My Flower Blooms

Have you ever watched a flower bloom in time lapse photography?  Tate has been my little blooming flower yesterday and today.  He is smiling and engaging us in games of peek-a-boo.  He is jabbering and pointing and laughing.  We see little develish smiles when he is getting into things forbidden.  He has said Mama (be still my heart!).  He waves his plump little hand and says bye-bye.  Today he added a new word to his English vocabulary: no no. 
He is being enudated with new sounds and sights, probably more in the past few days than he has had in his lifetime.  We have taught him how to climb on playground equipment and slide on slides.  He has been to restaurants, two hotels, a river boat dinner cruise, Wal-Mart, Shamian Island stores, and been a passenger on taxis, buses, and an airplane.  All this for a kid who spent most of his life in an orderly orphanage, mostly in two rooms.  I don't think he has ever seen a bathroom with tubs or western-style toliets or forks or blue eyes before.  I can't even begin to imagine how many new things we have exposed him to or will in the coming weeks.  But he is taking it all in and processing it quickly.

To Tara and I, the last few days have been fairly calm and slow-paced.  We've enjoyed walking around Guangzhou and Shamian Island.  We found our way to a sea food restaurant that offered to serve you any creature that even got close to water.  Most of the meals were waiting in tanks in the front of the restaurant for you to choose from, including a tank of snakes.  Most of the meals came to your table with head on.  If you don't make eye contact with it, the food is quite good.  We had a lot of fun ordering our meal by pointing at pictures on the menu.  No one spoke English and the menu was not in English.  It took several waitresses and the manager to get our order.  Why didn't any of the Mandarin that George tried to teach me stay in my head?

Tonight we went on a dinner cruise down the Pearl River.  The food was just okay but the view of the city lights from the river was pretty nice.  Apparently the government spent billions of dollars (or maybe yuan?) decorating towers and buildings with colored lights.

Tomorrow is our consulate appointment, which means that we are almost done.  The last thing will be to get his visa for entry into the US and then we will be heading back. This trip has gone by quickly for me but I will be glad to see my family at home again.

I will add pictures later.

Tate Pictures

Here are the latest pictures of Tate.

Back to Life

Yes, blog readers, I am still here.  I had to take a little break from blogging due to feeling a little under the weather.  Actually, I thought I was dying while I was sick but I survived.  Don't know if Tate gave me the tummy ills or if the food or one of the other billion people I encountered last week did. In any case, I got to visit the orphanage before totally wimping out.

The orphanage building and grounds were truly amazing.  It is a brand new building and was very clean and spacious.  The inside that we visited included rooms for sleeping, playing, learning, and eating.  There were apartments for foster parents to live in with three or four severe special needs children.  The grounds were well maintained and there was an outdoor playground with lots of fun equipment.  The ayis, or caretakers, were loving.  Tate was very happy to see his ayi, his friends, and his play room.  I have to admit I had a very unwarranted pang of jealousy when Tate went to his ayi so easily and then did not want to return to my arms. He had no trouble leaving with us and never shed a tear.  I don't think it was a necessary experience for him or a bad experience for him but I am glad we went.  He had another chance to say goodbye and to see that his friends and ayis were still where he left them.  I had a chance to see the environment he came from, see the bed he slept in, and to see some of the people who loved him before I did.  We even learned his nickname, Yang Yang (sounds like young-young).

We are in Guangzhou now and our hotel room is amazing.  Mostly, because it has air conditioning that is not turned off for the winter, but it is a very nice Marriott.  It also has soft beds.  The room feels like a little slice of heaven after our accommodations in Jinan.  Today we went to Shamian Island, which is very lovely this time of year, to torture Tate with a physical examination and a TB test.  He did not cry and was very good throughout the whole crowded, noisy, sweaty (maybe that was just me) ordeal.  We then walked around the island enjoying the scenery and the nice weather and we did a little shopping.  Tate now has a couple pair of 18 month pants, or the Chinese equivalent, some squeaky shoes, and some cheesy toys.  We took a taxi back for the first time without a guide and made it back to our hotel.  Tonight we are going out to eat with the CCAI group that we joined in Guangzhou.  Pictures will be added later!  Just be glad I was able to post for now.

Loving Tate

Tate has totally captured my heart.  He has a shy little smile that is so sweet.  I know that sometimes parents say that it took awhile before they felt any bond with their children, that it didn’t click until later.  For me, like in all our previous adoptions, it was immediate.  I know, I know, I can bond with a baby squirrel, but this little guy is something special and precious.  You would have to be seriously lacking not to adore him.

So far, since the first day of crying, he has been quiet except to cry when things upset him.  He had to be changed in a unisex restroom on a corner of the sink (stinky diaper so no putting it off) at the Registration Office.  I almost cried when I had to go in there so I can’t blame him for being upset.  Other than that, he has not uttered a sound.  He responds to sound so I know he can hear.  Hopefully, he is just being shy and will feel more comfortable with us soon.  He is “coming out” a little more each day and we see little glimmers of his personality.  He is very much a baby, developmentally around a year old to a year and a half.  He cries in the morning before he opens his eyes and quits when he has his milk. His gait is that of a baby who hasn’t been walking long and his fine motor skills are that of a one-year old.  The stacking cups we brought were his favorite toy until we found him a toy phone at Wal-Mart.  He sucks his fingers on his left hand in his sleep and when he is awake and upset he puts that hand over his little mouth.  He is so cute when he does that.  He is also very tiny.  He weighs 25 pounds and the 24 month clothes I brought are big for him.

