Pool at Nana's House

Today was a busy day!  Saiya met her grandfather today while we stopped by there to pick up my mother.  He spoke to her in Chinese and she was very shy, so she didnt say much.  Although when he called and talked to her, she was responding like crazy, just in mumbles and whispers, so he couldnt really hear her.

We picked up my mother at lunch time and we all had a nice lunch together.  We headed to the book store after that.  Saiya LOVED the book store!  She loves all kinds of books, especially the ones that look like the ones Chris and I read all the time.  She had plenty of time in China to watch us read, so she has an amazing fascination with books.  We bought her a couple of classics to read as bedtime stories and there are a few others I want to purchase online because the store didnt carry them.  We also bought her a new coloring book because she has sped through her last three.

After the book store, it was on to Walmart for a few things and then we headed over the Nana's house to have some fun in the pool with her cousins.  We were not sure how she would take to the pool since she wasnt really interested in the pool at the hotel in China.  We thought that having her cousins there to show her how much fun it could be would be a big help.  As it turns out, we were right!  I brought stuff to blow bubbles with and the kids had a blast with the bubbles and the pool toys.  We will definitely have to buy Saiya her own pool toys that are more her size.  There was a small amount of bickering about who gets to use the donuts, but since Saiya can't swim, and she had it first, we let her keep it.  Her cousin wasnt happy, but she found other toys to play with instead.  By the time she got out of the pool for dinner, poor Saiya was so pruney!!!  I dont think she ever spent so much time in the water before!

I'm glad she had a good day!  Tomorrow we plan to take it easy.  :)

Wheels!!

Uma and Umpa came over yesterday to visit with Saiya.  They brought a small plastic tricycle for her to play with.  It required some assembly, and she was more than willing to help with that!  Once it was all put together, she got the hang of it very quickly!  She is a fast learner.

After we assembled the trike, Uma and Saiya made fruit salad for lunch.  She had a blast doing that too, although she kept wanting to eat the pieces she was cutting up, rather than put them into the bowl.  Uma was kind enough to bring a delicious chicken soup because I am a little sick and wasnt feeling well.  There is nothing like homemade chicken soup to make you feel better!

Saiya played a little with her cousins yesterday when they came over.  They had a blast!  They pushed her around on the new trike and she loved to go zoom!  Look out world, she has WHEELS!!

Checking In

Today we took Saiya to our respective workplaces to meet and greet and check in with everyone.  I go back to work the week after next, so we wanted to make sure we were all on the same page.  We turned in some insurance paperwork at Chris's work because our health insurance has to change to include Saiya.  She was a little grumpy after meeting so many people, but some chocolate and a piece of candy later, and she was all smiles.  :)

We picked up Sebastian and Syrafina from school today and they played with Saiya all afternoon.  Saiya was a little apprehensive at first, but once I sat her down and showed her that they wanted to play with her, it was all good.  I had to explain that the toys she had were Syrafina's, not hers.  She is still in orphanage-mode when it comes to possession of toys.  When she thinks something is hers she will take it and sit on it so that the other kids wont take it from her.  I had to take some toys away from her and put them under Syrafina so that she understood that those belonged to her cousin.  After that, eveything was great and they played together.  I think we are finally figuring her our.  Maybe a little bit.

She is doing much better with Chris.  She loves to have him pick her up and swing her around.  Today, she even let him hold her hand at the grocery store and she let him push the shopping cart with her in it too.  Yesterday I sent Chris to the grocery store for some stuff for dinner and she sat in the kitchen and cried when he left.  I was a little shocked but diverted her attention towards helping me cook dinner.  When he got back, she had a big smile on her face and yelled, "BABA!!"  It was really sweet.

This weekend she will meet Chris's family.  She is doing so great with meeting new people.  She met my mother yesterday.  We went out to lunch and to the hardware store.  I think she got a little confused about who "Mama" was when we let her walk around the store with my mother, while Chris and I went to different departments.  I dont think we will let that happen again.  Poor thing.  Lots of new people in a short period of time.  She is good when we meet people and keep her close, but I think she just got a little confused because we let her and my mom wander without us.

It's definitely a learning process for all of us...

Home - Day 2

Today Chris had Jury duty.  We were up at 4:30am because we could not sleep anymore.  Saiya was awake, sortof, so we made breakfast at home.  She was a little cranky and kind of zoning out when we were getting ready to go around 7:15.  She fell back asleep in the car on the way to the courthouse.  I dropped Chris off at the courthouse around 8am and then met my sister for breakfast.  After breakfast, we went shoe shopping for Saiya.  I thought we did a pretty good job getting her shoes in China, but apparently the ones we bought are too small as well.  My sister is the expert, so we differ to her for all things kids shoes.  Saiya was having a bit of a melt down after we ate with my sister.  She was very tired and cranky and zonked out in the car on the way home almost immediately.

