Settling In

We've been home for almost 5 days now and things are starting to settle in. Neela is getting more comfortable with the new sleeping arrangements. We moved the crib next to our bed and kept her in the crib the whole time last night. She only woke up a couple of times and needed comforting to get back to sleep. Our previous strategy was to start her out in the crib, but then move her to our bed whenever she woke up. This was probably good the first few nights while she became used to our bedroom, but now that we are past that it was just resulting in all of us getting less sleep as we bounce around each other. Naps seem to going very well now. Marnie reads to her and rocks her and she goes down without a fight.

Foodwise, things are getting better. So far she continues to be a picky eater, but we are probably giving her a lot of new foods and she just needs time to get used to a wider variety. Grapes and applesauce have been added to the tolerated fruits list. So far ham is the only meat which does not come rolling back out her mouth. She'll each the white part of a hard boiled egg, and sometimes scrambled eggs are okay. Rice and congee are still king. This morning I'm making banana muffins and fresh congee. If my calculations are correct, she will love the muffins. I think maybe I'll try a cut up hard boiled egg in her congee, with the hope the congee will make the yellow part palatable. I'll keep you posted.

In general, she is as cute and playful as ever. The "little people" toy bin has been her mainstay. She loves going outside and just running around. Luke and Andrew gave her rides in the Lamborgini, which she loved! We should get a picture of that posted. The boys and I are getting some things ready for Halloween. We made a ghost which we hung from a string outside the front of out house. The plan is to pull on the string from inside the house to raise and lower the ghost, thereby scaring any nearby trick or treaters. Also plan to do the front door which opens itself using some fishing line.

We're home!

Finally arrived home at 11:50am yesterday. The plane ride was rough and the jet lag brutal. Our first trip from Guangzhou to Tokyo was only about 3 hours with meal, so that was pretty doable. We had a 2 hour layover in Tokyo, which was barely enough time to get through another round of security screening. Neela slept for 2-3 hours out of that 10 hour flight, and did gymnastics in my lap for the remainder of the time. We took her around the plane a little bit, but mostly we stayed in our seats. After she fell asleep, we positioned her on our laps, pushed the call button, and cashed in our drink coupons for a beer and a Bailey's on the rocks. After arrival, we had to go through immigration for our new little citizen. Marnie nearly passed out in line from the trip and dehydration. We made it through okay, stacked all our luggage on a cart, and rolled out to the street where Ed and Andrew picked us up.

Neela seems to really like it at our house. She is still learning how to go over the landing by the steps. She has given Luke and Andrew multiple hugs and likes to hold their hands while walking around the house. We all struggled to stay awake through the afternoon. I kept nodding off in spite of the coffee I was drinking. Neela fell asleep right in her high chair after only having a couple bites of her dinner. I went to bed shortly after dinner, and Marnie shortly after that. Neela spent most of the night in our bed instead of her crib, which is fine. We'll give her some time to get over the jet lag and get used to our house before trying to get her to stay in her crib. She and I got up for a couple of hours in the middle of the night. She had some milk and prune/rice cereal, played blocks and "little people" for a bit, and went back to bed at 1:30am. We all slept pretty good then until 6am. If that was the worst night in her "adjustment", then we should be okay...

Neela seems to be doing pretty good, so it would be okay for people to come meet her, but we just want to not have everyone come at the same time. So please call in advance to arrange a time. Thanks!

Dave

On my way back to you...

Hello, Marnie here signing in for one last post while in China. I imagine we will be able to post once or twice when we get home and then regular life will take over again. I must say that I am definitely ready to be back home and am not even going to gripe about the 16+ hours of travel it will take to get there. While living in the lap of luxury at the White Swan is nice for a bit, I am mighty tired of each elevator lobby lady grabbing Neela to play with her and 5 servers hovering over our table ready to snatch our plates away as soon as our lips close around the last bite. I just want to be alone in my own home. Well not alone. I am really excited to see the boys again and to sit in the cozy chair by the fireplace and snuggle them both on my lap and read a good Magic Tree House book or tell them all about our trip or hear what they want to do the next day. This has been such a long time to be away from them. We know they were in great hands with Grammy and Gramps and Grandma and Grandpa and they had a lot of fun times together. It was also very important for us to focus just on Neela for this time and I'm pretty sure I would not have had it in me to do this trip with 3 young kids. We will bring them all back to China someday, but for now I am so happy to be coming home so we will all be back together again. Here's a little smoochie and a hug for you, Luke and Andrew! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo I love you and see you soon!!! --Love, Mommy

