More Photos

One view from our hotel room.  At night, many neon signs light up the night, as well as electronic billboards.

 Our first glimpse of Miss Lily.  That's her with the woman in the light colored dress.

 Rose's first time holding Lily.

 Marion's (my sister) first time holding Lily.

 The hotel has many fresh flower arrangements, and most contain - you guessed it! - Roses and Lilies.  Makes this mommy smile.

 Lily today - napping away while I update blog.  You can't see him, but Doug is napping away as well in the bed next to her.

She still has a little diarrhea, and still vomits, but is keeping more and more down each day.  We took her to the hotel clinic and they think it's a stomach issue, not a cold like I was told by the orphanage and given meds for.  We stopped giving her the meds and instead have been giving her something for an upset stomach.  Fewer is lower and less often now too.   She's been thirsty and hungry, which is good.  But every time we give her something, it usually comes back up.  This morning though we gave her porridge (not sure what it's made of) and she kept that down.  This afternoon we tried formula with rice cereal, and so far she has kept that down too.  Poor little thing, we've been having to give her liquids in such small amounts, and she could drink up an entire bottle quickly if we let her.

Just "The Girls" hanging out.

 Yesterday (Monday) we finalized the adoption at the provincial office.  Here is a photo of us with the orphanage director.  Marion kept Rose busy at the hotel since it was very hot, crowded and a long wait with nothing for her to do.  I had a chance to ask the director some questions about how long Lily was sick (since Sunday, the day we got her).  I also asked if there was a note or anything left with Lily, and there was.  She had it with her and I got to hold it.  Doug took pictures of it, but it is hard to read since it's on red paper.  Made me feel pretty sad to be touching something that most likely was written by someone in her birth family.  It just said the day she was born.  But that is an important piece of verification to have, being that she has so little to actually take with her to her new life.

 Our hotel has a glass elevator that faces out.  We like to take it up to the top floor because you can see way out over the city.  At night, you can see a big neon lighted ferris wheel way off in the distance.  It's along the main river in the city, and it used to be one of the world's largest ferris wheels.  I'd like to ride on it, but it's a major event to go out of the hotel between the heat, sick baby, whiney 7 year old, and the communication gap between us and the locals.

 The pool at our hotel.  It's nice, except for the constant spitting.  Into the pool.  You'd have thought they'd learned a few things since SARS and H1N1.  Nope.

The city is actually quite nice.  The people are friendly and VERY curious about us.  Many smiles and thumbs up (which is good).  Many people just stop and watch us.  The boys on the hotel staff out front are really cute - I might have to take a picture of them sometime, they are so helpful and curteous, very good manners.

Rose is not handling China very well at all.  We've tried to venture out with her, but she can't tolerate the heat (you'd think coming from Hunan she'd have a tolerance for it).  She is very sensitive to strong odors, and let me tell you, this city has quite the smells.  She literally gags.  I think something else is going on with Rose and not liking being outside the hotel, but I'm not sure I can put my finger on it.  We try to talk to her about it, but she says she doesn't know whats wrong.

Today I was proud of her - we went a few blocks (not an easy feat around here with the busyness, construction, cars, bikes, mopeds, etc).  I had to first tell her no pool today if she continued to complain, and then I had to bribe her with money to go another block.  Anyways, we stopped to get some soda pop at a small family owned store, and they spoke to her in Chinese and she spoke back.  The store owner was very impressed.  She gets a lot of stares when people hear her speaking English on the street and in the hotel.  She helps me out when someone speaks to me in Chinese and I don't understand.  I hope some day she realizes how valuable an asset it is to be bi-lingual.

Today (Tuesday) is a free day for the families.  Our guide took some time to translate some questions that the foster family or orphanage answered for us (we had sent the questions in the mail a couple of weeks ago, along with a disposable camera for them to take pictures of meaningful things for Lily, and some small gifts).  We haven't developed the pictures yet.  We may wait until Guangzhou to do that.

Wednesday we will do some sight seeing.  Jiangxi is known for it's porcelean, and Nanchang has some important historical events that have happened here. Thursday I believe is another free day.  And then Friday we fly to Guangzhou after Lily's passport is done and we receive it.

I'm washing clothes by hand in the hotel room because I'm out of clean ones and it would cost us over $60 US dollars to wash just some of it through the hotel.  We haven't been able to find a local laundry, which would be cheaper.   Keeps me busy and I sweat enough to lose 10 pounds a day...

All in all I'd say things are going well.  Hopefully Lily will continue to get better.  She is pretty darn cute, especially when with Doug.  She seems to really adore him, and he adores her.  He is taking such good care of her.  How lucky I am!

And,  every day I'm so very thankful that Marion is here with us to help keep Rose company in a separate room, so Doug and I can take care of Lily without too much crazyness going on around us.

Thanks for following along with us!