Day 7 - People's Park



Today started off rough. Ivie woke up at 4:30 am and would not go back to sleep. She cried nonstop for about an hour and a half. We tried having her watch a Baby Einstein but that didn't last too long because she can't focus on anything for very long. So I took her outside at 6:30 for a walk and that calmed her a little. But after breakfast she was pretty good. We discovered that airplane rides and being held up in the air will elicit lots of giggles and smiles.

We were going to take a tour to People's Park - which is basically like Central Park in Nanchang. But about 1/2 hour before we left she crashed out. We let her sleep for a while and then we had to go. So I was able to change her diaper and put her into the hip hugger without her waking up - pretty slick.





The park was very cool, there were people everywhere. There were old couples ballroom dancing, people doing Tai Chi. But we were the star attractions. CCAI has given us all cards with our name and the hotel name on the front (in case we need to take a cab the cabbie knows where to take us) On the back, in Chinese, is a note saying that we are Americans and we are here to adopt this baby and that we will take her home and love her forever. This note sure came in handy because everyone would come up to us and coo over the babies. Sometimes you couldn't go 10 feet without being stopped.



We had a blast in the park. I am not sure that the babies enjoyed it but the adults sure did. We attempted to play Chinese chess on a life size board with 100 lb granite pieces. But the highlight by far was the hampster balls. Basically you get into this plastic thing which an employee blows up with a hose making it into a ball. They then push you into the water and you have to run to keep the thing moving. At first just the young kids, Wade and Joey Yamaguchi and Jake and Parker Mosher did it. But then Uncle Barry, Brett Winningham, Eric and Diana Mosher all got into the fun. It was a hilarious sight to see. Of course us all gathered around drew its own crowd and we again became the entertainment for the locals.





After we tired of the fun in the park, we went to lunch at a local restaraunt. They had food for us and for the babies. First they gave us a noodle soup which we were supposed to feed the babies with chopsticks. Ivie loved the noodles and knew exactly what to do with the chopsticks. But she wasn't sucking in the noodles like the other babies so a lot of them ended up on her and on the chair. She also had steamed eggs and her favorite, watermelon.

We had fried lotus root - very good, beef soup, bok choy, dumplings filled with sweet cream (my favorite), taro stuffed with pork (it was so good that Eric proclaimed it his new favorite food ever), some sort of moo shu and Chinese donuts. It was served family style on a lazy susan. The total bill wasd 30 yuan per person or about $3.90 per person - I love China.



Right now it is nap time - daddy and Ivie are both out cold. Ivie didn't want to go to sleep at first when we put her in the crib so she moved around a lot. When she finally fell asleep, she was sideways in the crib with her feet sticking out the sides - so cute.

Day 6.5 - First time parenting lessons

Well we've learned a few things in the day and a half we've had Ivie. She is not crawling yet - most Chinese babies are not given a lot of tummy time, especially ones in the orphanage. So all of our worries about a fully mobile baby are for naught. We had her on the bed in the afternoon and put her down on her tummy. She can push up with her arms and kick her legs but she doesn't know how to go forward. In fact with all of the kicking she kind of moves backwards.

We decided to put some toys out of her reach to see what she would do. She rolls over and over until she reaches what she wants - no matter what is in the way - she will roll over stacking cups, dollys and even tries to roll over us. If she wants to change direction - she will kick her legs around till she gets to the right direction. Its all very cute. So hopefully this work will get her crawling soon.

The downside of this rolling over has come in the changing department - she now tries to roll off of the changing pad. Its funny except for after dinner when she had another "explosion". You definitely don't want a baby rolling anywhere when she is covered in poop.

Its funny - Scott said I've never been so not grossed out by something that is so disgusting.

The other thing we learned is to stick to a schedule. The schedule we got from the orphanage said she takes a nap from 12:30 to 2:30. She crashed out for about a half an hour at WalMart in the sling. When we got back to the hotel she played on the bed for a while. We could tell she was tired and we were tired so everyone wanted to take a nap. We tried to get her to fall asleep on us like she did the day before but she kept rolling off of us (another down side to the whole rolling thing). She would not sleep.