1 more day

Took a little "blogger break" yesterday. Sorry if we left anyone hanging. Had a rough time putting our little congee munchkin to bed last night (at left is how miss manners likes to finish off her bowl of congee). She took a late nap which made it harder for her to go to sleep at the usual time. But once she did her usual scream for 5-10 minutes then she was ready. Then she treated us to another scream session at 3:30am because she wanted to go to my bed instead of Marnie's bed. When Marnie presented her with the options of her crib or Marnie's bed, then she was okay to with Marnie's bed. (fyi: we have another room with two single beds, if we had a king bed I think this would be a non-issue) It continues to be hard on Marnie when Neela continues to prefer her "ba ba". She does just fine with Marnie when I am not around, so a big piece of this just seems to be her stubbornness. We both feel things will be better when we are home since we'll have a little more space to manage these kinds of things.

Yesterday we finished up our shopping for various souvenirs and gifts. In the afternoon, we took a small bus and did a bit of touring. The first stop was at a Buddhist temple, where we made wishes, lit incense sticks, and received a blessing from a Buddhist monk. I clicked my heels three times and wished I was home, but apparently that was too tall an order for the Buddha. The various statues were very large (notice the little stacks of orange soda in front) and very beautiful.

The next stop was at an old school which was converted to a museum. The buildings were impressive with large dark wood framing and tall doors and ceilings, and in the middle of everything was a peaceful stone and small tree courtyard. The museum featured various artwork such as embroidery, carved ivory, and palm leave fans. The ivory carving was amazing, but is outlawed now of course. The last stop was at a store featuring high quality jade. They gave us a brief lesson on how to tell good jade from bad jade, and then followed that with a lesson on how to transfer money from our pocket to their pocket. Marnie got a nice little jade necklace which we intend to call "Merry Xmas".

We ended our day with another meal at Lucy's and a drawn out bedtime thanks to our not so tired little friend. After she was asleep, we enjoyed a little more of our $5 wine and the Discovery channel feature on the building of the Airbus A380.

Today we will pack up our things (again) so we can move to a more expensive hotel right next to the airport. On the way, we will stop by the US consulate to pick up her visa and take some sort of oath. I imagine it will read something like "we promise to raise her with the highest of capitalistic values and shop at Target regularly".

Tonight we have the daunting task of trying to get our money's worth out of the $200/night hotel by the airport, which we will be at for less than 12 hours. This will be especially challenging given we will miss breakfast, which rules out filling our backpack at the buffet. How they can even have a $200/night hotel in a country where you can get 7 ice cream bars for a dollar is beyond me. The other hotel we stayed at on our way to Nanchang was only $30 a night. I'm not only expecting them to tuck me in, but to also put my jammies on and brush my teeth...

3 more days

Today was a busy day. We were all up at 6am sharp and went down for breakfast at 6:30. The breakfast buffet here is fantastic. It is a little more western than the last place with a wider variety and everything tastes great! We sat by the window near the river and watched an occasional boat go by. After breakfast, we met Molly and made the rounds for visa pictures and medical examinations. This clinic was much better than the orphanage clinic - very clean and orderly. The doctor thought the little "outie" belly button she has is probably a hernia, which Marnie's mom thought might be the case. Not a big deal, easily fixed. She also thought she was a slight bit pale, perhaps due to her heart defect, though her lip color looks good so she is probably doing pretty well. She seems to have good color to us, but maybe scale is shifted a little for Chinese babies. Will have this checked out as well when we get home.

Next we took a little break and then Marnie went to Molly's room for more paperwork. Neela and I went and checked out the Mattel playroom. It was pretty nice, wall to wall carpet with lots of stuffed animals and a few other toys. She had fun checking out the new stuff and playing with the other kids there. Afterwards, we went back to the room and had lunch. She was pretty tuckered out at this point, since she usually takes a short morning nap and here it was already 1pm. She ate half her lunch and then fell asleep between bites.

At 3 pm we met Molly again for a walk to the local shopping areas. We first walked through a street full of shops for Chinese traditional medicines. (We'll spare you the picture of the hundreds of dried frogs with legs stretched out lying in a box...) Eventually these shops gave way to shops with all kinds of other things, such as small turtles and multicolored fish. The cute puppies and kittens always caught Neela's eye. As we neared the end of this street of traditional shops, the sign of the nearby Holiday Inn loomed in the skyline.

