Saturday in China

As I began typing this, I tried to figure out how many days we have been here, but truthfully, without our daily schedule in front of me, I am clueless. Basically, our guide Elsie says meet at this time and off we go. We have had two clear days so we have been out and about. We introduced Hong Hong to the pool and she loves it. She loves to splash her sister and kick her feet. She is not so sure about water in her ears or over her head but Love Swimming is in her future I am sure. The gym and pool here is very nice and the girls enjoyed a waterfall shower after swimming and could have been entertained by that for hours. Catherine had a few days of wanting to be carried all the time like Charlotte (poor Daniel) and has dropped a few comments about not loving her as much. All of that is slowly normalizing. Catherine is thrilled to be a big sister but it is hard to watch mom and dad have to devote so much time to caring for someone else after all this time. She is really starting to be our helper and Charlotte is simply in awe of her. Daniel's mom being here with us has been such a blessing because Catherine can have 100% attention when we need to tend to Charlotte. Charlotte continues to test our patience and make mom and dad feel old when we try to get her to go to sleep. She starts off by going through her entire repetoire of Cantonese words. So precious, but we have no idea what she is saying. When that does not work, she starts with her newly acquired English...hello, shoe, bye bye, uh oh, woof woof, meow. This is not to be downplayed by the antics that follow which include feet clapping, hand clapping, peek a boo, downward dog (yes Kiersta, she and Vida will have a ball), forward rolls (scary on the bed) and finally screaming. I have some new lines under my eyes but eventually, the child sleeps throught the night when she finally goes to sleep. She continues to eat like a champ. She is feeling well with a bit of a residual cough but clearing. Her coloring is kind of grayish like Catherine was before she had good nutrition and sunshine. She sweats a lot like Catherine did, like she has rickets, but is also high humidity and 95* here. As for our tourism, we visited both the Chen Clan Temple and a buddhist temple yesterday. The buddhist temple was new for me and absolutely amazing. Our family received a blessing by the monk and we captured some great photos. Today, we rented a paddle boat and sweated our butts off paddling around a lake at a near by park. Daniel lets Catherine ride on his shoulders for long walks through the park and the Chinese people really check us out when we do this. Catherine enjoyed a children's playground and again, it was such a treat to see some very unique playground equipment. Hong Hong must not have been around playgrounds too much. She is apprehensive to climb and slide but loved the swings. She seems to have her fine motor skills on track but we will need to work on running and climbing. She has mastered reciprocal steps over the last several days. As for mastering, we have officially placed an order at McDonald's and received everything we ordered correctly. We are getting a little better at the whole food thing. We found a wonderful Portugese restaurant right around the corner with a picture menu and the hotel has a huge breakfast buffet of Western and Chinese food. Daniel and I took a taxi with our guide to Hong Hong's finding place yesterday. Interesting ride. It is illegal to honk your horn in Guangzhou but oh my do they need to. We were able to find the group of shops at the address where she was abandoned but the exact shop number in our paperwork does not exist. It seems to be lost in translation but we were happy just taking a look around a taking some photos. The guard at the shops did not remember a baby being found but is has been several years. It is a very typical high rise apartment building with shops below. Lots of laundry hanging off balconies and children playing about (they are on summer holiday). Our guide says it is not likely that her birth mother lived in this high rise, she probably came from another area nearby because it is illegal to abandon your child in China. Therefore, she likely did not want others to be familiar with her. Truthfully, who knows. We are in love with the child she left for us and wish we could let her know she is safe and loved. Tomorrow we go to the zoo. We will keep you posted. The photo uplink here is not working. I am working on an alternative. Love to all...