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.