Next we visited more modern shops with pearls, baby clothes, CDs and DVDs, and eventually ice cream. The streets were crowded making me wonder "Don't these people have jobs?" This did seem to be a younger crowd here, at least on this street with the more modern stores. We don't seem to be as much of a novelty as we were in Nanchang, which is nice. Neela has made friends with the kids from another adoption family and insists on holding their hands as we stroll down the street. They don't seem to mind. We think she is going to love having two brothers!

Oh yeah, forgot to mention there was a nice little gift courtesy of Mattel waiting for us in our hotel room when we got back this morning. We were told that these are a White Swan exclusive gift that you can't get anywhere else. Hmmm, appreciate the gesture, but not sure we are big fans. Aside from the whole Barbie thing (which we won't get into), this just seems to have some message about international adoption which just doesn't seem right. Apparently these sell for big bucks on Ebay, so maybe we will give it a new home and put the $ in a savings account for Neela...

In Guangzhou - is this still China?

Hello all, today was just a day of packing and travel. We arrived in Guangzhou late this afternoon and took our little bus to the White Swan Hotel. This does not feel anything like the China we have experienced so far. There is a lot of western influence here on Shamian Island in the architecture as well as the urban layout. The sidewalks are flat and clean. There is no traffic. Signs announce one will be given a fine for spitting in public. And many, many shops line the streets with English speaking women ready to sell us endless numbers of souvenirs for families adopting babies.

If our last hotel really was a 5 star hotel, this one is a 10 star hotel. The lobby smelled fresh, like flowers, which was a nice change. There are ladies at every floor of the hotel that show you the way out of the elevator (as if we needed help....). A man just stopped by our room to see if we needed our beds turned down. Not our usual standard of travel. He did bring some chocolates so that was nice. The other strange feeling is now being around a large number of Caucasian couples with Chinese babies. Before we were the oddity, but now we are the norm, but that in itself is an oddity.

The drive to the hotel showed us another part of the city. We drove along the freeway at about the second or third floor level of highrise after highrise building of flats. The city is a sea of highrise housing. It is by far the most densely populated city I have ever seen. Some of it is very modern and new, and much of it is old and cold and gray looking, the only color coming from the laundry hanging out of every flat. Many balconies are enclosed with iron grating, sort of like a million little bird cages (for people) sprinkled around the upper levels of the city.

All of this is in extreme contrast to our experience yesterday. We rode out to the ancient city of Anyi. It is 1000 years old. It is now part living city, part tourist attraction. One area of the city seemed partly vacant, though part of it was definitely being lived in. It is a simple life and people do not have many belongings in their small rooms off the narrow streets. The town is surrounded by fields (or paddies?) of rice with smaller vegetable gardens bordering the walks. We had Monica touring with us and teaching us about the various places we stopped. It was nice to have her as we would not have learned as much without her, although just being able to see this ancient city was impressive. Until one travels, it is easy to not realize the vastness of the earth and its population and the many types of lives people lead. Finding Neela has brought to us another perspective of life on this planet that we all share.

There is something of this lifestyle that appeals to me - maybe the simplicity, life in a compact little society, yet surrounded by beautiful landscapes, life separate from the hectic lifestyle we have come to believe is necessary. But then again, squatting on the stones in the river to do laundry and living in 1000 year old stone buildings with no heat, a lack of a large variety of foods and using only "squatty potties" definitely would have its drawbacks....

China is definitely a country of many contrasts. The swing from life in the small villages to life in Guangzhou is 180 degrees.

The cow is a lucky animal because it brings many good things to people through work and food. (We think it is more like an ox or water buffalo.)

The hay covers the harvested rice to keep it dry.

a typical home in Anyi

a wonderful vegetable garden within the city walls.

The home of the most important family during the Song dynasty. Apparently they were a very nice family and they had a front vestibule that people who had no place to stay could seek shelter in.

Wood carving in the large home of this important family.

Girls doing laundry in the stream.

