Last Post from Beijing.

Aujourd’hui c’est Vendredi le premier Février 2008, notre voyage pour venir chercher notre fils est terminer. Le début d’une autre histoire commence, celle de notre famille qui inclut maintenant deux beaux enfants. Nous sommes vraiment choyées d’avoir eu la chance de pouvoir venir ici, en Chine afin d’avoir nos deux perles rares.
Notre voyage aura été une très belle aventure avec pleins de belles histoires à raconter. Nous sommes content de rentrer à la maison et de pouvoir partager le tout avec nos familles et amies.
Nous partons de Pékin Vendredi à 5 :30 pm, et arriverons à Vancouver Vendredi à 12 :30 pm pour ensuite décoller de Vancouver à 5 :00 pm et arriver à Edmonton à 7 :20pm.
A plus tard.
Dawn, Éva-Lynn, Samuel, Jean-Pierre.

Well, we leave for home this evening. Our flight leaves Beijing at 5:35 tonight (travel gods willing). We fly to Vancouver and then home, arriving there at 7:20 pm the same day that we left. This makes it look like our trip will only take us 2 hours, but it is a little longer than that. I think from here to Vancouver is 11 hours. We have 4 hours to do immigration, customs and get checked in for our domestic flight and then a 2 or 3 hour flight home. Since our little man falls asleep anywhere and everywhere (he fell asleep as I carried him through the Forbidden City and he fell asleep as Jean-Pierre carried him through the Yashow Market) and he doesn’t seemed too bothered by flying, I’m not too concerned about the flights home. Of course the other reason I’m not too worried is that since Jie-Jie prefers to be with Jean-Pierre when we are doing something new or unknown I won’t have to deal with too much of the behaviours that may or may not come up J.

And so our voyage to Samuel ends and the Samuel we imagined during the wait has vanished into the real, living, breathing, laughing Jie-Jie. He is a child infinitely more joyous, more loving and more wonderful then we could have ever conceived of. This trip has been a truly magical adventure, only made better by having shared it with both our children. It is common knowledge in the adoption community that the time in China is just survival. The child is traumatized, the parents are traumatized and no one is really able to do more than just make it through each day until you can get back home where you can start getting to know your real child and being building family relationships. We just did not experience that this time around. Our family and our son have been doing so much more than surviving, we’ve been thriving. It truly seems like Jie-Jie has always been with us. All the huddles that we jumped on our way to this little man were so, so worth it as they brought us to our sweet son. Couldn't not post this picture. (J-P)

Hutong Tour & Yashow Market

For our last full day in China we went on a rickshaw tour of an old section of Beijing. Neighbourhoods like these are called ‘Hutong’ in Chinese. According to our guide, ‘Hutong’ means water well. We actually visited inside one woman’s house. Her place is about 150 years old and she has lived there for about 40 years. She was given the place by her father. The woman and her husband are both retired ‘workers’ (she didn’t get specific). They live on a pension which is mostly provided by the government. They are considered a middle to low income family as are most people who live in Hutong areas. The areas are being ripped down slowly but surely to make way for buildings which can house greater numbers of people and which can have more modern conveniences such as toilets and running water. The families who live in these areas use public toilets since there really isn’t any way to get plumbing to the residences. After the tour we headed down to the Yashow Market. Although we didn’t know it, the market was only a few blocks from our hotel. We bought a mask to add to our collection and a couple of other things, but we didn’t find the vendors as hungry to bargain as the ones we met last year at the ‘Silk Market’ (a different market in Beijing).

Tiananmen Square and The Forbidden City

Even under renovation, the Forbidden City is beautiful. There weren’t many other visitors today either so we really got to take our time (as much as the cold would allow) and absorb the atmosphere of the place. Ahh…..

Today’s tour wasn’t as much fun as the Great Wall because there is a lot of walking with no real ‘pay off’ for the kiddies. I carried Jie-Jie in the baby sling and Jean-Pierre ended up carrying Éva on his shoulders. Our guide knew lots of interesting little tidbits of information which made the visit that much more interesting. While the kiddies napped, mom and I went by cab to visit The Temple of Heaven. Wow. The temple and the stairs were so beautifully framed by a clear deep blue sky. The grounds weren’t busy so we took our time walking around the temple and along the wooded walk ways. It was a magical way to spend a couple of hours with mom.
At one point we asked a girl to take our picture. She couldn't get the picture staight, so she asked her dad to do it. Once they had taken our picture the girl asked if the family could take their picture with us because 'they were very curious about foreigners'. We obliged, but when it came time to take the picture, the mother and the daughter snuggled up to me and pushed mom out of the way. It was terrible. On top of that, the mother was giggling like a 11 year old school girl the whole time.

