Big Brother is watching you.

I miss my China friends. You go through this incredible life-changing experience for a couple of weeks and then in one long plane ride, it's over and you're back to your old reality + one. Flashes of my three weeks in China keep coming back to me. In particular, and this may only be useful to anyone traveling there in the future, that hotel e-mails, beginning in September, will be monitored by the PRC. As tourists wanting to blog from the privacy of your hotel room, you will be required to fill out a lengthy questionaire before having access to the internet. We received several letters from the Marriott apologizing for "service delays" while we were there because they were installing "a new and improved system". Well that was it. Big brother wants to know what you are thinking via your correspondences to the rest of the world.
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Now that I'm home, I'm kicking myself for having been so overcome by the "mother of two" thing, that I completely forgot to buy tacky Chinese city place mats to add to my collection. I came back empty handed and only remembered this yesterday! Not that I saw any to purchase but what city doesn't have plastic place mats? I'm sure I could have purchased some at the Great Wall. I just couldn't see them through the fog.

The obsession with place mats started on a motorcycle trip I took from New Orleans to Monterey, Mexico, too many years ago. I remember stopping at a motel in New Iberia, Louisiana, and coming across some place mats of the State Map (complete with lovely pink flamingos) and the friends I was traveling with told me that I would see those things everywhere and to hold off on buying them. Well guess what? It's been twenty years and I still haven't seen them - and this is how an obsession is born. I don't have any other collections, which is surprising because I come from a long generation of packrats. So now, when I travel out of the country, I make it a point to seek them out, to the great embarrassment of all who travel with me. I stunned some friends of mine when I purchased a set in Gibraltar. I'm big on geography and I use them as an educational tool for my children. Yeah, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

On the home front, I finally left Makena for three and a half hours yesterday. It was the longest time we've been separated and I was worried about the impact this might have on her but I had to get to a meeting and I needed to reassure everyone that I could still "keep it together" and be productive on the work front. To my surprise and then relief, it went extremely well. She never cried and was in good spirits the entire time. Jack was home with her as well as Nancy, her new nanny. She had started working in the morning and the two spent most of the day observing each other. It was actually great because Nancy didn't try to force Makena to like her. She wasn't in her face. She'd walk past her occasionally and non-chalantly place an object (we're big on spoons and Tupperware)in her vicinity, to peak her curiosity. By the time I had to leave we brought in the "big guns". We had Nancy take Makena outside and personally introduce her to the eleven chickens and Rommel, our giant African desert tortoise. Then, she reunited her with Tiger, who we'd kept at bay most of the day, and it worked out perfectly! Makena hardly noticed I was gone (I'm not quite sure how I feel about that) and she spent the rest of the afternoon being distracted by Tiger's antics and Jack's theatrics. She napped and when I finally returned home, Makena saw me and reached her arms out to me making a happy, scrunchy, face. Jack sort of looked up at me, grunted, and then went back to watching his Sponge Bob rerun.

Life is still a jetlagged blur and nothing prepares you for re-entry with a Chinese baby when your brain is screaming for sleep. It is insane and none of the blogs I've read have ever really addressed this, in terms of the time it sucks out of your life before things return to normal, or a permanent routine is established. So if you're off to China in the near or distant future, don't forget to budget two more weeks to whatever psychological deadline you are giving yourself to function ideally.

I also have a new resolution. We're not going to pay for Mak or Jack's college education. We're setting up a therapy fund. The kids can always work their way toward their carreer goals and if they pay for them, they'll be all the more willing to reach them, after all that's what their father and I did. Okay, maybe I'm hallucinating.

So we're all taking it day by day with no real end in sight. My main goal is to move Jack's bedtime up to midnight before school starts in five days.

Wish me luck.


Isabelle, living life on the other side and missing her China friends.
PS Makena's picture was taken at 2AM.

No, you can't tongue-kiss the dog.

I was really worried about how Makena would take to our dog, Tiger. I didn't know if she would be scared of him, or allergic to him and I was worried about how Tiger would take to her, too. See, Tiger is a lover. He is a rescued dog with boundless energy, who can easily knock toddlers over with his ever-wagging tale. He is everyone's dog and he means to spread his devotion to anyone who wants it.

Well he finally found someone eager to accept all that he has to give. And she is a sixteen pound four-legged crawler from China. And, sadly, I find myself having to separate Makena from her newfound love.

