The Mistrettas

Thea's Birthday

2010-08-16T22:20:00.007-04:00

Thea's tenth birthday (can you believe it?!!) was in July. We celebrated several times! First, she got presents at lunchtime on her actual birthday. Caeli Xiu gave her some cute little figures she had been wanting, and Tony and I gave her a small desktop aquarium with all the stuff to set it up to keep a betta. (Betta didn't work out so well, and neither did the follow up goldfish. We're currently on fish #3, a glow fish. Hope this one works out better!) We also promised her new furniture for her own bedroom, as we have been planning for her to move to her own room upstairs.

A little later in the month, we had her actual birthday party. We rented the neighborhood pool for a couple of hours and invited the immediate family and several of her friends. Unfortunately, almost all of her friends were out of town; luckily, almost all of the family made it. We had fun with Molly's and Meghan's babies, Tony's silly siblings, and all Thea's cousins!

The final part of the birthday celebration/present was Thea's new room. It turned out great! Have a look:

It was a great birthday and birth month for Thea!

She can do it by herself!

2010-08-10T13:43:00.001-04:00

Happy Mother's Day!

2010-05-09T22:07:00.001-04:00

To all you moms out there:

My Science Project

2010-05-07T20:31:00.004-04:00

Hi, this is Thea. For the past few weeks I have been working on a science project. Here is what I came up with. The name of my science project is “What is a Pulse?”. My hypothesis was that everyone’s resting pulse would be two digits and apparently I was wrong. Here is the information from my presentation.

Since I didn’t have time to write things that could have affected the results here are some. Firstly people could have been excited, nervous or even angry about something. Secondly I didn’t take everyone’s pulse myself (I let some of the kids do their own). My results are interesting right?

With Apologies to All Parents Out There

2010-04-20T10:08:00.000-04:00

My child is cuter than yours:

What's Been Going On?

2010-04-09T22:09:00.014-04:00

Been a long time, huh? Here's a quick look at what's been going on:

We celebrated the first anniversary of Caeli's "Gotcha Day".

We had a family picture made.

The girls were a ladybug and a devil for Halloween!

Somebody used a (washable, non-toxic) watercolor marker as lipstick.

We decorated our Christmas tree.

Santa visited us!

Our girls posed for some sweet Christmas photos.

We visited our family in North Carolina.

Caeli got some fab new clothes and boots.

Thea was a fairy in her class play, "A Midsummer Night's Dream". She did a great job!

We had a little snow!

And then spring finally came.

A new member came to our family, my sister Meghan's son, Grayson.

We had fun dying Easter eggs!

We're just finishing up spring break this weekend, and then we're in the home stretch of the school year. Caeli has joined the toddler class at Thea's old Montessori school, and Thea is still doing great at her current Montessori school.

Will it be another 6 months before I post again? Maybe so and maybe not!

One Year Ago Today

2009-09-11T09:33:00.005-04:00

After the Party

2009-07-23T19:17:00.004-04:00

Caeli Xiu enjoyed Thea's party just as much as anyone else, but she really loved the morning after. She loved eating the leftover watermelon (and she looked cute doing it!).

She also loved playing with the extra party puffers (I have no idea what you really call these things, that's just what we've been calling them). How awesome is it to see these sweet sisters having such a fun time together with something as simple as party puffers? I just love these little girls!

Thea's Birthday

2009-07-11T23:59:00.000-04:00

Well, today was Thea's 9th birthday. As a birthday treat for all of you, here are some highlights from Thea's past birthdays and parties.

First, the actual birth day:

The first birthday (at the condo at Hilton Head):

Number two (at World Class Childcare):

Three (birthday morning at home. There was joint party for Thea and Claire with the Mistretta family at a later date):

Four (The Princess Party!):

Five (The Temporary Fairies!):

Six (birthday morning at home, with a JumpZone party at a later date):

Seven (the water party):

Eight (the Snip-Its Fashion Party):

And finally, nine: the surprise sleepover! Tony took Thea out for a fun afternoon of lunch, shopping, and jumping at Monkey Joe's, while I prepared a surprise party at home. The Mistrettas and a few of Thea's friends were waiting to surprise Thea when she arrived home. She was so surprised, she screamed at the top of her lungs and ran straight to her room! After that, though, she was all smiles. After dinner came presents and cake, and then after the family went home, a couple of friends stayed for a sleepover. As of midnight, they were still awake and having fun, but I think it won't be long until they can't keep their eyes open any longer!

So happy birthday to our big girl, Thea!

One Year Ago Today

2009-07-07T21:52:00.010-04:00

One year ago today at 2:41 pm, we received an email announcing, "The Stork Has Landed! If you have received this email we are pleased to announce that we have received your referral! Congratulations!" We knew we would soon have information about our baby! I was absolutely worthless at work that afternoon because I was so excited, but I had to stay until 4 pm when Thea would be finished at camp. At 4:20 pm, as I was driving home, I received "the call" and first heard her name, Xiu Hua Na. I learned her birthday, her weight and height, and a few little tidbits about her personality and appearance. At 5:07 pm, we got the email with the three precious photos of her. As soon as Tony got home, we all sat down on the couch, opened the email, and slowly scrolled down to see. . .

Here she is today. Isn't it amazing that this is the same little girl?

How Did I Overlook This?

2009-06-23T00:39:00.004-04:00

As I was catching up on posting videos to my YouTube channel tonight, it occurred to me that I never posted this most important video of all. Have you guys seen this? It's only just a small portion of the whole video, but it is the most important part. If you want to see more of it, nag Pam in the comments. She has it somewhere but has never passed it on to me.

More Beach

2009-06-03T20:39:00.007-04:00

Okay, just one video!

At the Beach

2009-06-03T10:30:00.002-04:00

Uh Oh!

2009-03-29T21:08:00.003-04:00

Uh oh! There's about to be trouble in our house. It started out as something innocent and cute. Caeli Xiu finally is tall enough to climb on and off of her zebra toy by herself.

She can climb up into the rocking chair and rock by herself too.

Then all of a sudden, this happened:

And then this:

She made a break from me in the kitchen today and was seven steps up the stairs before Tony could get to her. I have a feeling that injuries are in Caeli's near future. Wish us luck!

A Surprise for Mom!

2009-03-14T23:07:00.007-04:00

Tony took the girls out to the mall this morning while I was at a rehearsal. Here's how they looked when they got home.

Caeli was enjoying her first lollipop (root beer flavor!?!) and sporting some brand new bling.

She loved the lollipop so much that she pitched a huge fit when I had to take it from one of her hands and put it in the other so I could get her coat off. She ended up eating the whole thing and then had to go right to the bathtub! She was covered with brown, sticky slime.

Can you see the bling?

Pretty earrings for a pretty baby!

Thea was wearing some very stylish new earrings that Daddy let her buy. She picked them out herself. They're perfect for a girl who runs a salon, don't you think?

What beautiful, fashionable girls I have!

Caeli and Great Grampy

2009-03-12T00:06:00.006-04:00

How cute are these pictures from our visit with Great Grammy and Great Grampy this past weekend?

Snow in Georgia!

2009-03-01T21:59:00.010-04:00

Seriously, it snowed here today! It started as we were driving home from church around 11:30 am. By 4 pm, we had a quite a lot of snow!

Thea was so excited!

Caeli Xiu loved it!

Tony had just arrived at the Marta station from the airport after being out of town for the weekend. Earlier in the day, when it was just pouring down rain, I had asked Dan and Hannah if they would pick him up so I didn't have to drag the girls out in the weather (little did I know at the time that we'd really be out in it!) They arrived just after we went outside.

Lots of snowy fun followed.

Caeli really liked eating the snow, even though it made her little face really cold.

Thea had started a snowman when we first went out, but she got distracted when Tony, Dan, and Hannah arrived. Dan picked up where she left off and constructed a great snowman. Everybody helped smooth him out and cover up his grassy blemishes. I lent him my scarf and Caeli's "Little People" toy stop sign for a nose, and Dan scrounged up some stick arms, rock eyes, a perfect curvy stick for a mouth, and camellia buttons. We topped him off with Thea's sand bucket for a hat. He's the best snowman we've ever had! The girls love him!

Around 5 pm, we decided we had had enough. Everybody was wet, cold, and happy. Yay for a snowy Sunday in Decatur!

Thea's Beauty Salon

2009-02-25T19:15:00.009-04:00

It’s me, Thea! I have a salon in my room and you can come over on the weekends and get a makeover if you want. Just give me a call. Here is a sample of my work.

Catching Up!

2009-02-16T22:33:00.000-04:00

The last few months have been a whirlwind! Since I haven't posted in a long while, I'll just give you some highlights to catch you up. We celebrated Christmas with Tony's family before Christmas Day. Erica was present all the way from Italy by way of iChat.

Christmas Day was spent at home with just the immediate family.

The day after Christmas, we took Caeli on her first out-of-town trip since being home from China: we visited my family in North Carolina for a week. Caeli did great with all the people, the dogs, sleeping in a different bed, eating, riding in the car for 6 hours, etc. She was definitely ready to be home by the time we got back here, though.

The only bad part about the trip was that she picked up a nasty virus while we were there. Along with a runny/stuffy nose and chesty cough, she had a 102+ fever (brought down to around 100 with Tylenol or Motrin) for 5 days! I took her to the doctor after the first two full days of fever, and she told us that with a virus it was possible to have a fever for up to 72 hours. She said that it was okay if the fever was still at 100 with the Motrin/Tylenol and that i should only really be worried if the fever got to 105 (!). Thea has never had a high fever like that, so I was worried even at the 102 mark. Anyway, when she still had the fever on the fifth day I took her back to the doctor. They listened to her chest and it sounded clear, but the doctor said that we had to go have chest x-rays for pneumonia, since there wasn't much else she could think of that would be causing a fever for so long. We had the x-ray, which didn't show any focused pneumonia, but did show some general markings indicative of walking pneumonia. They also did blood work, which was fine, so we ended up just getting antibiotics for walking pneumonia. After 2 days of those the fever was down, but the cough and runny nose still lingered for a while. After another week, she was back to normal.

In other health and development news, at her 1 year check up the doctor heard a little heart murmur, so we had to visit a cardiologist. He did an EKG and an ultrasound and everything looks perfect, so no worries. She drinks whole milk now, and is completely off the bottle. She eats just about everything I offer her, which is great. She walks and even runs like a champ and is getting her third tooth, which is the biggest baby tooth I've ever seen! She tries so hard to talk, but most everything sounds like "da" or "ba". She can say "hi", "mama" and "dada", "boo", and something that sounds like "Tay". We have taught her a few "baby signs", which she uses very effectively. She knows "more", "all gone", "cat", "book", "fish", "bunny", "frog" and "dog". It's so cute and she likes that she can get her point across. She waves hi and bye, and her fine motor skills are improving every day. She likes to feed herself, and really wants to use a fork or spoon.

At the end of January we had a home visit from our adoption case worker for our 6-month post adoption report. She asked questions about how we are all adapting to our life together and about Caeli's health and development, and she spent a minute or two talking with Thea and observing Caeli. The whole thing only took a few minutes, and of course we got a favorable report. It will be sent to the China Center for Adoption Affairs. We have one more visit at the 12-month post adoption mark and then we will be completely finished with the process!

At the beginning of February, we went through the process of domesticating the adoption. It was not necessary, as the adoption was legally finalized in China, but we wanted to cover all our bases and make sure everything about the adoption is as final and complete as possible. Also, we can now get an American birth certificate for her, which will be much easier to use than the Chinese one throughout her life. We decided to keep the birthdate she was given by the Chinese government, just because all of her paperwork has been done with that date, but we got an ancillary order stating that her actual birthdate is two months earlier. We can use this for medical purposes as well as for school or sports or any other place where her true birthdate is important. I'll leave you with our family picture from the courthouse after the hearing. Thanks for checking in on us!

Thanksgiving and Baptism

2008-12-04T00:53:00.011-04:00

For Thanksgiving, my parents and my sisters and their families all came to our house. I think it was the first time we had everyone come stay all at once. We managed to find a place for everyone to sleep and a good time was had by all. It was the first time Molly and Meghan, their Mat(t)s, and the twins got to meet Caeli, so everyone was very excited.

Some foosball was played:

Some birthdays were celebrated:

The kids played toys:

The grownups played computers:

Caeli made a new friend:

The day after Thanksgiving was Caeli's baptism. Most of our family was there, along with some friends from church. My good friend Fr. John, who also baptized Thea, celebrated the baptism. He even invited Thea to help him with his homily!

Caeli wore her beautiful white silk dress we bought in China. We had matching shoes, but she's grown so much that they no longer fit!

She thought about crying when Fr. John first poured the water on her, but she heard Thea laughing and changed her mind. After Aunt Anne, her godmother, wiped the water from her head she was happy again and was good through the rest of the ceremony.

Fr. John anointed her with oil and Uncle Jeff, her godfather, lit the baptismal candle (he didn't even need the step stool!). After Fr. John blessed me and Tony, the ceremony was over.

