We're Home!

We are a day later than we thought but getting everyone home safe was worth it! Our flight from Newark to Buffalo was cancelled Thurs night, so we had to wait until morning to come home. We were surprised with a great welcome at the airport, my sister and her family came from Newmarktet ON to greet us. Our friends Kim & Jenn spent the night in Buffalo so that they could take us home on Friday, that was so above and beyond.

The kids did well on the flight home, it was the parents that were pretty frazzled. Getting from one plane to the other in Beijing took over 2 hours. With the new security, they took away our water and searched both our checked and carry on luggage three times during the trip home. It is much more difficult to travel with kids with all this security. Also, Liam at age 6 was good about staying close to us, but occationally Nyla would start to wander and the fact that my kids would blend into a crowd scared me during the entire trip. Overall, despite all my heavy complaints, I am really glad that we brought them, it was good for them to experience everything first hand. Kids are more flexible than adults in many ways. It was more work & stress, so I can understand why many parents don't bring their kids.

Below I will post some pictures of our arrival to Buffalo.






When we arrived home, friends Kirsten, Chris and Jen brought over some lunch, with no food in the fridge it was greatly appreciated.




I tried to keep the kids up but everyone was asleep by 8pm. Ethan woke around midnight and then woke up Liam and Nyla. It is 2am and they are settling back to sleep. I am going there also. We probably will keep Ethan home for a few days to get settled in and feel secure in his surroundings. We have been traveling to different places every few days so I want him to get to know his new home. Feel free to stop by, we may be asleep but hopefully we will get that straightened out in a few days.

US Visa

Update on post below: I mistakenly thought that we were going to the US Consulate at 4pm, but the bus was leaving at 2:45pm. Charlotte called our room looking for us and Patrick had just brought the kids back up from the pool and I was just finishing the post below. We scrambled to get ready and find our passports, we were the last family on the bus and were very embarrassed! Luckily, we got to the US Consulate before 4pm and we were sworn in without incident. Afterwards we went to Lucy's with the other families in our group to celebrate. We leave for home in the morning!




Yesterday, Charlotte our guide took all of our paperwork to the US Consulate and it was all ok. Today we take Ethan to the Consulate to be sworn in at 4pm. He will then be given a US Visa. We leave early tomorrow and have 3 flights until we get home. We should arrive in Buffalo at 10:30pm if all goes well.

Ethan is doing well and we are very thankful that he has been healthy on this trip, it really reduces our stress level. He laughs easily now and LOVES to be held which we do a lot of to make up for lost time. He is still not eating much but will attempt to taste things. I don't know if he just prefers the bottle or if it has anything to do with his cleft palate. But we will keep trying after we get home and haven't been pushing the food much since he drinks the bottles well. Actually he will drink every bottle dry and then always cries that is it all gone, like there should be 16 oz in there instead of only 8.

I took Liam and Nyla to the zoo this morning and will post a few pictures. We hope to see everyone soon and can't wait to get home!

People of China

We had Ethan's physical and passport pictures done yesterday. He is 8.9kg and 72.5cm long. It was not an opportunity to ask medical questions, they are just making sure the kids are healthy before leaving the country.


We have spent a lot of time in the parks around the hotel and find it interesting that young and old exercise on the same equipment. You will have kids playing and a 70 year old man doing chin ups beside them. I saw some 20 something year old guys exercising and smoking at the same time. There are also groups doing tai chi and other activities. In general, parents and kids and elderly are all exercising together in the same area, instead of the adults just watching the kids play (as I was doing). Very interesting.

In China, young people will also often come up to you and ask to practice their English. All of the people in the shops and hotel that we have met have been very friendly and kind to us. Our guides have been wonderful and so helpful. We are so thankful to them for all the work they have done to help us bring Ethan home.

Guangzhou

We are in Guangzhou now, sitting at Starbucks and writing this (free internet). One of the members of our group compared this place to West Palm Beach, tropical and clean. Nanjing is a great city, but when you are walking down the alleyways some of the odors are pretty strong, kids just squat and do their business in the streets, it is a real Chinese city.

Yesterday it took most of the day just to get here and we discovered that Ethan isn't a great traveler. Today he has been pretty happy and he is eating rice cereal for us 2-3 times a day. With the bottles I think he is overall feeling more full and content. We got photos done today for his visa and filled out lots of paperwork. Tomorrow (Monday) he will have his medical exam and Tuesday we have our Consulate paperwork submitted. We also took group pictures which I will post. We were joined here in Guangzhou by 2 other families who also adopted kids with cleft lip/palate from another province.

We're on our way to Guangzhou!

We are leaving today for Guangzhou (used to be Canton) where the US Consulate is located. We will be there for 5 nights. I may not post every day if internet access is expensive and we may not being doing a whole lot during that time. Probably a lot of swimming with the kids and paperwork for the US Visa. We will be staying at the White Swan Hotel.

Yesterday we visited the Natural History Museum in Nanjing. It was interesting for Liam but Nyla complained the entire time until we told her she couldn't swim unless she stopped. I don't have pictures ready to post but I will try to post some from Guangzhou.

Ethan is doing well, although more fussy the last couple of days. He is cutting teeth, possibly hungry and grieving for his nanny. Those are our theories. We are feeding him according to his schedule from the orphanage, exactly what they told us except he will only take a little bit of rice cereal before he clamps his mouth shut. He is a big baby and so I think he needs more solid foods. We are just trying to figure it out day to day. Liam and Nyla are doing well also, getting a little stir crazy stuck in a hotel for so long, doing better than I expected ultimately. We will all be happy to get home. Thanks for following along.

Happy Birthday Ethan!

Last night we celebrated Ethan's 1st birthday. It feels a little strange to have a child for just 3 days, yet he is already a year old. So much has happened in his life that we know nothing about and he knows little about us as well. From looking at his memory book from the orphanage (which was made by a Half the Sky nanny definitely), we could see he had a happy life. We appreciate that Ethan has opened his heart to our family after only a few days. That is a big change for a child and we must seem so strange to him. Yesterday, he started to cry if we left the room, especially when I would leave. I took Nyla swimming for a little while and Patrick said he cried the entire time. He also started taking a few spoonfuls of rice cereal from me without crying or fighting me. A big accomplishment for a child who will not put anything in his mouth other than his index fingers and the bottle. I think he is starting to trust us.

So we had a great little party last night and the kids had fun playing together. Everyone has spent the last few days bonding with their children, so we haven't spent a lot of time together. It was nice to just let them play and interact. Here are some pictures, Lillian and Lauren are the 2 other girls who were adopted in our group.

Nanjing

Yesterday we all had naps and decided to go out for supper and a walk. I took some pictures around the Confusious Temple where there are lots of shops and tourists taking rides on the river boats.


I got the backside picture of a toddler with a very revealing outfit on, he is potty training and it saves on diapers!


Ethan was kind of cranky this morning, he is cutting several teeth. I decided to stay at the hotel with him while Patrick took Liam and Nyla to a beautiful park in Nanjing. Our guide Min is very good to us and will help with whatever we need. The park reminded Patrick of the Chinese Lantern Festival in Toronto last summer but it is open 365 days a year, it is lit up every night. They went during the day and still enjoyed it, the only complaint was the heat.





Tonight we are having the other families over for pizza and cake to celebrate Ethan's 1st birthday. I will post pictures tomorrow, we may go to the Natural History museum.