It's been a couple of days and the dog is our daughter's greatest distraction. She can't get enough of him. She will see him and crawl toward him with her eyes as big as saucers and her mouth open in the hope that Tiger will lick her. It's gross, it's funny, and when we have our first visit with our pediatrician, I'll make sure to have her de-wormed while we are there. What's a little ring worm when you probably have giardhia and a whole slew of parasites? I'm also not a hundred percent sure that she isn't trying to eat him...She really is Daddy's little girl.

In any case, her crawling is progressing at warp speed thanks to our four-legged friend and her two-legged brother who likes to tease her by having her chase his remote-control car.

It's quite brilliant, actually.


Isabelle

Sifting through fifty pounds of mail at 3 AM...

In n' out!

Good bye China, hello America!

I want a medal for surviving a thirteen hour flight with a gassy baby who woke up crying every hour on the hour. Between the noise, the claustrophobic bassinette, the weird Chinese lady in the seat across from us who kept making crazy faces and the leaky diaper all over my clothes...and did I mention her farts? Yeah, that's what I want, a medal. Made of any kind of metal, as long as it has some weight to it. Although if Makena gets her hands on it, it will probably become a teether.

I Benadryled Jack and I should have done the same for Mak but at the last minute, I called an audible and gave her infant Dimetap because she was so snotty (literally) that I wanted her to dry up more than I wanted her to sleep. In any case, that did the trick but she was not inclined to pass out.

So we finally made it onto American soil and we could see the finish line, in fact we were the first to line up at the "Adopted Babies'" checkpoint after we got off the plane...and NOTHING HAPPENED because NO ONE WAS THERE. An officer finally walked up to us and told us to take a seat and that someone would be with us, shortly. By then, the whole plane had unloaded and some immigrants were actually trying to stand behind the yellow line, ahead of me, even though I'd been seated and waiting for ten minutes. I'd be dammed if I let someone cut ahead of me at this juncture in time. Hello? I'd just spent three weeks in China. I knew how it worked. I used the good old sleep-deprivation "glare" and made them back up to the end of the line.

You'd thing that with a dozen babies waiting to be processed, that "Homeland Security" would have sped things up... made it comfortable for the children. Nope. We stood there aimlessly for a good forty-five minutes before some uniform-wearing woman showed up and told us to stand in line before she would take our dossiers. So we handed her our child's future, sealed in a brown envelope, and stood there, moronically, for another forty-five minutes, opting for second degree butt rash instead of changing a diaper for fear of having having her show up and start the processing. We waited and we waited...we didn't dare rase a fuss because we didn't want to piss off the government employee, because we wanted him or her to stamp the passport and make Makena an American. Hell, we just wanted to get our baggage and get home.

This was the final indignity. We waited two hours. We watched as everyone else on the plane was processed ahead of us. Only after that did they free up one person to help the dozen of us adoptive parents, and then we all panicked because a plane from Jamaica landed and travelers started queueing up.

When they finally called our name, it was uneventful. They returned our passports -- along with Makena's Chinese one that was stamped with a shiny visa. And that was it.

When we finally stepped out into the cool night, Los Angeles air, we inhaled deeply for the first time in several weeks. After the time we spent breathing "Chinese air," breathing "L.A. smog" was like changing cigarette brands and going from Marlborough to Marlborough "Light". We sealed off the trip with a ceremonial stop at In n' Out burgers for a heart-stopping "double double". And what we felt was relief.

I wanted to post a picture of the group of children who traveled halfway across the world to greet sisters into their families. None of them asked for this kind of adventure but all of them stepped up to the plate and were great ambassadors for their country. First class troupers.

I also wanted a record of the dress Makena wore to her swearing in at the US consulate and a picture of my number one-son "raging" at the final dinner party, on the eve of our departure. He actually tried to sing Chinese karaoke because he was so into the Asian disco groove. I regret not having taped his show.

f="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6995/2428/1600/DSC01717.jpg">I'll post more pictures and thoughts as they occur. I was also given two cameras full of pictures of Makena before we adopted her and I hope to have something special to show her when she is old enough to grasp all the excitement of her early life.

She is a survivor. Call it fate, call it destiny, she is finally home.


And we love her, dearly.


Is - a - jetlagged

Star spangled baby

The last two days have been a blur. I'm posting from the lounge in the Guangzhou airport,three hours away from taking off,and I'm feeling pretty emotional.

Makena was babbling away on the bus, looking out the window laughing, and it struck me again, the way it did in Chongqing, that we were taking her away from her country. I know a lot of Chinese people look at her and think "What a lucky baby" and we feel so lucky to have her because she is our beautiful ray of sunshine but I also know that to some, watching their countries' daughters be sent away to be raised by foreigners across the four corners of the globe, is an embarrassment.