We all had a chance to chat and have dessert at the lovely reception provided by Susan and her friend Harriet (thanks ladies!). Before Molly and her family had to leave to go back to NC, we took advantage of the fact that my whole family was together (and looking decent!) and had Dan take our picture.

So it was a great week: a wonderful Thanksgiving with lots to be thankful for; time spent with family and friends; and a beautiful baptism. I hope you all had wonderful holidays too!

Strongest Baby in the World

2008-12-01T09:39:00.003-04:00

Bath time!

2008-11-15T00:04:00.004-04:00

Is there anything cuter than a baby in the bathtub?

If you look closely, you can see her tooth on the bottom. There are actually two teeth there, but you can only see the bigger one.

Halloween

2008-11-05T22:35:00.011-04:00

For Halloween, Thea was a "gothic vampiress" and Caeli was Blue from Blue's Clues. We took them to Dan and Hannah's house first. Hannah was out voting, but the girls had fun visiting with "Uncle Awesome".

Next we stopped by Great Grammy and Great Grampy's apartment. Unfortunately, they were out for the evening; we took a picture by their door so they would know we were thinking of them that night.

After that, we returned home so Tony could take Thea out around the neighborhood.

Caeli and I stayed home and played a little before bedtime.

Here's a new game her daddy taught her.

She likes frozen yogurt

2008-10-22T22:08:00.004-04:00

I decided to try frozen yogurt as a treat after lunch the other day. I think she liked it:

On the same day as the yogurt discovery she actually wore a hat for more than 2 seconds. I took pictures so I would have evidence. It seems, as a general rule, that hats and socks are repelled by her head and feet and attracted to her mouth. It's not good, especially with the cooler weather we've had this week. I'm going to keep trying the hat each day so that by the time the cold comes she might be used to it.

Could we please sleep more?

2008-10-18T22:32:00.003-04:00

We've been home now for several weeks and we are starting to settle in to some kind of routine. It's not perfect, but it seems to be improving. Caeli usually wakes up between 6 am and 7 am, if not earlier. On the weekdays I get up with her so Tony and Thea can sleep a little longer before they have to get up and go to work and school. I feed her some breakfast, usually baby rice or oatmeal cereal and fruit. I did successfully make some congee, which is the rice porridge that we always fed her in China. She likes it with a little sugar and sometimes with a little fruit mixed in. The fruit has to be perfectly smooth, though, or else she will spit it and the congee out. If the fruit has lumps she will still eat it, but I have to keep it separate from the congee. I don't understand this requirement, but I do my best to obey. After breakfast I make Thea's lunch for school and help her and Tony get ready to go. Caeli and I walk them to the door and wave and say bye. She is able to wave now, although she mostly waves with her hand facing herself instead of the person she is waving to. We play for a short while, and then she goes back to bed for about an hour or so. I try to take a shower during this little free time, but sometimes if I have been up late with her I take a nap myself. It's not nearly long enough for my liking but at this point I just take what I can get. When she wakes from her nap, we get her dressed for the day. We play some, do some housework, eat some Cheerios, and just putter around the house. She takes a bottle mid-morning, and eats lunch around noon. She is a good eater and has liked almost every food I have made for her. She did turn down zucchini and avocado, but is a big fan of butternut squash, potatoes, spinach, and carrots. After lunch we play for a little while, then it's back down for another short nap. During this nap I try to catch up on some work from church or some housework. If she wakes early enough, she gets a little snack of Rice Chex or banana or something before we pick Thea up from school. She sleeps on the way to school, but is wide awake for the ride home since Thea entertains her for the entire ride. Those girls love each other! She takes another bottle when we get home, then eats again at supper with me and Thea (and Tony, if he gets home in time). Thea usually plays with her while I cook supper. After supper she plays with Tony, then takes a bottle at bedtime. She and Thea usually go to bed at the same time.

It would be great if that were the end of her day, but unfortunately, it isn't always. She often wakes several times throughout the evening before Tony and I go to bed. She doesn't need a bottle; she just wants someone to come in and hold her for a minute. The worst part is that she cries loud and hard immediately upon awakening and has to be soundly asleep before you can put her down. Sometimes she will sleep from around midnight until the morning, but often she wakes around 3:30 am, 4 am, or 5 am. These times are tough! 5 am is the worst, because in my book that's just too early to start the day, but it's so close to wake up time that if you don't get her back down quickly you may as well just go ahead and start. I get up with her during the weeknights since Tony has to go to work all day, but I try to make him do it on the weekends. Unfortunately he snores so loud that he often doesn't hear her cry and I end up having to wake up anyway to tell him to get up. We try to get in there quickly so she doesn't disturb poor Thea too much. Also, we believe it's important to our bonding process to not let her cry for long before we save her from whatever is bothering her. I know people say that you should let them cry a little so they will learn to comfort themselves and go back to sleep, and we certainly did with Thea, but all the rules are different with adopted children. We learned this through the educational courses we had to complete as part of our adoption preparation. It feels like she is just being spoiled, but I constantly try to remind myself how much she has been through in her little life and how much she needs us to be dependable and understanding. It's hard at 4 am, though, especially when you're half asleep. I bet you probably haven't noticed this before, but I can get kind of grumpy when I'm tired. It would be better for all of us if we could get this sleeping through the night thing worked out.

Thea has been so good about helping me with Caeli--watching her while I take a bathroom break, playing with her when she's grumpy, feeding her, gathering her laundry, cleaning up her toys--and she really loves her to pieces. Yet she is still finding it difficult to adjust to life with a baby sister. She never says that she is jealous, and she never seems to be mad at the baby for hogging all our attention, but she does seem to be quite grumpy with me and Tony and life in general. The poor child has been through a lot over the last couple of months, what with starting a new school, taking a trip to the other side of the world, and learning to live and share a room with a demanding, needy baby. I'm trying to encourage her to post and share her view of the situation, but she has not shown much interest. I guess we'll all just keep on keeping on and we'll eventually get used to each other.

I have taken Caeli out to quite a few places and she has met lots of family members and friends. I'll try to post details about this next. For now, enjoy these cute pictures!

The longest post in blog history!

2008-09-30T02:49:00.023-04:00

Yes, we are still alive! The blog fell lower on our priority list in the final days of the trip for several reasons. We became quite busy with shopping, gatherings, and outings. In addition to us becoming very busy, Caeli decided that she didn't like sleeping in that crib after all; in fact, she didn't even like sleeping through the night, so we were also pretty sleep deprived. Not to mention that the temperatures in Guangzhou are ridiculous and after being out for even a little while you feel completely wiped out! And our final excuse is that the internet connection was spotty, which made doing anything on the internet kind of a hassle.

So we left off with our first full day in Guangzhou, the medical exam, shopping, and a Thai restaurant for dinner. The next day we visited the Chen Family Temple. This is an ancestral temple constructed by the many branches of the Chen family to honor their ancestors. Our guide told us that the Chen families also sent their children here to stay and study when they had to take their examinations in the city. Also housed here is the Guangdong Folk Arts Museum. There are many kinds of art displayed throughout the temple, like ceramics, sculptures, embroideries, and carvings.

Our guide walked us through some of the many rooms and courtyards there. The whole thing was quite beautiful and peaceful. Some of the rooms were set up like they would have been in the past. The furniture was made of very dark, hard, heavy wood, which used because of the climate of the area. The courtyards were perfectly manicured and maintained. There were exterior walls around the whole thing, separating it from the buildings around it. The funny thing was that the walls were short and all the buildings around it are tall, so you could still see the neighboring buildings looming above the courtyards. It was an interesting juxtaposition.

The tour wasn't long, so we had time to go by the government store to buy jade on our way back to the hotel. We went to the government store rather than buying it in the little stores near the hotel because the government store guarantees the quality. I got a jade bead bracelet, with white jade beads down the center and other colored jade along the edges. Thea got a jade dragon pendant for a necklace, as she was born in the year of the dragon. We bought Caeli a purple jade bead bracelet--the beads are carved into roses--to save for some time down the road. I think traditionally Chinese women get a jade bracelet when they get married and they pass it down to their daughters when they marry. We'll decide later when we'll give it to her. Pam bought herself a jade bangle, and bought bead bracelets for my sisters. It was fun to shop there, and I have the feeling that we got really good deals on great quality jade. I also got a cinnabar jewelry box and bangle for myself. They are carved laquerware, with a beautiful red color. I couldn't resist!

Later that night we went out to dinner at a nearby restaurant. We were kind of taken aback when we entered; there was an overpowering foul odor from all the open tanks of aquatic creatures. It was like a seafood market in there. I couldn't bring myself to look at any of them for longer than it took me to walk by, because the smell was so gross and I didn't want to linger in it. After we passed through that room we were in the actual restaurant, which looked kind of upscale, but also looked a little shabby and dingy. Once again, it was family style dining, with the lazy susan in the middle. Surprisingly, a lot of the dishes were the same ones that we got in Chongqing, which just solidified our suspicion that our guide was carefully selecting which dishes to serve us. After we all ate the dishes provided, Tony told our guide he wanted to order some of the water beetles we had seen in the tank in the front room. Veronica reluctantly ordered them for him. It took a while, but finally he was presented with a plate of water beetles, which basically look like cockroaches. Word started to spread through our group and even into the next room where the other group was, and people started to gather around to see the spectacle. He started into them, and offered them around. A few others tried them, but most of us just made stink faces and tried not to look at the people with bug legs sticking out of their mouths. Tony said they were delicious, and after the other brave ones had their fill, Tony finished them up. He got no good night kiss from me or Thea that night!

Our trip the next day was to the Yuntai Garden. It is a huge garden with a bazillion different kinds of plants from all over the world. It also has huge sculptures, statues, fountains, and architectural elements. It was a really beautiful garden, and I'm sure it would have been very interesting and fun to explore if it hadn't been 400 degrees with 1000% humidity out there! And it was only 10 am! I have to admit that I was completely unable to enjoy it because of the unbearable heat. Even Thea was beat down by it; she sat down or leaned on something every chance she got.

On the way to the garden, we stopped at a Buddhist temple for a blessing for the babies and families. It was very interesting, but I felt a little bad about standing and looking around because there were people worshiping everywhere. I felt kind of like we were intruding on their private moments. But none of them paid us any mind, and Veronica took us all over to what looked like the main worship space. There were several little altars, open rooms, and courtyards, filled with statues, people, flowers, incense, and all kinds of fancy decorations and embellishments. The space we entered was dominated by three unbelievably huge, golden statues. We took off our shoes and sat in front of the altar. Our guide, who is not a Buddhist either, introduced us to a sweet monk, who would do the blessing for us. He gathered all of the jade that people had purchased the day before (we only had Pam's bracelet and Thea's pendant with us) and placed it on the altar. Then he started beating an irregular rhythm on some kind of wooden block instrument and chanting, mostly on the same pitch with a little variation every now and then. It was kind of like when a priest chants, but much more free flowing and effortless-sounding than any priest I've ever heard. Also, the tonality was very different--very eastern sounding, of course. Caeli had been sleeping soundly in my arms, but the second he struck the wooden block, she was wide awake and super attentive. She sat in my lap and watched him intently for the entire blessing. He kept up the chanting, but put down the mallet and took up a little sprig of some plant, dipped it in water, and started blessing the jade. He also painted little dots of red something on each piece (it just rubbed off with wear afterwards). Then, still chanting, he moved around and sprinkled each baby, then each member of the families. I have no idea what he said, but I'm sure it was nice. It was a really wonderful experience and I'm glad we did it.

After the blessing and the garden, we were all beat, so we went back to the hotel. I believe that we rested, shopped, and maybe Thea and Tony swam. The following day was the day of our consulate appointments. Somehow Veronica worked it out so that we did not actually have to be present. She took our paperwork for us and told us to stay in our rooms so she could call if she needed any further information. We did some more shopping that day and rested. That afternoon our group gathered for our "red couch" photo. Since so many families who adopt from China stay at the White Swan, it has become a tradition for each group to photograph their babies on one of the red couches in the hotel lobby. Our photo went relatively well, I think. The other group of 8 that was with us was not able to get a good photo because all of the babies were crying and squirming and crawling off the couch. Our babies made it long enough to get a decent photo before Caeli decided to cry, start to crawl over to me, and faceplant right on the floor--it wasn't as bad as it sounds; she was on the couch pillows on the floor in front of the couch. Veronica had hired a photographer, so the picture he got was from the front and was better than this one that I took. We each got a large, laminated copy of the picture. We also got a photo of all of us in the group together. It's a great memory from the experience of a lifetime.

The next day was our consulate interview when we got Caeli's visa. All the families whose adoption applications were logged in to the CCAA through our agency on January 23, 2006 were there. That included all 16 of us who went to Chongqing, as well as another 11 or so who went to a different province. We all had to bring our babies up to a window, where a worker compared the baby's face to the picture in the passport. If she approved, we got the baby's passport back, complete with the American visa. Then we all, as a group, had to take an oath to take care of our babies forever. There are no pictures from this event because cameras weren't allowed inside the consulate. Caeli wore her "I love the USA" romper and waved her little American flags (thanks Nana Virginia!) Lots of other babies wore American outfits and some people had flags. It was the final hurdle and we felt relieved to be finished at last! Luckily the appointment wasn't until 3 pm, because the night before a typhoon dumped several inches of rain on Guangzhou and flooded the area where we were. We didn't go down to get pictures, but there was another person in our extended group who got some good ones. Take a look at her blog to see how flooded it was.