Then it was time to see the pediatrician. After we got back we were practially falling over so we decided to put her in the crib to see what happens. What do you know - she fussed for a few seconds and then went to sleep. Of course by now it was 5 pm. We did not want her going down for the night then. So we woke her up at 6 - not happy.

We had some dinner (the explosion) and then a bath and bed at 8:30. She slept till 2 and had a bottle. She went back down until 4:30 am and had been up since then. So today we are going to try the schedule and see how that works for everyone (more naps for mom and dad too).

Today we are going to the Peoples Park and then to lunch at a local restaraunt. Till later.
Renee

Hello friends and family, Scott here. Renee's playing with Ivie, and I have some time to post.

It's 1:00 p.m. Tuesday afternoon in Nanchang. Ivie slept like a champ last night, a solid stretch from 9:00 p.m. to 4:30 a.m., then up for a change and a bottle, and then back down from 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. We got up and had breakfast with the rest of our group. Ivie ate watermelon, rice cereal, sticky buns, and steamed eggs. She chased it all down with a bottle of formula.

After breakfast, the entire group went to the Notary office to make our adoptions official. We met with the Notary official, answered some questions, and then received confirmation that according to the Chinese government, we are Ivie's parents. We won't receive the official paperwork to take with us until Sunday, so we are here for the rest of the week.

After the Notary office, we went as a group to Wal-Mart, where Renee and I bought bibs, diapers, outfits, baby food, bottles, formula, and rice cereal for Ivie, and gatorade, snickers, water, pringles, noodle bowls, and soda for Renee and I. All told our bill was 350 Chinese Yuan, or roughly $48 US Dollars. Unbelievably cheap. We ate lunch at one of the roughly 89 KFC's in Nanchang. That's one popular restaurant. Outside, waiting for the bus to take us back to the hotel, we were approached by a beggar. He wouldn't take, "Bu, she she" (no, thank you) for an answer, so I gave him a small coin. Then another beggar, this time a woman, came up to me pushing a bigger bill at me. It looked like she was trying to give me money. Of course, the real answer, according to our guide Evelyn, was that she was showing me the bill she wanted me to give her. Riiigghttt. That makes much more sense.

We are now in our hotel room waiting for Ivie's appointment with a local pediatrician. We are learning so much about her personality as she becomes more accustomed to us. She is so, so active, curious, serious, and playful, all at the same time. And, to close this post, something amazing just happened. Ivie smiled at us. For the very first time. For all the pictures we'd seen of our daughter, for all the time we've spent together over the last two days, I had never seen our daughter smile...until just now. We put a plastic stacking cup on her head and let it fall to the bed. I clapped and cheered for her. And there it was...a huge smile, two -teeth and all. I'm not ashamed to admit it's getting a little dusty in here. Now I have to go play with Ivie, so we'll conclude and post more later.

Thanks for your continued support. We love you all.

Pictures from Family Day



The sign at the entrance to the Civil Affairs office.



All the babies. These weren't our group but it shows how the set up was.



Me receiving Ivie for the first time - I can't tell you how amazing it was.



Mommy and Ivie. She has the bear we sent her. We also got the disposable camera back so I can't wait to develop the pictures they took for us.



Christina and Zoe - Zoe was not happy and cried all the time. But she has since calmed down. Ivie and Zoe shared a nanny at the orphanage.



Susan and Emily Ruth. This is Susan's third adoption so I'm sure I'll be asking her a lot of questions.



Pretty in Pink!



Nap time with Daddy.

Day 5.5 - Nighttime in Nanchang

Well we had an exhausting day but here I am wide awake at 1:30 so I thought I'd share a little more about Ivie.

So far she is really calm - she only cries when she is hungry or tired (just like daddy). She loves holding on tight to the toys we've gotten her. She likes the little butterfly that makes noise that Michelle (I think) got her and a little Einstein book with mirrors. She sticks them in her mouth and chews on them.

