Day 2

I have assumed the usual position in front of the laptop at 3:45am. I guess it is nice to have a couple of hours to catch up on emails and such before she gets up. Marnie is still sleeping, or at least lying there wishing she was still sleeping. It took a little longer to get Neela to sleep last night. I think I fell asleep before she did, which I suppose is also why I'm up so early.

We took care of pretty much all the paperwork needed here yesterday morning. Our host, Monica, is very aggressive, zipping us from one place to the next and making sure we were the next ones being taken care of. It appears that you need to be more assertive in this culture. We were waiting to exchange some money the other day at the hotel desk, leaving our customary midwestern buffer zone between us the people in front of us. Some other people showed up and plowed right in front of us, apparently with more urgent business than us. Luckily the clerk saw this and made sure she helped us next.

It is still mostly dark but Neela is awake and is talking to us in her crib right now. For all we know, she it telling us something in Chinese right now, but it just sounds like baby talk to us. It feels good to know she can wake up and be happy on her own without needing us to comfort her. Seems like a characteristic of a resilent child. I do think she is mourning the loss of where she was before we came. She occasionally goes into these little tirades with a whiny/pouty/raspy voice, waving her hand and pointing to the door as if to try to tell us of her longing to go back, or of the things she misses there. I try to mimic her facial expressions and tone of voice because I read this is a way to comfort her by showing empathy, even though you can't communicate verbally. It seems to help. At least it gives me something to do.

We found a nice playroom in the hotel here which gives her a place to run around and bounce off the walls. It has a big pool of balls and some rocking horse type things, and a few play tents which she did not want to go in. We got her to go in the ball pool with us for a bit. We have not gotten her to eat any fruit yet, despite their claim that this is her favorite thing. Our latest theory is that they fed all her fruit in a sauce format, since it seems she has issues with the texture of the fresh fruit. Or maybe something got lost in the translation of the word "fruit". Will see what I can find at the supermarket this morning.

It appears she is recognizing us as authority figures of some sort. When we were out walking in the hallway yesterday, there was an open doorway to the stairwell. She looked thru the door, curious about where it went, but then stopped and looked up at me. I shook my head and said "no" and she promptly turned around and walked away. This is good, although I must say we have not always gotten the right response. She did not listen to Marnie when she told her not to play with the plug for the lamp, which turned into a bit of a game and we heard our first giggle (so it wasn't all bad).