After the appointment, which didn't take long at all, we returned to the hotel briefly, then some of us headed out for the pearl market. That place was amazing. It was a huge mall of hundreds of little shops inside. It was at least 6 or 7 stories high, and it went on from front to back farther than we had time to shop. Veronica showed us the best shops, and we bought pearls. Thea had been longing for a string of pearls, so Tony took her to get them. She picked out her own strand, showed the jeweler how long she wanted it and what kind of clasp, and he made it right there. Then we had a second one made just like it to give to Caeli someday. Thea picked out that strand as well. I got myself a necklace of white and black pearls on clear thread. The prices were incredible and we had a lot of fun looking at all those gems.

After we returned from the pearl market, we went back to our rooms briefly, then gathered and had cake to thank Veronica for all her great work. She was so sweet and got all teary. She told us what a great group we were, and how lucky we were to all have such healthy, happy babies. She told us how she had just told her mother that the reason our babies were all doing so well was because of how much love we all had for them. It was nice. We gave her a gift of a few trinkets and a generous amount of American cash. The cake was delicious and the babies had fun playing with each other one last time before our trip came to an end. Later we had dinner and returned to our room early to pack.

We had to have our luggage packed and ready to be picked up by the bellboy at 4:30 AM! Then we departed the hotel at 5:30 AM. Once again, Veronica worked some magic and got the hotel to pack us all breakfast in boxes to take on the bus. I don't want to go into detail about the flights but suffice it to say that they were long! Caeli and Thea were both pretty good; we didn't have any major problems. Thea did get sick at the end of the Tokyo/Detroit flight, but luckily it wasn't until the very end and she grabbed a bag in time. Caeli was declared a US citizen as we went through immigration in Detroit. When we finally arrived in Atlanta, Susan picked us up from the airport and brought us home. It was great to be home, but very strange at the same time. It seemed like a lifetime since we had been here last.

So, that's it for my epic post. I will do my best to find time to update again soon. Caeli is doing well (would be better if she would sleep through the night!) and we are all hanging in there. Good night!

A change of scenery

2008-09-20T18:54:00.008-04:00

So the first full day in Guangzhou is behind us. Caeli's crib here is much smaller than the one in Chongqing, but she seemed to like it pretty well and slept through the night other than taking a bottle @ 2:30am. We three woke up around 6am for the next bottle and Thea came over soon thereafter. Bummed around the room a bit, showered and dressed and headed down to breakfast around 8:30. Pam is very excited about the breakfast buffet here - if given the opportunity, she would never leave it.

At 9, Mif and I left with the group to get Caeli's medical exam. Thea stayed with GramPam to do some exploring. Guangzhou's much less crowded, more sanitary and obviously more used to hosting Americans than Chongqing, so the girls are more comfortable exploring on their own (I, personally, much preferred Chongqing - this almost seems like we're vacationing in Savannah with the locals speaking pretty good broken English rather than old South with a gentile drawl). We stopped by the photo shop to get a couple of visa photos made and then proceeded on to the clinic.

The clinic was clean and shiny, though full of adopted babies in various stages of emotion. There were 3 stations that each baby had to visit: the weight, height temperature station; the ENT check; and the physical exam booth. They had it down to a pretty efficient assembly line and we were first in line of our group, so it wasn't so bad. Highlights from the visit included: finding out that she weighs 18.4 lbs (interesting since the growth report we received 2 days before we got her said she weighed 20 lbs and she definitely hasn't lost any weight since we got her), is 28 inches long with an 18 cm head circumference; hasn't had ear infections; has a little bit of redness in her throat; and otherwise looks quite healthy. The physician doing the physical exam even called her "little fat baby" in Chinese, so we took that as a positive. There was concern about the fact she'd had a fever, but both doctors seemed happy to hear that it's been over 48 hours since her last high temperature.Mif, Caeli and I left the clinic and stopped by the grocery store on the way back to the hotel. On the walk back, we came across about 20 schoolkids and their teachers. The kids looked like they were about 7 or 8 and obviously had been taking English lessons. They took the opportunity to try out their English on us, asking questions that they had obviously practiced alot like:

"What is your favorite fruit?"
"What is your favorite sport?"
"What is your favorite color?"
"What is your name?"

After they received our answer, they would respond with their favorite fruit, sport, color, name, etc. It was really cute and it was apparent that they were truly excited to have the opportunity to try out their English. The teachers watched with pride as well. After all the questions were answered, Mif and I got to sign our names on little note pads they each carried with them.

Thea stayed in the room and Pam and I went out shopping some more. Pam found some gifts for various people and saw some dolls that she wanted to show to Thea (who's been asking for a China doll since we arrived). On the way back to the hotel, Pam and I stopped by the Deli Shop and got 3 box lunches for us. They were pretty standard fare of BBQ pork, chicken and veggies and another pork dish. The only weird food item was sliced lotus roots which were very pretty and had the taste and consistency of a mild and mushier water chestnut.

After a bit of lounging, we all went out exploring. Picked up laundry, went to the store with the dolls and bought some more stuff (though no doll - Thea's tough to please). After the stroll, Mif, Caeli and Pam rested/napped while Thea and I went for another playdate with Madeline at the pool. The hotel pool here is much better than the one in Chongqing. It's outside, and thereby not freezing cold, and there's a waterfall at one end that the girls liked. There were also less rules at this pool and, though there was no 2 foot section like at the pool in Chongqing, it worked out for the best because Thea actually swam rather than walked around for a change.

Back to the room for showers and clothing and we all headed out to a Thai restaurant (called "Cow and Bridge"?!?) for dinner. Mif ordered a veggie plate, Thea had fried rice, Pam got sweet and sour chicken and I had beef brisket and potato in yellow curry. Everyone ate well, so I believe it was a good meal. We headed back to the hotel, fed the baby, got our pajamas on and wound down for the night.

Caeli had her first really bad sleep night. I don't think she like the tiny crib here with barely any padding and no mattress. Also (based on the protracted sounds coming from her lower regions this morning) I think she was brewing up quite a bit of gas (hopefully we can continue to develop her burping skills, because they are definitely lacking and could alleviate some of the gas). She was up around 10:30, midnight, 2ish and from 3-4am with Mif taking more of the early shifts and me the latter. Despite the sleeplessness of the night, she was up at 6am and ready to start the day.

Guangzhou

2008-09-19T09:23:00.002-04:00

We have arrived in Guangzhou! I'll go ahead and apologize now: there are no pictures from today, unless GramPam took some that I don't know about. We left this morning from the hotel in Chongqing around 10 am. We made it to the airport and to the security checkpoint with no trouble, because our guide had somehow checked all of our bags and gotten our boarding passes in advance for the entire group. I'll repeat what Tony has said here before: our guide is amazing. I was especially thankful for her when I ran into a little trouble at the security gate. It seems that on the intra-China flights you are not allowed to take any liquids in your carry on luggage. That apparently includes the liquid that is inside baby teething toys. So Caeli has one less toy now, and the Chongqing airport security guy has one more. They also ran the hand-held metal detector over her, and pawed through all of our prescription medicines that were in my backpack. I even had to open one bottle of powdered antibiotic so the guy could sniff it. This is actually the second time that happened--on the way from Guangzhou to Chongqing, I had to open the same bottle so the security girl could sniff it. They both tried to open the bottle themselves, but they apparently have no idea how push-down-and-turn childproof tops work. Anyway, Veronica worked some magic on the security guy, and he settled for just taking the baby toy and running the backpack through the x-ray once more. Once we were finally through security, we made it to our gate just in the nick of time. We walked straight onto the plane as soon as we arrived at the gate.

The flight went pretty well. Since we were so late getting to the gate, we didn't have time to stop and buy water to make Caeli a bottle for takeoff. Luckily, she was fairly content with sucking on the edge of her baby (a doll made from cloth diapers) and eating Cheerios. As soon as we reached the cruising altitude, Veronica was there like lightning, taking the bottles of all 8 babies to get warm water so we could make formula. After her bottle Caeli was happy and ended up sleeping all the way until we got into the airport in Guangzhou. Even though the flight was only an hour and a half, I'm hoping that it was a good indicator of what kind of traveler she is. We have a much longer flight coming up soon. . .

The trip from the airport to the hotel was about 40 minutes. While we rode, Veronica gave a us a quick rundown of the events to come in the next few days. She also told us a few things about the hotel and the surrounding town. We are staying in the White Swan hotel on Shamian Island in Guangzhou. It is a very beautiful hotel, and the town is very quaint. We took a quick walk through a little of the town on our way to dinner with our group. It would have been a very enjoyable walk except for that it is absolutely hot as hell here (yes, John, I realize that it is good practice for me)! Veronica told us on the bus that it was about 100 today. As many of you probably know, I hate to sweat, so I was completely miserable by the time we reached the restaurant. I was carrying poor Caeli in a sling, and she and I both were drenched. About three quarters of the way through the 20 minute walk, she went to sleep. She was in a sitting position in the sling, so her little head was just lolling around. I had to take her out of the sling and hand her off to Tony for a while, because it is impossible to maneuver her in the sling while I am walking. In fact, it is almost impossible to maneuver her in that sling at all. I'm not ending up liking it very much, which is kind of disappointing because I had high hopes for it.

We have come to realize something interesting about Caeli, and the falling asleep in the sling episode today just confirmed it for us. When she gets into a situation that is too much for her, whether it be too much noise, action, heat, visual stimuli, etc., she just shuts herself down. We had noticed it on a couple of our outings over the past week and at dinner last night. It's like she has an on/off switch. When we went to dinner last night, she was perfectly awake and well-fed, but after a while in the crowded, noisy, smoky restaurant, she just switched off and went into a deep sleep in a matter of seconds. It was the same with today's walk in the oppressive heat: one minute she was fine, the next she was in a sleep so deep that she didn't even whimper when Tony and I passed her from my arms to his. I guess it is just her way of coping with stress right now.

So now we have sent Thea off to bed in GramPam's room, since each room only has two twin beds, and Tony and Caeli have gone to sleep as well. It was hard getting her down tonight, I guess because of the change of scene and the excitement of the day, but still much easier than the first few nights when she screamed and cried like someone was killing her. I sort of have her figured out, I think, at least when it comes to getting her to sleep, so hopefully it will continue to get easier as we go along. Of course, we'll have a major setback when we travel home, but we will deal with that when it comes. I am hoping that she will have bonded with us enough and learned to trust us enough that we can get through the transition from one side of the world to the other without too much grief.

Tomorrow we go to the clinic for her medical exam. I'm not sure what else is happening and when, but we'll try to keep you all updated as much as possible. Have a great day!

Ci Qi Kou Village

2008-09-18T10:53:00.006-04:00

Our last day of sightseeing took us to Ci Qi Kou Village. This is an ancient village close to the bank of the Jia Ling River, which joins with the Yangtze in Chongqing. It is a shopping district now, but the ancient architecture remains much the same as it was hundreds of years ago. The government has declared it a protected cultural site, so while the rest of Chongqing has grown up into a modern city, this little village is allowed to remain intact. We strolled through, looking at all the little shops and admiring the ancient buildings, courtyards and sidewalks. There were lots of candy stores and snack food stores, although we were not familiar with anything they were selling. There were also stores selling clothing, jewelry, ebony combs and compacts, carved wood, paintings, antiques, and all kinds of trinkets. It was fairly crowded, with lots of people shopping, talking, and just milling around. It kind of had the feeling of a carnival, with all its interesting sounds and smells.

Outside one store, which I think was selling some kind of meat products, we found this guy, who reluctantly agreed to have his picture taken with Thea, Tony, and Caeli. We didn't end up purchasing a lot of things, since we have a strict weight limit on our baggage to Guangzhou, but we did get a hand carved stamp for Caeli. Even though the stone carver didn't speak any English, Tony somehow managed to explain to him that we wanted the Chinese character for Xiu, which I am sure you remember from a certain previous post. He selected a stone, the top of which is carved into some design (I admit, I haven't even had a chance to examine it) and carefully drew the inverted character on the flat bottom. He then proceeded to carve out the area around the character by hand. Tony made a video of the process, but, of course, we are unable to post it from here.

While we were waiting for the carving to be done, Caeli and I managed to gather a small crowd of curious locals, mostly older folks. Luckily, we had remembered to bring our card that explains what we white people are doing with this Chinese baby. All the old ladies exclaimed over Caeli (and of course, over Thea too!) and one gentleman beckoned me over to his store across the way. He had a small silver bracelet with bells on it that he wanted me to buy for Caeli. Since Tony is carrying all the money here (and only here, because the conversion thing confuses me--when we get home, I'll be in charge of the money again!) he went over and haggled a little before buying it for a lower price than I had been offered. Someone told us that Chinese girls often get this kind of bracelet as babies and wear them until they get married (they are adjustable). The man put two bracelets in the box, whether on purpose or by accident we don't know, so Thea ended up getting one too. The last purchase of the day was by Tony. He bought a beautiful painting directly from Mr. Yao Xuzhang, a famous Chongqing artist.