The China Team took us to the airport and acted as our interpreters and assistants, making sure that all the "i"s were dotted and the "t"s were crossed and when it finally came time to say goodbye to them at the security checkpoint, I was overcome with tears and cried my way through inspection. As soon as we settled for the wait, my husband headed for the refrigerator and cracked open a Tsingtao for me. So, yeah, I feel better, certainly calmer.

Yesterday was surreal. We started out the day by taking the kids in our group, bowling. About twenty of us piled into taxies, in the pouring rain, and headed to an alley about ten minutes drive from the hotel. It was a blast. The look on the bowling league's faces when these "May Gwans" with their Chinese daughters unloaded on their spot and took over was funny . We had a blast and Jack got better at bowling because he didn't have any bumpers to cushion him. He bowled a 35 the first game and a 44, the second, and I know he's headed for bowling glory. He loves it.

We hurried home to get the babies dolled up for their swearing in and headed off to the the Consulate. We brought Makena up to Window 9 and the girls behind the bullet proof glass double checked that her photo on her visa application matched the baby before them, then they handed us back our paperwork and we waited for the short vice-consul to come out and make us swear something (I can't remember what). All I know is that when we land on the 26th and Makena's papers are stamped, that she'll be an American citizen.

We ended the day with a group dinner party to celebrate and Jack danced the night away, literally, I left him on the dance floor with the Puerto Rican family and headed home with the baby. Jack came home with them an hour later, sweaty and deliriously happy. It was very nice way for him to end his adventure in China.

I've got the Benadryl ready, hoping for a smooth flight...

Thank you for following our adventure. I'll post more thoughts and photographs when I get home.

Isabelle

Cruising to the finish line.

One of the China Team people got on the loudspeaker as the bus took us to our Pearl River Cruise dinner, which is another right of passage for us adoptive parents sojourning in Guangzhou while we wait for our embassy meeting. He warned us about Chinese people's "manners" and basically told us that shoving, pushing, and cutting in line were permitted (as are spitting, clearing your nose and slurping you tea or noodles).

He told us to stand back, hold onto our children and let the other people embark but that when it came to the buffet, to push our way through or there wouldn't be any food left for us.

Picture this...300 Chinese tourists ready to party on their (expensive) Pearl River cruise. Some of them are already hammered and, well before the first call to embark has gone out, they're all stacked against each other like spoons, trying to be the first to board. This is what happens when you have a billion + people in a country. You don't stand on ceremony or you'll be trampled. The law of the jungle prevails here. This is the future. This is Emily Post's worse nightmare.

Naturally, my agoraphobic husband bowed out of the occasion and I set off with Mak and Jack to see the city lights at night from the water. Luckily, our seating was assigned so it didn't matter that we boarded last. By the time we had gotten situated and purchased our thirst quenching Tsing Tao beer we headed for the buffet. The food, consisting of greasy noodles, soupy duck, mysterious vegetables, and spicy fish balls. Plus an array of other foods that I couldn't name or didn't recognize so I avoided. Jack decided that fish ball were his favorite food on the menu and went back three or four times to fill his plate. I think he really wanted to practice shoving and elbowing people.

Not only am I going to have to readjust to our time zone when we come home in a couple of days but I'm going to have deprogram Jack. He's enjoying Chinese manners a little too much. We've been here almost three weeks and he hasn't whined to come home. He's already talking about wanting to come back to show Makena her country and has expressed interest in attending this Chinese Culture camp in Beijing when he is older. I'm telling you, I don't have the heart to tell Jack that he isn't Chinese.

We were also taken to the electronic market which was extremely painful for Jack because we were the only parents who did not purchase the $1 dollar DVDs that were offered or the PSP games. Jack ended up with a pair of walkie talkies but couldn't stop getting weepy at the sight of the other kids going home with Pirates of the Carribean part 2! My husband was forced to give Jack his first lesson in copyright infringements and intellectual property rights. He better start learning this now, since he shares Ingmar Bergman's birthday and this may affect his future one day.

Today,I also ventured out to a Friendship Store by myself and practised my Chinese manners. There were two groups of people, clearly standing in line, at the taxi stand outside the hotel. A cab drove up and I boldly walked past them, opened the door and got in.

Time waits for no one. Score one for me!


Is - a - rude

Tastes like chicken...