Yesterday we spent the day going back and forth between the Registration Office, the Notary Office and the Police Station (for his passport application—we weren’t arrested).   All the paperwork necessary to complete his adoption is done.  He is officially our son.  By Thursday, I should have his registration certificate and his passport on Friday.  We gave a gift (not a bribe) to help make sure the passport would be ready by Friday.  To accomplish all these appointments, which included going to the police office twice, we took harrowing rides in cabs back and forth across the city.  I’m still not sure how the cab drivers managed not to run over anyone or anything during our wild rides.

Hand print at the Registration Office

Today, we had a free day.  We slept in and almost missed the breakfast buffet.  Tara will be posting pictures of the buffet on her blog, allhisblessings.blogspot.com, so if you haven’t experienced breakfast at a 5-star hotel in China, check it out.  We then took a leisurely walk to Wal-Mart.  I’m very proud of us for finding it on Google maps and walking there and back without getting lost.  We bought a nice stroller for Tate, some toys, and a few food items, including bread, peanut butter, and jelly!  Wal-Mart was fun, much more fun than at home.  The food selections are soooo different.  The Wal-Mart workers even assembled the stroller for us!  We then went to the McDonalds we spotted on our way and had mild chicken wings and French fries and Mcflurries.  Tate had his first chicken nuggets and fries.  Sadly, there were no Happy Meals.  We had fun trying to communicate with the workers behind the counter and surprisingly they got our order right (unlike in America where it is always wrong, even speaking the same language).  Amazing.  

I'm playing here

Chicken nugget stuffed cheeks

Wal-Mart was exhausting

Tomorrow, we will go to visit the orphanage.  I hope that this visit goes well for Tate and doesn’t upset him.  It will give us a chance to talk to his Nanny and gain some insight into his life prior to us.  The woman who brought him to us was not involved in his care and could not answer any questions.

Getting Tate

The train ride from Beijing to Jinan was smooth and uneventful. The train was very clean, not crowded, and the ride was pleasant. We got to see a lot of countryside, much more than I have before. However, moving at 360 km per hour, we were only able to get a flavor. We saw cotton fields with workers hand picking the cotton. We saw corn spread out on residential rooftops for drying. Most of the land we saw was cultivated or city. There were fruit groves that our guide told us were owned by the government but since they were not tended, the people can go pick fruit for no charge. We moved from tall buildings to fields with traditional homes connected by courtyards.

The ride to our hotel was “smooth” as in we did not kill any pedestrians, or hit other modes of transportation (bikes, scooters, cars, busses, hybrid bike-scooter-wagon things) though I am not sure how we managed to avoid it. Our driver picked whichever lane had the least traffic and drove in it, no matter which way the arrows were pointing or which side of the road. He honked to let people know we were coming through. After a few heart pounding, gasping moments, I stopped looking out the window as much.



Our hotel room is comfortable and pleasant enough, much like the other rooms in I’ve stayed in. The beds are narrow-full or maybe wide-twin? The mattresses are rock hard. This will be home for the next five days and I am happy to be here. We are waiting for the orphanage to arrive and bring Tate to our room. Any minute now.

UPDATE

He came to our room at 11:30 as promised. He’s wearing new clothing, only one set now that I have removed one. He’s is totally adorable. He let me pick him up and hold him and after a couple of minutes of that started crying and crying and crying. We went out to exchange money and get registration and passport pictures done and he finally stopped crying. We had to go to two different banks because the bank official at the first bank said I had to prove how I came up with so much money. Hmmmm. I think he just couldn’t read the English on my passport and didn’t want to deal with me. The second bank would only let us exchange $2000 per person, since it was Sunday. I gave money to our guide and to Tara so that we could get all the money we needed for tomorrow’s appointments. The banks aren’t usually open on Sunday but since they were closed all week for the National Holiday, they had to open on Sunday. After our errands, we came back to the hotel to do some paperwork. Tate cried some more. Tara and our guide, Cindy, went to the local super market to get various sundry items like water and milk for Tate. Tate cried while they were gone and finally quit when Tara returned with milk. He was very hungry and had missed nap and was introduced to the world outside the orphanage and white people at the same time. I would have cried too.

We had dinner in the hotel restaurant and he ate more than I thought would fit. As I write this, he is filling his diaper with something stinky. So I guess I won’t be going into much more detail on this post. I got some cute grins at dinner when I played peek-a-boo. Good ole standby.

We Made It to China

We made it to Beijing.  The plane ride was just as excruciating as I remembered but we got here around 9:00  last night and fell into our beds immediately.  Now we have 1 hour to get ready eat breakfast and catch the fastest and newest train in China, so we were told last night.  I hope it slows down for me to get on, I do not feel capable of catching anything fast.  We meet Tate at 11:30 at our hotel in Jinan today!!!

Count Down to Tate

We are leaving in the morning for China!  Again!  I think I am packed now and my suitcase is still 3 pounds overweight.  So if I forgot to pack something, it doesn't matter, there's no room anyway.  We will fly from home to Atlanta then on to Seoul and then to Beijing.  We will stay overnight in Beijing before taking the train to Jinan.  And then that very afternoon, which somehow ends up being Sunday, we will see Tate.

Like any expectant mommy, I'm dreading labor.  For me that will be the plane ride from Atlanta to Seoul.  And it will be back labor after being cramped in that tiny space in coach.  Mostly though, I'm thinking about my baby.  I'm wondering how he will handle leaving the only home he has ever known to go with me, a strange looking white woman.  I know he will be afraid.  Will he cry?  Will he shut down?  Will he reject me?  So far each one of my little ones have come to me easily but with their own way of coping.  Tabitha clung to me tightly, Tobianna ran around like a wild monkey, and Teegan had a few temper tantrums, nothing major for me to deal with.  I pray that Tate has an easy adjustment and is not too afraid.  I can't believe I will see him in just a few hours. 

Keep tuned....