Merry Christmas to all!

Some holiday pics

First, the China Moon that Ken refers to will be published in January.

Here's a great pic of Evan and Abby with Santa:

Here's us all with Santa (Elaina screamed when placed on Santa's lap, so once again I must be in the picture).  A picture from Thanksgiving of the sisters.  A picture of the grandkids and the grandparents.  Finally, a pic of the 3 kids after decorating our tree.  Elaina "supervised" the process from the comfort of her exersaucer :-)

Welcome, China Moon Readers!

A warm welcome to everyone who found their way here by reading the article in China Moon. If I knew I would get such a wide audience, I would have proofread more closely.

You can follow our entire trip through the archive bar on the right.

We've been home with Elaina for three and a half months now. She's really come out of her shell and is much more active, happy, and and curious. She's in the rampaging-toddler-grabbing everything mode, making us regret no longer having a baby-proof house. Plus, she's in favor of family equity, in that she hurled on Katrina last night. Kids puking on Ken: 2, kids puking on Katrina: 1. I'm still in the fight!

A few new pictures

Here we have a family picture with Katrina, Evan, Abby, Elaina, and somebody resembling Karl Rove; a shot of Abby in soccer action; and Elaina at her first haircut.

Settling In

Off to the pediatrician today. Elaina is at the 90th %ile on American charts for weight AND height :shock: My arms could've saved them a trip to the scale. Abby is petite always hovering around the 25th %ile while Evan is at the 50th %ile. Wonder if she'll say at the top of the charts? The dr was very impressed at her overall excellent health and her development. Elaina is now playing peek-a-boo with much glee as well as waving bye. Her newest thing is standing for seconds on end with great balance. I am thinking she will be taking some first steps VERY soon (note to self--buy more baby gates). We are SO blessed and so in debt to her foster family!

In the sleep department, we are making baby steps. She definitely is grieveing at night, but slept for 4 hours straight on top of or right beside me last night. Ken and I are switching off so we can get some good solid sleep in between wakenings.

Evan and Abby are totally in love with her and are such great siblings. Of course, Abby is trying to constantly mother her. Abby has shown some acting out which is not unexpected, but overall she is very happy to have her sister finally home. They LOVE getting her to smile and laugh and are quite good at it!

The pics are from this evening. The nasty heat wave her in CA finally broke and we enjoyed dinner outside.


Thanks for all your support!

Home Again

The trip home was remarkably easy. Elaina slept most of the flight, either splayed out in her seat or on our shoulders. She didn't care for the car seat and wailed for most of the 110 freeway.

We're slowly and gently trying to transition her to this time. She's doing pretty well -- slept from midnight to 3 and then from 5 to 730, and one nap so far today.

More later, with pictures.

A few pictures from our last day

One of the antique-choked hallways of the ground floor of the White Swan:



A local street with some of the many children's shops:



Tourist row, the dense pack of souvenir booths closest to the hotel:



Starbucks, site of the new opium war:



One of the broad plazas running down the middle of the island:

Friday arrival

To family and any interested friends:

We'll be arriving on China Southern Flight 327, Guangzhou to Los Angeles, on Friday. Scheduled arrival time is 655, but try checking a few hours in advance. You can check with Delta's web site (Delta is a partner with China Southern). You can also call China Southern at 888 338 8988 (their web site is impossible). Our flight here landed 45 minutes early and some people landed late, so we suggest checking.

We figure it will take an hout to deplane, get luggage, and clear customs and immigration.

See you then.

Last Full Day

We're enjoying our last full day on the island. Just had a successful shopping trip, the baby is down for a nap, and we're starting to think about how many more suitcases we need.

More pictures later.

Another Busy Day

Wednesday night here. We're sure looking forward to coming home and seeing the family.

This morning was a brief trip to Liurong Temple, the Temple of the Six Banyon Trees. It's a sixth-century Buddhist temple about fifteen minutes from Shamian Island. The main temple and pagoda were build in about 537 and rebuilt in the 10th century after a fire. The lead pagoda is quite impressive. No, I didn't climb it -- it was very hot and humid out.



We saw Buddhist monks and some worshipers process from one temple building to another. All of the grounds were ornate and very well kept, though only two of the titular banyon trees survive.