The Great, Great Wall

The kids absolutely loved The Great Wall today. Not that I’m sure that they knew it was the great wall however. Éva said that it was Cinderella’s castle and Jie-Jie seemed to see it as a big challenge to be overcome. Éva and Baba went to the second or third tower (the one where you can get your picture put onto a little card). Jie-Jie and I went up to the first tower and that was enough for me. He wanted to run along the battlements and ‘walk’ up all the stairs. It was hilarious. The wind was blowing so hard at some places and the slope was so steep that he was pushed backwards as he tried to move forward. On the stairs he had his own special style. I held his upper body as he lent back into me and he kind of popped his feet up each stair. Cute, but a little disconcerting for Mama because he could have pushed me over backwards. Anyway, we had a wonderful time and the kids are totally wiped out tonight. It’s 7:30 pm and they are both snoring already. Yeah!

Jean-Pierre has gone out with the two other men in our group to a Chinese Acrobatic show (at least that’s what they are calling it). Mom and I are going to go tomorrow night with the little girl who is travelling in our group and maybe one of the other moms. I have to say that I was a little nervous about being left alone with the two kids. Last week Jean-Pierre just went downstairs to do some paperwork in the guide’s room and all hell broke loose in our room when he left. Jie-Jie was almost hysterical, Éva was crying her head off (lord knows why since she isn’t usually bothered by him leaving) and neither one of them wanted me to comfort the other. I was holding them both in my arms at one point and they starting whaling on each other. Éva was yelling, ‘No, no Sam. Stop it, no Sam’, and he was crying, ‘boo yao mei-mei’ (no want little sister) over and over again. It was ugly. Mom was in the room with me, but there wasn’t anything she could do to help because they both screamed louder if I gave them to her. I finally put Éva in the crib with her precious stuffed elephant and was then able to calm Jie-Jie down enough that he started to play. Eventually they both started playing, but I had to keep them entertained so they wouldn’t think about Baba and go off again. Tonight, by contrast, went extremely well. Mom stayed in the room with me again (Lord she is a brave soul) so she could play with one (yes, they both wanted to play with her tonight) while I got the other ready for bed. There was a little whining and some incanting of Baba, but nothing got out of control.

We hit three factories today. The pearl factory, the closiné factory and the jade factory. We went to town at the closiné factory, but the others I could have done without. I did buy Jie-Jie a little rooster at the jade factory since that is his Chinese zodiac sign.

Oh yes, we drove by the Olympic Village today as well on our way back from the wall. The two stadiums are amazing. We had heard all about ‘The Birds’ Nest’, but there is another stadium right beside it called ‘The Water Cube’ where all the aquatic events will be held. It is an incredible building. The whole building is built in such a way that it absorbs the energy from the sun for over 10 hours a day. That energy will be used to heat the pools, run the lights, etc. It looks like a big cube wrapped in bubble wrap. Very interesting. Tomorrow is Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City and we are trying to get the guide to take us to The Temple of Heaven. We’ll see.

Doctor Day / Le Docteur

Nous sommes allés voir un médecin aujourd'hui, car nous devions le faire avant de rentrer au Canada. Samuel est en bonne santé, mais il est très petit. Je dis très très petit. Nous savions déjà, et cela n'est pas très important, mais il n'entre même pas dans la charte du poids / grandeur pour son age. Il mesure 89 centimètres, et il pèse 24 livres. On va s'occuper qu'il grossisse un peu a la maison.
Lors du départ de Nanjing il y a eu une tempête de neige, et l'aéroport était fermé pour plusieurs heures. Notre vol, prévu pour midi, nous avons décollé a neuf heure le soir. Je peux vous dire que la journée a été longue. Les enfants étaient très fatiguer mais ils récupèrent quand même bien.
Demain nous allons voir la grande muraille de Chine. Alors bonne journée pour l'instant et a plus tard.
Well, our little man is officially a little man. He doesn’t even make the charts in height or weight. He weighs 11 kg (24 pounds) and is 90 cm (2.9 feet) tall. We knew from his file that he was VERY small for his age, but I thought he was at least in the 10th percentile. The doctor said that she wasn’t sure if his size was due to malnutrition or genetics. Since the 3 other children who have left the same orphanage as MingJie are all big and healthy I would say MingJie’s size is more likely due to genetics. We don’t see signs of food deprivation in him. He eats normal amounts of food for his age and he doesn’t hoard or seem desperate when he sees it. We’ll get some blood and stool tests done when we get home (as is the usual routine anyway) and that will tell us if there are any problems.

The doctor also checked out his eye. The cyst is far away from the pupil and doesn’t appear to be obstructing his vision. We’ll need to see an ophthalmologist to get any further information though. His vision seems to be pretty good though. He can spot cars, buses and trucks from at least a mile away and he can find Baba in any crowd!

Tomorrow will be a long day. We’re going to the Great Wall and to a bunch of factories. We leave at nine and will be back around 4:00 pm.

Free Internet in Beijing!

Hello,

We are all settled into the Poly Plaza Hotel in Beijing and we’ve been to The Summer Palace already. Our room here is so much larger than the one in Nanjing and the hotel has several good restaurants. Yeah.

