He knows what he wants

We put on the PJ's we had brought for Will they have long pants and a short sleeve shirt. He put them on but when he got ready for bed he started pulling on the sleeves. David told him the sleeves would not come down as they were short sleeve. So Will grabbed David's hand and wanted him to unroll his sleeves. So we decided to change him into the only long sleeve shirt we brought with us. He was much happier and as you can tell went right to sleep.

So this morning (it is 11:41pm here) after the paperwork was finished we went to Wal-mart to buy him long sleeved PJ's and two long sleeve shirts. He saw a Mickey Mouse stuffed toy, so David got it for him. We also picked up some snack food and water.

Pictures from family day!!!

As usual Blogger's photo order is not what I want. This is the outfit he came to us with, purple pants( like sweater material) another pair of cotton pants, socks, white and purple Mickey Mouse sneakers, a turtleneck with vehicles on it and a dragon jacket.
A very blurry family day photo taken with our camera that was not on auto so the flash did not go off. He was very unhappy to be away from his nanny/ayi. He was crying and wiggling. It took several minutes to get a picture where he was facing the camera for the adoption decree.

This is just after David gave him the car and airplane we brought for him. The photo album on the table is the photo album we sent in his car package. His Ayi took it out to show him we were his mama and baba, same as our pictures

This is David handing him a sippy cup before we learned he had never used one before. He threw it three times before we put it away.

A good start to adoption day

Will went to sleep easily last night. He had a sippy cup full of milk, baba had to help him hold it as he is use to bottles. Then when we layed him down we gave him his bottle with water in it and he slept thru the night. We had to wake him up to go to breakfast and he was not happy when we woke him up or changed his diaper. He continued to cry as we left the room. When his baba said eat and he saw we were at the elevator he stopped crying.

He sat in the high chair they provided which has no straps to hold him in, but the back is padded. He ate a steamed bun with pork (I cut it in half he ate the meat, then gradually the actual bun) congee (really well cooked rice with pork), bacon, pancakes, french toast, hard boiled egg, part of baba's chocolate doughnut and some milk. He has refused to wear a bib, pulling it off each time we put one on. He has a strong sense of what he likes and does not like and will let you know very quickly. If he does not want to eat something he will close his mouth and turn his head. If he wants something food or toy he will point and raise his eyebrows. When I started to peel a hard boiled egg he turned his head toward me and got a very excited look on his face. He did some self feeding this morning but is more than happy to let you feed him, opening his mouth like a little bird.

While waiting for our guide we went by the koy pond, as soon as he could see the water he started to turn away. Bath time tonight should be interesting.

Finally Family Day!!!!

We met our son today. We meet our guide at 10 am and went to the Civil Affairs office to met Jing/Will. We went by taxi, walked up the stairs and turned to the left where the Civil Affairs office is, it has glass doors that were closed. Their were two children standing at the door, David said their he is, that is Jing, our son. The other child was a little girl, whose family came in about 20 minutes after we arrived. Because Monday was a holiday their were fewer families adopting today.

When we came in the door we said hi/ni hao to Will, he looked at us but said nothing. He stayed very close to his ayi/nanny Margret. He did not want to leave her side. He had a snack whole wheat crackers, in a round shape. The orphanage sent another package with him, along with several other snacks. They brought back the photo album we sent, you could tell it had been well used. He also had the camera, and bear we sent in February. We signed guardianship papers, showed our passports, provided a passport photo, and a copy of each of our passports.

He walked around the room some, eating his snack, he would walk close to us but would not come to us. We handed him the car and plane we got for him, he put them in the pocket of his coat. David handed him the sippy cup and he threw it on the floor and smiled. We tried the sippy cup two more times with the same result so we put it away. We took out the stacking cups and he loved those. We also gave the soft wire ball and he threw that several times. He kept coming back to the stacking cups. We wrote out a statement of why we wanted to adopt him and a statement of care, similar to what we have already written. It will be translated and part of the adoption paperwork we complete tomorrow. Then we went to take the family photo for the add option decree. This did not go well as Will did not want to leave his Ayi Margret, he was crying loudly, thrashing, did not want to sit with us or look at the camera. With lots of help from the director, the nanny, the guide and the women taking the picture we finally got at least one photo that should work for the adoption decree.

While we were filling out the paperwork I asked some questions the first one was had they brought the list of questions we sent in the care package they were all answered just in Chinese, so our guide was going to write the English answers for us. We asked about if food or drink came out of his nose because of the cleft palate being open, they said not much mostly when he drinks alot. They said he will eat anything, but does not really like vegetables, he loves fruit especially bananas. He has been eating food for a little over a year, he can feed himself with a small bowl and a spoon. He does not like taking a bath. He drinks from a bottle not a sippy cup. He goes to sleep with a bottle of water or milk. They said he had no problems with the first surgery to close the lip. The ayi/nanny Margret that brought him is the one that often took him home to spend the night with her family.