We returned to the hotel around noon, and Thea and I had lunch in the room, while Tony went out on the streets again. That evening, we had a gathering of all the families in both groups that got babies here in Chongqing. We had pizza from Pizza Hut and the babies all played together. It was really neat to see them all interact with each other. Some of them, you could tell, had been close friends in the orphanage and were glad to play with each other. Na Na was interesting, because she definitely wanted to play with her friends, but she still wanted to be close to me. She ended up doing a little of both, which I think was a very good thing for her. I was glad we had the chance for her to see and play with her friends again.

Today was a free day, so there wasn't much to post about, besides Tony's and Thea's adventures from this morning, which Tony described in the previous post. Tomorrow we travel to Guangzhou, and hopefully we'll be able to post about the trip tomorrow night. Thanks for reading, and thanks for all your comments. We like hearing from you!

Breaking the rules

2008-09-17T20:23:00.006-04:00

OK, I'm gonna break protocol here for a minute and post on the events of this morning before we've posted on yesterday, because Thea and I (Tony) went out early and saw some interesting stuff. So we went out to go to the grocery store to get some water. Unfortunately, the grocery store, like everything other than McDonald's (which is open 24/7) does not open until around 9am. Stores here open late but stay open late. It gives the locals time to get up and get their chi balanced before starting the day.

One of the main ways they do this is by doing "morning exercises." When Thea and were out, we saw several pockets of morning exercisers all doing similar tai chi movements, though with different props, including swords, handkerchiefs, fans and badminton racquets:

This stuff must really work, because the other thing we noticed was dozens of little children (all the way down to the age of 5 or 6) walking to school by themselves.
In a town of 30,000,000 people, the streets are safe enough for these tiny kids to wander right through downtown alone! Although there are many things that American can be critical of China about, there are certainly a number of things that we could stand to learn from the Chinese people.

As I was walking back to the hotel, I came across what seems to be the sole transvestite in Chongqing. I've come across him on 3 different days, and he seems to be quite content with his lifestyle. It's obvious that the locals think he's a bit weird because of the conversations he gets involved in (although I don't speak more than 10 words of Chinese, I'm assuming that these one-sided conversations go something like this, "What in the world are you thinking, dude?"). Nonetheless, noone's seemed outwardly belligerent to him. This is surely a broad generalization, but it also seems to me that the human rights violations seem much more focused on those who express non-conformist political ideals than those who express individualism.

Chongqing Zoo

2008-09-17T03:38:00.008-04:00

For our second day of sightseeing in Chongqing, we went to the Chongqing Zoo. Like the park from the day before, it is right in the city and it took us about 20 minutes to get there by bus from the hotel. As we entered, the path was lined with statues of animals.

The first exhibit you get to once inside the park is the pandas. Turns out that the Sichuan province, the province right next door to Chongqing, is the home of the most wild Giant Pandas in the world due to the mountainous terrain on abundance of bamboo. According to our guide, the Chongqing Zoo has more pandas in captivity (8) than any other zoo in the world. Although we have 4 pandas now at Zoo Atlanta, none of us had ever seen pandas as up close and personal as in this habitat.

The rest of the zoo was pretty much a zoo with only a few animals that were new to us. There was a neat exhibit of maybe 15 different tanks with different species of goldfish including some funky ones like the bubbleeye and lionhead. The petting zoo had a couple of mini horses and some pitifully scrawny pigs. But the biggest attractions, as always, were the white folk with yellow babies and Thea's eyes. Several more people wanted to have their kids' pictures taken with Thea and we even brought some American tchotchkes to give out. As you can see, Thea and this child are as excited as their parents to partake in the photo diplomacy.

It was hot as blazes at the zoo, and Na Na feel asleep long before the tour was complete. She had a fever on and off throughout the day and the heat and humidity at the zoo definitely wore her down. Around noon, we finished the tour of the zoo and headed to a neighborhood restaurant close by. Again, the food was excellent lazy Susan-style fare. Nothing too exotic, but the sweet and sour pork was obviously the way it's supposed to be done - never had any better in my life. Na Na woke up and ate some and the workers at the restaurant took pity on the red faced Americans and brought out about half a dozen fans, so it was a great lunch. Again, Na Na fell asleep and slept the whole bus ride back to the hotel.

We headed back up to the room for some quiet and nap time. Thea watched her DVD and Mif, Na Na and I grabbed a quick power nap. At 3:30, Thea and I went down to the hotel pool to let Mif and Na Na rest in peace. The pool here in the hotel is FREEZING. It's set at 25 degrees centigrade which is 77 degrees Fahrenheit. Doesn't sound so cold, but trust me, it is. Thea and I swam until about 5 before heading back up for showers. While we were gone, Mif and Na Na slept a bit more and then apparently played some dress up.

Thea and I headed out on the town to grab some McDonald's (I've got to take a photo of the Chinese McRib, it's my new addiction) and Mif and Pam ordered some room service. Na Na ate anything she could get her hands on. She still had a bit of a fever on and off and, despite all of the naps, took her Motrin and went down around 8. She woke up again around 10:30pm and took another bottle, but then was done for the night until 6am. She's still doing great and we're feeling very fortunate so far. Here's to hoping the good luck continues!

And for you Molly, here was my dessert after the McRib:

Definitely the spiciest things I've eaten in Chongqing. As far as tastiness, I'd say somewhere beneath white fungus soup, cuttlefish and pork stomach, but definitely above abalone and bamboo shell.

Eling Park

2008-09-16T04:02:00.011-04:00

Yesterday we had a morning outing to Eling Park. The weather was the best it has been since we got here--not too hot, not too humid, and fairly clear. We ate a quick breakfast in the room and got on the bus at 9:30 am. The park is in downtown Chongqing, so it didn't take us long to get there. It was weird how the busy city was all around us until we walked into this lovely little park. It was quiet and beautiful. There were beautiful plants, pagodas, and walkways. In the first pagoda we came to, there was a man playing some kind of Chinese stringed instrument. It was amplified with some kind of speaker, so the music filled the park all around us. It was an interesting sound, and I enjoyed it. I took a video of it, but we seem to be unable to download the videos onto this dinosaur of a computer. We also passed a pagoda with a keyboard and vocalist providing music for a group of ballroom dancers.

As we continued our walk, we came across a wedding party coming out of one of the pagodas. The bride looked so pretty, and her groom couldn't stop grinning. We all enjoyed looking at her beautiful dress. Our guide said that a lot of people get married here because of the great views of the river and city and the beautiful scenery for pictures. We continued to run into the wedding party throughout the park as they made their way around for pictures in each choice spot. As she came down the steps at one point on the path, I noticed the most wonderful thing about her! I wanted to get a picture, but we were too far behind. Tony ran up to them and just asked her if he could take her picture. To my great delight, she quickly obliged with a big smile. This photo is for all of you who called me weird on my wedding day!

Our guide explained to us later that some Chinese people, on special occasions like weddings, will wear red underwear, socks, or shoes to make themselves visible to the gods, so the gods can see them and watch over them. I can't say that was my reasoning on my wedding day, but I can now say that I am not the only one in the world to wear red shoes with a white wedding dress!

There were several places on the path where you could look out over the river and the city. Even though the weather was good and the air fairly clear, the view was still obstructed by the haze. I'm sure this is a fantastic view when the air is clearer (if it gets any clearer) and it probably looks cool at night, since they seem to have lights on every tall building in Chongqing, but for us this was about it. As you can see we were very high up. Chongqing is a mountain city, as I'm sure we've mentioned before, but this really makes it apparent just how high some of the city mountains are.

Aside from walking on the trail and enjoying the beauty of the park, we did a few other fun things. There was a man painting people's names on long, rectangular sheets of paper. He painted the English letters, but made each one into a fantastical beast or plant or scene using beautiful colors and grand flowing motions. He was fun to watch. He did one for Thea and Caeli. We also stopped in a tea house and watched a presentation about different kinds of tea and the Chinese tea ceremony. We got to sample several kinds of tea, including jasmine and oolong, and I loved them all. I wanted to buy a tea set (I know, I'd probably never use it, but I just wanted it!) but we still have an intra-China flight to take and we have to watch the weight on our baggage.

Thea got to do something cool that the rest of us didn't: she got to pose for a picture with two live peacocks! There was a lady with a swing on a stand, which was covered in greenery and flowers and had a peacock on a perch on either side. As we approached it, the bride was getting up from it, and the lady started offering to let us sit in it, for a small fee, of course. The fee really was small, and the swing looked so beautiful that we let Thea do it. Afterward I remembered that our travel nurse had cautioned us against getting close to any kind of animal while we were here, but it was over and done by then. So Thea sat down in the swing and posed with the peacocks. The lady gave her greens of some kind to feed to the birds while she sat there. First she fed one, then the other, then the lady gave her two handfuls at once and she fed them both at once! She loved it, and I got some cute pictures.

We made it through the park and were back on the bus before noon, so it was the perfect length of time for an outing with babies. When we got back to the hotel, we went to the hotel restaurant for lunch. Thea, Pam, and I ordered from the menu, but Tony went for the buffet. He went back several times and found interesting things like pork belly with chili sauce, cuttlefish, and marinated chicken foot. After lunch Thea and Tony went swimming and Pam, Caeli, and I rested and played. None of that was that exciting (except for the fact that Caeli is so darn cute and is playing more and better every day!), so I'll leave you with the thrilling images we got to see in person during our lunch that day. Bon appetit!

Moon Festival day

2008-09-15T08:15:00.007-04:00

So the main reason we are here in China for 17 days rather than the standard 14 is that the Moon Festival was celebrated yesterday. The Moon Festival, as its name implies, celebrates the moon and is generally expected to coincide with the roundest full moon of the year (not that you can see it). It is the second largest holiday in China after Chinese New Year even though it is only celebrated in cities that are on a river. Because Chongqing is at the confluence of the Yangtze and Jialing rivers, it is a big celebrant of the festival, also known as the Mid-Autumn Festival. Preparations for the Moon Festival have been omnipresent since we arrived with moon cakes for sale everywhere (the grocery store even had a whole section with different types of moon cakes and other Moon Festival wares just like American stores do around holidays), tents and booths going up downtown, and an increasing number of people wandering the downtown area as the weekend approached.

The day started for me (Tony) around 5am. I woke up and started "watching" college football on ESPN's website. It was actually pretty fun to not have the TV on and be able to follow the games online without announcers - and the ESPN scoreboard thingy is pretty cool with lots of great stats to look at and a slick layout. Got to sweat it out with the rest of the Dawgs fans right to the end.

Everyone started stirring around 6:45 and we got ready to go down for breakfast. I had to go to the bank at 10am to do the wire transfer of the "donation fee" (i.e., non-refundable purchase price) to the orphanage for Na Na, so I went down to breakfast by myself around 9:30 while the rest were getting ready. They joined me around 9:50 but I had to scamper up and get the cash and my passport to head to the bank.

Only 1 parent was required to go to the bank to wire the donation fee, so I left Mif, Thea, Na Na and Pam at the breakfast table. Joined up with the rest of the crew (mostly the dads, of course) and walked down to the bank. Luckily, I was one of the first to get to go and after some waiting, filling out a small amount of paperwork and having the guide take care of the rest, I was done and on my way back to the hotel by 11:15 or so. Quan Yue let us know that we'd be having an early dinner at 4pm since we were going on a boat cruise for the Moon Festival at 7, so I made a quick dash to the grocery store and we ate room service and snacks for a light lunch. Played around the room with Na Na and lounged for the next few hours until it was time for dinner.

The restaurant we went to was within walking distance and most of the families came along. Although we had been warned that Chongqing was renowned for spicy food, most of the dishes were, again, fairly mild. I think I speak for everyone in saying that the dishes were even better (albeit less fancy) than the previous local restaurant we attended. Thea got a bit overheated at one point and I had to take her out for air, but otherwise it was a good meal. Lazy Susan-style again, with dishes that included: deep fried beef strips with mango jelly, broccoli with garlic, really good salted green beans, some sort of bean, corn and seed salad, chicken and eggplant with peanuts and cashews, stir fried beef and red onions, some beignet-like pastries and I'm sure a few others that I can't recall right now. The meal cost 105 Yuan (approximately $15.50) for all 5 of us. It's pretty amazing how cheap everything is over here (except for imported goods, which seem to be about 50% higher than US prices).