Tomorrow we are off to the medical exam, which I think is just a quick once over for Neela and the now 3 other babies in our group. We will also get her VISA picture and then do a bit more paperwork. We now have Molly as our guide. Neelahas zonked out tonight. We're hoping she can make it all the way through the night tonight. She had only a short nap in the airport today and we have now realized that when she gets over tired she gets over active. As active as she is normally, she was bouncing off the walls this evening and getting a bit crazy. Dave has been holding her much of the day since we left for the airport and I think she was feeling a bit too constrained. (This does not bode well for an 11 hour flight following a 5 hour flight on Thursday...) This morning, however, she was very conveniently content to play inside the drawer we put on the floor for almost an hour while we packed.

Neela in action

Here are a couple of photo sequences we thought were neat. This first one is when we were at a park this week. Another little boy really liked her hat much more than she did...













Here is another sequence from the outside of our hotel door...

Lucky Girl

People have said a lot of things to us as we wander around the various places. Mostly they tell us how beautiful she is. Someone once told us she was a "lucky girl". I'm not exactly sure what she meant by that, seems like you could take that a number of different ways. I suppose she is lucky in a way to be joining our family given all the fun we will have together, all the experiences we will share, and all the opportunities which will be open to her. Life here is not easy, you do not have to walk far thru these streets to see that. Our host/guide Monica is studying business in hopes of getting a better job some day. We also wonder how much of what people say she is really telling us. Sometimes she will talk to someone for 5 minutes or so and then at the end she will turn to us and say "they said she is beautiful".

We met a nice couple yesterday with their 4 year old daughter Olivia. They were here 4 years ago for their adoption trip, and now they are returning to visit Olivia's foster mom for the first time. Their first trip happened around the time of the SARS scare. It was interesting talking to them about their experience back then and how things are now, kinda like they were sent to give us a glimpse of what lies in store for us. Neela and Olivia had a blast together. Neela kept giving her hugs. I think maybe she misses her little friends from the orphanage, so it will be good to get home so the boyz can give her some "kid love".

Dave

TGIF

The blogster here. Staying up late tonite, so I think I'll sleep in tomorrow. I wonder if Jing Jing will be down with that. Here is a pic from the hallway at the hotel. Turns out one of her favorite things is a fire extinguisher placed conveniently on the floor to facilitate easy access for our little friends. I don't know about you, but it seems to me we may have a trouble maker on our hands... :)

The boys are out on the farm with Grandma and Grandpa now. Video chatted with them out there this morning, which I guess was Thursday nite Minnesota time. The webcams have been great for touching base everyday with the guys. They get to know Neela a little bit before we finally make it home. She doesn't interact too much with video of her older brothers, but we hold the webcam on her as she roams around and tears apart the room during the call. Andrew wants us to do a webcam of us giving her a bath, which I guess would then be a bathcam.

This morning Marnie took Neela to the pavilion park by herself as part of our "mommy bonding with Neela" program. The program was off to a roaring start until Neela fell asleep in the stroller and slept through half of the kick-off event. We met for lunch at a nice local restaurant where half of what I tried to order was either too big, too spicy, or wasn't available today. We were there early and so we had about 6-8 people waiting on the three of us. They helped keep Neela entertained before the food arrived by walking her around the restaurant. Our food came and Neela sat on my lap eating bananas, noodles, and ham. Her favorite thing is to take the end of a long noodle in her mouth and slurp the whole thing up. Cost of today's lunch: $12. Trail of food from Neela's mouth to the floor: Priceless

We took a brief nap in the early afternoon and then took Neela back to the orphanage to have her boil checked out. It is looking better, but they felt trying to drain it a little would help it improve faster. After seeing the syringe they would use in a sealed sterilized pack, we gave them the go ahead. The room there was not particularly clean, but their procedures were good. The doctor washed her hands and put on clean gloves. Everything they used came out of autoclave containers. They cleaned the skin with iodine before draining. Marnie and I held her during the whole procedure. The only disappointment was that not much fluid was extracted with the syringe. They said something about it not having softened up enough yet. Not sure what that means, but we are feeling okay with it since it is looking better and we will be home soon to have our doctor take a look at it. We will continue with the warm compress regimen.

We ended the day with a nice stroll down the walking mall and a $3 dinner at one of the thrifty restaurants on the mall. Tomorrow we are going out to see a small ancient village near Nanchang. Will be nice to get outside of the city again.

