Thursday, June 21, 2007

Every morning, we all gather around Jenna’s crib, watch her sleep like an angel, and anxiously wait for her to wake up. It’s like Christmas morning. Everyone is so excited when she finally opens her eyes and makes some of her sweet noises. From the very moment she wakes up in the morning, she is such a happy baby. Today she woke up with lots of smiles and squeals for the girls. It’s amazing how much they already love each other.

We gathered our things and went downstairs for breakfast—our favorite meal of the day in China. Kaylee and Madison love to eat with chopsticks, but I have yet to master them, even after three trips to China. (If they didn’t have forks here, I’d be in real trouble!) There are several families at our hotel from New Zealand, who adopted their daughters on Monday, as well. They are 18-20 months old, and absolutely adorable. It’s so much fun to watch them in the mornings with their new families.

After breakfast, we met Daphne and the rest of our travel group and went to Martyr’s Park, a beautiful park in Changsha. There’s a huge lake, several ponds, beautiful flowers, and tons of trees. All over, there were families playing and exercising together. Men and women were doing Tai Chi, playing flutes, and sitting in circles playing cards. They had boat rides, roller coasters, and beautiful stone pathways to walk around the park. We were here in 2001 when we adopted Kaylee, but they’ve greatly expanded the park since then.

After the park, we visited the Hunan Embroidery Research Institute, where they do some of the finest embroidery work in the world. It is part museum and part working embroidery shop. Hunan Province is renowned for its embroidery, which dates back 2,000 years. The detail is incredible. They separate a strand of silk into many threads, each thinner than a hair. In the museum, there is an embroidery of Franklin Roosevelt done in 1933 that looks just like a photograph. For years, embroidery works from this museum have been chosen as National Gifts. When President Bush visited China a few years ago, they embroidered a family picture for him.

There are four provinces in China that can do double-sided embroidery on translucent silk, but Hunan is the only place (in the world) that can do two different images—a tiger on the front, and a panda on the back, or a picture of a beautiful Asian lady—the front view on one side, and the back view on the other. Only the very skilled embroiderers from this province are able to do the “magic” hidden stitch. While we were here, one of the ladies had just finished hand-embroidering a double-image. It took her 8 months to finish, and she finished both sides at exactly the same time.

That afternoon, at the 30th floor playroom in the hotel, Jenna had her first playdate—with Vivienne, Madeleine, Kaylee, and Madison. It was great fun for everyone. A little later, we had another playdate at the indoor playground downstairs with our new friend, Lilian. Lilian is almost 4 years old and about to move to Wisconsin with her new mom Jean. She was just adopted on Monday, as well. Madison and Lilian had so much fun playing on the kiddie-see-saw and slide, and playing with some large stuffed turtles. When it was time to go, I said something to Kaylee about Lilian not understanding English yet. She was completely baffled. They had all played together for almost an hour, and no one had noticed that they didn’t speak the same language. I love that about kids…they have absolutely no language barriers.

At the end of the day, the moms had a meeting with Daphne. We received Jenna’s adoption certificate, birth certificate (naming her parents as unknown), her abandonment certificate, immunization record, and the paperwork we would need to apply for her visa in Guangzhou. Tomorrow, we’ll receive her Chinese passport.

At the end of the meeting, Daphne had us all (the three moms) in tears. I so wish I had had the video camera there with me. She gave a really touching tribute to the girls. She talked about what an honor it has been to be there for such an important moment in their lives, and told us that she considers these little girls her nieces. She went on to describe that these babies are like little trees…they will grow to be big and strong and beautiful…and their roots will always be in China. She said she hopes, as they are older Chinese-Americans walking down the street, when someone asks them where they are from, they will be proud to say, “I was born in China.” Then she gave her three nieces a present from “Auntie Daphne”. She gave us each a red silk bag containing some soil from the rice paddies in Hunan Province. She told us of the Chinese custom to give a family member some soil from China whenever they travel—so they are never homesick and always have a piece of their homeland with them.