London's in China

The day started off bright and early. We were up early to get to breakfast at the hotel buffet. We had to get back to room before 9 am. The luggage picker-upper guys were to pick up our luggage and we we’re to gather in the lobby prior to 10 am to get the bus to take us the Changsha airport. We had to check out as well and pay any extra fees from the week. This would include paying for all the “vitamin” drinks one might have utilized from the hotels mini-bars. See when you stay up late with a baby and you’ve been running non-stop for close to two weeks, what you need is a good “vitamin” drink to make sure you stay healthy. In China I’ve found that you can advertise anything you want any way you want with what ever words you want. Oh and also can’s are smaller here as well. So suffice it to say, you don’t need as many vitamins as you might back in the states. Anyway, we checked out after breakfast and told the front desk (after they asked), that we would be checked out by 10 am. Sc...

I know it looks like I’m posting two entries close together but I'm really not. They are written in the morning and I can just never get the posted until the evening. But we leave early tomorrow morning so this is being written at 2 am in the morning as I pack. Let me just say I’m in charge of the paperwork in China (not Christe), so I’ve been working on some things. Also I have to work with the coordintor to make sure the local guides and drivers get the right amount of tip money tomorrow. Let’s also not forget that the luggage will all be overweight so I have to see what order people are to check in based on the numbers of bags I believe they will have. As for today, I awoke with a sore throat. An ever tightening sore throat. Anyone who knows me, knows I have a fairly strong tolerance for this sort of thing but it’s really starting to tighten up. I know, I know, what the hell am I doing up at 2 am writing this when I will get up at 5:30 am. Well for you of course! You are reading...

Man oh man. Where do I start? So much has happened since my last post. London has gone from acting like an infant new born to hodling her own bottle, crawling on the bed, now to grabbing on to something to pull herself up and rockin’ and a rollin’ dance style while up. I had heard that these girls are sometime developmentally delayed. There is no ‘mentally’ part of the delayed but maybe some of the standard mobility parts are. Well she made it all up in a day. Amazing. For a quick recap, she still likes mommy better but there are a few reasons why and I don’t mind them. I’m going to tell a story mostly for all you first time mothers getting ready to come to China to get babies. For the rest of you, if you are at ALL faint of stomach or get upset or offended easily DO NOT READ FURTHER. I mean it! I want no ill comments about my story! So here goes. My girl is not making the good “poo-poo” like the other girls. We’ve had to resort to Peggy’s remedy of a teaspoon of sesame oil every eight...

Starting yesterday evening, London decided that daddy wasn’t as cool he was before her nap. I came to find out from some of the other fathers that their girls did the same thing. They say they’ll have nothing to do with them and it was overnight. So I’m still in the game as it were. I’ve also been told it’s pretty regular. Also London hasn’t made me a bragger about the poo-poo yet, one or two! We’ve tried prunes, prune juice, apple juice, and watermelon. All that really did was turn her into a little peeing machine, an unhappy peeing machine. She slept through the night with just one big outburst. Christe walked her and she was quickly asleep again. I have to say this little girl can sleep. Part of it may be the cough and sneeze or it may be the cough medicine or we may be feeding her 4 times more that she was getting just days before. We went to a museum that centered around a tomb unearthed in 1972. It contained three separate tombs, each one was a member of the family. It was very c...

All right all, I’m very sorry for the delay in posting. If you only wanted words I’d be golden but those darn pictures are so hard to load from Changsha. I’m sure it’s probably just because it’s free. For 160 Yuan a day in Beijing, I better have been able to post stuff quickly. Well today was somewhat of a relaxer day if you can really have one with a new toddler that woke up for the first time in a crib different than she’s ever known. She slept through the night like a trooper. Well at least I think so. I SPLEPT through the whole night without her waking me up, so if she needed me, she didn’t make enough noise! Now all of you parents freaking out, my wife said she listened for a peep and she didn’t have one. Christe was up every two hours just checking, so get of my back. As for the goings on of the day, they were fairly, short. We were doing our best to keep London on her schedule. The orphanage gave us her schedule showing her feeding times and preferences of food and sleep. It was...

I finally found some soy sauce! No, I mean it! I have yet to see soy sauce on a table or in a store since I’ve been here. I finally went to the hotel ‘western style restaurant’ called “Coffee Garden” and that had sushi on the buffet. There it was SOY SAUCE. How on earth in the whole of this country does every single Chinese person know, “When you see Cash coming, hide the soy!” All right, I know you all want to know about the baby. The baby, the baby, the baby, well I guess no more attention for me; it’s all about the baby! Much attention has been made in the adoption community about the ‘grieving’ that the child will inevitably do. Some start it on gotcha day and it takes days or weeks. Some wait for months and then just start crying and don’t stop for days. I however have started my grieving today and I don’t know when I will quit. Baby, baby, baby, baby when will it stop? I figure somewhere about the time she’s getting married to some guy I’m going to hate because NO guy is good eno...

First and foremost, Christe and I have made it to Changsha safely and without incident. Second, the internet connection here in the hotel is free and I know why. It is slow and buggy at best. Loading photos is very difficult but we are both committed to being patient to allow all of you follow along. I’m writitng this in the few hours before we leave to go get our daughter. We have been spoken to countless time along the way about the ‘babies’. Peggy, our coordinator is very experienced. She has explained that these are Chinese baby. These baby not like American babies. These baby like the hot. These baby not like the room temperature like you like room temperature. Ok? You hear me, Ok? If you think room is too hot, then baby like your room, Ok? When you get baby, baby is crying. It’s ok. No crying baby, something wrong. When you get baby, baby is very uncomfortable with you, it’s ok. Baby don’t like you smell different, you look different. Baby is no going to poop, ok? So when baby po...