Neela and I and the baby whisperer

I just got back from the nightly walk of the hallway. I hope she likes to be rocked to sleep since we don't have such a long length to walk her to sleep at home. My back is breaking. At twenty pounds, she is not as big as her "little" cousin, Dane, though is no feather either. We have found that she finds me acceptable if Dave is not in sight. Or if Dave is holding her, she is ok to goof around with me and smile and giggle. If I have her and she sees Dave, she will whine and squirm with all her might to get away. She has also taken to sinking her teeth into my shoulder if I do not immediately do what she wants or give her to Dave. She knows that is not good and immediately looks up at me with guilty eyes. I have taken to just having him take her if we are in public as to draw as little attention to us as possible. It is lucky that I am traveling with "the baby whisperer" :)

She is starting to show more and more of her true self I think. I think her true self is really a very happy and fun and goofy kid. A kid who is smart as a whip. A kid who is mischievous. A kid who is extremely busy and very active. A kid who likes to talk. Dave said, "Isn't her baby talk cute?" And then we thought maybe she is speaking Chinese. All the same to us... I think she is slowly beginning to trust us more and more each day, and with that coming trust is also beginning to test us more and more.

We have two and a half more days here in Nanchang and, I must say, I am ready to move on. We do have an outing to a village in the surrounding area on Saturday that I really look forward to, though some things are beginning to wear on me. Today I seemed to hit a wall in regard to eating Chinese food. I like Chinese food. In fact I really like it. But I need some variety. I need to eat fresh fruits and veggies and we cannot risk eating them here for fear of getting sick. I told Dave I looked forward to "Danny's Bagels", a take-out restaurant we have heard about from other adoptive families, in Guangzhou. He wondered what the draw was to it. It is American food. I just need a little American food. Or Mexican food. Or Indian food. Or anything else. No more choices like braised frog or braised pork hoof.

Being out in public is also wearing on me. It turns out the biggest attraction in Nanchang is us. Wherever we go, people stare, they come up to us and touch Neela, they ask Monica a million questions about us, they bring their babies to say 'hi'. Today we went to a nice park. Neela loved to run around the open area chasing the birds which were sort of like pigeons. Then we sat down to give her a bottle and the crowds began to form. One older lady spent quite a while discussing with us (Monica) how her legs were bowed and that we should take her to a hospital to get her legs fixed and we should do it soon. She grabbed her legs and held them straight and touched them again and again to show us. She, along with most people, also said she was beautiful. Yes, we agree. Yes, we will make sure her legs are fine. Yes, we'll put a jacket on her even though the sun is hot and we are sweating.... I feel like my parenting is under the microscope here and everything I do is wrong. And when I get home, I think I will feel like I am doing a fine job. I am experienced after all :)

While I have experience and am "fully qualified", it is definitely different. It is strange to have a new "baby" who can walk and learn signs and mimic sounds and wash her mouth and eat with a spoon and play with toys and get into trouble. It is strange to have a child at this age and not feel like I completely know her. By this time with the boys, we had a solid connection and I could read their moods and I knew what they liked. I knew how to feed them. I do not know what to feed this girl other than rice, rice cereal, rice congee, noodles, bananas or eggs. I guess her formula will have to carry her for a bit until I can figure out how to get a more balanced diet into her. I swear she could live on rice alone. Expectations have to be different as well. She is a toddler, though much of how we need to interact with her is also more baby-like.

We're gettin' there. Sometimes it is surprising that we have really only had her with us for four days. All in all, when that is taken into consideration, we are all doing quite well.

Jing Jing's Place

This is Neela's favorite spot. I'm thinking she is going to be some sort of adventure seeker when she grows up. Part of our ritual of walking up and down the hallway is to stop on the end and sit and look out the window. We hold her of course, not sure how much we can really trust the installation or quality of the glass. I'm wondering if our hotel room can be a little overstimulating for her, so her walks up and down the hallway are a way for her to relax a little.

I'm also a big fan of Marc's comment. Why can't my brothers be more profound??? :)

Small update on traffic rules. I think their variation on our traffic law of "always yield to pedestrians" is as follows: "Always honk the horn at pedestrians prior to swerving and grazing them with the rear view mirror." I am equally impressed (or perhaps unimpressed) at their ability to uphold this rule even when faced with baby in baby stroller. We went out for a shopping stroll yesterday with Monica and our friends from Burnsville, it is was interesting how the baby strollers did not make it any easier to cross the street. I guess the system is what it is.

Enjoyed a fun albeit small dinner in our room last night. Jing Jing sat in Marnie's lap and had a blast wielding her single chop stick and eating chicken flavored rice. I love it that she is still very oral when it comes to eating, and we are still learning all her likes and dislikes. Texture seems to be a big deal for her and mainly prefers the soft and gooey stuff.