Later the children received a blessing from a Buddhist monk. Apparently they are very fond of blessing adoptive children before they travel. Katrina tried to make friends with the temple cat, who was insulted by her familiarity.






Back at the hotel, Katrina got a massage while I tried unsuccessfully to get Elaia to nap. In the afternoon, we took a bus ride to the American consulate downtown to get the babies' visas and formally complete the adoption. Downtown is sleek and modern where the fringes of the city show their age. It was a quick trip through security to the waiting room, and then a short wait before we all stood and took an oath to take care of the kids. With that, she was ours, as far as the U.S. government is concerned, and will become a U.S. citizen upon entering the country.

Tomorrow is free for shopping and packing. I'll try to post some final pictures of the island.

Sleep 2, Elaina 0

Elaina unsuccessfully fought sleep today.

First observe the unfortunate impact of sleep on her hair:

Next, she refused an afternoon nap. Later, she fell asleep on the floor with her teething biscuit:

Peggy Gets The Last Laugh

My redoubtable mother-in-law gets a certain amount of grief for cycling through all her children's and grandchildren's names in addressing one of us. Karma watches for such things. Now I am constantly calling Elaina "Abby," and have probably done so on this blog. Peggy will laugh, and I deserve it.

Doll Face

We've seen a great many dolls here, in stores in Beijing, Wuhan, and here on the island. They fall into two categories: entirely stylized Asian dolls and more "realistic" dolls with Western features. All the Barbies are white -- every one I've seen. Every other Barbie-type doll I've seen, and every plastic baby-doll, has been white. The Asian dolls are generally very ornate or very stylized, like an Asian Raggedy Ann.

I'm not sure what this reflects. Perhaps the Western style doll is not to Asian tastes, so they don't produce Asian versions.

Mattel does, however, produce Adoption Barbie. (I'd like a version where you pull the string and adoption Babie says things adoptive parents frequently do: "For the last time, I DON'T KNOW when she's coming home!" "I AM her real mother!" "It's none of your business how much it costs!" Anyway, the White Swan gives them out to adoptive parents. Here is the latest:

Comings and Goings on the Island

It's been a busy couple of days. Yesterday we took the kids for their medical checkup, required before they can be released from the country. The stroller brigade was ready:



For Elaina, the only traumatic part was waking up from the nice nap she took on the walk over. The medical exam was uneventful, except when she bit down on the tongue depressor and was strongly disinclined to release it.




Yesterday evening I took Elaina out on an second attempt at the apocalyptic boat ride. This one was far less eventful, though Elaina did not cooperate with my efforts to take pictures and my photographs are blurry as a result. The breeze on the top of the boat was refreshing until a sudden rain hit, and the lights along the shore held Elaina's interest and mine. Later, she fell asleep in my arms. I carried her from the boat back to the room that way, and when I put her down, was forcibly reminded of what I had forgotten for a few years -- when you carry a sleeping baby in your arms for half an hour, afterwards you need Advil if you want to fully extend your arms again.

Today, we did the traditional group picture with the babies on the red couch in the lounge of the Swan. Making nine babies sit still for a picture is about as hard as you are guessing. There was much drama. Elaina stole someone's rattle. I'm not sure what you call a group of babies; judging from pacification methods here, I propose "A Cheerio of babies."




Afterwards one of the other dads and I enjoyed a few drinks in the bar overlooking the river while our wives took the babies to a local clothing store to be measured for custom traditional dresses. They returned with the babies in diapers; they had left the dresses they were wearing there to assist in measurement. Apparently this was scandalous, carrying babies wearing only diapers back to and through the hotel. One would think that a place where so many toddlers wear pants designed to allow them to relieve themselves in the streets would be above being shocked by such things. I'm reminded of the dining room where breakfast is served; the servers primly drape a small cloth matching the tablecloths over the diaper bag. You wouldn't want to detract from the decor of a room where thirty babies are dropping about a metric ton of half-chewed breakfast items on the floor.

After pictures and a few drinks, we had a wonderful group dinner at the hotel's barbecue restaurant by the river. It was my type of place: you pile your plate with a variety of raw meats (steak, short ribs, and squid, in my case), hand it to the chefs, and they grill it for you in tasty sauces and bring it to your table. And they had fries. And pizza. If it weren't for the commute, I'd be back every weekend. The kids enjoyed theirselves in the evening air, which gradually cooled (or maybe that was the bottle of Reisling talking). Elaina's hair did not survive dinner intact, as usual.