I am not going near my husband for the next 48 hours. Last night, we were led to a Guangzhou "specialty" restaurant to feed on beetles and snake. I've been here, what, two weeks and I finally drew a line at insects. I know shrimp could be construed as "insects of the sea" but seeing water beetles floating in bins at the entrance to the restaurant sent cease and desist signals to my stomach and pretty much erased any appetite I had. As one fellow diner put it, this meal would be a law suit in the States!

But before we could send our taste buds into shock, Martin, one of the guys from the China Team, passed small bottles of brown liquid around and poured shots for the guys. When asked what kind of alcohol this was, we were told that it was - brace yourselves - seahorse, dog, and buck testicle extract liqueur. Good for men, good for you know what. Abstinence, that's what! I am not going near my husband until I am certain that the traces of Chinese dog have left his system. I figure 48 hours and I'm not even certain that I can ever kiss him again. Duck tripe is fear factor 101. Dog liqueur and fried beetles are fear factor 505. We're talking about a guy who doesn't even like vegetables. My husband drank 2 bottles with the guys, pictured.

I was told by the people who ate the beetles that you have to peel the outer shell and the wings, away. You're left with a larva-looking fleshy thing attached to six legs (I didn't count) and you pop the whole thing in your mouth. It has a lobster texture but a weird after taste. No kidding. Then perhaps you need to drink the shot first and then go for broke with the beetles.

By the time they rolled out the snake, it looked so normal, that I actually tried it. It was chewy and crunchy - they didn't de-bone it - and palatable. Jack even ate it and had a second piece. They also prepared a snake skin dish that was a little bit slimy. It was sauteed with celery and garlic and I took the tiniest bite and it felt rubbery, in an escargot kind of way.

I couldn't help but think that this snake skin had been rejected by Ferragamo for his Fall purse collection.
Happily enough, we are all fine this morning. No parties in our stomach or other surprises.

Although nothing surprises me anymore.


Isabelle

Down for the count.

It's been hard for me to blog because I've been sick. I've had this sore throat and persistent headache and this being "a mother to two children" thing has kind of sucked the life out of me. How do people do it?

Our little dumpling of joy is full of mischief and now wakes up every couple of hours during the night, screaming. Her sleeping through the night for the first 72 hours was pure entrapment. For the last three nights, she's awakened at midnight, 2AM, 4AM and 6AM -- which doesn't really count because that's when she should wake up. I'm wiped out. I have to buy a bottle warmer when I get home because she just won't take a room temperature bottle in the middle of the night.

As soon as she has it, though, she giggles and I feel suckered. What am I going to do? I'm not going to deprive her of comfort. She needs to know that she can get answers to her cries. But it's a fine line, she's testing boundaries while we're trying to set them -- right now it feels like shifting lines in the sand.

We cleared another paperwork hurdle yesterday. "We" is an over-statement. I gave my husband Makena's dossier and left him to fill out her Citizenship application because he has neater handwriting. I may have forgotten to tell him that the process would take three hours... I gave Jack 100 Yuen ($12.50) and pretty much paid him to hang out with the China Team girls and watch the younger kids-- and I went out with the baby and the $25 yellow stroller in search of bargains on Beijing Row, a shopping district about ten minutes cab ride from the hotel.

I was dumped on a street corner with fifty thousand other people who were all there for the same penny-pinching purpose and I couldn't do it. All the stores were tiny and crammed with shoppers, and steering the stroller while hanging onto my wallet and keeping my cool was a little taxing. I ended up in the department store, on the baby floor, paying full price for a pair of shoes for her. I parted with 98 yuen and decided that life was too short to save thirty yuen for a similar pair on the street.

I didn't see another caucasian face in the crowd and I definitely drew a lot of looks and stares. The children's faces are usually the ones that register surprise and then break into giggles. One woman assumed Makena was my daughter because we have the same eyes and the same coloring. I explained that the baby was Chinese and adopted and she really was shocked.

It was comforting to know that when some people see the baby with me, that they don't immediately label her as "different." I think it's also a testament to the effort the CCAA and the director of our agency put into "matching" children to their new families.


Life is good,


Is - a - tired.

Zen and now

Makena and the rest of the babies were all blessed by Budhist monks, yesterday. We were taken to a beautiful 600 year old temple somewhere in the middle of Guangzhou and spent about an hour there melting in the heat. We were ushered into a pavillion and all knelt before a large copper budha. It was rather awesome and the monks said a prayer and we all bowed three times. Then another monk walked around the room splashing the babies with holy water and then we bowed three times more and that was it. The prayer was to protect our daughters and wish them health, happiness and prosperity.