Today is our 10 year wedding anniversary! Maybe will celebrate with a dinner out somewhere and a nice taxi ride, which I like to call "Valley Fair".

Dave

So true

I'd like to post a comment shared by my brother-in-law, Marc, because I really liked it. Thanks Marc!

"Maybe being a pedestrian in China is an allegory to the whole adoption experience. It seems so busy and confusing trying to get where you're going. You get brave and just jump right in. You hope, pray and trust that it's going to work out great. And it does."

Neela's past

We went to visit the orphanage this morning. I just can't say how great it was to be able to do this! We had her along with us, of course, and she did really well. She was teary at times and reached for several people, but overall, she still clung to us and it seemed like maybe it was good for her to go there with us - a sort of closure if that is possible for an 18 month old.

The orphanage is set back from the street. Once you enter through the gate, there is a large courtyard with a small park and then a high rise building for the elderly to live in. Behind that is the orphanage. Included within the building is an elementary school for children living there as well as for some children of workers from rural areas as it is cheaper than other schools. Monica took us in and as soon as we got into the outdoor play courtyard, several people came toward us smiling and saying "Jing Jing"! They knew her and they were all excited to see her! She seemed to be fond of one man who was holding a child and talking with her. She reached out and tried to go to him. As we looked in on a class (music perhaps as they had a piano in the room?) for children with special needs, many women started coming out and there were calls of "Jing Jing" coming from so many people. It is obvious that she was well loved in her former home. We had started calling her Neela yesterday, but have been using Jing Jing as a nickname today as it sounded so sweet coming from all of her nannies - sort of a singing quality to the way they said it.

We then went on to the baby nursery. This is where she probably spent her first 2 or 3 months while they helped her recover from her illness and then decided where she would move to next. There were probably about a dozen very tiny babies lying in small cribs. They looked SO tiny. It wasn't until later that I tried to imagine Jing Jing lying there looking so small, being cared for by all of these wonderful women. She is so round and strong right now, it is hard to imagine her small and vulnerable.

We then walked back through the play yard and further out through the garden to a small apartment building. This is where Neela lived after her first few months. She lived with two foster parents and 5 other children. Most of the children were quite a bit older and in school for the day. Another young boy had been recently adopted by a Chinese family. We were able to take a picture of a photograph of her foster family.

Her "Sunday mama" was there. She is the woman that takes over when the foster parents can go home to their own families or out to do something else. The foster father also goes out to work at a job during the week. I looked around a bit. The apartment was pretty spare, but overall fairly clean. She slept in the big bed with her foster parents. Another little girl slept in a small bed next to them. There was an aquarium filled with stuffed animals. But really, I did not absorb as many details as I wanted to. I was in a sort of amazement that we had been granted a rare opportunity to see into her past a bit. We are so grateful to know that she had people to care for her who loved her. Her Sunday mama held her and she was a little unsure. She looked back at us, she looked at her, she looked around, but she did not cry. After a bit, I took her back and she left with a little toy kitty from her old home.

The next stop was the health clinic. Yesterday, Dave and I talked about whether or not we should be including the following as we did not want to worry people, but after our continuing experience with the medical world in China today, we thought is was just an experience that really should be documented as it has become a significant part of our trip.

For some background history, when Neela arrived, she had a gauze bandage on her belly that they said was covering a heat rash that they had treated with some medicine, though it was getting better. After inspecting it after everyone left, we immediately knew that this was most certainly not a heat rash. She had a huge knob sticking out of her stomach and I had no idea what it was, though it looked quite ugly and scary. We immediately called Monica, who came back to our room and consulted with the orphanage director by phone. They told us it was a boil so we went online to Mayo.org and researched it. The doctor says that boils are quite common in the children because the weather is so hot and humid and they bundle the children up so much. Why they don't then bundle them less is beyond me. (On a similar vein of thought, I can't pair up the intense bundling with the wearing of split pants. Why is it ok for their bare butts to be hanging out in the cold but they have to wear three layers on a 70 degree day???) Anyway, with further research, it seemed to be not too serious and would need to drain before it could heal. We attempted to apply warm compresses to this little person who was still not really trusting us.

