The kids waiting for their medicals
We even have our own little section at the clinic to wait in.
Clan Chen is beautiful, even in the rain
Ethan was mesmerized by the artist carving our name chops.
Typical breakfast for us in the room
Nathan keeping Ethan from a collision!
Anna and her jie jie have got this!
Toby rocking the trampoline park – my favorite activity when it’s 100 degrees!
Anna high-fiving on her way around the carousel
Ethan and Noah enjoying the car ride
The most amazing menu translations ever.
First time at the pool for Ethan and Anna!
Heading into the tomb of the Nanyue king
The dim sum place we actually liked even though the entire restaurant stared at our family the ENTIRE time.
The fish market just outside the entrance to our cruise – who needs an aquarium?!
Starting our cruise!
The Pearl River at night
Since we’re in a fast province as far as the adoption goes, we have to keep moving. The next morning, we had the kids’ medicals. Each child has to pass a medical clearance in order to enter the United States. They do a very perfunctory ear, nose, and throat exam, a very quick eye exam, a height and weight, and 2 minute physical with a pediatrician, and then they take a blood sample for a TB test. We have to wait 48 hours for the results of the TB and if they are positive, we have to go back for a chest x-ray.
I was dreading the medical. After the day we had with Anna’s foster mom, Anna was completely rejecting me, and I didn’t want to be the one who took her for a blood draw. We sent an emergency prayer request to the family about this Wednesday night, and I was sick to my stomach thinking about it. But medicals went surprisingly well. The kids both did fine, and neither of them even blinked at the blood draw. They just put their little arms on the table and watched them do it. It was a little uncanny, actually, and not really good. Noah did the same thing, and it wasn’t until he started trusting me that he told me anything hurt. But at least it wasn’t more trauma for our relationship at that moment, so I will take it.
We stopped quickly and in the pouring rain after the medicals at the Clan Chen Academy to order chops for our Chinese kids. This is a traditional stamp with your name carved in it that serves as your signature. We got one for each Chinese child with their American and Chinese character names, and also ordered one for our family name, Shaw, for the rest of us who aren’t so lucky to have Chinese character names to use. It was amazing to watch the artist carving them – Ethan was enthralled.
We had the rest of the afternoon off, so we decided to keep it really low key. We got food in the room for lunch, and then we read books and played games in the room. We went downstairs after a while to the playground and met up with a mom, Ashley, who I’d been talking to online for months. She and I were on the same timetable, and had been helping each other with each of the adoption steps. She adopted a little 3 year old girl who is the size of a 9 month old and has many medical issues. Ashley’s husband came for the first week and then went home to be with their other kids. They’ve had a really hard time, and this little girl has a tough road ahead of her, but it was wonderful to see how much she was already loved and how much she has already learned to count on her new mom! She has a chance at a completely different future, and when I looked at her, I knew she was in there!
We had one tough moment in the playroom while we were hanging out where a boy came and took something Ethan was playing with, and he crawled under the play space and just stayed there angry and sad for a while. We got as close to him as we could and let him know we were there, but we couldn’t get him out for a bit. This boy definitely likes to hold his cards close to his chest and take care of himself. Eventually he recovered and came out on his own. It’s not about the toy at this point, which we know, but sometimes the kids just need an excuse to feel what they are feeling.
We went back to the room and Anna took a nap. When she woke up, she just laid there for a long time. I finally went over and rubbed her back and asked if she was okay and just a single tear rolled down her cheek. I realized, “Oh, okay, we’re not okay” and laid down with her. Almost as soon as I did, she started crying hard, and then she was sobbing and yelling for her mama. Noah came over and said she was saying, “I want to go to my mama’s house!” over and over. It went on for at least 20 minutes. There’s not much you can do except to let them know they aren’t alone, so I just stayed with her and rubbed her back and told her it would be okay. Ethan and Noah were both in the room (Nathan and the other kids were napping in our other room) and were worried about her. Ethan talked to her every once in awhile, and I don’t know what he said, but the third time he did, she just stopped crying and got up to play with him. He’s been really sweet to her in general, helping her with many things – this is a wonderful glimpse into his personality. Anna’s grief is hard, but it’s also what we were expecting. It’s totally normal, and actually a good indicator of emotional health even though it’s absolutely excruciating to witness. And now, of course, I’m wondering if I’m helpful when I’m there, or if I’m just the wrong mom that she still doesn’t want and it’s making our relationship even harder to begin.
