What a ride....

I know we haven't posted for a few days.....we've been spending that time bonding with our daughter.  I can't believe I just typed that....I have a daughter!

 

We are at the Majestic hotel in Nanning which is the capital of Guangxi Provence. We are in the southern end of China.  Guangxi shares the border with Vietman.  It is very beautiful here.  When we were landing you could see all the green covered mountains.  We landed just after 5pm on Tuesday, July 7th.  It was about a forty minute drive to the hotel.  We arrived just as the rest of our group was sitting down to eat.  We were told that they would be bringing Emily to our room at 7:30 pm so we decided to join our group for dinner.  There are 2 other families that have brought children with them, both are right around Nathan's age.  Everyone is so friendly and welcoming.  They have all heard about our adventure already.

 

We headed back to the room early to get ready for Emily's arrival.  You could hear a baby crying in the hall and then the doorbell rang.  I could feel my stomach drop.  The moment we have been waiting for has finally arrived.  As they enter the room Emily is still upset and crying.  We try talking to her and showing her toys before she is handed off to settle her down, but nothing works.  I finally hold her in my arms.  What a wonderful feeling!  I have my daughter! 

 

For about the first 30 minutes she only wants me and not interested in Eric or Nathan at all.  Finally after Nathan is acting silly and playing with her toys does she start to warm up to him.  Over the next hour she has Nathan wrapped around her little finger.  She learned very quickly that if she wanted Nathan especially to pick her up, all she does it outstretch her arms and wiggle those fingers and he's there in a flash.  Nathan loves carrying around his sister.  He has been so loving and caring with her. 

 

Emily is so very tiny.  The outfits I brought are too big, but most are dresses so we should get by okay.  Our guide took us to Walmart yesterday and I picked up an outfit that was 9-12 and it seems to fit her good.  We bought small size diapers and they fit perfect.  I had even brought one pair of shoes that are size 5 and they are way to big for her.

 

We were sitting out in the hallway with some of the other families and letting the children play.  Nathan was running around with the older kids and Emily was sitting down on blankets with the babies.  Within a couple minutes Emily was running up and down the halls with the older kids too.  Whenever she is around Nathan she is laughing and giggling, it is music to my ears.  We also took her to the baby play room they have set up.  Not much of a play room, but there is a toddler slide and teeter totter.  Emily must have been exposed to a slide with her foster family.  She knew exactly what to do.  She was climbing up the stairs and sliding down.  Emily also seems to love music.  Her eyes just seem to light up and body moves to the music.

 

We went to the civil affairs office & the notary yesterday.  Emily is officially our daughter.  They gave you a brief interview at both places.  With all the running around Emily feel asleep.  I was able to hand her off to Eric while she was sleeping.  This was the first time he has been able to hold her.  Later in the afternoon she was back to not wanting Daddy around.

 

I feel so bad that right now she wants nothing to do with Eric.  They warned us that the child will pick one parent usually to bond to at first.  I took Nathan to the pool while she was napping hoping that if she woke up while we were gone it would give the two of them the quiet time they needed together, needless to say both were upset by the time we got back to the room. 

 

The pool at the hotel has some strict rules.  I think the reason for which is to make money.  All swimmers must wear a swim cap ($20 yuan).  All male swimmers must wear a speedo style swim suit ($20-$50 yuan).  The cheaper suits are very girly looking too, but Nathan wore it anyways.  Another one of the pool rules is no swimming if you have hypertension.  All these rules, yet there was a little boy about 2 years old swimming completely naked in the pool....go figure!

 

Everyone in the group is getting tired of Chinese food by now so we got some taxis and decided to venture out for some western food.  The hotel had some business cards written in both English/Chinese with some of the tourist spots and the hotel info so we could just show the driver where we wanted to go.  I thought it would be an uneventful ride....WRONG!  Most of you know the drivers are crazy here.......as we were driving in traffic a moped hit the taxi.  The taxi driver stopped in the middle of the street and grabbed the moped.  We are all just sitting in he taxi watching our driver yell at the moped driver.  Our driver gets back in the taxi and is yelling, but in Chinese of course.  Eric just looks at him and shakes his head since we have no clue what he said.  We get pulled over to the side of the road along with the moped and the driver again gets out.  Eventually our taxi driver hails down a new taxi for us and tells him where we want to go.  We meet the rest of our group and the first thing they say is....."This could only happen to you guys."  We found a Pizza Hut and had a great dinner.  Eric ordered a kimchi pizza.  Every since we traveled to Korea to get Nathan, Eric has been a fan of kimchi.  He really enjoyed the pizza, but Nathan & I stuck to the American classics. 

 

Emily is such a good eater and tries to be very independent.  She wants to feed herself, but for the sake of bonding, I have been feeding her instead.  You would have never thought the girl ate before.  I was feeding her some rice and some was falling on plate.  She kept picking up the place to get the rice we dropped.  I brought a sippy cup from home, but she doesn't seem too keen on it.  When we were at the store I picked up a different kind with a softer spout, but she doesn't really like that either.  While we were at the restaurant I was filling her sippy with water.  The lid was off of the sippy and she grabbed it to take a drink and did perfect with it.  I think she must have been drinking straight out of a cup with her foster mom.

 

Since we have finally caught up with our paperwork, we get to join our group today for our first outing.  We are going to see the countryside. 

 

I'll try to get some pics loaded! 

 

By the way......Facebook doesn't seem to work in this area.