thick the sun doesn't break through. It can be hard to tell which direction your headed or if it might actually be rain clouds. I miss blue skies and sunshine. We did see a Home Depot. I wasn't expecting that. We leave tomorrow afternoon to go into southern China to finish up our appointments with the American consulate. It's been a slow day for news.Besides a stomach ache, we are the lucky ones.Matt and Melissa

More pics

My list

We are having a great time on our trip. We finally get Jade today. (we found out she's called LanLan by her foster family) That should be tramatic for all of us :-) Since we haven't left to do that yet, I thought I'd post a quick list of observations.

1. The women here have a thing for outrageous shoes.

2. The Chinese people love their pets - dogs, pigeons, crickets-which they keep in cages just like in Mulan.

3. The drivers are crazy with a capital C and the pedestrians are even crazier-they have no fear.

4. Jay walking across a five lane road is no problem, because street vendors have taken over at least two of those lanes.

5. Chinese people are as interested in seeing their historical and cultural sights as foreigners.

6. Everything is big-buildings, monuments, crowds- it's all on a grand scale.

7. The younger generation - at least - really believe that Chairman Mao and the communist government made China a better place for the Chinese people.

8. Feng Shue (sp?) is practiced in China and taken very seriously.

9. I think that Chinese people drive nicer cars than Americans.

10. The Chinese people want the world to know they aren't poor and behind the times anymore.

11. I haven't had to use a squatty potty yet but I have found out toilet paper can be really hard to find when you need it. Always carry Kleenex.

12. I haven't seen any soy sauce yet but I have seen Tabasco sauce.

13. A child with red hair in China will be treated like a celebrity. Everybody wants to touch them and have their picture taken with them.

14. Very few phone lines to be seen. EVERYONE has a cell phone. Most are nicer than mine.

15. Apartments are in short supply, but they are building thousands of high-rises that look like dominoes stacked up. Looks like a scene from a Sci-Fi movie. No wonder prices on building supplies are up world-wide.

16. They are tearing down the old cities so they can build the new one a few miles down the road.

That's just a few of our observations so far. I'm sure we'll make a few more.

Matt and Melissa

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Momma, don't let your baby grow up to be an acrobat.

Sorry I didn't write a post yesterday.  Too tired.  I'm normally  a night owl but between jet lag and being super busy I'm asleep by 8:30. Yesterday we saw Tianamen square and the Forbidden City.  We also visited  silk factory.  Tianamen square was big.  The government buildings around it are pretty and big.  We were on a pretty tight schedule so we didn't get very close to anything-just sorta walked past.  The forbidden City was not just big it was huge.  We didn't didn't get to go inside any of those buildings bit we could look inside the rooms.  It's so big that you can't take it all in and there were so many people there.  The only thing I can compare it to is Disneyland during it's busy time. Let's just say you better be moving with the flow of traffic otherwise you aren't going anywhere. 

Today we went to the jade factory, the Great Wall of China and the acrobatic show.  We bought some jade for Jade.  A little piece that we probably won't give her until she's quite a bit older.  It's super sweet.  I kinda wish it was mine. :-)   The Great Wall was so impressive.  I thought I might die climbing it.  My legs were shaking and my heart was beating so fast. The view was amazing.  I feel like between Matt and I, we have to e xperience China for Jade.   Who knows when or even if she will get to come back.  We need to be able to tell her about it.  So I went farther on the wall than I really wanted to.  It really was awesome and that's not an exaggeration.  We also made a quick stop at the birds nest stadium.  Apparently the big question here is what to do with it now that the Olympics are long over.  I guess they haven't come up with any good ideas.  The acrobatic show was really great. The performers could do amazing things with their bodies.  I'm sure they were all elite gymnasts at one point.  As I watched them perform the different parts of the show, I thought to myself - I bet their mothers cannot stand to watch the show.  To dangerous.  One of the girls did get dropped.l. I wanted to give her a hug and make sure she was alright.  That is the story behind the title of this post.   I'm to tired to write more but I know what I'm gonna write about so check back soon. 

Melissa

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