Later that evening, Ashley brought her baby back over to our room and we had dinner together. They are heading home tomorrow, and I will be praying for her flight! 16 hours is a long time by yourself with a new and high-needs baby.
Friday was a free day. We took it easy in the morning, and then decided to head to the museum next door. When we got outside, though, and realized the weather was really good (it was supposed to rain the whole time we’re here, but we’ve been pretty lucky with the weather as far as rain goes – still, we try to take advantage of the sun when we see it!) we decided instead to go back to the park we took Noah to last year that’s across the street.
We rented some boats. Last time we did paddle boats, but it was already 100 degrees, so we went for the electric ones – no one needs to do any more exercise than necessary! That was really fun – we all took turns driving, even the little ones, and we tooled all over the lake. We had a boys’ boat and a girls’ boat, and even though Anna wasn’t thrilled about going with me, her beloved jie jie’s (older sisters) were with her, so she went with it. Then we brought them back (girls’ boat won! Anna was so proud) and there were a few little rides nearby that we let them do.
By that point, we were all really hot and it was lunchtime, so we tried to find a dim sum restaurant our guide had told us about. We got very confused by the directions and learned a lot more of our neighborhood! But eventually we found it. They put us in our own room because we are a huge party. None of us loved this place – we won’t be back. But, it did give me maybe my favorite picture of bad food translations of all time, so there’s that! In case you can’t read them in the picture, the four foods listed are “Mustard Seedling Torture Show,” “Big Brittle Cream to Fight Garlic Bone,” “Hand Steamed Mountain Pretty Chicken,” and my favorite for a light luncheon, “Cabbage Fried Furry Fish Balls.” It was pretty hard to choose.
We headed home to rest a while and then we went to the pool. This was the first time in the pool for both Ethan and Anna. Neither of them seem to have any concept that they don’t know how to swim! They loved every minute, and they scared us almost every minute too – we had to watch them like hawks! And we had only brought one swim ring, and that was dumb because then we had to fight over whose turn it was the whole time. But on the whole, that was amazing. Ethan has definitely learned the word “swimming.” We hear it all the time! As in, “Swimming? Swimming? Dad? Swimming?” All. The. Time. 🙂
We ate dinner in again and finished watching the Lego Movie. We also met up with another family I’d been talking to online and their new little guy. They dropped by our room and played with our kids. They were just arriving in Guangzhou from their child’s province. So fun to get to know them – they are both from Michigan and work for the same company Nathan’s brother works for. Their little guy was so cute! He has the same heart issue Noah has too, so we had that in common. Then they headed out and we headed to bed. The new kids are doing really well with sleeping, but not so well with going to bed. We have to tackle them a bit! But if we can get them to lay still for a few minutes, they pass out.
Saturday we got the all clear for their TB tests, so no x-rays and we were free until that evening. That morning we decided to try the museum again. We had no idea what it was, but we had heard it was good and cheap (yup, family of 8 for a total of $4.50US admission). It turned out to be the tomb of a Nanyue king. It was pretty fascinating and a little creepy (he was buried with quite a few human sacrifices to make his post-earthly life easier – note to self, never become valuable to an ancient king) and much bigger than we realized – you could go into the actual tomb, and then there was a huge museum of everything that had been found in it. We didn’t see a lot of it – Ethan was not interested in the museum at all, just the tomb part, so we tried not to push it too much.
