One busy day and one rainy day

It's Thursday afternoon and Emily is napping peacefully in the other room. Yesterday turned out to be a very busy and exhausting day. We are grateful to have a quiet, rainy day today.

Our Holt Guide took us to the Friendship Store in Guangzhou yesterday to purchase baby supplies and groceries. The Friendship Store is like nothing I have ever seen. It's like Home Depot, Macy's and Whole Foods all rolled into one. It has nine floors connected by escalators. Each floor sells different things (lawnmowers, housewares, electronics, groceries, baby supplies, pharmacy, etc.). It is absolutely gigantic and has lots of high end merchandise (Gucci, Louis Vitton). All three of us went along on the shopping trip, but that turned out to be a bit of a mistake, since it took much longer than we expected and poor Emily was a bit overwhelmed by it all. It turns out that she still requires two long naps each day (I had been counting on only an afternoon nap). After fussing for a while, she finally fell asleep in my arms. But, she was cranky for much of the rest of the day because I messed up her nap schedule. Unfortunately, we had to wake her up early from her afternoon nap, too, to go and get her Chinese passport. We have also discovered that Emily is not much of a morning person. She takes a LONG time to wake up. The picture here of her sleeping was taken while I was getting her dressed for the day. She slept for 12 hours over night and then woke up around 7:30 am. I tried to get her dressed at 7:45 am and she fell asleep while I was dressing her!

It is 11 am as I write this post and the sky is pitch black outside. The blue sky never seems to show through the smog, but during the day it is generally a light gray color. Today they are predicting heavy rains. There is absolutely no evidence that it is daytime right now. Our hotel is located on Shamian Island in the middle of the Pearl River. When I look outside our window I can see lots of small ships sailing by even in the midst of this storm.

Emily was such a joy this morning. We finally had success getting her to drink soy milk mixed with a little formula this morning (she had been refusing to drink anything for most of the day yesterday). I was starting to get worried that she would become dehydrated. After trying many different beverages and many different sippy cups and straws, I finally found one that she liked. Whew! After she finished drinking she sat on my lap and we read the Very Hungry Caterpillar over and over together for about an hour. She was fascinated by it. She loves the pictures and poking her fingers in the little holes inside the book. The only baby I ever knew who could sit still that long reading the same book over and over again is Emily's big brother, Colin!

Our Holt guides in China are terrific. They are Chinese natives who speak excellent English. Holt has an office located inside our hotel. The guides really seem to know how to deal with any issue the adoptive families throw at them. They navigate all of the bureaucratic stuff associated with the Chinese adoption like nothing and they deal very well with lots of anxious first-time parents. They often give us interesting commentary about what we see around the city as we drive from place to place on the bus with the other adoptive families. We learned yesterday that Guangzhou is the fourth largest city in China, that the people who are Guangzhou natives speak a dialect of Chinese that is very difficult for people from other parts of China to speak or understand, that Guangzhou was the capital of China during the Ching Dynasty, and that for periods of time no Chinese people were permitted to live on Shamian Island (where our hotel is located) because it was under French and British rule.

Tonight we will go to a traditional Cantonese restaurant with our guides and the other adoptive families. I am grateful that the guides will be with us tonight. Steve and I have had some "surprises" in our food the past few days (fish tails, pig livers, etc.). Neither one of us are picky eaters, but I have to admit I am very glad that I packed some crackers and peanut butter in our suitcase before we left home!