You’ll never believe what happened on our trip here. We lived it and can’t believe it ourselves. We have been SO INCREDIBLY UNLUCKY travelling on this trip. Colette, you may not want to read the rest…..

The morning we were due to leave Nanjing, we woke up to the largest snowstorm they had seen in 25 years. Very wet, very slippery conditions. The van that is supposed to take us to the airport is slowly making his way to the hotel, but will never make it in time for our flights. The guide can’t reach the airport to see if flights are getting out nor can she reach the agency to get them to help us. As we hang out in the lobby, the guide books three taxis that are willing to get us to the airport. Oh yeah, all the highways are closed so we’ll have to take secondary roads. Almost two hours after we left our rooms, as our luggage is being loaded into the cabs, the van shows up. We cheer and get on board. The trip from the hotel to the airport should take just under an hour. 5 hours later we arrive at Nanjing airport. There is nothing flying in or out. The guide had cancelled our 12:00 flight and booked us on one for 5:00pm (we’ve been up since 6:00am). We arrive at the airport around 3:00pm which is great timing for a 5:00 flight. Of course it doesn’t leave, but flight are starting to get out. At 4:30 we check our luggage in for an 8:00 pm flight. We’ve now been ‘travelling’ for over 12 hours. Jean-Pierre has been pacing the airport with Jie-Jie the entire time we’ve been there because, well, he’s a busy little guy. Around 9:00 pm we board our flight, wait, wait, wait and then finally take off at 9:30. Jie-Jie is so overtired that he is screaming his head off on the plane (luckily no one was sitting beside Jean-Pierre) and the stewardesses are losing their minds trying to come up with ways to ‘help’ Jean-Pierre calm the baby (they just needed to leave him alone, but that’s very hard for Chinese people to do when a baby is in distress). The flight takes off and Jie-Jie falls instantly asleep. Eva is not far behind and we have a lovely flight. We got to our hotel around midnight. Checked in without a hitch and tumbled into bed. I have to say that our guide was EXCELLENT during this whole adventure. She was on the phone most of the day doing everything she could to get us to Beijing. We were lucky to have her.

Today we visited the Summer Palace, had lunch and then went to a silk factory so the kiddies missed their naps again today. Jie-Jie actually fell asleep in Jean-Pierre’s arms during lunch. Eva fell asleep every time we got into the van. Poor little babies. Tomorrow we go to a clinic for Jie-Jie’s medical. It’s part of the process to immigrate him into Canada. It’s actually really a joke since he’s been tested up the wazo in order to be adopted. Anyway, our appointment is at 11:00 and we hope to be out by 12:30. Jie-Jie’s appointment should only take a half hour, but we then have to wait for the other two kiddies travelling with us to get done.

Last Post From Nanjing / Depart pour Pekin

Demain matin nous partons pour Pekin. Nous allons demeurer au Poly Plaza Hotel. Nous savons pas pour l'instant la situation de l'internet la-bas, donc il est possible que nous ne soyons pas capable de continuer notre blog. Nous verrons une fois rendu a Pekin....

Tomorrow morning we head out for Beijing. We'll be staying at the Poly Plaza hotel. We don't know what the internet service will be like from there so this may be our last post from China. Yes, I follow blogs and I hate it when they don't post during the second week too, but I'm not willing to pay $15.00 a day for an internet connection. I'll post when we get home. We are due to arrive Feb. 1 at 7:20 pm on AC242 out of Vancouver. For those of you who would like, we would love to see you at the airport to welcome our son home. We just ask that Jie-Jie's arrival is a quiet one and I can't promise to stay and visit too, too long :-). Check back on Sunday and Monday to see if we are posting from Beijing.

Have You..... Avez vous deja....

Ever traveled with two almost three year olds? Ever thrown them right out of their routine, given them candy for snacks and then pushed them around in strollers all morning so they got little to no exercise during the day? Ever forced two almost three year olds (both of which are adjusting to very new situations) who don’t know each other, who don’t speak the same language and who are worried about losing the attention of a special parent into a confined space with little or nothing to do? Ever spent the morning in a hotel room with one almost three year old screaming her head off for 20 minutes because she wants an elephant that she’s only allowed to sleep with and then turned around and dealt with crying from the other almost three year old because he wanted to go on the escalators, didn’t want to wait and/or didn’t want to leave Toys R Us?

Yet, have you ever sat at breakfast in a different country and found yourself looking around the table and realizing that your family was complete, that you had two bright, curious, beautiful children that had entered your life as if by magic? Ever felt so grateful to the people who had been guiding and protecting them before they came to you that your chest hurt? Ever watched your children bursting with laughter as they ran across the marble floor of a hotel lobby toward the revolving doors you had walked through first feeling worried, then feeling relieved and now…feeling like a family?

Ever wondered what you had done and at the same time wondered how things could have ever been any more wonderful…..