I went alone with Makena today to her medical health check up, which is required by the US embassy in order to process her citizenship application. I found out that she is about a half pound heavier than she was 3 months ago and two inches longer. She weighs about 16 pounds (which is about 2 pounds heavier than last week) and stands 27 inches tall. I think that puts her in the 5th to 10th percentile, maybe more. All I know is that I have her in 3-6 month clothes and they fit her loosely.
But what she lacks for in size, she makes up for in personality. This little bundle of joy is a very determined person. She sets goals in her sights and rarely gives up, or cries in frustration, until she reaches them.

Makena loves to video chat with our friends who are house-sitting for us. We've made them put our dog on camera a) to prove that he is still alive and b) to get her used to him. If she sees him enough she may not be terrified by him when she finally meets him in person. I'm also trying to get them to put our tortoise on camera but he weighs close to forty pounds and I don't want to have them risk dropping it. I may make them take a picture of it next to the day's newspaper. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Makena is definitely feeling more comfortable expressing her likes and dislikes and she saves her best smiles and giggles for Jack and her dad. She is fearless and loves to be thrown and caught. We are working on 2.5 revolution and back flip. I give her a 5.9 for agility and a 5.7 for artistic impression. We haven't decided whether to apply that to diving or gymnastics. We'll have to take her lead on that...

She has started to smile freely with us but is still guarded around strangers. She really studies people and things, seriously. She is almost ready to crawl and she watches you like a hawk when you eat. I prepared a little too well to be "unprepared" and I realize that the house is not baby-proofed. So we'll be doing that the second we return.

I'm posting a couple of pictures of adoption veterans. People who have gone back for a second child. Pictured below left is, Alissa, the oldest girl in our group to be adopted. She is posing with her dad and big sister, Aimee. She is almost 3. The last picture is of Olivia, one of the Chongqing Spice Girls, being held by her mom.



I can't believe we have five more nights here. I've hardly shopped but I did splurge today and I purchased a $25 stroller. It's an eye-popping yellow and should give the Bugaboo pushers a run for their money.

That's all I have for now. I'm sick and tired and I need a foot massage.


Isabelle

Houston, we have lift off.

Getting eight families out of Chongqing and to the airport on time was quite the production. I would probably have written about it sooner but our newest member of the family decided to greet the day ahead of the rooster and started wailing around 4 AM the day we were flying. Having stayed up late the night before, this change in the 72 hour routine we had set up caught me off guard. I can be an early morning person on 6 to 7 hours sleep but 4.5 hours is tough.

We had to have our bags packed and in front of our hotel rooms by 8:30 AM for a noon flight. The hotel took our locked luggage to the airport ahead of us and checked it all the way to Guangzhou for us. It was actually really convenient, except for the fact that I was exhausted and I had to pack when I would much rather have been sleeping. Makena was still following her course of antibiotics. Jack was now coughing again and blowing his nose and all I could think about was how my kids were going to be able to pressurize or depressurize on the 1.5 hour flight to Guangzhou.

The thought of taking a baby on an inaugural flight is about as exciting as anticipating a root canal. You know you have to have it, you just hope it won't be too painful and that you won't lose your cool during the operation. Just before we boarded, I gave Makena a bit of Dimetap and I withheld her bottle until we started to lift off. She fell asleep before I could actually give her the bottle but ultimately, it was brilliant and uneventful. Poor Jack, on the other hand had a hard time adjusting to the air pressure on the way down and ended up with a wicked ear ache compounded by a sore throat. Not good.

This is day two in Guangzou and both my children are now officially on antibiotics. I called the doctor in to look at Jack's ears and check Makena's lungs to make sure they were clear. They were. To find this out cost me 100 Yuen, or $13 US.

In retrospect, the only thing that caught me off guard, was me. As we were boarding the plane I started crying. It came out of nowhere. I was crying for Makena and the thought that I was taking her away from the place she was born. I was crying for her biological mom and I was crying for the homesickness Makena would probably never know.

I locked eyes with this pregnant woman in the airport on the way to the gate and I think that's what probably set it off. I wondered if it was her first pregnancy, whether it wasn't, whether she was from another town and had flown to Chongqing to have the baby...all these thoughts ran through my head and then to my mother who would never know Makena, just as she never got to meet Jack, who is named after her.

After I calmed down, I came to the conclusion that:

A) I'm either going through PMS,
B) Menopause or
C) I'm just whack or
D) All of the above.

Don't answer that.

