Another Good Day

Today, Emalyn woke up at 5:00 am, she didn’t seem ready to fully wake up, so I put her in our bed and she became very fitful as she slept.  She rolled from one side of the bed and back again many times.   I cuddled her, picked her up and rocked her and she would just flop back down on the bed.  We assumed she was probably having a bad dream, but we couldn’t wake her from it.  Finally, about 6:30 am I decided to take her out of her sleep sack and change her diaper.  Amazingly, after that she slept peacefully for another hour.  Could it have really been that simple?  No sleep sack and a dry diaper?  I assumed first that she was fitful because of an “adoption related”, fear related dream, but in reality, she was just bothered by two things any baby would be.  I am sure it won’t always be that simple and eventually we will face true sleep problems, but next time I will try to exhaust the baby related ones first.

All in all we had a good and uneventful morning today.  After we were all up, I gave Emalyn a bottle and then we gave both girls baths…Adair in the big bathtub and Emalyn in the small inflatable one we brought from home.  Emalyn and I sat on the edge of the tub while Hank bathed Adair.  We were hoping that would help to ease her fears of getting in the water, but when I went to undress her, she arched her back and started crying.  I put a few toys in the water first and then just dipped her toes in it.  She finally calmed down and allowed me to sit her down.  Within a minute she was playing and enjoying the water.  I bathed her and went to get her out and she refused.  She wanted to stay and play, so we let her sit and play while Adair played in the big tub.  This was great progress from her first bath.  Hopefully, she will continue to get more comfortable with the tub and eventually be able to get in with her big sister.

While I was blow drying my hair, I sat Emalyn in the stroller at the door to the bathroom and gave her a few toys to play with.  Five minutes later when I looked over, she was sound asleep.  I think she was tired from her fitful sleeping.  She snoozed for 45 or so minutes, all the way through breakfast.

After breakfast we met our guide for an outing.  We were supposed to go to a park, but the weather was gray, wet and iffy, so we decided to go to a history museum instead.  It isn’t all that cold here, 50’s during the day, but the museum had no heat and it was freezing inside.  We spent an hour or so looking at artifacts and pottery from this province and by then Adair was complaining of being cold, so we thought Emalyn was probably cold too (and hungry), so we headed back to the hotel.  It was a neat experience to see the things that were found here in Jiangxi.  Most of the details were written in Chinese, though, so it was difficult to really learn much about Emalyn’s province from our tour, aside from what Helen shared.

We did have a “spectacle” moment today.  Actually, we are a spectacle where ever we go, especially outside of the hotel, especially since we have one daughter with us (with light hair and blue eyes, mind you) and another who looks nothing like us, and are expecting another child.  Today, though, as we walked through the museum, Adair noticed several teenagers continuing to stare at her.  She kept running around and around me, as if she was trying to get out of their site line and looked up at me and said, “Mommy, I don’t like those people staring at me.”  To which I replied, “Sweetie, they just think you are beautiful.”  After that we stopped briefly to take a family picture and immediately had another girl (besides our guide) snapping our picture, too.  It should be flattering I guess, but it’s really a bit strange.  I couldn’t help but think about what they might do with our picture…Facebook, Twitter…I am just not really sure what use I would have with a stranger’s photo, but that’s just me.
 

Daddy and his girls

I digress, when we got back to the hotel, we talked to my parents via FaceTime for a few minutes before ordering lunch up to our room.  Emalyn was very quiet and emotionless all morning and while we talked to Mom and Dad, but after eating an entire bowl of steamed eggs and two Baby Mum Mums, she was a different child.  Poor thing was just hungry, I guess.  She laughed and smiled and played for an hour and then we put her down for a nap.

One of Adair’s favorite past times in our room is watching the school children out of our window.  There’s a little nook where we piled some blankets and she loves to pile up there and see what they are doing and how many are outside.  The school yard is just across the street from our hotel and on Monday their entrance into school was quite formal.  They lined up, did some movements, and saluted the flag before starting their day.  We’ve watched for this every morning, but apparently they only do it once a week.  Throughout the day we see them playing soccer, basketball, table tennis (ping pong), etc.  Adair is fascinated by it and is constantly giving us a report on what the “school children” are up to.

You'll have to forgive the panty picture,

but this is Adair's little window spot that she loves so much.

We have noticed that she really lets her personality shine, but only when we are in our hotel room, her safe place.  When we go out, she becomes pretty straight-faced and doesn’t express much emotion other than crying.  We are thankful that she seems to feel as secure as she possibly can in two and a half days when we are “home” at the hotel and pray that over time, she will begin to feel secure as we go and come from place to place, too.

Figuring out the zipper

Unpacking the toys

So proud, big smile!

Tonight for dinner we joined two other families that we have met since arriving in Nanchang.  We ventured out together to a Japanese restaurant, which was quite an adventure since no one spoke Chinese.  There was a little confusion while trying to order our dinner and they had to run next door to the local market for the bottled water we wanted, but all of the girls seemed to really like the cooking at our table.  It was wonderful to be with other American adopting families and to get to know a little about what led them to adopt.  One family has two biological children and 10 children adopted domestically, so their girls (they are adopting two this trip) make number 13 and 14.  Isn’t that awesome?  The other family has a 16 year old son and is adoption a two and a half year old.  It’s always so neat to me to see how God puts families together.  It’s not always what we consider conventional, but He moves in ways that get these precious children, unwanted in their own country, into loving homes and forever families.

We are so excited!   Our dear friends Alan and Shannon and their children, Cameron, Laura Cate and William arrive tonight to spend a few days with us.  They live in China, so we are thrilled we will get to spend some time with them in their country!  They also speak Mandarin, which will be helpful when getting out around here…no one really speaks English outside of our hotel.