We had to meet the group @ 6pm for the boat cruise, so we only had 15-20 minutes in the hotel room to prepare. Got on the bus and headed down to the harbor. From where the bus dropped us off, we hiked about half a mile, then down about 75 steps, across about 100 feet or floating piers onto the boat. I'm telling you, Mif's guns are going to rival Jeff's by the time we get back to the states.
It took a long time before the boat debarked. Thea was antsy so I tried to keep her entertained by looking off the side of the river and letting her hang out with her buddy Madeline. There was food for purchase on a banquet table that included pig stomach, goose stomach and oxtails. I asked the guide if they were OK so eat and she told me not to even consider it as the items were probably anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months fresh (in fact, nearly 2.5 hours later, none of the items on the table had been touched by even the locals that came along on the cruise). Eventually, the boat took off and we rode down the Yangtze in celebration of the moon.

As I already mentioned, there was no appearance made by the moon, but all of the buildings up and down the river have colorful neon lights, so it was kinda like floating down a river through Chinese Las Vegas with the sounds of slot machines replaced by babies whining.

Thea really enjoyed it once we got moving, Na Na was pretty content with eating and hanging onto her mom. She did let me carry her around for about 15 minutes at one point, but she is definitely a momma's girl. In addition to the lights on the buildings, the coolest thing were the lanterns that the locals were sending off from the edge of the river. They were tapered cubes made of orange colored paper with a bit of sterno or something similar in a little tray at the bottom. Lighting the sterno would cause them to float upwards to the moon like little hot air balloons until they ran out of fuel and crashed down into the Yangtze. It made for a really pretty scene with dozens of these orange glowing lanterns floating up in the sky.

By the end of the cruise (9ish), both Na Na and Thea had passed out. Despite our nice requests, Thea declined to awake when we got back to the dock. So I had the joy of carrying her across the bobbing piers, up the 75 steps, around a street fight and back the half mile to the bus. Good thing I've got strong hips;)

By the time we got back to the room, I was as done for as the girls and fell asleep in Thea's bed. Mif somehow mustered up the energy to post and went to bed sometime soon thereafter, I presume. That's yesterday for you - we'll get you today tomorrow hopefully!

Live Q&A with at least one Mistretta - 9/15/2008 (in China - 9/14/2008 in America)

2008-09-14T16:57:00.002-04:00

Who would have guessed that in China I am a morning person? It's 4:42am here and I'm up, so I'm going to set up this section for you guys to load up any questions. I may not start answering immediately, but I might. 9pm eastern time in America is the official start time, but it can't hurt to start loading up any questions you have in the comments section to this post, especially since time will be tight as we have a sightseeing trip this morning. Do not put them in the comments for any post other than this one or I may not find them. If I need to respond to more than one question at a time (since I know there are so many of my fans waiting to post questions), I will use the standard blog signifier of @ . Since Mom cheated and asked a question in the comments of the last post, I'll give an example of a response to her question:

Susan Mistretta said...

Now things are really confusing. I looked at 6:45am our time and saw no post. Now I see this one at 10:30am with a time of what 2:59am your/our time(?) which is not even here in our time unless it was delayed like 20+ hours. I guess this will be ancient Chinese mystery kind of like Na Na's real birthday.

Are you calling her Na Na because she answers to that? Do you think that will stick? What a day - I know you are exhausted. As much as I love pictures, the words are even better.

Can't wait for Thea's post. Love to all of you. Na Na's and Thea's Nana

September 13, 2008 10:42 AM

@ Susan Mistretta

I started writing the post around 3pm here (or 2:59am eastern time in the US). Because of all of the other adventures of the day, I did not finish until right around 10pm China time (or 10am eastern US) and published the post. Thus, it was not up when you checked @ 6:45am eastern, but then was at 10:30. Despite the fact that we're a day behind on blogging, there is no 20 hour lag in the posts appearing (that would make for a terrible live Q&A). No need to overthink things - although we are in China, this is still Earth;)

As to the question about Na Na, since all of the babies at the Xiushan orphanage are given the surname of "Xiu" (simply an abbreviation of "Xiushan" but also the Chinese character for beautiful or elegant) and the first first name of "Hua" (one of its meanings is "China"), their second first name is the only distinguishing name between them all. Rather than call them their full names at the orphanage and saying way too many redundant and superfluous "Xiu Hua's," all of the babies are called by their nicknames which are their second first names repeated twice. Hence, Na Na or Jiao Jiao or Min Min, etc. Thea loves to call her "Na Na" so I have a feeling this nickname will stick.

But yes, you are a lucky Nana to have an actual Na Na - believe me, there's a lot of serendipity (feel free to insert your own religious equivalent here) going on with this adoption.

OK, I hope that makes it clear how this will work. Like I said, feel free to start loading up any questions you may have and I will start answering by 9. For those of you who figured out the magic of video chat, I am not going to start that up at least until everyone wakes up in this room, but I may get on for simple IM here shortly. Keep in mind that I will only be able to video chat with one person at a time, so I will probably limit those to around 5 minutes so as many people can squeeze in as possible. However, I can text chat with an infinite number of people, so feel free to text chat with me if you see us online.

Walmart Day

2008-09-14T03:10:00.003-04:00

Hi all, it's Miffy again. I'm so glad that Tony did that massive post yesterday because I was just to worn out to even think about it! I already had been going to sleep early every night, just because there was nothing else to do and my body's internal clock is all messed up, but last night I was just plain worn out. My arms are like jelly from holding this child. She doesn't seem to want anyone but me when she is cranky, which is a lot. My mother says I am just getting my come-uppance since Thea was never a mommy's girl. I'm hoping this is just a phase that she will pass through.

Since we weren't sure what size the baby would be, we only brought a few clothing items in several different sizes from home, which leaves us with only a few things that she can actually wear. So yesterday our guide took us all to Walmart so we could shop for more clothing. We started out with breakfast in the hotel restaurant. We fed Na Na several different foods, and she was very happy to try them all. She is an eater! After that we all piled onto the bus and headed for one of the two Walmarts in Chongqing. The one we went to was the closer of the two, about 20 minutes from the hotel by bus. Our guide told us that most of the shoppers in the Walmart would be local people, and they would be very interested in us white folks with Chinese babies. She gave us a card in a plastic sleeve on a string, like a name tag you would get at a conference. The card explained that the baby had been an orphan and that we had adopted her and were taking her back to the US. It went on to give her name and where she was from, and expressed how much we love the baby, China, its culture, and its people. We did actually have more than one person stop us and exclaim over the baby (and Thea!), so the card really came in handy. It's interesting how the people here have no qualms about pointing, staring, and/or coming right up to us and touching the baby (and Thea!).

Once we were in Walmart we had about an hour or so to shop before we were to meet at the cashier stations. We went straight for the baby department, passing through the grocery area on the way. I noticed several people who had raw, unwrapped, whole chickens in the bottoms of their shopping baskets with all their other groceries right on top. I wonder how come they all don't have food poisoning all the time? Anyway, in the baby department we mainly wanted to get socks and pajamas and possibly a couple of outfits. Unfortunately, we found their selection to be lacking. We did finally find some socks that we thought would work (the sizes were weird and hard to figure out) and a package of undershirts with one long sleeved and long pants bodysuit included, but no outfits that would work for us. The people here believe that children need to be protected from any kind of draft or cool air, so they bundle the children up in layers and layers of heavy clothing, even now when the weather is still quite warm. All the outfits we found were either quilted or padded or corduroy or something completely inappropriate for the current weather. So we ended up mostly shopping around in other areas. We got some diapers, a couple of CDs of Chinese music, a sweet backpack for me, a pencil box and colored pencils for Thea (she only brought markers), and several other little stationery items. One of the best things we got was a reusable Walmart shopping bag with Chinese characters on it. We bought one for my dad as well, as a souvenir. So even though we didn't get what we went for, we still ended up happy. As an added bonus, we stopped at a little store right outside Walmart and got Thea some fabulous red Chinese shoes. I wish we had more time in that little store, because there were several pairs that I would have loved to have!

After we got back to the hotel, Thea and Tony went out to McDonald's for lunch (again!) and Pam and I ordered room service while Na Na slept. When Thea and Tony returned, Pam and I got very brave and went out to a nearby department store to see if we could find some baby clothes. What an experience! First, we had to ride escalator after escalator to reach the 8th floor, where the baby department is. Then we had to try to find something that we could use! Again, all of the clothing was completely inappropriate for the weather, but we did manage to find a couple of pajama sets. Actually, the sales clerk found the sets for us because in stores here you are often not allowed to look around by yourself. There is always a sales clerk hanging over you, checking sizes, making suggestions, and generally making sure you find something to buy. It would have been a lot better if we had been able to understand each other! So after we had made our selections, she carefully wrote everything on a couple of receipts. She took the receipts and led us to a cashier's desk in the middle of the department--I guess it was obvious that we had no idea what we were doing--and we paid him. He stamped our receipts, which we had to take back to the sales clerk to retrieve our purchases. It was an interesting process.

We then went back and picked up Tony, Thea, and Na Na and went to the Toys R Us in the shopping mall adjacent to the hotel. Thea picked out a really neat magnetic paper doll set, and I got myself a little trinket, a lucky kitty with a solar powered bobbing head. Pam and I also got purses in an awesome little store in the mall.

We were all beat after all that shopping, so we headed back to the hotel for room service dinner. Thea almost fell asleep during hers, so she went right to bed afterward. Tony did not have room service dinner, but instead went out on the town. I have no idea what all he did out there, but I know it involved meat on a stick, losing money playing mah jong, getting a little lost, and hanging out with a Chinese guy who learned English from Youtube. So all in all an interesting and tiring day. I ended up falling asleep flat on my back on top of the covers, fully dressed and still wearing my glasses, while Tony finished up his post about the previous day.

Luckily most of us didn't have to be anywhere this morning (Tony had to go to the bank at 10 am), so we were able to relax most of the day and recover. This evening was a different story, though, so check back here tomorrow to hear the story of our second authentic Chinese dinner and our Yangtze River cruise during the mid autumn festival!

I am excited!

2008-09-14T03:09:00.003-04:00

Getting the Baby was harder then I had thought, but taking care of the Baby was easier then I thought. It is also a very cool experience to have her. Well as you probably know I also have two three-year-old twin cousins who are also a lot of work, yeah.

It is all hard because they are all little kids, other then that it is still hard, yeah
And sometimes little kids are like that, right? Yeah right. Well any way she is still hard.

Na Na’s favorite games are playing with toys, peek-a-boo, bouncing on Mom and Dad, Singing, Dancing, Some type of a booing type game, Talking, Dadaing type game, Trying to stand up by herself and crawling around with me.

That’s all I can say for now.

The story, so far

2008-09-13T02:59:00.008-04:00

So yesterday was long and interesting. I (Tony) was up first around 5:30 and started playing on the compy, looking at cnn.com for updates on Ike, checking on my fantasy football team, etc. Thea woke up soon thereafter and Mif and Na Na (Caeli) were up by 6:20 or so. We played around the room for a bit, changed diapers, showered, clothed, tried to give the baby a bottle (she didn't really want it), invited GramPam over, did some webchat with Meghan and Dan. We were short on time, so we just ate breakfast bars in the room and attempted to feed the baby some formula. We've since realized that she is much more happy with food than drink, specifically bananas, congee, Cheerios, and noodles.

After breakfast, we gathered everything up for the trip to the Office of Civil Affairs. We left the hotel around 9am and the trip took about half and hour (I'd estimate we drove maybe 3-5 miles). Chongqing is the most populous municipality in China (even moreso than Beijing and Shanghai) with a population of over 30,000,000. Because it is in the mountains, no one rides bicycles here, so the roads are very congested with cars, motorcycles and lots of cabs. Downtown, where our hotel is, the roads are called pedestrian roads and they are combination sidewalks/roads paved with bricks and stone rather than cement. Pedestrians are all over the place and motorbikes seem to be allowed on the actual sidewalks. Stories of the pollution are not exaggerated. Even in the foothills of the mountains, right next to the Yangtze, it is nasty. Kinda looks like a thick smoke mist covers everything. And by the end of the day, we all smelled pretty much like car exhaust ashtrays of funk.

The Office of Civil Affairs was, like most of the official business we've done, a study in unorganized chaos. I paid the fee for the Registration Fee (registration of the adoption), Passport Fee (Xiu Hua Na's passport - she's a Chinese citizen with her Chinese name until we check her at American customs and she gets her American name and loses her Chinese citizenship), the Public Announcement Fee (the local police are required to run the "finding ads" in the local newspaper for 60 days just in case the child was actually lost rather than abandoned and the birth parents want to reclaim him/her. After that, the child is officially an orphan and ward of the orphanage where she has been staying. This money is to reimburse the police for running the ad), and the Notarization Fee (for notarizing the documents, of course).

After the payment, there was a lot of waiting and trying to keep her and Thea occupied. Eventually, Mif, Na Na and I took our official adoption portrait (no Thea allowed) and then all 16 families were called to a room for the official ceremony. Each family would be called to a podium that had little Chinese and American flags on it to confirm that they would take care of the baby and never abuse it, stamp our fingerprints on some documents and take some more official photos. We then received our official adoption certificate and some sort of commemorative gold plate. Soon thereafter (and about 2 hours after arrival), we left and got back on the bus to return to the hotel. This was great by me, as it was really hot and Na Na and I were very sweaty. Most buildings keep the windows open (even if they have A/C) and are very hot by American standards. Even though the weather is supposedly very nice now that the seasons are changing (happily we seem to have missed 90+ degrees by a couple of days) the humidity is so high that it feels not so comfy outside and in buildings that have open windows.