Francais

Avez vous déjà voyagé avec deux enfants de presque trois ans? Avez-vous déjà changer leurs routines complètement, leur donnant des bonbons comme collations et les pousser dans une poussette toute l’avant-midi. Avez-vous déjà eu deux enfants de presque trois ans qui sont les deux dans de nouvelles situations, qui ne peuvent communiquer ensemble et qui sont inquiets de perdre l’attention d’un parent, pris ensemble dans un endroit restreint d’une chambre d’hôtel? Avez-vous déjà passer l’avant midi dans une chambre d’hôtel avec un enfant qui pleure a tue tête pendant 20 minutes pour avoir un toutou qu’elle n’est supposé avoir que le soir ou pendant ses siestes ou l’autre qui pleure parce qu’il veut aller dans les escaliers roulants ou ne voulait pas quitter un certain magasin de jouet?

Par contre, avez-vous déjà été assied en mangeant le petit déjeuner, dans un pays lointain en regardant alentours de vous et vu votre belle famille complète, avec deux beaux enfants, curieux, sociable, qui sont entrer dans votre vies par magie. Avez-vous déjà voulu remercier les gens qui ont tellement pris bien soins, protéger et guider vos enfants afin qu’ils soient prêt pour vous. Chaque petit sourire, chaque petite caresse, chaque regard efface tout doute de notre esprit et nous savons instantanément que nous avons pris la bonne décision de devenir une famille.

Temple Visit

This morning we headed out to visit a temple. We went by cab. Since there are two families, we went in one cab and the guide and the other family went in the other. The cabs dropped us off at different entrances and we never met up. That was actually fine with us. We enjoyed the temple and a little shopping along the side streets.

We headed back to the hotel around 11:00 and then went for lunch in a little restaurant behind the hotel. This place had plastic models of the the menu items right in their front window. I had beef in my noodles.

After the kiddies had their naps Eva had a major meltdown so Jean-Pierre and Jie-Jie went out so she could scream in peace. After they came back we began to see our little Jie-Jie's monkey side come out. It has been three days now and his real character is emerging. Holy cow, he can be hell on wheels. At dinner he ripped a flower off the center piece, threw his spoon across the table, cried and ripped up a napkin, all within 10 minutes. This was all while he was tied into a highchair :-0. He wasn't even being 'bad'. He just thought it was all just so funny.

Dr. Sun Yat-san .

Bonjour, aujourd'hui nous sommes alle visiter la place ou le Dr. Sun Yat-san a ete enterre. C'est un beau parc dans une magifique montagne. Splendide mais beaucoup trop de marches.

Nous sommes retourner du parc vers midi trente et nos deux enfants ont sauter le diner pour aller droit au lit pour la sieste. Ils s'etaient endormient en auto sur le chemin du retour.

Samuel continu de faire du progres. Il a eu droit a son premier bain avec sa soeur et papa. Il n'a pas aimer au debut mais il a terminer son bain en etant confortable dans l'eau. Nous sommes aller souper dans un restaurant que nous avons trouver Lundi. C'etait tres bon. Ils nous ont montrer le poisson vivant avant de le faire cuire afin de nous montrer que le poisson est tres frais.

Une bonne journee en general encore, demain nous avons une autre visite en matine.

A plus tard.

Hello All,

I didn’t post last night because my son wanted me to hold his hand through the bars of his crib. I wasn’t going to pass that opportunity up, so I laid on the bed for 45 minutes with his little hand in mine. Heaven. Since those 45 minutes happened to be around 8:00 pm and since I need to keep moving around that time or fall asleep, I consequently…fell asleep and didn’t update Jie-Jie’s blog. So, worth it. Of course it is now 4:00 am and I can no longer sleep :-0.

So, today we visited Dr. Sun-Yat-Sen’s tomb. It was stunning. It felt so good to be in a quiet, park-like setting surrounded by huge trees and green bushes. We felt fantastic as we pushed our children’s strollers along the wide ‘avenue’ toward the tomb. Then we saw the stairs :-0. Of course we knew there were 392 stairs up to the tomb, but to see them rising up in front of us was a little daunting….Jean-Pierre carried Jie-Jie in his stroller up the stairs and I held the handle part of Eva’s stroller while mom carried the bottom part. It helped that there were some parts of the climb where we could push the strollers up a ramp that ran between sets of stairs. Anyway, we made it both up and down without anyone getting hurt or throwing out any body parts. That evening we went for supper at our new favourite restaurant just down the street from our hotel. We ate there for the first time on Sunday. That was quite an experience. Sunday morning Jean-Pierre had been out scouting for places to eat because the suppers at the hotel are very expensive and not very good. We went out for a good meal with our guide one of our first nights here, but that restaurant wasn’t heated (we could see our breath as we ate) so we didn’t want to eat there again. Anyway, we decided to try the restaurant that Jean-Pierre had seen. We were very concerned about what we might get though because we had had quite an experience at lunch.