Monday, the director looked at it again and said they would send a doctor to our hotel room as she thought it needed more medicine. The doctors showed up wearing jeans and t-shirts and poked around at her belly and put some more brown goo on it and bandaged it up. I have never felt so out of control of a situation as having to sit there with 5 Chinese women (Monica, 2 doctors, a nurse and the director) standing there talking a mile a minute, not a word of it that I can understand, all about the health of our child. They told us to put this goo on once a day and keep it totally dry and that the boil would go back down. All of this was counter to our research of the Western approach to treatment. We have been consulting with nurse Grammy who, in turns, has been consulting with our pediatrician back home. We decided to follow her advice and went back to compressing.

Now today, they wanted to check her out again at the orphanage clinic. We sat down in what appeared to be a staff break room to wait. The doctors came in, now wearing blue lab coats at least, and began prodding around on her belly again as I held her squirming body while sitting on a break room chair. Again, we sat at their mercy as words flew back and forth and my eyes followed from speaker to speaker as if by some chance I might figure out what was going on. They left and came back and put some darker brown goo (which is supposed to make it softer??? what???) on it and then bandaged it again. This did not instill confidence in Dave as he thought they could hardly put the tape on, how could they possibly know what treatment to do. They did say that we should come back on Friday and they would drain the abscess. This is the only thing so far that seems to make sense as the correct course of treatment, though I must admit, I am nervous about them being the ones to do it. We will say a little prayer that they know what they are doing and I can't wait to rush her in to Dr. Gold when we get back to Minneapolis. For this reason alone, I wish our trip were much shorter.

Our last stop this morning was off to the hospital in front of which she was found in late April of 2006. It is a special hospital for women and their babies. We can only guess that maybe she was brought here to be found and cared for as she was very sick and her parents could not afford to get medical treatment for her. And perhaps being born a girl did not further her chances... The hospital gate is wedged in between a couple of shops on a very busy commercial street. It is incredible to imagine that a little baby could be laid down amidst all the chaos and not a person to see it happen. In any case, we are glad that she was quickly found and got the medical care she needed.

Almost halfway

It is 4:43am. Sadly, this is "sleeping in" for me. Neela is restless this morning. Twice she stood up at the railing in her crib. She didn't cry, just kinda rubbed her eyes and wondered what she should do. Both times I rubbed her back a little and she willingly layed back down to try to go back to sleep. I think maybe she didn't get enough to eat last night and now she is feeling a little extra hungry. She had her bottle at walmart last night, and then had some bread from Marnie's sandwich and a few bits of the jar of mixed fruits we bought. They said she was only doing two bottle feedings a day, but it seems she really, really, really loves drinking from the bottle. It is the one thing which always puts a happy ending to her tirades. They say these regression things are great for bonding, so we are thinking we will let her have a few more each day. It is weird cuz we never bottle fed out kids at this age. I suppose we are lucky that she still enjoys this and we can share this with her.

The sheer number of people living here continues to amaze me. As we walk thru the streets, not only are there corner to corner store fronts on all the major streets, but every building has at least 3 or 4 floors for housing. The streets are constantly packed with cars, mopeds, bikes, and periodic buses. We see a lot of bikes with electric hub motors, and most of these do not look new, which means they have been driving these for years. There are also a lot of solar water heaters on the roofs of the buildings. They look like the evacuated tube kind, but I suppose some could just be metal pipes.

We are starting to get the hang of crossing the streets here. We started just waiting for another local to come by and then we would literally draft on them across the street. Now that we are more confident, we will proceed on our own. The trick is not to wait until the street is completely clear, you just wait until the part of the street right in front of you is clear, and then you move forward to occupy that. You continue in this manner until you have reached the other side. The flow of traffic is a constant space negociation between all the players, with both drivers and peds constantly asserting themselves for real estate. It helps that most of the time cars are never moving that fast so any collisions would be minor. The commute home last night was faster at times and we nearly hit three people. It is surprising how some of the peds don't even look before crossing the street. They seem to trust that someone will horn or swerve around them as needed. Maybe there is something more subtle in the technique I'm not picking up on.

Today is orphanage day. Plan to pick up some diapers to donate to the orphanage, not sure what size. We are going to avoid the part where she lived, but I'm still a little nervous she may recognize some things and it will make her upset.

Thanks to everyone who continues to share this with us via our blog. Thanks especially for all your comments and keep them coming, it means a lot to us to hear from you!

All for now. I must check my email and take a shower before pumpkin wakes up. Oh, too late. She is standing up watching me right now....

Dave