She's got a bit of a cold. She saw the hotel doctor and her lungs were clear and she did not have a fever. Her nose is all stuffed up and she is coughing and sneezing a bit. So we are giving her medicine and hopefully that will go away.

At 3:30 today we went back to the Provincial Office building to register the adoption. They took a family picture and one for her passport. We then met with the registration official who asked us all sorts of questions like why did we want to adopt from China, what our plans were for her education and would we promise never to abandon her.

We then met with the orphanage director who told us a little about the Social Welfare Institute where she lived for the past few months. There is a nursing home and an orphanage in the same building. But they are currently building a new orphanage and hope to move the babies there in a few months. The director gave us all pictures of the orphanage and a little necklace for Ivie with her zodiac sign on one side and the chinese character for blessing on the other - very sweet.

We had dinner with group 1043 who received their babies last week and are on their way to Guangzhou tommorow. Ivie ate some sweet sticky bun, some rice, some steamed egg and some watermelon. Then she had a little "explosion" which necessitated a full change. I just wanted to announce that Scott was the one who changed her - very brave.

She had a bath and bottle and then fell asleep on my chest. We put her down in the crib for the night. When I woke up about an hour ago she was about 90 degrees from where we originally put her. I watched her for a while. She lifts up her little leg and swings it around to get into a comfortable position. She tossed and turned for a while until she turned another 90 degrees - now lying the exact opposite of how we layed her down.

Tommorow we have to notarize the registration in the morning and then we have the rest of the day free. We are going back to Walmart for supplies and then will just chill.

Now I am going to try to go back to sleep - stupid jet lag.

Day 5 - Introducing Vivienne Chao

Its 12:30 and we've had Ivie with us for about an hour and a half. She is so precious I can't even believe it. She is so tiny but she is heavy because we are not used to holding a baby.

Scott, with the help of our intrepid guide Evelyn, bought a new camera so we were able to take pictures. I will try to load them on the blog but there are no guarantees.

At 11 we walked across the street to the provincial office building. We took an elevator to the 26th floor and walked into a room where there were all sorts of nannies and babies. There was another group getting their babies at the same time as ours so at first we did know which babies belonged to our group. Evelyn walked up to a woman who had a list of the babies so we knew which ones were ours.

I spotted Ivie right away - she was sitting peacefully on a nanny's lap. Two other families got their babies first - the Moshers and the Yamaguchis. Then it was our turn and the woman placed Ivie into my arms. I can't even begin to tell you how amazing it was. She was calm at first and then started to cry. We tried calming her with cheerios - she ate a few but loved the lid to the bowl which she is still holding. She had the bear that we sent in the care package with her - so at least she has something familiar with her.

She was wearing a bright yellow shirt and yellow pants and huge electric blue split pants (which are the pants many babies wear with their butt showing so they can be put on the potty when it is time to go). Most of the babies from our orphanage were wearing the same thing. They all so cute.

The room was chaos - babies crying and parents trying not to cry. Everyone was running around taking pictures of all the babies. Cameron and Christina, the couple we met our first day, have a beautiful girl Zoe who shared a nanny with Ivie. So it is so nice for them to have friends in our group. Zoe was very unhappy though and every time we went by her Ivie would start to cry too - like it was contageous.

When we left the building Ivie was looking around facinated by everything outside. She was very calm in my arms - clutching the lid and her bear. We got her up to our room and made her a bottle. She polished it off in about 1 minute - she was very hungry. We tried to set her down to change her clothes but she would cry every time. Finally we managed to get the orphanage clothes off of her and into a cute pink (of course) onesie and pink striped pants. She has a few scrapes and bumps (apparently in the walker she managed to run into a table and bump her head). She also has a few mongolian spots on her bottom (which are small bluish spots that are common in Asian babies - they look like bruises but they will fade as she gets older).