I wanted to include this picture of Makena with the giraffe cudly she sleeps with. It was taken after I gave her the inaugural "first" bath. She loved it. But trying to bathe her was like trying to hug an eel. She was slippery and wiggly and kept launching into her crocodile death roll spins and it was a small miracle that she didn't split her head against the tub, the way she splashed around in the soapy water. It was worth it though. A) she got clean and B) it was the first time she giggled and laughed freely. I've decided to give her a bath once a week, whether she needs it or not.

72 hours and counting.

Here I thought we were out in 106 degree weather at the Three Gorges Dam Museum, yesterday. I was wrong. We were in 112 degree weather. No wonder we were all so cranky. My husband has given up on all group tours for the remainder of our stay and refuses to step out of the hotel, unless it's to get on the bus that will take us to the airport. He's actually the sane one in the group -- but I will never admit that to his face.



Chongqing made the CNN International weather report as being the hotest place in China and having broken a hundred year record for heat. I knew my daughter's birth place was special, I just couldn't quite put my finger on it until now. It's 11PM and it's 85 degrees outside. On the plus side, my complexion has cleared up, I don't know if it's the exfoliating smoggy haze facials or the pearl powder face cream I bought in Beijing but something is definitely working for me...maybe it was the steam from the hotpot, come to think of it. Vanity knows no borders (and yes, you can be a vain tomboy as long as you have a no make up look).

Today they gave us Makena's Chinese passport and I don't think she will complain about her picture. She is adorable. I am biased, I'm her mom, I can say that. All her air travel has to be booked under her original name, Qian Lihan, until we get her Certificate of Citizenship and apply for her American passport. Until then, I will have to travel with her passport and her Chinese adoption decree + the notarized translation.


We travel tomorrow and Mak and Jack are sick. Makena is on day 2 of antibiotics and I suspect she also has a sore throat and has spread it to Jack, who crashed early tonight complaining that he couldn't swallow. So, selfishly, I am in a panic because I don't want to get what they have and I'm running out of airborne tablets and I'm washing my hands but I'm not feeling so great. I should be in bed but I'm too wired from having spent two hours packing which was absolutely an insane amount of wasted time.

As usual, everyone is asleep and I'm blogging when I should be in bed. I obviously need help.

Help!

Is - crazy.

PS: I'm posting pictures of our outing today. There's no hiding the sweat on our faces or the haze in the air. The kids bought some spun sugar lollypops. Big sister Catherine whose little sister is Emily, is pictured, And we walked through old town, which, funnily enough, reminded me of every Chinatown I've ever been to, give or take the odd worker balancing a bamboo pole heavy with bricks and the smell of fish sauce in the air.









Maelin, posing with her parents

More thoughts on the first day.

Tomorrow will be our third day with Makena and the honeymoon continues. When we were hearded into the Civil affairs bureau last Tuesday, the babies were already in the room. I had heard that, in some instances, that they like to play a song from the animated Tarzan soundtrack just to milk our emotions as they bring the children in from another room. Who knows. In any case, there was no surprise "reveal." There were a lot of nannies and a lot of babies being held or propped up on couches. We were all quickly ushered to one side of the room and my family and I quickly scanned the group of children looking for Makena.

The picture is blurry and had I not seen the recent snapshot of her when we were filling out her official adoption paperwork, I don't know that I would have necessarily found her in the crowd, but I did. My husband had a steadier hand and I asked (screached at, was probably more accurate) him to quickly snap pictures of Makena so that we could have one of her "just before" she became a part of our family. She was the only baby in a walker and the only one who wasn't being attended to.

After she was handed to us and I had spent about a half hour with her, I got a chance to meet the head nanny, the woman who managed all the foster mothers, and I asked her what she could tell me about Makena's imunizations and her situation at home. The woman told me that Makena shared a crib with another baby, that was younger and not yet adopted, and that she liked to play by herself. Another woman came over hearing me ask questions about "Lihan" and she said "ah...she is going to be a model, that one." Very outgoing, very active. Loves pretty-clothes. ???

You grasp at straws in situations like this. I was hoping she would say tom-boy, hates to wear pink, rocket scientist, that sort of thing. But I do believe in karmic retribution and I'm sure I've been sent a girly-girl - hopefully of the Pink Power Ranger variety. One who can pack some punch.

I must take deep cleansing breaths and be like a willow reed and bend to the wind. What ever. I get it. I'm in trouble.