Saiya spent the whole day playing with Sebastian and Syrafina.  I was a little worried she would ignore them like she did all the other kids in China.  She was a little apprehensive at first, but once they sat down and started to show her how to play with all the toys in the toy box, she fell right into step with them.  We watched the kids while my sister was in school today and Saiya played all DAY!  She had a blast!  I am so glad that she is finally coming around to playing with other kids.

She had trouble going down for her nap this afternoon like yesterday, but after about 45 minutes of crying, she finally fell asleep on her bedroom floor.  I had to move her to the car when Chris called for me to go pick him up from the courthouse.  She slept the whole way in the car and the whole way home.  So, today, she had a pretty good two hour nap.  At least she sort of fell asleep in her room today.

We had a nice dinner with my sister and her kids and then a bath and off to bed.  Chris and I are both getting sick, which really sucks, but we are working through it.  I can only hope that Saiya doesnt pick it up.  Not sure what the plan is for tomorrow.  My sister wanted to go to Orlando to swing by the outlet mall for shoes for Saiya, but I dont know if we are really up for it.

Saiya comes and goes with Chris.  Today she hasnt really given him the time of day.  He talks to her and she looks at him, but doesnt really respond.  She responds really well with my sister, but Chris, she is still needing a bit of time.  Sometimes she is great and other days, like today, she is unresponsive and indifferent.  She didnt even want to give him kisses good night.  I know things will get better and I can only hope that Chris is taking it better than I would.  Poor daddy...

Home at Last!

Sunday 9:00pm

Thursday in China went well, we didnt really have a lot of time to do much. We took the red-couch picture and then we had to check out of the hotel and head to the US Consulate to pick up Saiya's Visa. After that, Connie took us to the train station and we left GuangZhou for Hong Kong. Saiya did great on the train. She loved to look out the window and read through the magazines. Then she discovered a new game. She took Chris's book, randomly picked a page and had me start to read to her. Then after about a paragraph, she would take the book back, flip to a different page and let me read some more. This went on for about an hour and a half. She loves being read to! I think she is going to pick up english very quickly!

Friday we spent wandering around Hong Kong. For our last day, we took it easy. It was the one day we were in China where we didnt have to be anywhere or meet with anyone. So we wandered through the shops and restaurants near our hotel and stumbled upon the Hong Kong Science Museum. We took Saiya to the museum and she LOVED it!! She had a blast there! The museum was huge with lots of things for her to play with and experiment with. She was a little young for understanding most of it, but she had fun nonetheless.

Saturday was the LONGEST day ever... Because we didnt sleep on the plane, we were up for over 24 hours straight. Enough said.  Immigration was a bit of a hassle as we were told that we could be processed all together in the US Resident Line, which was not the case.  Saiya had a bit of a melt down while we waited in line, not that I can blame her.  We were all very tired and exhausted from the long flight and now we had to wait in line... twice... and then go through Customs.  So, yeah, we had to wait in yet another line.  If I were her, I would have done the same thing.

Saiya did great on the extrememly long plane ride.  We really didnt hear much out of her besides the little songs she sings to herself.  She watched several disney movies (without the sound because she refused to wear the headphones we brought for her) and colored and played.  None of us slept on the plane, which was a good thing and a bad thing.  Good because that means we sleep the night through and will have little to no jet-lag, bad because we were all CRANKY!  Haha, especially little Saiya.  But she loves Auntie Tami, she cried when she left for the night.

Today was our first full day home.  We landed in Orlando last night at 8:15pm.  After an hour ride home and a quick bite to eat at McDonalds (Chris was in Heaven!) we finally got home around 9:45pm.  We came home to a spotless house (thanks to my loving sister!) and balloons and a cookie-cake for Saiya that said "Welcome Home".  We spent a little bit of time introducing her to the animals.  She didnt really like being on the floor with the dogs (I think it had something to do with them being eye to eye with each other), but she slowly got over her anxiety and we finally went to bed around 11:30pm.

We decided to put her in bed with us as that would be the easiest thing to do and it was late, we were all very tired, and all we wanted was sleep.  She insisted on sleeping on my left, which put me in the middle between her and Chris.  I knew that was a bad idea from the start, but she threw a fit when I tried to move her to the middle.  So I let her be.  Around 6:30 this morning, I woke up to a *SPLAT*.  Yup, she rolled off of the bed and right onto the floor, landing in a face-down froggie position.  I jumped out of bed and picked her up.  She was still ASLEEP!  Talk about your heavy sleeper!  I put her in the middle of the bed and she only woke up and started crying after a few minutes when she realized her poor little nose was bleeding.  It wasn't broken or anything and she calmed down quickly after we got her all cleaned up.  She refused to lay back down on our bed though and decided it was much more fun to bounce around and crawl all over us while we struggled to fall back asleep.  Since we were all awake anyway, we decided to crawl out of bed around 7am this morning.