We have basically had to hold her and walk around because she did not want to sit at all. She was getting a bit heavy for me so after a while I passed her off to Scott. She fell asleep and we tried to put her in the crib but she wanted nothing to do with that. So Scott is currently sitting on the bed with Ivie asleep in his arms - I wish you could see it (and if I can get the pictures loaded you can).

We have a meeting with the registration officials this afternoon and then nothing but Ivie time thereafter.

Hello, gang. Scott here. It is 8:55 p.m. Nanchang time and Renee's stressed and asleep. We are experiencing some serious audio-visual problems. Most seriously, our faithful camera, which has been with us for several years, decided to break today of all days, 18 hours before we finally receive our daughter in our arms. We tried to buy a new digital camera at the local Wal Mart, but of the thousands (literally) of people there, zero of them spoke English. We were able to decide what camera we wanted, but apparently our credit cards don't work in China. Or so we think. We couldn't really tell, since the checkout lady tried to run our card but gave it back to us without a receipt or a camera. We think this means our credit card didn't work.

Also, internet connectivity here is spotty at best. We are unable to download pictures to the blog at this point, even with an operational camera. We also cannot depend on the availability of this main blog page to conduct posts.

The good news, however, is that (a) we'll probably be able to have someone in our group take pictures of us as we get Ivie, (b) we have a functional cam corder to record the event, (c) we have two excellent guides who may be able to help solve our camera problem tomorrow locally, and (d) after two long years of waiting, thinking that the day would never come, having to rely only on the 5 pictures we've received of our daughter, we will have her placed in our arms tomorrow, 11:00 a.m. Nanchang time Monday, or roughly 10:00 p.m. your time Sunday night. We couldn't be more excited, well, that is to say, unless we had a functional camera.

To our family and friends, we love and miss you all. Be well and, if it's not too much trouble, think happy thoughts for us.

Day 2-3-4

We made it!!!!

Our flight from Chicago left on time (yeah!). We spent 15 hours in the air. We flew north over the North Pole - very cool to see - and then back down to Hong Kong.

We tried to sleep but it was difficult - I think I got about 2 to 3 hours.

When we arrived in Hong Kong at 4:50 pm on Saturday (or 3:50 am Saturday morning back home), we were met by our guide Matthew. Who took us to the Regal Riverside Hotel. Most of our group was already doing something (or sleeping) as they had arrived a day earlier and taken a tour of the city.

There was another couple from CCAI on our flight - Christina and Cameron Johnson. The four of us decided to venture out into Hong Kong (we were staying outside the city in New Town). We took a cab ride to Kowloon Harbor to watch the laser show at 8pm. It was very cool - basically the buildings in downtown Hong Kong along the harbor have lasers on the outside and they flash differnet colors to music.

After the show we took a ferry across the Harbor into downtown. We wandered around downtown looking for a restaraunt. At first we were in a more business area and it seemed deserted. But the more we wandered we found people and followed them. There was a large street fair for Halloween - we did not explore it much because we were so tired but it seemed like fun. We found a small local restaraunt which had great food for really cheap - can't get much better than that.

After our adventure in Hong Kong we returned to the room and tried to get some sleep but I think I only got about 4 hours. I will try to catch up tonight because after tomorrow who knows how much sleep we'll get.

This morning we met the Johnsons for breakfast - the buffet had fried rice and dim sum as well as hash brown triangles. After breakfast we met up with the rest of our group. Everyone is very nice but right now I don't have all the names straigt so I will tell you more about them later. We then went to the airport for our flight to Nanchang. Its about an hour and 1/2 flight.

We arrived in Nanchang around 1:30 pm today. We were met by one of our guides Evelyn. As we were driving into the hotel, she gave us some history on Nanchang. Aparently it is one of the "smaller cities" in China - there are only 4 million people here. There are people everywhere here - I have never seen some many people in my life. I can't wait to explore more. Nanchang was were the revolution started on August 1st 1927 between the Nationalists and the Communists so there are alot of memorials to that date.