Elaina at Ten Months

Elaina turned 10 months today, the 28th. She's doing very well. We hit on a stragegy to keep her from waking up more during the night -- more rice cereal in her nighttime bottle.

She's definitely come out of her shell. She's equally comfortable with me or Katrina, loves to babble and play with her toys, and gives us lots of her face-transforming smiles -- though few laughs, mostly prefering her huffing noise. In sharp contrast to the first couple of days, when we were not sure if she could crawl, now she is into EVERYTHING. It reminds me of our first Christmas with Evan at about this age, which we spent mostly retriving the TV control from him.

She has a lot of funny little habits. She's taken to cocking her head against her shoulder to look at us. Also, she crawls with one leg extended, as if the leg doesn't work. As a result she frequently seems to be giving an impassioned but ultimately unconvincing portrayal of Richard III in some baby Shakespeare festival. Now is the diaper of our discontent/ made glor'ious summer by this bottle of milk.

A few pictures:

The Pond Not Fallen In

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we are not a seafaring people, or indeed skillful traversers of any body of water not containing a bath mat or diving board. So it is not a non-sequitur when I remark that this week I did not fall into a pond.

The pond in question was the koi pond in the center of the White Swan. Katrina and I took pictures with Elaina in front of it.




And I did not fall in. You must recognize that this was a distinct possibility, even a karmic probability. One of my earliest memories is a trip to the Eagle Rock Mall with my Nana to see the Disney version of Robin Hood. I would have been five, I believe. It was a rainy day, and I was wearing a slicker as we waited outside the theatre. I was eager to see the movie, which was animated and featured Robin Hood portrayed by a fox or ocelot or possibly some sort of vole. Anyway, we chose to sit on the edge of the tiled fountain outside the theatre to wait. But my rain slicker was slick and I was fidgety and you know where this is going already, don't you? A large gentlemen fished me out of the fountain and my Nana drove me home, dripping on the seats of her '53 Chevy. I didn't see Robin Hood until it was out on VHS, when it made somewhat less of an impression on me.

This time I kept my footing.

Ken - 1, Ponds - 1.

About The Island

We've been enjoying Shamian Island for four days now. Views from up in our rooms:





It's a great change of pace from the rest of our trip. The cities bustle, but this island is sedate. Most of the buildings are from the turn of the last century, and their style reflects the consulates and diplomatic lodgings they once were, making the neighborood eerily reminiscent of Embassy Row in Washington D.C., only with more split pants. The middle of the island -- that is, the two avenues that run down the center of it east-west -- are cool and leafy, with small playgrounds and parks and gardens and limited vehicle traffic. I've taken Elaina for several walks through here, and enjoyed the ambience -- the older ladies and gentlemen sweeping leaves with handmade brooms of straw, children playing a variation of badmitton on the sidewalks, and elders lounging on benches.

It's a popular wedding destination, apparently, as I've seen at least four brides per day taking pictures on the shady parts of the central avenues. Here one was posing next to some soliders drilling:



The action and bustle are closer to the White Swan. An economy has emerged to service the adoptive parents who cycle through the Swan -- perhaps a dozen small shops with baby clothes, toys, souveniers, and laundy service. Their proprietors sit in the sun outside their stores and greet parents walking their babies and bid them (far more politely than the Great Wall vendors) to come see their wares. Stores offer free stroller loans and free email usage, and there are many personalized handicrafts -- today a proprietor wrote Elaina's name in caligraphy as a gift as we shopped in his store. Neat, polite, and smiling people greet you just outside the Swan, ask friendly questions about your baby, and eventually discretely and politely bring the conversation around to how their store, just a little out of the way, has the best prices. Their English is impeccable.

It's a little sad to think this may all disappear. The White Swan became popular with adoptive families when the American consulate was on the island. It moved about 40 minutes away a year or so ago, but the hotel remains the standard base of operations. Later this year, though, it will close for several months for renovations, and there are rumors that it will no longer cater to the adoption crowd when it reopens, seeking higher-end customers (they clearly have not reviewed my buffet and bar bill). The island's economy will collapse like a cheap folding chair if that happens, and some new economy will arise. They will still sell souveniers, but the shops will no longer be focused on babies, and no longer skillfully marketed to adoptive famiies. That's a shame.