That afternoon everyone went swimming again while I stayed back and tried to catch up on my writing! It’s been hard to find a moment for it, but I hate to miss it because I’ve loved the record I had of our time with Noah. And let’s be real, it’s also been hard to be constantly rejected by Anna, and I was sad and needed some time.
Then we all got cleaned up and went on the Pearl River Cruise. We didn’t do this last time, and weren’t sure we wanted to bother, but we haven’t had time to do much with the speed of this process, and thought the new kids might want a few fun memories of the trip rather than all government offices.
We met another family who was adopting for the cruise and that was really sweet. Anna was pumped about this cruise! When she realized we were getting on the boat, she lit up and pumped both arms up and down several times, the universal symbol for “Yes!!”
We had the choice of getting the Chinese buffet on the cruise or having our guide bring us pizza. We would normally never dream of getting pizza – for one thing, we’re in China so we enjoy the food, and for another, China is NOT known for their excellent pizza. 🙂 But we had heard a number of people say they’d gotten sick from the buffet and we thought that sounded much more terrible than Chinese pizza, so pizza it was.
The pizza was… interesting. The first offered topping was durian. The other types were equally as “foreign” to us. Both Chinese kids opted for something that ended up being very like Korean bulgogi on pizza, actually the best kind we tried. Nathan got “luxurious” pizza which looked like supreme and it was, but the addition of sliced hot dogs and squid was a bit off-putting. We also got a couple “classic Americans” listed all the way at the bottom of the page. This was pepperoni, but unlike any pepperoni we’d ever seen before. We all ate something, and we all had a ton of pizza left, which is a statement perhaps about the pizza. But the pizza is not why you take the cruise!
After we ate the little we were going to, we headed to the top deck. This was really beautiful. We were cruising down the Pearl River as the sun set and all the lights came on in the buildings on either side. All the other boats were also lit up, and every single time one went by, Anna yelled, “Mama, mama!” and mimed taking a picture – she knew I had the camera and wanted a picture of every single boat. This was great and hopeful because she was actually interacting with me. She also discovered a speaker on the deck that was playing music, and this was profoundly surprising and puzzling to her. We think she’d never seen one. She kept gesturing to it and then gesturing, “What? Where?” to ask where the musicians were. It was really cute.
Ethan was having a harder time. We can tell he’s really homesick now and grieving, but he wants to “be a man” and not show any emotions. He was acting up a lot and really having a rough patch. Nathan ended up taking him below and just letting him play fruit ninja on his phone for the rest of the trip. A lot of our time in China is just surviving, and Ethan had just had enough and needed to unplug for a bit.
We had been told there was a show on the second deck halfway through the cruise, so we checked it out and it was the angriest looking juggler I’d ever seen. Frankly, her facial expressions were the most amusing part for the adults in our party. We were still hanging out with the other family, and every time the juggler finished a trick and people would clap, she would glare around like, “I can’t believe this is what my life has come to and I’m doing this stupid routine AGAIN!” It was so over the top that we were all giggling. Then this terrifying woman was spinning a basketball on her finger (she was really pretty impressive, both in skill and in facial expression!) and all of the sudden she came over to Anna and reached out her hand. Anna looked at me like, “What do I do!?” and I held her other hand and told her to give her hand to the woman. She looked very nervous, but the juggler just spun a ball on her finger. Then she took turns doing that with all my other kids except Ethan who was downstairs with Nathan. I don’t think Anna knew what to think! But since the other kids did it, she decided it hadn’t been bad and the woman was not trying to steal her.
We headed back up for the end of it. It was about 1.5 hours, and Anna loved every minute but she was getting tired. Ethan and Nathan survived, and we headed home. I feel like Anna and I have made at little a tiny bit of progress, so that’s good. But I’m still hoping we can figure this out sooner than later, and we’re worried about Ethan now too. We’re praying and we’ll get there. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that we’ve only known these kids a few days!
Oh, and strangely, we somehow forgot most of our leftover pizza on the boat! 🙂