At lunch that day we decided that we just wanted a plain old bowl of noodles so we struck out in search of some. We ended up in a little ‘restaurant’ in the subway system of the city. The person who spoke token English was placed before us and with much hand gesturing and laughing we were finally able to order noodles with 'diced chicken'. They diced the WHOLE chicken. To our surprise, we found feet, heads and eyes in our noodles. Imagine if we had ordered beef and noodles! I have to say, Mom was a real trooper. She ate a lot of her chicken. I ate all the noodles and not much of the chicken. Jean-Pierre sat there with a glazed look on his face and didn’t eat much of anything .

So, you can see why we were slightly hesitant to order when supper came around. Anyway, we were tired and hungry so we jumped in with both feet. The restaurant brought out their token English speaker, but she actually spoke English very well. Not a bad start. Jean-Pierre insisted on having something with chicken or beef, but our ‘guide’ kept suggesting fish. We finally gave in and ended up ordering fish, rice and vegetables. The woman was a little worried because she didn’t think that would be enough food, but we insisted so she placed our order. A few minutes later, a young waiter came over to our table with a LIVE fish in a basket. We started freaking out. We figured he was going to cut it up right there and we’d have to eat it. Our reaction had him scurrying back to the kitchen, likely wondering what the hell those foreigners were going on about. The vegetables came out first. I think it was bok-cho. It was delicious. Next was the rice with shrimp, peas and corn. Also very good. Finally the fish arrived. It was both gorgeous and delicious. It was kind of deep fried with an incredible sweet and sour sauce on it. Wonderful.

O.k., O.k., now the good stuff. Jie-Jie continues to settle in beautifully. We are reaching the magical 3 day mark and it shows. We had a few tears yesterday when he woke up from his nap, but that may have been because he had wet himself (perfectly understandable since he hadn’t had the chance to pee before he fell asleep in the taxi and then we put him right down for his afternoon sleep). Anyway, wet pants gave us a good opportunity to give him a bath. We had made overtures toward bathing on Tuesday afternoon, but he wasn’t having any of that. He went running from the bathroom like his pants were on fire when Jean-Pierre tried to take them off and he wouldn’t step foot in there again while Eva and Jean-Pierre were in the bathtub. Since he was clean when we got him, I’m sure he wasn’t afraid of bathing. I think his reaction had more to do with the feelings of vulnerability being naked bring.

Anyway, he cried a little and insisted on sitting on Jean-Pierre’s knee for the first half of the bath, but by the end he was enjoying himself. I was glad to finally have the chance to get him naked so I could get some cream on his dry, dry skin.

He seemed more relaxed and comfortable once the bath was finished too. That evening he was cuddling more with Jean-Pierre and he sat on my knee to watch some TV. That little boy sure loves his Baba. Jie-Jie has never rejected me outright, but he has really bonded with Jean-Pierre. He searches for his baba anytime he goes out of sight and it’s so beautiful to see the way his face light up when Jean-Pierre comes toward him. (I have to say that Jean-Pierre’s face gets quite a glow too). Jie-Jie also prefers Jean-Pierre when he is unsure of a situation. At the moment Baba comes first, Mama second and Lao-Lao is starting to come up a close third. I can’t imagine that first place will ever change now. It’s so precious.

Adoption Day

Today we went back to Civil Affairs for the offical adoption of Ming Jie. We actually went in the morning, but there was a snow storm around Danyang so the orphanage director and the nannies couldn't get to Nanjing for 10:30. That meant that we had to go back this afternoon at 1:30. Ah, hello, our kiddies nap from 12:30 to 2:00. So, both our children missed their naps today. They did very, very well considering how tired they were. Jie Jie had a little more trouble then Eva, but his behaviour was manageable. At one point though he started spitting. He thought it was hilarious. We had the guide give him a good talking to about that one.

Ming Jie was happy to see the orphanage staff, but he was pretty much glued to his Baba the whole time we were at Civil Affairs. He went into the director's arms once, but he ran straight back to Jean-Pierre right afterwards.

He began to cry a couple of times today, but we were able to gently distract him out of it. Tonight though he had a good cry as we were putting his pajamas on. It's so heartbreaking. His bottom lip begins to quiver then large tears start to roll down his cheeks. He tries to hold it in because he's been told that 'big boys don't cry', but he just can't. Jean-Pierre takes Jie-Jie in his arms and tells him it's alright to cry and he begins to sob. Tonight he cried for about 5 minutes and then he fell asleep.

Ming Jie talks alot. He was walking around the hotel room singing this morning. He's started to say, 'pee pee' when he needs to go to the bathroom now instead of the Chinese phrase. He greets all the waitresses we meet with a smile and a very charming, 'Aiyee ya' (Hi auntie). They always laugh and ask him how he is. It's adorable.

So, he is bonding, he is eating, he slept through the night last night without a peep, and he's done his 'business'. He has not shut down at all and although he has moments when he feels overwhelmed, he is generally happy, curious and full of life.

