Seven Years Ago, part II

Second installment, emails from China while on my adoption trip. This one was sent Sunday, March 6, 2005.

Hello all!

I'm getting a second chance to make an e-log here so I'm taking advantage of it. Actually this email could be entitled, "Chapter Two: In Which Thalia Takes a Really Big Dump and Improves Her Outlook Considerably." I've heard that they sometimes give the girls something to constipate them for long train rides up so that people don't have to deal with diaper blowouts. Don't know if that happened here, but since almost all the Maoming girls were constipated the first 3 or 4 days, I wouldn't be surprised. Our co-ordinator made a run to the local pharmacy for some Special Chinese Herbal Tea, and at least in Thalia's case, it did the trick.

Her spirits have perked up considerably, though she still basically will only stand for me holding her. Also, when we're out of the hotel room she mostly won't walk and absolutely refuses the stroller. She's pretty much a velcro baby. Generally that's good, but an entire week of carrying a 17-pound baby ALL THE TIME is doing things to Mommy's back. Things almost reached a breaking point Friday evening. We did paperwork all afternoon, Thalia had to sit on my lap but squirmed and griped all the time. Then she and Kellie and I went out for dim sum and she was squirmy there, too, and I just was really fried. But yesterday, the sun came out and we did the trek to a local park and the Chen Clan Temple/Academy. Weather was nice. Thalia fell asleep in the hotel room after, and Kellie insisted I get out for a walk. MUCH better! Today is absolutely gorgeous. Around 70 degrees and sunny. The locals are all still in long sleeves and jackets and looking at me like I've taken leave of my senses. Kellie and I went on a walking tour of a couple of Buddhist temples this morning. I burned some incense at a few altars and only messed up once (I bowed to the sand pit instead of the altar--oopsie), but the locals just smiled indulgently. One of the nuns told me Thalia has beautiful eyes and looks very smart (at least, that's what Kellie thinks she said).

Anyhow, Miss Thalia is in many ways about a 9-month-old baby in the body of a 15-month-old toddler, but that's to be expected. Her movements are still awfully spastic. But she smiles a lot more than she did. She shows a pronounced preference for her left hand, so I may have a leftie in the house! Probably too soon to tell. I think she'll be OK, and if not, then I'll deal with it. When I call home Abra just wants to talk to Thalia, and doesn't quite get it that Thalia has no concept of the telephone and couldn't talk on it anyway.

Thanks to people who responded--I had a chance to read your emails. I will be back in the U.S. on Thursday morning March 10, after taking a red-eye from LAX. We'll be pretty fried, but I'll do my best to check in at some point soon after. Thanks for all the well-wishes.

Author's addendum: It seems a little funny to me now that I ever would have described her as physically "spastic" or "developmentally delayed," though at the time it was true. She was by U.S. standards very small for her age, and developmentally behind. But within six months of coming to the states she was fully on-track developmentally. And now, it seems she excels at nearly everything she does. Chris and I have long since grown accustomed to meetings and conferences with teachers who sometimes struggle to find new ways to say, "Holy shit but that kid is smart." Far from having intellectual delays or disabilities, she's actually an academic phenom. And physically, she's gone from spastic to jock pretty quickly--it's a lot of fun to watch her shimmy around over every piece of dangerous equipment she can find, turn dozens of cartwheels in a row, or outrun most of the boys on the playground with her.

And I turned out to be right about the left-handed thing, too.

Seven Years Ago

Last year I posted this, on the six-year anniversary of what international adopters have learned to call "Gotcha Day"--the day the child you've been approved to adopt is actually placed in your arms. That post was a re-post of a Facebook note from the year before, on the five-year anniversary. I was going to re-post that again this year, but I decided to do something different instead (maybe because it's actually a couple of weeks past Gotcha Day by now). Feel free to click on the link and read it (or re-read it, as the case may be). But this time I've gone back and found the emails I sent around to family and friends while I was over in China on the trip. Here are some excerpts from the first one, slightly edited with a bit of surplus removed. More to come.


Letter #1, sent Wednesday, March 2, 2005:

Ni Hao! OK, I was getting a bit skeptical that we'd ever get to this point, but we're here. To start off with, the first leg of our domestic flight was cancelled. So I'm freaking out thinking that we're going to be late getting to L.A., miss the flight to Guangzhou, etc. Well, they got us on a flight to Minneapolis and we got to L.A. in plenty of time. And the wonder drugs really did work and I slept on the plane quite a bit, despite the fact that for the trip overseas I sat in what was unquestionably the most uncomfortable airplane seat I've ever experienced. So we get to Guangzhou and yes, one of my suitcases DID NOT make it there (it arrived the next day, none the worse for wear).

I stood in a long line to fill out the forms, and eventually met up with the rest of my group, only to discover that we were not going to get the babies that afternoon as scheduled but in fact the next day. At which point I almost cried. In retrospect, though, it was undoubtedly a good thing. There was a bit of a delay for some people in checking in to the hotel, plus by about four o'clock Kellie and I were both pretty fried. We were watching Chinese TV in the hotel room and laughing a lot at things that probably weren't really all that funny. So, we were in better shape the next day.

Gotcha Day was suitably emotional. Lots of tears all around. Kellie got a very good picture of me just sobbing (duh). This whole thing has been kind of a bizarre trip, though. Monday was Gotcha Day, Monday night was administrivia, and Tuesday was the day that the adoptions were finalized. It's kind of weird having the registrar and notary ask you if the child is satisfactory--in a way that sort of makes you think that if you say you were hoping for a cuter one they might exchange her! But of course I said yes she's wonderful, I signed on the dotted line, and it's now official. Yesterday was a free day which Kellie and Thalia and I spent at a trip to the Guangzhou art museum. We might do Jade Market later today.

This morning at breakfast was pretty much of a disaster. She upended an entire container of vanilla yogurt all over herself and me. Then it got worse when she did the same with my hot coffee. She got a bit scalded but not bad. She did, however, wake up anybody still sleeping in on the first six floors. After all that, I decided I just wasn't up to the zoo this morning. I'll try again at some point to make another entry. Maybe some night after she's in bed asleep. Right now she's sitting on my lap and dying to type. I'm just afraid she's going to break my connection. So I'm going to have to sign off for now.

To sum up, Thalia's beautiful, bewildered, sad, developmentally delayed but probably temporarily and probably otherwise OK. Kelliegirl is keeping me sane. Guangzhou is very interesting. Weatherwise I was very excited to see that it was on the same latitude as Cuba/South Florida, but in fact I might just as well be adopting from Seattle. It's rainy and chilly every day. I'm tired and mildly stressed and in every way on cloud nine.