In the meantime, I just made a long distance call to my pediatrician's office because I didn't like the look of the Chinese cough syrup the hotel doctor prescribed and I wanted instructions on the dosage of Children's Dimetap Cough Supressant to give her. They took my call right away without saying "hold please." I didn't give them the chance. I went into Drama Queen mode and said, "I'm calling from china, my adopted baby is sick!" And it worked. They actually spoke to me and fired away a bunch of questions. This was a very exciting way for them to start their day and it was a nice way for me to go to sleep, knowing that when Makena wakes up, I will more assuredly be able to minister some measure of relief.

Nobody said this was going to be easy.

Isabelle, party of four.

PS pictured below are contrasts in Chinese architecture: The Three Gorges Museum and the Chongqing Auditorium, that we are melting in front of.

Things that go bump in the night...

We had our first scare last night. It was my fault. I momentarily left Makena on the bed in the care of Jack so that I could fix her a bottle. Making a baby's bottle is quite the production, here. You have to boil the water - whether it is tap or bottled, and you have to get the perfect mix of formula and rice cereal (they drink it thick) and heat. The bottle has to be hotter than you would normally think an American baby would tolerate or they won't drink it. Seriously. It's taken us three days to figure this out. Warm, doesn't cut it. It almost has to be hot. Anyway, I hear Jack scream "oh no!," followed by a thump, followed by a wail. I lost it. I quickly scooped the crying baby up and after about a minute, she calmed down. I should just have laid her on the floor but up until then, I had always had to argue with Jack to let me hold his sister. He explained that he got distracted by a crocodile eating a bird on the Discovery Channel and then burst into guilt-ridden tears. I joined in with my own guilt-ridden tears and it took us the rest of the evening to get over it.

Makena may not be able to crawl but she can do this quick spin log-roll, we shockingly discovered, much like a crocodile when it catches its prey.

She is fine. The doctor said so. By some miracle, I had scheduled a doctor's visit in the hotel earlier that afternoon and we only had to wait about twenty minutes between the incident and our scheduled check-up. She isn't bruised or tender but she has been started on a course of antibiotics to deal with her wet cough and continuous runny nose. Her spirits are excellent and she babbles and gurgles a lot.

Our group went on two excursions today. My husband took part in them, having gotten up at four in the morning so that he could conduct business in order to be able to join us. We were all slammed by the heat and the Russian roulette game of trying to cross the street, at cross-walks, without getting hit by a bus or a car. Nobody stops for anything here. They don't care. This is a city of thirty million people with things to do and people to see. Lots of them, everywhere. We are surrounded by enormous sky scrapers, with neon signs and laundry hanging from them and vegetable garden roof tops. People constantly stop to stare at our group of "May Gwans" parading our adopted babies through the crowd. Saying Ni Hao, usually disarms them and earns us a smile.

We got to see the Fighting Tiger's Museum, some beautiful artworks (Chongqing is famous for its National arts Academy and has an art scene) and the Three Gorges Dam Museum...'cause you just haven't lived until you've been there. Kidding. I know I'd prefer these excursions in minus-degree weather.

By the time we were through, we had a ten minute walk to the restaurant. Our guide wanted us to taste Chongqing hotpot. It's basically Chinese fondu and you cook a variety of meats in a pot of boiling broth. You can also cook your ingredients in spicy broth -- which is what Jack and his dad did. It's 105 outside and we are steaming ourselves, sweat pouring off out bodiesm guzzling beer and chowing down on hotpot. Jack is an incredibly picky eater at home. Here, he is trying absolutely everything (except vegetables). The family seated across from us and sharing our table is staring glumly at their dinner with slight looks of disgust on their faces. It turns out they weren't feeling so "hot." And after trying to cajole them into eating anything, we give up and take it all for ourselves. May-Way (that means delicious in Mandarin)!

As we leave, Jack and I walk past our guides' table to discover that they were eating hotpot but that their selection of meats is entirely different. So I sit down with them, decide that I have survived eating duck blood and bravely try pork tripe, duck guts and duck kidney. Bottom line, take tire, chop it up and boil it in hot pepper oil and I dare you to tell the difference. What I couldn't forsee after this daring tasting of bizarre looking foods was that my husband now refuses to kiss me.

Bummer.


Isabelle
An average mom in an extraordinary country.

Whose baby is this?

Makena has us wrapped around her finger tips. I put her down at 8 PM last night and I woke up at 7AM to find her awake in her crib studying her giraffe. My husband, Jack, and I all woke up at separate times, in the middle of the night, to check on her and make sure that she was really there and that this wasn't a dream. I put her in a sleep sack because of the air-conditioning and because I didn't know what kind of "sleeper" she was. I didn't want her wrapping herself in a blanket. I was right, she rolled all over the crib, on her stomach, on her back and on her side.