He and Eva started to pay a bit more attention to each other today. They mostly parallel play, but they did a few things together. Ming Jie is amazing at sharing and his actions are very kind and gentle. He knows the 19 month old girl that was adopted by the family travelling with us and he is wonderful with her. He strokes her cheeks and gives her whatever he is playing with whenever they are together. Tonight at supper he was eating a piece of watermelon when the other family came into the restaurant for their meal. As soon as he saw the baby he gave her his last little piece of watermelon. He doesn't let Eva push him around, but he is gentle and kind about it. While we were playing in the room tonight, she danced by him and gave him a kiss on the head. Mom saw her do it, so when Eva told me about it later I asked her if she loves Sam. She said, 'yep'. She didn't say, 'I love him as long as you're not holding him', which would have been the full truth, but she is starting to bond with her ge-ge.

Francais

Nous sommes alle au bureau des affaires civiles afin de finaliser les papiers de l'adoption. Maintenant, Samuel est officielement notre fils. Nous avions rendez vous pour 10:30 ce matin mais le directeur de l'orphelinat n'a pu etre present du a une tempete de neige au nord de la province. Notre rendez vous a donc ete remis en apres midi. Ce qui etait supposer etre la sieste de nos petit devenu le rendez vous. Malgre la fatigue, les deux enfants ont quand meme tres bien fait ca. Sam a pleurer une ou deux fois mais etait facilement consolable en lui faisant changer d'idee. Ce soir en mettant son pyjama, il a pleurer un peu plus. C'est tellement touchant quand il est triste. Il bouge la levre du bas un peu et ses yeux deviennet triste pour ensuite faire couler de grosse larmes. Je le prends dans mes bras afin de le consoler et il a pleurer pour environ 15 minutes pour enfin s'endormir dans mes bras. La plupart de la journee par contre il est quand meme assez joyeux et curieux.

Il est vraiment attachant. Il est tout petit, une vrai peanut. Il aime vraiment son papa pour l'instant mais a jouer un peu avec maman aussi. Il me fait beaucoup penser a Edouard, le fils a mes amies, on pense a vous.

Il a commencer a dire pipi pour faire son besoin. Je lui lisait un livre avec des images et il repetait les mots que je lui mentionnait. Eva et Sam vont bien esemble, ils jouent un a cote del'autre sans pour autant jouer ensemble pour l'instant. Eva a donner un bis sur Sam une fois. Elle commence a aimer sa compagnie. Donc une bonne journee en general, demain nous irons visiter. Je peux ire vos commentaires, mais si vous ne pouver utiliser le site pour nous donner des nouvelles, vous pouvez toujours utiliser notre adresse habituelle qui est dawnjp@telus.net

Bye

Gotcha Pictures

We weren't sure that pictures would load onto blogger so we put flickr onto our site. The pictures seem to be working so, here they are. By the way, we're receiving all the comments from the blog now.

Gottcha Day

Nous avons maintenant Samuel avec nous. Ce matin, nous sommes arrive au bureau des affaires civils vers 10:15 et Sam est arrive vers 10:40.
Ils n'a pas pleurer et semblait assez joyeux. Nous lui avons donne du jus avec quelques bonbons et un sac a dos avec une voiture et telephone. Nous avons signer quelques papiers et pris une photos officielle. Demain nous retournons pour finaliser les papiers.
Une fois dans la chambre, nous avons donner Sam et Eva un peu de nourriture et c'est par la suite que Samuel a commencer a pleurer. Il accepte d'etre consoler par Dawn ou moi. Lors du repas du souper, il appelait baba (papa) a chaque fois que j'allait chercher de la nouriture au buffet. Il demande pour faire un pipi (quatre fois deja).
J'aime vraiment pouvoir etre pres de lui. Eva va bien, elle semble aimer avoir un frere et prends ca assez bien.
En tout cas, ils sont au lit tout les deux. Eva dort bien tandis que Samuel regarde un peu partout encore. On vous donnera d'autres nouvelles.


It’s 2:15 pm and our two babies are finally asleep so I have a few minutes to write. I plan to write the entries in Microsoft Word whenever I get a moment and then we’ll publish to the blog once the kiddies are in bed for the night. So, although I wrote this entry at 2:15, it won’t be published on the blog until tonight. Sorry guys, two kids doesn’t leave much time for writing!

Gottcha was truly a dream come true. More beautiful and calm then I ever dare hope for. We arrived at the Civil Affairs office about 30 minutes before the children. We signed paperwork and waited for our children (there is one other family travelling with us here in the province). We were on the ground floor of the building, in a room that had large windows facing the parking lot. As we watched anxiously out the windows, Jean-Pierre suddenly said, ‘Here they come’. Ming Jie was being carried by his nanny and the other little girl was being carried by the orphanage director. My first thought was, ‘He is so gorgeous’. There was NO doubt that it was our Samuel. I was so excited to actually see all those people live that we have been studying in pictures for so long that I couldn’t help but wave to them. They came around to the door and put Ming Jie down.