When we got back to the hotel around 1pm, everyone was sufficiently worn out so I made a quick McDonald's run. Grabbed Happy Meals and burgers and a peach drink and my first meat-on-a-stick (chicken, I feel fairly certain - very, very good) and brought them up to Pam's room for lunch as they were cleaning ours. Moved back to our room to gather ourselves.

At 2pm, we met in Quan Yue's room. Quan Yue (Veronica) is our Chinese guide. She's from Beijing and has been working as an adoption guide for over three years. When I tell you that she is amazing at her job, it is no exaggeration. The two guides with the 16 families have gone non-stop for the past few days and been available 24 hours for anything we need. Quan Yue had invited the head nanny and one of the other main nannies from the orphanage to her room for an hour of Q&A. After 10 minutes or so of background info about Xiushan and the Xiushan SWI orphanage, they went around the room child-by-child giving some characteristics of the child and answering any questions the parents had. It was very obvious that both the head nanny and the other nanny were very knowledgeable about all of the girls and also loved them very much.

About Caeli, they mostly spoke of the fact that she is active, likes to eat food and smiles at everyone. They also spoke about her friendship with Min Min and Jiao Jiao, two of the other babies in our group. We asked about some marks on her legs (mosquito bites) and red bumps in various places (air allergies, they said). During this part of the discussion, the most interesting revelation occurred. Turns out, when Na Na arrived at the orphanage, she weighed about 3 pounds rather than the 8 pounds it stated on the growth report we received about a month ago. We asked why the growth report said something different and pretty much got an ambiguous answer. This is made even more interesting due to the fact that we came across this a few months back. If you look at page 5 of the PDF, the top of the third column, you'll see the picture of a baby that looked at the time (and definitely still does look) quite like our Caeli. If you read the third sentence of the third column, you'll notice that the author speaks of meeting our child (supposed DOB - 1/3/2008) in November of 2007...

This all started to make a bit more sense regarding the Na Na we've had the past 2 days. The one that can crawl like crazy, eats food like a piglet and, in certain regards, seems much more developmentally advanced than your average 8 month old. We may never know for sure, but we're pretty convinced now that there is little chance she was born in 2008.

After the visit with the nannies, we went back to the room again. Na Na took a quick nap and the rest of us rested a tiny bit and readied ourselves for the group outing scheduled for the night - a visit to an authentic Chinese restaurant. We met up with the group at 5:30pm and walked to the restaurant.

An interesting and upscale place that, oddly, had widescreen HD TVs everywhere on the walls. The Paralympics were on, so I don't know if the TVs were installed specifically for the Olympics or have always been there, but they seemed out of place in a nice restaurant. All 16 families went, so we had 4 tables alloted for the group. We sat at one with the families of Min Min and Wei Wei and shared bowls served on a Lazy Susan at the middle of the table. Before they brought food for the adults, they brought out a bowl of congee for each of the babies as well as a steamed egg. Na Na, who had not been doing very well with her bottles all day, proceeded to destroy both.

Then the dishes for the adults and big kids (Thea and Wei Wei's 5 year-old sister Madeline [also a Chinese adoptee] were the two non-baby children) started to arrive. These dishes were brought out above five minutes apart in the following order:

Fried pork and cabbage (the fried pork looked like pork rinds, but was actually not spicy at all - the cabbage was to wrap the pork in)
Rice cakes, mushrooms and bamboo shoots (pretty much like moo goo gai pan with less veggies and with rice crispy treats made without any sugar, marshmallow or butter)
BBQed beef and mushroom stems (kinda like a sweeter version of Mongolian Beef - everyone loved this one)
Spicy chicken and peppers (this was what I expect most Sichuan dishes taste like. It started out really hot and slow burned to mega-hot. Made with chicken, red and green bell peppers and ancho chiles, among other spices)
Steamed celery and something (our whole family dislikes celery, so that's all I got in the way of description here)
Rice and green onion (seemed more like dirty rice than anything else I've ever eaten. Definitely not like the fried rice in American Chinese restaurants. At some point while eating this one, I bit into something I can only describe as a small seed that immediately filled my mouth with the flavor of pure Pledge extract to the Warhead Lemonth power)
And finally, dim sum triangles with lemon glaze and sweet bean paste filling (savory and not too sweet)

After dinner, we slogged back up to our room and prepped for bed. Na Na pitched her first major fit about going to bed, but Mif wore her down eventually. Pretty sure Thea and I both passed out before the battle was over.

Sorry there are no pictures on this post. Check back later and we will definitely add photos to this post [done!]. Right now, I'm just too worn out to take that on, but I really wanted to get this recorded before I forgot. Hopefully tomorrow we'll have time to post about today, as there's so much stuff going on that if we get a day behind we'll be hard pressed to recreate the day two days prior. Thea's got a post in Word that we'll also definitely get up tomorrow. Transferring the donation fee to the orphanage tomorrow as well as boat cruise on the Yangtze during the Moon Festival.

Love to you all and we'll get you stories of more breakfast, trip to Chongqing WalMart, shopping around Chongqing, the first poop, more McDonald's, mahjong street gambling, birthday party for Jiao Jiao, me hanging out alone downtown with Chinese folk, etc. as soon as we can.

May as well embrace the 15 minutes of fame and act like a rock star

2008-09-11T17:43:00.002-04:00

OK, so I haven't run this by anyone (it came to me when I woke up at 5:30am this morning), but I figured I'd post it now to give anyone interested time to plan if they want to try this.

On Sunday evening, September 14th @ 9pm US Eastern time, I'm going to hold a live Q&A in the comments section of this blog. Like I said, I haven't run this by anyone so I can't guarantee that Caeli, Mif, Thea or Pam will be here to answer, but feel free to ask questions of them and if they're not here at the time (which I believe is 9am, Monday the 15th here, but will confirm), I will respond with answers I have come up with that I am sure that they would have come up with themselves.

As a special bonus, I also plan to log onto iChat using Mif's account to do even liver chatting with those who know her account. I'm not going to post her account info here to hopefully foil those internet predators that lurk on blogs of American families in China that are hosting live Q&As over webchat, but anyone who knows Mif or I personally certainly knows someone they can call that will know her IM account info.

And as a special, special bonus, anyone who has the capacity to do video chat over IM will have the opportunity to actually see my face answering their questions in real time. Again, I can't promise that I will have any special guests for this portion, but it may be worth your while to check as Caeli may be on hand to say "Ni hao dur?"

We Got Her!

2008-09-11T09:55:00.000-04:00

Oh my gosh, people, we got her! She is so adorable! We recognized her the minute they brought the babies in the door. All of us waiting parents gathered on three sides of the conference room and when the nannies came in with the babies, they sat on the remaining side. Caeli was sitting so calmly on her nanny's lap, and she was looking all around to take in everything that was going on. Then the guides called out each baby's name and the family that belonged to her went up to get her from the nanny. There were a lot of families called before they finally got to us, and by that time the room was total chaos. Babies were crying, parents were crying, nannies were crying, and everyone was talking. All of that was completely forgotten when they called our name and we went up to get her. She came to me without a fuss on her part (her nanny was tearful and kissed her), and after I hugged her a bit she went to Tony without a fuss. She even went to Thea with no problem. The nannies gave us a bag of formula and a bag of rice cereal, and then we brought her back to our room.

Once we got to the room, we put her down on the floor to see what she would do. I sat her down and Tony put a pillow behind her because we were afraid she would fall backwards. That fear was completely unfounded. She sits like a champ, and can even crawl at record speed and pull herself up to standing. She played with some toys and played peek-a-boo with a little towel, but mostly she just looked at us. The peek-a-boo game got her to chuckle a little bit, and Thea's dancing inspired her to dance. We made a little video of that, but we are unable to load it from this computer so it will have to wait until we get home. We tried giving her a bottle, but she was uninterested. She did take a little nap in my arms and then Tony's arms, but after that she was up and ready to play again.

After a lot of playing, we decided to try giving her a bath. We were prepared for her to be upset about having her clothes off, and also about getting in the water. We were wrong about that, too. She seemed to like having her clothes off, and she enjoyed the water in the tub until we started to do the actual washing. But she never cried and was completely cooperative the whole time. After her bath and lotion, I put some pajamas on her. I tried some that were size 6 months, but they were too small. I ended up with a size 6 - 12 months outfit from Old Navy, whose sizes run large. Tomorrow I'm going to try a size 9 months dress and see how that goes.

We tried once more to give her a bottle, but she only took a little of it. I guess she was just exhausted and overstimulated. I held her and she drifted off to sleep. When I put her down in the crib she never even stirred. We think she might wake up sometime in the night because she's hungry, but we'll see what happens.

We have a kind of busy day tomorrow, but we'll try to post in the afternoon or evening. Thanks for all your comments, prayers and well-wishes!

More in a bit

2008-09-11T07:15:00.003-04:00

We're a lil busy playing baby right now, but we'll post more shortly. This'll have to tide you over for an hour or so.

As you can see, somebody's (or somebodies) enjoying themselves so far.

Quick Update

2008-09-10T23:44:00.002-04:00

We just met with our guide and she has spoken to the orphanage director this morning. The train left Xiushan around 7:00 AM, so the babies should be arriving here on time. We'll probably get a call around 2:30 to say that they are in Chongqing, and then about a half an hour later we'll meet her in the hotel! All 16 families and babies will be in a conference room, and they'll call our baby's Chinese names one at a time. We have to recognize the name/baby and go up to get her (no problem!). After all the babies are delivered to their families, we can bring her back to our room. Then about one hour later, one parent (Tony, of course) has to go back down to the conference room to do paperwork. The rest of our evening is free, and our guide even offered to help us order pizza to be delivered from Pizza Hut for dinner. Tomorrow morning we head over to the office of Civil Affairs to do more paperwork and apply for her passport. After that, we think we'll be heading to WalMart for shopping.

We'll post a little later this afternoon--with pictures of Xiu Hua Na/Caeli Xiu Mistretta! So sleep well and check back here in the morning to see our new addition!

We're Here!

2008-09-10T09:32:00.001-04:00

We made it! We arrived at our hotel in Chongqing, China early this afternoon, Wednesday, September 10. We are exhausted, but excited. The trip here was extremely long, but it went pretty well overall. We left from our house at about 7:30 am on Monday morning to go to the Atlanta airport. We got on a plane to Detroit at about 10 am. After grabbing a quick lunch in the Detroit airport, we got on a huge plane to Tokyo. We boarded a little late due to a security breach in the airport, and then we left late due to a problem disconnecting the plane from the gate, but somehow we managed to get to Tokyo only about a half hour behind schedule. We sat in the next to the last row of seats in the plane, in the middle section. It was about a 13 hour flight, so we tried to sleep a lot. Thea managed to stretch out with her head on my lap and her feet on Tony’s lap, so she ended up getting about 5 or 6 hours of solid sleep. The rest of us just caught naps here and there as best we could, which were often interrupted by turbulence (apparently it’s very bumpy in the back of a huge plane like that). When we arrived in Tokyo, it was about 4 in the afternoon on Tuesday. Then we immediately jumped on a plane for the 4 hour flight to Guangzhou, China. We finally arrived in China around 11 pm on Tuesday night. Fortunately, we got to spend the night in a hotel adjacent to the airport, so we all got about 5 hours of sleep. This morning, Wednesday, we got up and walked back over the airport to catch our flight to Chongqing. It was only about an hour and half flight, so it wasn’t a big deal after all the flying of the day before. After a 45 minute bus ride, we arrived at our hotel. Whew!

We spent about an hour getting settled in our rooms, and then we met our guide to go to the bank and the grocery store, which are both within walking distance of the hotel. At the bank we exchanged enough money for the legal fees we’ll have to pay over the next few days. Thea and I stood outside the bank while Tony took care of the money exchange, and I thought it was very interesting to watch the city around us. It is very crowded here, because we are right in downtown Chongqing, in a big shopping district. Thea was not so interested, as she was so tired she could hardly see straight. However, the Chinese people find Thea very interesting. Several people have stopped to touch her face or to speak to her and smile. It’s funny to watch them as they watch her. They cannot seem to stop looking at her! Sometimes they even notice me, and seem to get an even bigger kick out of the two of us together. I guess we must look alike or something. In the bank, one lady came over and started motioning to Thea’s eyebrows and mimed drawing them on herself. She was chatting and laughing, especially when I pointed Tony out to her. She obviously recognized the similarity! I think she must have noticed that Thea was feeling a little shy about the eyebrow attention, because she bent down to Thea’s level, stroked her face, and gave her a big thumbs up, as if to say that she liked her face. It was cute, but I don’t think Thea really appreciated it.

