Saturday, June 23, 2007

We arrived in Guangzhou, a city of 12 million people, last night. We are staying at The White Swan Hotel, a beautiful hotel on Shamian Island that caters to Westerners, and adoptive families in particular. Early at breakfast, every family you see looks just like us—and every table has a little Asian baby sitting in a high chair. It’s precious. All American families must complete their adoption here in Guangzhou, where the U.S. Consulate is. Each day adoptive families come here from all different provinces with their new daughters or sons. As we sit here at breakfast with our three precious little girls, looking out at the boats on the Pearl River…and as Kaylee and Madison both try to feed Jenna her bottle of apple juice and scrambled eggs, in between lots of kisses…once again I have to pinch myself and wonder if this is really real. We are so incredibly blessed.

Before we left for our morning outing, I quickly ran back upstairs with Jenna. As we walked in our room, the attendant stationed right outside our door handed me a welcome gift, a “Coming Home Barbie”—a typical blonde Barbie Doll holding a tiny Asian baby. (I’m sure Kaylee and Minca are going to LOVE playing with that when we get home!!!)

We then went downstairs and met Jason, our Guangzhou guide, in the lobby. He just returned from the US yesterday, but was remarkably alert, energetic, and helpful.

We walked across the street to get the babies’ visa photos taken, then took a 15 minute stroll down to the medical clinic for our babies to receive their final medical check before leaving the country. Thankfully, the clinic wasn’t nearly as busy as it was in 2001 and 2004. As we were waiting, we recognized the friendly doctor that examined Madison in 2004 and had a picture taken of him and the girls.

Each time we come here, they seem to have improved the process greatly. Everything went smoothly—much more so than when Kaylee peed all over her doctor in 2001. (Unfortunately, that was actually our fault. Kaylee had fallen asleep, and awoke to the doctor removing her clothes. She was scared and started crying. We were trying to comfort her, saying, “Shhhh….. shhhhh… it’s ok….. shhhhh”. Well, we didn’t find out until afterwards, that “shhhh” was the signal her nannies were using at the orphanage to potty-train the kids and get them to pee on command!) Kaylee thought this was hilarious, as we were reminding her of this story, as we waited for Jenna’s exam to begin.

Jenna went through all three stations quickly. They gathered her statistics, gave her a cursory check, and checked her hearing by using musical toys to the left and right of her, looking to see if she turned her head. They verified that she is indeed a very tall baby. At 77 centimeters and 7.9 kilograms, Jenna is 2 inches taller than the other girls in our group. Thankfully, our guide Jason was right behind them, translating everything from kilograms and centimeters to pounds and inches for us. As of today, Jenna is 30½ inches and weighs 17.4 pounds. I’m anxious to see where that falls on the growth charts, once we get home.

When we got back to the hotel, Christin took Kaylee and Madison swimming while Jenna took a nap. They swam for two hours, had a fabulous time, and got completely pruned up!

We all met for dinner a little later, and walked to the Thai Zhen Restaurant. Everyone sat together at a long table, and ordered individually (as opposed to the traditional Chinese style, where everyone sits at a large round table with a “Lazy Susan” in the middle, and spoons out servings from several family-style bowls.)

They had steamed eggs—Kaylee’s very favorite food—but Kaylee turned them down, saying “They’re not as good as Nai Nai’s”. Instead, she tackled a large pot of chicken and noodles—enough for a family—with gusto. We ordered steamed eggs for Jenna, and she seemed to really enjoy them. (Just wait until she tries Nai Nai’s!!!) Madison ordered shrimp cakes, which she was convinced from the picture were chicken nuggets—and we couldn’t persuade her otherwise. She was wiped out from her afternoon swim, and fell asleep on my lap before her “bock bock” ever made it to the table. She slept through the entire dinner, all the way as I carried her back to the hotel, and all through the night. In fact, we ALL slept well this night. Woo-hoo! :)