May 9, 2013: 8:47pm, Guangzhou

May 9, 2013:  8:47pm, Guangzhou

These last two days have been incredible.  We are in full fledge toddler mode over here!  Zia Mei is becoming increasingly more comfortable with us and is all over the place as a result!  Her new favorite thing to do is blow kisses at us. It melts our hearts every single time. Yesterday at dinner she called us Mama and Baba (“Daddy” in Cantonese).  As you can imagine, that pretty much put us over the edge in love!  It was amazing. 

Bedtime is getting much easier.  Even though she can’t understand our words yet, I know she feels safe with us and is beginning to trust that we will be there when she wakes up. 

The hotel has a wonderful little playroom, so we have been spending some time there.  She is a smart little cookie, and we love to see her little mind hard at work.  We also spend a good deal of time in our hotel room bonding as well.  It’s been amazing, and while we miss home and our dogs, part of us wishes this time never had to end.  This is such precious time, and we are savoring every single moment.

Yesterday, we took Zia Mei to get her medical exam and to the police station, where she got her passport info processed.  Our little Tiger Princess is more like a scared kitten in a doctor’s office.  She started crying when the doctor took out a measuring tape and gently put it on her head.  We did our best not to laugh.  She cried through the whole appointment but was all smiles the moment the exam was over and she was back in her Mama’s and Baba’s arms.  Oh, the drama!

At the police station, the policemen who were in charge of processing the passport info were running behind so we were there for over an hour.  Fortunately, all the other adoptive families were there too so we got to spend some time sharing stories of our experiences.  We made friends with a wonderful couple from Norway who waited 7 years for their little boy!  We also made friends with a great family from Phoenix who brought their three biological children and all the grandparents on the trip.  Now that’s what I call a family adventure!

Our driver got lost in this wild city during these errands so we were in the car for a bit longer than expected.  Our Zia Mei is quite the wiggle worm in the car and we are looking forward to being back in the land of car seats when we have our automobile adventures.  The traffic out here is wild.  It reminds us of our honeymoon in Vietnam.  There’s a method to the madness but we sure haven’t cracked the code.

After the police station, we enjoyed some down time and then met the group for a dinner buffet in the hotel.  There were some very unique options at this buffet.  Eric was a bit adventurous with some things but I played it safe.  Our guide, Zhou, had things on his plate that looked more like a science experiment than a dinner.  He seemed to enjoy it though so to each their own.

Today was a mellow day.  We started with a breakfast buffet (much better than the dinner one!).  After being egged on by the other couple we are with, I made Eric dive in the deep end of the pool of parenthood by sending him upstairs to change his first #2 diaper on his own.  He did great but took a little longer than expected and I did get a bit worried that I would come up to a crazy mess of a hotel room!  Fortunately, I taught him well and everything turned out okay.

After breakfast, we took a short and very humid walk that had us all sweating bullets.  We hustled back to our air conditioned hotel and spent the rest of the day playing in the room and the play area.  Eric had the bright idea of getting the group to walk to dinner and, of course, after a day of no rain it started dumping right when we started our walk.  We kept Zia pretty dry but the rest of us got soaked!  It was a fun dinner though.  The rain stopped in the early evening and we got to take a nice stroll through the island while Zia fell asleep in Crystal’s sling.  She fell asleep blowing kisses to us.  Precious. 

Tomorrow, the rest of the families from the first part of our trip fly to Guangzhou to meet us.  It will be a blast seeing them with their children and hearing about their experience.  Then we get to share the last week together as a group.  We are so thankful to our agency for the way they set this up.  It is such a cool way to become parents!

Family Gould – over n out!