We made a run to Walmart this morning to get some essentials for Saiya and pick up some food.  Saiya likes to help Chris push the cart, so it took us a little longer than we planned because her little legs can only go so fast and she can barely reach the handle.  But she was having fun, so we went with it.  We had lunch, and tried to put her down for a nap in her room, but she wasnt having any of that.  She cried and whined for about an hour (although she stayed on the bed).  We gave up on the whole nap idea and let her play in the living room.  I went to take a nap for a couple of hours and she did great with Chris.  She even let him take her outside for a short walk.  After my nap, I took over while Chris went to lay down for about an hour and a half while I made dinner.  She played in the toy room.  She finally discovered the goodies in the toy-box.  :)  We gave her a bath, I trimmed her hair and put her down on the mattress we put on the floor in our room.  She fell asleep almost immediately.  Poor thing was so tired.  I'm just glad I dont have to worry about her tumbling off of our bed again.  I like the idea of having her on the floor much better.

Visa Appointment and Oath Day

Thursday 10:00am

Our Visa appointment went off without a hitch. On Tuesday, Connie went to the embassy in our place and we stayed in our room and waited for her to call. She called around 11:30am and told us that one of the forms we filled out was expired. Strange since that form was printed directly from the USCIS US Consulate website. It was not a big deal and we filled out the newer form for Connie to give to the consulate. After that, we were free to wander the island. We wandered around and when it got too hot, we retreated to the air conditioning.

Yesterday we had the morning free to wander the island, we went to Lucy’s for lunch, where Saiya had her first peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and then we met up with Connie at 2pm to head to the US Consulate for the swearing of the oath. The oath process was surprisingly simple. The consulate officers compared our passports to our paperwork and then when they were finished with all of the families, we all swore an oath. It was super cute. As we raised our hands and began repeating after the consulate officers, Saiya raised her hand and gibbered along. After the oath ceremony we met Connie with a big hug and headed back to the hotel. After about an hour to refresh and drop stuff off in the room, we headed back down to meet Connie for the dinner cruise.

The dinner Cruise was awesome! It was absolutely beautiful on the river. Many of the buildings have lights that flicker and change so that passing boats and river tours can be amazed by the bright colors and beauty of the river front. The river cruise was very much a highlight of the trip. Connie even managed to get us really good seats right in the front of the boat. It was very hot and humid, even at night, but the boat tour was still very nice. Saiya loves boats!! She spent a lot of time hanging out on the deck, watching the boats and river front go by.

Today we are taking to red couch picture, pick up our Visa, and then we head to the train which will take us to Hong Kong. We will be in Hong Kong for one day and then its off to home! We are really excited to finally be heading home.

Paperwork and the Jade Market

Monday 6:00pm

Yesterday we didnt do much here in Guangzhou. We met our guide, Connie, at 10:30 and went through all of the paperwork needed for our Visa appointment. After that, we were free to wander about the island. We had lunch at Lucy's and headed back to the hotel for a nap. Saiya refused to go to sleep. That child can entertain herself for hours. We met the other families at 6pm for dinner at a local chinese restaurant. The food was wonderful! Chris was not impressed, but they had tashu baos so he was happy! Saiya really likes them too! After dinner we went to a local bakery and had some cake for dessert. Then it was time for bed.

Today we met Connie at 9:30am to head to a local Budhist temple for a tour and do some shopping at the jade market. Since it is a national American holiday, the consulate was closed today, so we had all day to explore and really get to know China. On the way to the temple, Connie explained a little bit about Guanzhou and some of China's holidays. The mid-autum festival starts next week and the traditional dessert for that holiday is the moon cake. So we stopped off to get some. Yum Yum! The temple was awesome and very relaxing. The monks even did a traditional budhist blessing for our children. We were very grateful! I'm so glad that Saiya is old enough to be able to experience things like that. maybe she will remember it when she is older.

We bought a few gifts for family back home at the jade market, although not alot because it is expensive. We got back to the hotel about 12, had lunch at Lucy's and then it was off to the room for a nap. Saiya crashed hard. Poor girl was so tired. After her nap, we attempted the pool. She wasnt really interested in playing with the other kids, but didnt really throw a fit when we put her in the pool. I kept her in my lap for the most part and she refused to leave me to go splash around on her own. I'm certain that she is going to love the pools at home, we just have to get her more comfortable around other children.

After dinner, we headed back to the room for a moon cake dessert! Saiya loved them! :) Yum Yum!