When we pulled up to the hotel, there was another bus behind ours. It was full of CCAI families who had been here almost a week with their babies. It was funny everyone in our group just ran to them and were looking at all of the babies. That will be us tomorrow. CCAI said they would arrange a dinner for the two groups to meet tommorow so that should be fun - all the new babies with all the "old" ones.

This afternoon we have a meeting where we will go over our schedule for the week and have a better idea about what will happen. The most important thing is that at 11 am we will go to the provinical office building and finally be united with Ivie it is so surreal that it is finally happening.

Just wanted to tell you that when we walked into our room, the first thing we saw was a Mickey Mouse stroller and a Pooh crib with Hello Kitty sheets - too cute. There is also a little potty in case she is potty trained (they start very early here).

Journey to Ivie Day 1

Brought to you by rainy Chicago and the O'Hare Hilton.

That's right I said Chicago - we are still stateside.

We got to the airport in Milwaukee no problem. They announced that our flight was overbooked and offered to send people by bus to O'Hare arriving at 10:10 and you would get a free ticket. Our flight to Hong Kong was at 10:48 so we chose not to do this - we did not choose wisely.

When we boarded the plane we were informed that there was a delay in Chicago and we would have to wait. We waited on the runway for 1 hour. At that point we were allowed to go back to the gate and wait one more hour. By this time we had missed our connecting flight.

We arrived in Chicago at 12:15. The airline booked us on the 12:18 flight which we of course missed. So we got rebooked on a flight out tomorrow at 12:18.

We will arrive in Hong Kong at 4:50 pm (in theory and barring any other weather delays). We will miss the scheduled tour of the city. But luckily we will be there in enough time to make our flight to Nanchang on Saturday.

Keep us in your thoughts and prayers. Please post your comments, we'd love to hear from you.

Six more days until we leave.

We have been busy getting the house ready for Ivie. The cats sure are enjoying the activity, so many boxes to jump into and new furniture to explore.

We have been so lucky to have had 4 showers so far and one more this weekend. It is so wonderful for us to know that there are so many people who support us on this journey. Everyone can't wait to meet Ivie.

Here is our itinerary:

October 26 - leave for China. We are flying Milwaukee to Chicago and then direct to Hong Kong.

October 27 - arrive in Hong Kong at 3:10 p.m.

October 28 - tour of Hong Kong

October 29 - leave for Nanchang. Nanchang is the capital city of the Jiangxi province.

October 30 - Family Day! We will be finally united with our beautiful little girl at the Provincial Registration Office - we will finally become her forever family.

October 31 - November 5 - we will be staying in Nanchang bonding with Ivie while waiting for her paperwork and passport. We are hopeful that during this time we can travel to her orphanage to see where she was found. We would also love to meet her foster mother so we can thank her for loving Ivie.

November 6 - leave for Guangzhou where the US consulate is located.

November 7 - Ivie's visa physical and photo are taken today.

November 8 - Consulate appointment

November 9 - back to the Consulate to take the oath and receive Ivie's visa

November 10 - leave for home!!! We leave Guangzhou for Hong Kong. We will leave Hong Kong at 11:35 am and arrive in Chicago at 11:43 only 7 minutes later - its like magic (except for the 18 hour flight. We will arrive in Milwaukee later that afternoon to be greeted by our friends and family.

I can't believe that it is almost here - amazing.

26 days and counting . . .

Our travel is booked. We are leaving Milwaukee on October 26th. We will fly through Chicago and arrive in Hong Kong on the 27th. We will have 1 1/2 days in Hong Kong. We leave for Nanchang on the 29th.

We will become a forever family on October 30th when we are finally untied with Ivie!!!

I don't know the rest of the adgenda yet, we should find out within the next two weeks but the most important thing is that we are finally going to meet the little girl who has occupied our thoughts and hearts for so long.

If you would like to share your wishes for Ivie, I will be putting together a book for her and would love to include messages from all our friends and family. It will be nice for her to know that so many people have walked this journey with us and can't wait to meet her. You can post your comments here or else e-mail me directly.

Renee