We sent Eva to him right away and she gave him the little backpack we had brought. He took the truck out right away and began to check it out. Jean-Pierre was beside him right away and Ming Jie was fine. We lured him away from his nanny with candy and a drink, which he sucked up like there was no tomorrow, and we began to play with his truck. He was quiet, but he laughed several times and did not seem bothered that his caregivers were on the other side of the room. He let us touch him and finally Jean-Pierre picked him up. He was fine with that.

We went upstairs and had our picture taken with him (it is needed for the adoption paperwork) and he was fine with all that. Jie-Jie started to get upset at one point when Jean-Pierre tried to take his coat off of him. Jie-Jie didn’t like that, so we left it on.

We left and rode back to the hotel. Jie-Jie was so intrigued by all the buses, cars and bicycles. He was bright eyed and curious about everything. In the hotel room he still didn’t want us to remove any of his clothing and we obliged, but it was starting to cause a bit of a problem because he has SO MANY clothes on that he was getting overheated. On top he’s wearing a coat, a padded cotton vest, two v-neck sweaters, a heavy wool turtle neck and a t-shirt. On the bottom he has two pair of wool pants and a pair of long johns. He was cooking, but he didn’t want us to take anything off. He was fascinated with the view outside our hotel room and stood at the window pointing buses, cars, bikes, etc out to us.

We decided that both kiddies needed to get some lunch into them so they could have their naps. We sat them on the floor of the hotel room and fed them some eggs. Ming-Jie ate quite a bit and then he started to cry. It was so heartbreaking. He looked out the window and little tears began to roll down his face. I don’t know what the trigger was, but he sobbed his heart out for the next hour or so until he finally fell asleep. I held him for a while and then Jean-Pierre held him. I imagine he will still be quite upset when he wakes up. On the very positive side, Jie-Jie accepts either one of us and seems to understand (in theory anyway) that we are Mama and Baba. He accepts comfort from either of us. Jean-Pierre is thrilled about that and I’ll be lucky if I get to touch the kid more than two or three times during the next six months! Seeing the glow on Jean-Pierre face will make it worth it though.

As usual, Eva did very well through the whole processes. She is a little jealous, she was seeking some attention by jumping around the hotel room more vigorously than she usually does and she cries whenever one of us leaves the room for any reason (of course she was doing that before Jie-Jie arrived too). She is a least a head taller than him. We’ll have our work cut out for us over the next two weeks, but we’re off to a good start.

Thank god my mom is with us though. At the Civil Affairs office she looked after all the stuff, videoed the entire Gotcha moment and kept an eye on Eva while we talked to the orphanage staff. Right at this moment Eva is napping in my mom’s room because Jie-Jie didn’t like the curtains closed in ours.

So, even though he is upset now and is likely beginning to shut down, we feel so lucky to have been given a long glimpse at Civil Affairs as to who our son is. We’ll now just need to wait for him to re-emerge as he gets more comfortable with his new situation.
72 hours, 72 hours, 72 hours from now.

Little Update:

Jie-Jie cried a little on and off during the afternoon today. He laughed alot too. He has started attaching very strongly to Jean-Pierre. At supper tonight Jie-Jie called 'Baba' and looked for Jean-Pierre each time he went to the buffet for more food. In fact, I'm not sure that Jean-Pierre will be able to write tonight because he is holding Jie-Jie until he falls asleep. Our little man ate like a real champ and seemed to enjoy everything going on around him at the restaurant. At one point he thought it was super funny to spit his food onto the table. He smiled and laughed like a little devil each time we told him to stop. Once we decided to ignore it, he stopped. We have been successful in getting his clothes off him and some pajamas on. Feety Pj's seem to be something new for him. He kept picking up his feet as if trying to see if the feet would come off. So cute.
We are totally in love with this little charmer already.

And Our Luck Continues....Et ca continu...

Just a quick post to let everyone know we made it.
-Been here since Friday night. Is now Sunday night. We meet 'Jie, Jie' tomorrow.
-Flight to Vancouver was delayed due to mechanical problems. Sat over an hour in the plane on the tarmack, then over an hour back in the terminal, then 45 minutes in the plane again while they de-iced the wings.
-Just made connection to Shanghai.
-Luggage didn't make it onto the flight. Computer was in the luggage.
-Received luggage tonight at 5:00 pm. Just in time to get ready for Samuel tomorrow.
-Guide is Juliette. Very sweet. Sick with a cold at the moment so have hardly seen her over the past two days. We're managaing fine however. She knows alot about Samuel (a.k.a. 'Jie (Jeeay)-Jie'). She talked to the orphanage last Thursday and was told that the kids are very excited about meeting their Mamas and Babas because they believe they will have tons of toys and eat lots and lots of candy once they are with us. Went out and bought more candy and cookies :-O. Don't want to disappoint.
-Weather is cold and rainy. Chinese people think that I am an abusive mother for not dressing my child in more clothing in this cold weather. I want to put a sign on Eva that says, 'OUR LUGGAGE HASN'T ARRIVED YET!' Supposed to clear up tomorrow (now that Eva's warmer coat, hat and mitts have arrived).
-Don't have a clue what to expect tomorrow. We will meet them at 10:30 at the Civil Affairs office. Starting to get excited, nervous and terrified.
-Can't see our blog from here and can't read any comments that have been posted since we left. We've changed the settings and will now receive comments through the e-mail, so comment away.
-Pictures and news tomorrow. Please send positive vibes our way.

