Heading Home

Hello everyone! We are in the final countdown to our journey home. I can't wait to be back in the states and get Tiany settled into a regular schedule...however, I can't say I'm too excited about the flight. Many of the folks we've been hanging out with here leave tomorrow, so we may be a bit lonely. We leave way too early in the morning on Sat. Have to be packed and in the lobby at 5:20 a.m. Ick. So this is likely to be my last post from China. We take the oath tomorrow for Tian's citizenship and have a bunch of last minute shopping to do, and then packing in the evening, so I don't imagine I'll be on the blog much. I'll probably do a final email check for the great adventure home begins.

I have more photos of the girls, and we are heading over in their matching outfits to the White Swan tomorrow for some red couch photos. But internet is seriously slow again this evening, and I just don't feel like fighting to get the photos up here.

I also got our cameras that we had sent to the SWI developed and have some additional LYG photos. Many have different kids in them, most I don't recognize, so it will be interesting to see if some of the rest of you do.

I wanted to do an update on Tiany (as Clio and I like to call her) before signing off. She is really blooming before our eyes. Despite the update that she wasn't sitting up, wasn't crawling, basically wasn't doing anything...she does all that and more. Each day she shows us a new skill. She crawls very well, both army style and a full crawl when she wants. She can pull up and balance a bit, but is wobbly still. With daddy's assistance she's has taken some tentative assisted steps. She grabs everything in site and flings it to the floor. She will eat anything and everything we put in her mouth and while she hadn't demonstrated this before, tonight she started putting food into her mouth, only big items, but it is great progress. She smiles and giggles a lot. And while she still is fairly fixated on mommy, she's decided that daddy is not such a bad guy after all. In fact, she won't go to sleep easily for mom, so that's become dad's job. While originally she wouldn't let me put her down, she graduated to sitting next to me, to crawling around in the area I'm in. She has also tolerated a high chair and stroller for brief periods. She is babbling all the time and we believe we heard both mama and dada come out of her mouth today. She loves her sister and wants to imitate everything she does. We are so happy with her progress and her pleasant happy demeanor. She is a great addition to our family.

She reminds me so much of her big sister in many ways, and yet is her own unique self. If you cover her mouth she looks so much like Clio, but then she has those pouting Angelia Jolie type lips. And she has the cutest, charming giggle. Very different from Clio's belly laugh.

Clio is still having a rough time. She has been eating better here in Guangzhou, but is now refusing naps which makes for very tempermental evenings and afternoons. She desperately needs to be back home and on a schedule and back with her friends. It is hard for her to not be the center of attention all the time anymore and she really misses interacting with kids her age. She's been a trooper, but her patience is gone and the novelty has worn thin. She's learned that she can exploit the fact that we are in a hotel room and many public places, so our discipline has gone down the tubes. Today she was throwing a huge fit in front of our hotel and I couldn't get her to calm down at all. A police man came over and waved his finger at her and that scared her a bit and she settled down. I was grateful to him actually. Everything was different here, the schedule, the rules, the bathrooms (she is terrified of the Chinese style ones), the food, the kids...so who can really blame her for being on edge. We just have to survive the 24 hours of travel and I think we'll be able to get back to normal.

If we were to come again, I don't know if I would bring Clio or not. We are traveling with several families who left kids behind and it's been really tough on them in a way we haven't experienced. Despite the challenges for us, I think overall it's been good for her to be here. I think the bottom line is that it's a hard trip anyway you do it.

Like when we returned home with Clio, I think it will take a while to settle into a new routine with Tiany in the mix. For instance, we had getting ready with the three of us down to a science and were pretty quick. Now we can't seem to do it in under 2 hours. It's more than doubled, because we can't trade off the way we did before and we end up each watching the kids while the other gets ready and then each getting a kid ready. Not very efficient, but we haven't learned how to have one of us get two ready at once. And with Tiany refusing to be put down most of the time, it's tough. So my hat is off to all you moms reading this with 2 or more...I've got some learning to do!

I'm not sure what else to add. There's been so much this trip and I've only captured a small part of it here. Dane is off getting a hair cut and massage. I had a foot massage last night which was GREAT! And about $10 for 90 minutes! We love China and feel so fortunate to be able to bring these little girls into our lives. But the trip also makes me realize how blessed we are to live in the US and how very much we have to learn about the Chinese culture. I find myself wondering what our girls will make of all this when they are grown and how they will feel about their birth country and their new home.

I'm going to call it a night. Thanks to all for the support, prayers and wishes during our journey. We can't wait to see you back at home and introduce our beautiful little girl to you!