It's a Tall World After All

We finally broke down and went to a Western eatery -- Starbucks. (Mr. Pizza really didn't count. Anyplace that serves pizza with cherries on it is not Western.

Katrina, recovering from stomach ambiguities, was jonesing for some latte. So during a shopping trip we walked to the center or Shaiman Island, a few blocks away, to the local Starbucks. It looked like pretty much any Starbucks anywhere, except hipper and cleaner. The drinks were the same. Some of the food was different. The "Aussie Sausage Rolls" looked extremely questionable, and the Eclair of Sumatra is a pastry for which the world is not yet prepared.

My vanilla frapaccino tasted like one at home. Not that I drink such thinks. Katrina's iced latte was too strong, whcih in her case must mean it was about 99.5 percent raw caffeine.

Ship Of Fools

So on Saturday Katrina went to a "paperwork meeting," in which the wives of the group gather with our Holt supervisor to ensure that our adoption and visa paperwork is in order. The husbands are of at least normal intelligence, college-educated, in many cases bearing advanced degrees and holding down jobs requiring intricate documentation; nevertheless, there is a consensus among the women that they should handle the paperwork unless they are actively being sick at that moment. They are probably right.

Anyway, Katrina came back from the meeting eagerly reportng that we were scheduled to take a boat tour of the river that night. This was something or a surprise. We are not a seafaring people in my family. Several of the most cherished legends of my clan involve boats capsizing or being knocked out of boats or otherwise using boats for purposes other than staying dry. But I thought what the heck.

We arrived at the dock area adjacent to the hotel at the appointed hour that night. Elaina was safely ensconsed in her carrier.



The carrier is not designed with hot and humid environments in mind. It raises the respective body temperatures of the carrier and caryee precipitously.

Fortunately it was raining too hard to get really hot. Not a mild rain, not a tentative rain, a very deliberate hard pounding rain. And there was lightening. And thunder. Elaina looked up at me as if to say "surely you aren't serious." Several mothers, Katrina among them, politely asked our guide if it is safe to take a small craft into a river in a thunderstorm. The guide replied that the captain had assured her it was remarkably safe.

We walked to the boat. Katrina and I were wearing Crocs; just as well, as feet were soaked. The boat did have a canopy and cabin:



We awkwardly furled our umbrellas to climb the gangplank and crammed into the small space under the canopy at the back of the boat. I elected not to mention to Katrina that the captain looked uncannily like an Asian version of Quint from "Jaws." We sat wiping our camera lenses, illuminated by lightening flashes, stoically ignoring the rain driving sideways at us, wondering when we would embark.

Suddenly there was the closest and loudest peal of thunder yet. It was a thunderCLAP, the sound of God clapping His hands quite sharply and impatiently, as if to catch the attention of some wayward and inattentive element of His creation, such as a group of adults that had elected to take a group of nervous infants for a sightseeking cruise on a small boat during a lightening storm. The clap set off several car alarms along the waterfront. The mothers in our group stood up as one, as a flock of migratory birds will change direction together without apparent communication, and led us off the boat. We squelched back through violent puddles, drippng water through the marble floors of the lobby and attracting the politely incredulous gazes of the staff, who were not, I should point out, standing around outside in a lightening storm. Their gazes seemed to convey, in the most polite and non-judgmental way possible, the question don't they SCREEN these people?

It might not rain tomorrow.

Pizza and Diplomacy

Rarely do I get to eat pizza for breakfast in the company of my wife. Usually it's the sort of thing I do when she's away, or else I gobble it hastily before she's awake. It's the sort of thing husbands are fond of and wives barely tolerate.

They serve pizza for breakfast at the breakfast buffet of the White Swan. It's hot, it's sort of Hawaiian, and it's quite good. Better yet, it's shrewdly located adjacent to the Asian breakfast food section (steamed buns, vegetables, congee, and bits of fish that passeth understanding). This allows an entirely plausible argument that when I eat pizza for breakfast, I am not acting like a slob. I'm acting like a diplomat. I am experiencing another culture, embracing my daughter's heritage, acting as a crisp-crust, piping-hot-cheese ambassador for America to China, demonstrating our culinary broad-mindedness.

I'm working on a rationale for the tater tots.