The grocery store was very interesting, and after wandering around for a bit we bought water, juices, PBR and a few snacks for the room. It would have been fun to stay and explore longer, but it was crowded and loud and we were all tired and ready to rest. Back in the room we rested for a few hours—Tony got us connected to the internet, Thea watched Scooby Doo on her portable DVD player, I caught a cat nap—and then forced ourselves to go out and get some dinner. Thea almost fell asleep while she was eating, so we wrapped that up as quickly as we could and came back to the room. Thea was asleep within seconds of hitting the pillow, and Tony has passed out now as well.

Tomorrow morning at 10 am we will meet with our guide to go over some details about what will happen later this week, and then Caeli is supposed to arrive around 3 pm. The head nanny from the orphanage, along with some other orphanage staff members, will be bringing the babies to the hotel. Fortunately for the babies, they are coming on the train instead of the bus, which means a 7 hour trip instead of 12 hours. All of the families and babies will gather in a conference room, but I believe they will give the babies to the families one at a time. We will be allowed to have some time with the head nanny on Thursday afternoon, after we have had a day and night to observe Caeli and get to know her. Supposedly the head nanny is very familiar with all the babies, so she will be able to tell us details about her schedule, habits, temperament, etc. We did get a growth update today, which says she weighs 19.8 pounds and is 65 cm. tall. It says that she has no teeth, can stand with support, smiles to everybody, doesn’t cry often, and is not afraid of strangers. It also describes her eating schedule and her sleeping habits. We will be able to elaborate on this in the next couple of days, so stay tuned!

Okay, off to sleep now. Tony or I will try to write again tomorrow, of course. The internet access seems to be good, so we shouldn’t have a problem.

Haircut!

2008-09-05T21:47:00.008-04:00

I absolutely should not be posting right now because I have so many other things to do, but I can't help myself. I got my hair cut today and I think it's cute! I have about 12 inches to donate to Locks of Love this time (I've done this once before).

Okay, now I'm off to work on packing and straightening up the house! Two more days before we are on the way!

Oh, and Meghan? See this picture on the left here? Yeah, I totally kicked your arse.

Packing

2008-08-23T22:39:00.008-04:00

So I haven't posted in a while, mostly because I was speechless after Tony's last post. Thanks a million, hon. That was so sweet.

Actually, I've just been kind of crazy and haven't been able to focus long enough to put together a coherent thought, much less a coherent post. I guess it's either because I just turned old or because I'm getting excited and nervous about the upcoming events; whatever the reason, I have had mush for brains lately. Now it's time to start packing, and in addition to being crazy, I'm also a little overwhelmed. I have looked at a million packing lists from our agency, other people who have adopted from China, people who travel a lot and various travel websites, and still I feel like I will never be able to get this done. There's just too much stuff to fit in there! We can each check one bag, which has to weigh less than 44 pounds, and we can each have a carry on, which has to weigh less than 10 pounds. These are the restrictions for the intra-China flights, so that's what we have to deal with on the way over. On the way back we may be able to check two bags each with a 50 pound limit, so we could buy an extra suitcase in Guangzhou if we find that we've done too much shopping and can't fit all our stuff in the suitcases we brought. Supposedly suitcases are very inexpensive in China, so it shouldn't be that big of a deal if it comes to that. I'm just going to take it a little at a time, and hopefully I'll have it all done by the time we have to leave.

In other news, Thea started at her new school this week. She had a great time! Here she is in her new plaid skirt, which she specifically asked me to buy so she could wear it on the first day of school. I also had to curl her hair the night before so she would be appropriately fashionable for the first day. Top that all off with the High School Musical sweatshirt jacket and the new pink lunchbox and she is ready to rule the school!

I am so grateful to have a child like her. She goes off to new places, like school or camp, with such excitement and joy that I never have to worry about her; I always know she'll make new friends and have a wonderful time. I was awful about things like that when I was a child (don't get my mom started on the subject) and I guess I still am now, so I absolutely don't deserve this--but I'll take it!

Thanks for stopping by!

PS--Be sure to notice the man behind Thea in the picture. He's wearing pants that aren't jeans or shorts, a belt, which you can see because the shirt is tucked in, and he has on dress shoes. Believe it or not, it's Tony! He actually has to dress like a grown up at his new job. Ha ha! I still get to wear jeans!

Happy birthday, Caeli's mom!!!

2008-08-19T22:23:00.001-04:00

It's Official!

2008-08-14T23:02:00.002-04:00

So it's official, we have our travel dates! Yesterday started out awful, but ended up great! Our travel adviser from our agency called me yesterday morning to say that she had consulate appointments for everyone in our group except for us and one other family. She explained that I needed to get our new fingerprint dates (the new fingerprints we got last week) to her as soon as possible so she could try to get our appointment on the same day as everyone else. She wasn't at all sure that she would be able to get the appointment, and if she didn't, we weren't going to be able to travel with the group. I pointed out that I had sent those dates to her last week by email and she said that she must not have gotten the email, or maybe just overlooked it in the rush of emails she got that week. I couldn't believe it! I was livid! But I held it together and I thanked her and promised I'd resend the dates right away, which I did. I also called Tony and expressed my displeasure with the situation--that's a nice way of saying that I called poor Tony and yelled and cursed a lot. He felt sorry for me and offered to call the agency to appeal to them to work it out. He got our referral counselor, whom we worked with for many months during the wait for our referral, and she promised she would make sure the appointment request went out by the end of the day. I felt a little better, but I still spent the rest of the day grumping and grousing and just feeling ornery.

Later in the evening I got a phone call from one of the sweet ladies in our referral group. She had seen my post on our group message board, so she knew of the day's troubles. She and I chatted for quite a while, talking about the many trials and tribulations we've all been through in this long process, and afterwards I did feel a little better (the wine Tony brought home was helping, too). No sooner had I hung up with her than the phone rang again! It was our travel adviser, the same one I had been cursing all day long. Calling at 10:45 pm! She apologized for calling so late, but said she just had to give me the good news so I could sleep--she got our appointment! Not only did she get ours, but she also got one for the other family, who apparently had some paperwork issues similar to ours. I told her that when she had good news like that she could call me any time of day or night. I thanked her profusely and called the sweet lady from my group to tell her what had happened. Tony ran back out to grab a celebratory bottle of wine, since we had just finished the mood-improving bottle. Then I settled down and watched more Olympics, finished the celebration, and just felt relieved.

Late this afternoon we booked our plane tickets to and from China using a travel agency that works with our adoption agency. Our adoption agency will make all of our intra-China arrangements, so pretty much all we have to do now is pack! It will be no small job, I am sure, but they've given us so many travel guides and tips that I'm sure I can handle it. I just need to stop procrastinating and get to it. Do any of you have any packing or travel tips for us? I'll be glad to hear them.

Thanks for reading!

I Aint No You Aint No Picasso

2008-08-13T23:34:00.005-04:00

At the risk of me turning into a music blogger (it's a big risk, I promise), I feel the need to post about this song. Very few have ever captured my attention like the Avett Brothers and this song off their latest is apropos, in my estimation. Sure - lyrics tend to be subjective and they certainly did not write this song about adoption, but I'll dedicate this one to Caeli:)

Travel Dates!

2008-08-13T23:04:00.002-04:00

Hey yall, I can't (shouldn't) post a lot right now because Tony and I are on our second bottle of wine, but I did want to say that we got our consulate appointment and travel dates tonight! Our appointment will be on September 23, and we will depart from the US around September 8. More details later! For now, just YAY!

Losses, returns and future gains

2008-08-09T13:27:00.014-04:00

There's no way around it - the Atlanta Braves have had an awful year. However, to me the losses of Smoltz, Hudson, Chipper, Teixiera, Matt Diaz, and the others for all or part of the year is nothing compared to the loss of Skip Caray this past Monday. I love the Braves and these past three seasons have been painful, but Skip's death had and will have a greater impact on me than the losing. I don't know that there's anyone throughout my life whose words entered my ears more than Skip's and I was always a big supporter even during his extended periods of curmudgeonry. To me, it's good that the Braves are no longer on TBS around the world for 150+ games a year, because I'd much rather they be remembered by non-Braves fans for Skip than Boog and Joe.

Skip and the players above, of course, are but a few of the losses (personnel and otherwise) that the Atlanta sports teams have taken this year. Although not all were bad losses (Petrino and the Hawks/Celtics series come to mind), between those, the loss of Mike Vick to Leavenworth, Toad to Europe, any chance that Josh Smith will ever be happy as a Hawk to the bumbling of the Atlanta Spirit, LLC, Crumpler, Hall, Dunn and several other Falcons starters to anyone who would take them, etc., I doubt any city could boast of a worse 12 month stretch of sports debacles. Almost makes you yearn for the days of Loserville, long before we had a taste of the good life.

Closer to home than those of the ATL's sports franchises, we/I have experienced quite a few personal losses in the past year. I lost a grandmother. We lost two cats. I lost the job I poured myself into for nearly 12 years. Thea moved on from her school of four years. Sichuan (the province next to Chongqing) lost 70,000+ people to an earthquake.

Each of these situations affected us - but despite all of the bad, we survived. Not only did we survive, but we moved on, oftentimes better for the wear. Our extended family (34 of us!) spent 4 days together in the Bahamas to celebrate my surviving grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary. We got a new kitten (I think that was positive). I found a job that is much less stressful, more enjoyable and with better co-workers. Thea starts at her new school in 9 days after an action-packed summer. And Sichuan had 2 more earthquakes in the past week with exponentially less loss of life and property.

So, what does all this mean? What does it have to do with Caeli? I guess it's just my long and convoluted way of saying that the past 4 years has been an eternity. The wait has taken its toll on us in certain ways, but in others, it's prepared us better to deal with the coming changes. Ultimately, it has given me more faith than ever that life, despite the inability we have to control much of it, is really, really great - and that there is nothing more rewarding and perspective-focusing than the experience of being a parent. Caeli, we've done a good job of being patient and coped fairly well with the frustration, but we're ready to be done with the waiting. We love you and will see you soon.

ps - OK, so in my last post i asked for feedback on my potential tattoo acquisition. Somehow the message got lost due to an unfortunate Photoshop scandal. I shoulda known that I'd never get that by you guys. Although most of you are aware of my hirsuteness, no one could possibly grow a handlebar that smooth. So here's an alternate location for your review - this time with no faux mustache trickery:

Travel Approvals!

2008-08-05T21:52:00.000-04:00

Woohoo! We got our travel approvals yesterday! Everyone in our group got one except for two families whose babies are coming from a new orphanage. They are hoping that theirs will come in the next couple of days so the agency can schedule all of our consulate appointments for the same day and the group can stay intact. We don't mind waiting a couple of days for them because our consulate appointment can't be scheduled until we get those freakin' fingerprints approved! Thanks a bunch, USCIS! Our appointment is really early Thursday morning, so hopefully we will be able to call the FBI fingerprint line and get our new approval and expiration dates on Friday. We won't have the new form with the new expiration date yet, but we'll at least be able to give the new date to the agency so they can schedule our consulate appointment. As soon as that appointment is set, we'll know our travel dates! Right now the agency is estimating that we will travel sometime between August 29 and mid to late September. I know, it would be nice to have something more specific, but that's all we've got right now.

This past weekend Thea went to the beach with some of Tony's family. My sister-in-law, Anne, and her kids picked up Thea and my sister-in-law Erica and they drove down to Hilton Head to spend a few days with Nana and Grumpy (Tony's parents) in Grammy and Grampy's (Tony's grandparents) condo. She had a great time! Unfortunately, Tony and I couldn't go because he had to work (he'll be using all of his vacation time for the trip to China) and I had a doctor appointment that I couldn't miss. I used the kid-less time to do some much-needed house cleaning, which only scratched the surface of what I should do, but was a good accomplishment nonetheless. I ended up with several bags of household stuff to donate to the thrift store at church. With all that stuff out of the way, I had enough space to put away most of the new baby things. I still have lots of Thea's things to find a new home for since she lost half of the space in her bedroom to the baby's stuff, but I'm slowly making progress. I also cooked and baked a few things to have in the freezer for when things start to get hectic around here. Too bad for Tony that one of those things was pea soup, which he hates; don't worry, hon, I'll get to something you like soon. Thanks so much, Anne, Erica, Susan, and Paul for taking Thea!

I'm really starting to feel nervous about having a baby in the house again. I've gotten spoiled by Thea! She's always been a very easy kid to have around, even when she was a baby, but now she's so big and she can do so much for herself that it feels like she hardly even needs me. She can dress herself, feed herself, entertain herself, and clean up after herself. She even helps with housework; she actually likes helping with the laundry. Because she's so independent, I've become accustomed to a certain amount of freedom over the last couple of years--and I've enjoyed it! I'm sure that freedom is about to take a hit, and I'm sure I'm going to miss it. I know Thea will be a big help, but I'm going to try to make sure that she still has plenty of time to do her own thing. It's going to be a challenge, I know, but I think we can handle it.