We ventured out this morning in balmy 106 degree heat to check out the sights. We left dad at the hotel so that he could work and we got to see the Yangtze river and attend another Tea ceremony (and sonny-boy got to practice his tea-slurping skills.) Jack is a joy. I could hardly get him to lift a finger before she came into our lives and now he insists on taking an active part in almost everything that concerns her. He has to feed her and hold her and stroll her. I offered to pay him a dollar for every diaper he changed, but the buck "stopped there."

She has a bit of a cold -- as do most of the children -- she has, as far as I can tell, eight pearly white teeth and she puts absolutely everything in her mouth. She is nine months old and doesn't quite crawl. She rocks back and forth, pushing herself up with ease. She also has Mongolian spots on her back. I went to a seminar last fall and the doctor/speaker warned us that this was a very common birth mark in children of Chinese ancestry. They appear as large bruises that extend from the middle of her back to her tailbone. They should completely disappear by the time she is four or five, but had I not been told what to expect, I would have immediately assumed that she had been harmed, which isn't the case.

72 hours is the average time it takes for a child to adjust to her new family and to show them her true personality. I'm hoping that she doesn't stray too far from the course she has set with us because she really is perfect. I'm also giving Jack 72 hours to see if the love fest continues.



These are happy times and the waite it took to get to this point was well worth it. I really believe that all the babies that were matched to the parents in our traveling group are perfect matches and that it was all meant to be.

Isabelle
PS, The baby being held by one of the women in the China Team is Maelin. She is absolutely gorgeous and her parents are thrilled.

Makena

My family is asleep. I am shell-shocked. As I write this, I'm looking out the 17th floor window and taking in Chongqing at night. I keep thinking I'm in a scene from Blade Runner.

Makena greeted us with curiosity and us, with tears. She didn't cry the entire time we were at the Civil Affairs Bureau and she was calm and relaxed the following two hours we spent there. She chewed on a teether biscuit. She sipped water and ate apple sauce. She fell asleep in my arms on the way back to the hotel and only cried when I put her down momentarily.

She ate at dinner and Jack, our empathetic-sweetheart-comedian, was the first to get her to laugh. My husband tickled her and made her giggle and when eight o'clock rolled around, I laid her in the crib, stared at her for a bit and walked away. She fell asleep within five minutes.
Is this really a child of mine?
c="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6995/2428/320/DSC01352.jpg" border="0" alt="" />I'll blog more thoughtfully as soon as I can. Who cares anyway? All I ever want to see are pictures. So here they are. She's precious and tiny and fits in 3 to 6 months clothes. I only brought two outfits in that age range...so I'll have to go shopping.

The family at the bottom greeted their daughter, Maelin, first. I could not take more pictures as we were suddenly called next.



Thank you to everyone for your support. This is completely surreal but extremely cool.



Isabelle
On the other side.

A half hour to go as a family of 3.

Our group made it safely to Chongqing this morning. We flew in over somewhat mountainous terrain and finished it off with a bumpy landing. I discovered, as we taxied to a stop, that the little girl in the seat in front of me had been amusing herself by pouring her water glass between the seats. My bag, with all our documents, Jack's PSP, MY CAMERA, and our airline tickets were wet! I had a near anxiety attack and was relieved, after I dried everything, to find out that the camera worked (who cares about the rest).

As soon as we got out of the terminal, the heat assaulted us but what was even more startling was a group of people who saw Jack and promptly squealed and ran up to him, hugging him and dragging him away to make him pose in a picture with them. Jack, quite naturally freaked out, thinking they were kidnapping him. I knew right away that it wasn't the case and was sort of amused by it all. I mistakingly assumed that he would enjoy this kind of adulation as much as I do.

It turns out that these people were in from the province and had never seen a white face before, except for on television. The woman pictured kept trying to kiss and hug him and he was overwhelmed by it. After we allowed them to snap a few pictures of Jack, and us with them, we asked if we could also have a souvenir of this occasion.

Jack has now crossed off rock or movie star as potential career choices and I have personally crossed out detective because he can never find anything when it is staring him right in the face (he takes after his dad that way.)

About a half hour ago, our group convened in a conference room of the Chongqing (six star) Marriott and signed the formal adoption application. I was caught off guard by the postage stamp picture of Makena, looking older and less chubby. They handed us a sheet with information on her daily routine and I discovered that she eats, mashed pork, mashed liver, tofu and steamed egg -- she obviously takes after my side of the family.

I have to go. I need to slap some make up on my face.


Isabelle