Juste quelques mots pour vous dire que nous sommes arrivé vendredi comme prévus.
Le vol en direction de Vancouver a été retardé de trois heures due a des ennuis mécanique,
Nous avons juste eu le temps de prendre le vol pour Shanghai mais pas nos bagages. Nous venons juste de les recevoir (deux jours en retard).
Notre guide est Juliette et elle est très gentille. Nous ne l’avons pas vu beaucoup pour l’instant et elle a un mauvais rhume.
Elle a parler au directeur de l’orphelinat afin de savoir comment vont les enfants, et le directeur a dit que les enfants vont bien et qu’ils ont hâtes de rencontrer leurs nouveaux parents. Ils croient qu’ils auront beaucoup de jouets et de bonbons…
Eva vas très bien. Elle a très bien fait ça dans l’avion. Elle est encore très fatiguer et elle se réveille très tôt le matin. Elle prendra quelques jours pour se rétablir.
En tout cas, demain est la rencontre avec Samuel a 10 :30.
Nous publierons des photos et nouvelles.
A plus tard.

Quelle semaine! What a week!

OMG!
What a week it has been so far. Dawn was in Montreal to sign some paperwork and receive the passports and visas from Formons. Well guess what.
No passports and no visas.
The original visas that Formons had asked had expired and now China did not want to issue new ones because our passport are expiring within six month of when we come back.
Dawn ran everywhere, our wonderful sponsor made many phone calls and of course so did Formons. Dawn was supposed to come back from Montreal this morning but we had to change that because she went to Ottawa to pick up the visas and passports. Thanks so much Jen.
So as I write, her plane from Ottawa is about to take off inbound Calgary and I will pick her up in Edmonton at 7:30 tonight.
So the good news is that everybody is leaving tomorrow morning as planned.

Quelle semaine!
Dawn était à Montréal afin de ramasser les passeport et visas de l'agence d'adoption. Arrivé à l'agence, il n'y avait pas de passeport, n'y de visas. Ceux que l'agence avait réussi à avoir auparavant était périmées et la Chine ne voulait pas en émettre de nouveaux car nos passeport expire avant le six mois requis de la fin du voyage. Un peu compliqué mais le tout pour dire que nous avions besoin de ces visas. Pas de visas, pas de Samuel.
En tout cas, après plusieurs appels de notre agence, ils ont finalement réussi à obtenir les fameux visas pour tout le monde.

Dawn est présentement sur un vol de Ottawa en direction de Calgary et j'irai à Edmonton la chercher à 7:30 ce soir.
Donc la bonne nouvelle est que nous partons tous demain matin.

Little Update

Well, we've been running around like headless chickens over the past two days, but things are coming together. We have the plane tickets in our possession. All three bags and all three carry-ons are packed (except for the last minute stuff). Emergency numbers and questions for the orphanage director have been printed off and put into the file folder with the 'millions' of other papers we have to be sure to bring.

The fridge is pretty much cleaned out and we have marinated beef in the freezer so we'll be able to at least make a couple of half decent meals when we get back. Last time, Jean-Pierre's mom parked her motorhome in our yard and proceeded to cook and clean for us over the next 3 days. Eating good meals and not needing to expend too much energy greatly decreased our recuperation time with Éva. I remember people phoning us and asking (with copious amounts of sympathy in their voices), 'So, how's it going?' They were so surprised when we said that we were feeling great. Unfortunately, his mom is in Florida this time around, so there'll be no motorhome in our driveway when we get back :-).

To the right of this post, you'll see that I've posted our itinerary. I'll add more details when I have them. Above the itinerary you'll see that Jean-Pierre has added 'Flicker' for pictures. Last time we were in China, we couldn't add pictures to the posts. So, the pictures will appear in the Flicker box. I think you just have to click on it to make it work. There is a picture of Samuel in it at the moment.

Finally, while you'll see pictures of Éva, Jean-Pierre, Samuel and I during the trip, you'll also see pictures of the lady below. That's my mom and she's coming with us on the trip. She HATES seeing pictures of herself and will likely complain when she finds out I have put one of her on the blog. Luckily, her computer is away being repaired at the moment so she may never learn about this little indiscretion :-).