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.