I expect we'll have more posts this week from one or all of us. Tony said he will write something, and I'm sure Thea will want to report on her vacation. I promise I'll try to get that picture scanned! In the meantime, everybody pray for quick fingerprint results and NO MORE EARTHQUAKES!

We're Going to Have Our Biometrics Captured!

2008-07-29T21:17:00.000-04:00

Yay! Yesterday, we finally got appointments from the USCIS! We have been instructed to appear at the application support center on August 7 to have our biometrics captured--in other words, to have our fingerprints done. This is great news! The appointment is only two days before the current prints expire. Way to push it to the wire, guys. We are not out of the woods yet, though. We still have to get our I-797 reissued with the new fingerprint expiration date. Our agency has given us tips on how to make sure we get this form in time before we travel, so hopefully it won't be an issue. Please continue to keep your fingers crossed, offer up your prayers, or whatever you were doing. It worked for the appointment!

Not only did we get the appointment letters in the mail yesterday, but we also got another picture of Caeli! We got it from Research-China.org, an organization that helps families adopting from China find out more information about their children's birthplaces. They offer photos, books, DVDs, and maps of many different orphanage cities in China, as well as information about the orphanages themselves. We were most interested in what they call "finding ads". Finding ads are ads the orphanages are required to place in a local newspaper with details about the children that are found and brought to them, I guess so the birth families have a chance to reclaim them if they wish before they are adopted out. The cool thing about these ads is that they often have a picture of the baby at a much younger age than the picture the orphanage sends with the referral. They found Caeli's ad in a local government publication from February, 2008, complete with a very small, very sweet picture. She's probably about one month old in it, whereas in the picture I posted before she is almost 5 months old. They were able to provide us an enlarged picture of the newspaper ad, along with the negative so we can make copies, and the original newspaper! This was great luck for us, because they don't always have spare copies of the publication. So now we have one more picture of our sweet girl! If I can manage to make a good scan of it, I'll post it.

We've been watching China Week on the Travel Channel for the past couple of days. We've seen lots of crazy foods that we WON'T be trying (travel nurse's orders!), and lots of fantastic wildlife and natural wonders that we probably won't see, since we'll be spending our time in cities. But it's fun to watch and learn a little about the culture and people we'll soon be visiting. It's hard to believe that the time is almost here!

Getting Ready for My Sister

2008-07-26T10:20:00.000-04:00

Amathea here! I am very exited about the baby! I am looking forward to getting the baby and being able to play with her and picking her up and hugging and kissing her! I REALLY don’t like having such a long wait. I really want to go N.O.W.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

People have been giving us very nice baby stuff. We have been working very hard on a lot of stuff around the house. I even had to spend two weeks in my playroom while we painted my bedroom and set up the crib. It was harder than I had thought to go to sleep upstairs, but what I did to go to sleep was to look at the trees waving in the breeze. Here is a picture of the room Caeli and I will share. Write to you later! Bye!

From whence comes the name?

2008-07-25T20:49:00.000-04:00

For some odd reason, people always seem to ask where we came up with the names of our children. The query tends to follow, "How do you say that?"

So, here's the background on Caeli's name:

Caeli (CHEY lee) - Latin for "heavenly"

Like Amathea, Caeli was Mif's idea and harkens back her classical studies and churchly singing history. Despite my religious failings, I can still appreciate the secular meaning of "heavenly" and anything that invokes memories of Miffy at Duke and Miffy singing makes me happy. We (mostly I) toyed with the idea of the hyperLatin mashed together a & e (æ) but, although we may be weird, we do at least attempt to harness our masochism. I did voice a concern that it was too close to Shaylee, but I got past it. Plus, it's got the "ch" sound like China and ends in "li" which is Chinesi, right? Caeli it is. This was decided months ago, though kept tightly under wraps.

Xiu (shyu) - This one has a number of subtexts, some of which are obtuse and/or ridiculous:

Her given (by the orphanage) name is Xiu Hua Na (shyu hwah na). All of the girls at her orphanage are named Xiu Hua something, with the "Xiu" being short for Xiushan, the province in which she lives. Although the first written name of Chinese names is their last name and not the first name, we still thought it was fair to use it as her middle name to retain part of her history. Plus, it definitely sounds cooler than Hua or Na. The idea of ditching the Xiu altogether and inserting Mary before Hua Na and making that her compound middle name, though humorous, was not given strong consideration.
So, liking my initial impression of Xiu, I did some research on what it meant. There seem to be many opinions on these interwebs, but "elegant" and "beautiful" seem to be the consensus. Obviously, that works.
I mean, having an "X" as your middle initial? C'mon.
Then we got talking about PawPaw and how he likes to say "shewwwww" or "shewwweee" when confronted with a stinky diaper. Another vote for Xiu.
Then I wanted to see what the Chinese character for Xiu was. I found this:

I mean, look at that. It's like a dude on top of a really '80s hair band looking "B." Wasn't that "B" at the bottom there one of the logos for one of the skate gear companies shown in graffiti style on the walls during one of the street skate session scenes of T&C Surf Designs? Although I tend to find more humor than inspiration in tattoos of Chinese characters (see Andrew Jones, Jack Shephard, Audrina, etc.) I think I might want to get it tattooed on the left side of my chest where my heart is. ergo:

Let me know what you think in the comments. The travel nurse told me that it probably wasn't worth getting Hepatitis B to get it done over there, but I don't believe her.
Finally, if you say it all together fast, it sounds like "jelly shoe." Nuff said.

So that about sums it up! Any more questions?

Fingerprints, Please!

2008-07-24T23:13:00.000-04:00

We are moving along in the final stages of our long adoption process. We have sent our letter of acceptance back to China, which says that we accept Caeli. Now they have to send us our travel approval, which may take three to four weeks. When the approval comes in, we can then schedule our appointment with the American consulate in Guangzhou to get Caeli's visa, which we will need to be able to bring her home. This appointment will determine the actual dates of our travel. Our agency estimates that it could take three to four weeks to get the appointment scheduled. They also say that any of these steps could take longer than usual for us because of the Olympics.

So while we are waiting for these four, six, eight, who knows how many weeks, we are supposed to be getting our home ready, packing, and making sure all our paperwork is in order. One of the most important pieces of paperwork we need is our I-797 (sometimes called I-171H), which is our "Notice of Favorable Disposition Concerning Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition". In other words, it's the paper that says we can bring a foreign orphan into the country.

We have this form now--it's actually our second one because our first one expired during this long wait--and it is good through January of 2009. However, our fingerprint checks that go with the form expire on August 9, 2008. I have no idea why or how fingerprints can expire--unless, as my sister says, we've been soaking our fingertips in acid or something. We've already had them done twice for this form alone, once for the original document and again for the one we have now. I also have no idea why anyone would think it was a good idea to have the supporting documentation for the form expire before the form does! Regardless, we have to get our fingerprints done again.

To make a very long story short, I have been trying to get a fingerprinting appointment with the US Citizenship and Immigration Services Atlanta office since June 12, and I still have not received a response from them. They make it impossible to speak to an actual human there, so I have written letters, sent an email, and left a voicemail message. Yesterday I filled out a form requesting help from my congressman and I sent an email asking my agency for help. Hopefully the USCIS will deem it appropriate to respond to at least one of them, since I am apparently not worthy of their attention!

All I can say now is that if our travel approval comes in and we don't have that updated form with new fingerprints, we might be in trouble; and someone, or everyone, in the USCIS Atlanta office is going to be in BIG trouble by me. Please keep your fingers crossed, offer up some prayers, and hope for us that the USCIS straightens up!

Vaccinations and Visas

2008-07-18T23:46:00.000-04:00

Ow! I had to get vaccinations today for the trip. Luckily, I only had to get two shots: one was tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis (tdap) and the other was a hepatitis A/B combo. We aren't going to a malaria or typhoid zone, and polio isn't a big threat either, so I didn't have to get any shots or pills for any of those. I'm a big sissy about shots! I could have IVs all day long without any problem (as long as the person sticking me doesn't have to dig around too much), but shots are just hard for me to handle for some reason. I hate that feeling when they push the medicine in; it's like your arm gets really heavy and hot and full-feeling. The hep combo shot hurt when she pushed it in and hurt for a good few minutes afterward, but by this evening it's pretty much fine. The tdap didn't hurt so much going in, but man, is it sore now that my Tylenol wore off! Another very sucky thing about travel vaccinations is that our insurance doesn't pay for them if you are only getting them because of travel, so it's completely out of pocket. It was over $300 just for today's consultation and shots, and I still have two more to get to complete the hepatitis series. Yikes! Tony has to get his shots on Tuesday, and Thea's already had all hers, except the chicken pox booster, which she will need to get next week some time.

We had to do our applications for Chinese visas this week. The travel adviser from our adoption agency, Great Wall China Adoptions, emailed us late Wednesday afternoon to tell us that if we wanted her help in obtaining our Chinese visas, we had to complete a visa application for each person traveling and have it in her office (in Texas), along with our passports and payment information, by Monday. That's two days to get new passport photos for each of us (required for the application), get all my mother's stuff overnighted from her in North Carolina to me in Georgia, and get the applications completed and overnighted to the agency. Two days! I'm a procrastinator and a slow-poke! Two days is not enough! You might be thinking that it would be easier to apply for the visas on our own without the agency's help so we wouldn't have to worry about the deadline . . . but you would be wrong. To apply for a Chinese visa, you or your representative must hand-carry the application to the Chinese consulate--they don't accept any applications by mail. Unfortunately for us, there are only six Chinese consulates in America and the closest one to us is in Washington, DC. So we'd either have to go to DC to hand deliver the stuff to the consulate ourselves, or entrust the job to some random courier or other service. Um, no thanks. I'm just too cynical and paranoid to entrust all that personal information to someone I don't even know. Fortunately for our agency, there is a consulate close to them in Texas so they can carry our stuff there for us for a small service fee of $40 per person. And that fee is in addition to the $100+ per person fee for the visa and the fee to fedex our passports back to us after the visas are approved. Holy cow! Luckily, I managed to get it all done and sent off by express mail this afternoon, so that's one more hurdle down. I wonder how many to go?

So after all the stress of the last few days, I have a stiff neck, a sore arm, and a little insomnia. I did have some fun today, though. After my vaccination appointment, I went to Babies r Us and walked around with the little scanner gun adding stuff to our registry. That's always fun. Amazingly, I didn't buy anything myself, but I think that was because my arms were too sore to carry or push a basket. After a few hours and a couple of Tylenol, my arms were healed enough to clap and chop and cheer the Braves to victory at Turner Field tonight! Friday night Braves games are especially fun because they always have fireworks afterwards. I really love fireworks, which, incidentally, were invented in China. Not that I have China on my brain or anything . . .

First

2008-07-15T21:04:00.001-04:00

So here I am, making a blog. I never thought I would see the day! But we, the Mistrettas, are about to do something so wonderful, so exciting, that I just have to get in here and start writing. We are going to China to adopt a baby girl!

Our friends and family are spread all over the country, so this seems like the best way to keep everyone up to date on our exciting journey. We plan to take a computer with us to China, and we hope to even update this while we are there.

Here's where we stand right now. Last Monday, July 7, 2008, after a 30 month wait, we got a call from our adoption agency telling us that our referral had arrived. They told us our baby's name and vital information, and later that day we received her picture by email. Tony, Thea and I sat together on the couch and opened the email. We were so excited and happy to see this beautiful little girl!

Her name is Xiu Hua Na. According to our translated report, Xiu (shyu) represents the county where she was born and the orphanage where she now resides. All the girls in her orphanage share this last name. We plan to keep this part of her name as a special connection to the place of her birth and early life. Hua (hwa) means China; all the girls in her "group" in the orphanage share this first name. Na (nah) is the name that is unique to her and we are told it means beautiful. We will name her Caeli (CHEY-lee) Xiu Mistretta. Caeli is a Latin word meaning heaven.

She was born on January 3, 2008 in Xiushan County, Chongqing, China. The medical records from the orphanage say she is in good health and all her medical test results are normal. Her growth report states that she is a quiet baby who never gives her nannies any trouble.

We should travel to get her in about 6 to 8 weeks. All three of us, along with my mother Pam, will travel. Unfortunately Beijing will probably still be crowded and busy because of the Olympics, so we will not get to go there on our trip. There is no specific information about our itinerary yet, but we believe we will probably fly into Hong Kong or Guangzhou, then go to Chongqing. We have heard that they will bring her from the orphanage to us in the city, but we don't know that for sure. After we do lots of paperwork, official appointments, and shopping in Chongqing, we will go to Guangzhou to do the final paperwork and then head home with our new baby girl!

We are thrilled and excited that this is finally happening! There have been times when I thought this day would never come. Now I feel like I'm caught up in a whirlwind! I have to pack, get vaccines, get last minute paperwork updates, make travel plans, etc., etc., etc.! Aaaahhh! Will I make it without losing my mind?! I hope to be able to keep updating this as we move along in the process, but since I've never blogged before--hell, I've never really even kept a journal before!--I have to just wait and see how I do. I hope I do well.