We then had to go upstairs to take a passport photo as the one the orphanage brought was not the correct size. He did not want to take that photo either, even with his nanny sitting next to him. We then went back downstairs and our guide and his nanny decided that she should leave quietly without saying goodbye as he was easily upset if she moved away from her. He saw her walking away from the building and started to cry and scream again. He allowed me to pick him up but continued to cry and wail, he did put his head on my shoulder. Before we left the office he was whimpering. it


We went to the bank to exchange the money to pay the fees tomorrow. David held him while I did this. The only time he cried in the bank was David had let him get down and when he picked him up again he started to cry. As David and I tried to comfort him our guide said it was okay babies cried. We finished at the bank walked across the street and to our hotel. Our guide walked us up to our room and spoke to Will again telling him he would stay in the room with his mama and baba. She also reminded us to call us if we had any problems no matter the time.

Day 1 in Nanjing

As we traveled from the railway station to the hotel she asked what we wanted to do this afternoon. About this time David asked about the mountain directly in front of us, she said it was purple mountain. She asked if we wanted to go their today as it would be alot of walking and would not be a good place to visit after we got our son. Then she asked how we wanted to get their we could take a taxi or hire the van driver we were with and she would go with us. We enquired about the cost of the taxi or using the van and their was not a large difference. So we decided to go with the van as it would be safer and we would get a personal tour of the sites on the mountain. We checked into the hotel with the assistance of our guide. She went upstairs with us to make sure the room was acceptable to us, it was so we agreed to meet at 1:30 to purple mountain, and the Zhongshan Mountain National park. We went to eat at Burger King, they had a bilingual menu on the wall so we could get the correct sandwiches.

We meet our guide in the lobby and we rode out to the mountain. On the way we passed an amusement park, we could see rope bridge climbing, and big balls and spheres that people could get inside and move them on the lake. We first went to the mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, it has several buildings and gates on the way up to the actual mausoleum. It is 392 steps to the mausoleum. We walked up all of them. We received very detailed information about Dr. Yat-Sen from our guide.

As usual Blogger did not put the pictures where I wanted them. The pictures are all from the mausoleum area. The first one is the view from the top of the mausoleum built so you don't see the stairs but just the flat areas. The next picture is a view of the city from the top of the mausoleum. The picture directly below it is also a view of the city. The first picture in the next row is of the front of the tablet describing Dr. Sun Yat-Sen. The next picture is of us behind the tablet the building in the background is the actual mausoleum.

We also went to the new museum about the Ming tomb, as the area is being restored, it is a well done museum and has some interesting artifacts and information. We bought our first souvenirs here.

Traveling to Nanjing

We woke up early as were to meet our guide at 8:15 to go to the train station. We made it down to breakfast by 7 am. The breakfast was a buffet with traditional continental (American/European), Japanese, and Chinese food. We tried a little of everything and enjoyed our first breakfast in China. We went back up to the room to collect our bags and check out of the hotel. When we got to the lobby our guide was already waiting downstairs.

We drove to the train station which was farther away then we thought. The driving this morning was not to bad. We were dropped off downstairs came upstairs and had to navigate around lots and lots of people that were returning from the 3 day holiday. We waited in the soft waiting room, as opposed to the hard waiting room where most of the people were waiting. About 20 minutes before the train was to leave they called that it was loading, so we went with our guide to catch the train. We were booked in a first class car, we had seats in the very first car of the train. The train ranged in speed from 120 kilometers to a high of 205 kilometers and hour. For the most part the ride was smooth.

When we got to Nanjing our guide meet us at the train car. We started walking toward the end of the train platform and it was a sea of people, even our guide seemed surprised at how crowed it was. We made it thru the sea of people and to the van. The ride to the hotel was about 20 minutes.

Our flight over to China

Our flight over was interesting as we did not follow the flight path listed in the sky miles magazine. Instead we flew over the North Pole, over Russia and then thru China including Beijing, before landing in Shanghai. The only thing we could see from northern Canada thru most of Russia was snow and ice as far as the eye could see.

Most of the flight was smooth except from northern Ohio till we had been in Canada for a little while. That part of the flight was like continuous roller coaster ride.

It was a code share flight with China Southern so all announcements were in English and Mandarin. Whenever announcements were made the in seat monitor would say "PA in progress" then it would go back to whatever you were doing. You could watch movies, TV programs, play games or listen to music. It allowed you to create your own personal play list.

They feed us one small snack, then after about 4 hours they feed us lunch you could choose from chicken, pork or pasta, and then we had a heavy snack (small sandwich, grapes, cookies and spring water), then about two hours before we landed they served our second lunch you could choose beef and rice or seafood pasta. All during the flight they provided water. It was a good flight, just long.