I was visiting another China mom's blog last week and she had a "final thoughts" post. She basically recapped their trip to China. I thought that was a great idea. Now that we've had Paul home for a little over two months there are a few things from the trip that I wanted to "put down" before I forget. Plus I am going to end this blog with this last post. I want to keep this as Paul's blog, but I have so many pictures and stories of the other kids that I want to continue to share. My goal is to update the new blog once week or so. So.....here are a few stories from the trip that didn't make it into the blog while we were in China.
- As we were climbing the Great Wall in the freezing cold weather again ( we adopted Audrey in Feb. 2005 and it was bitter cold) I promised Ted that the next time we adopt it would be in the summer. He responded with a dirty look.
- After we checked into our room in Changsha we requested a roll away bed for Natalie. House keeping brought it in right away and we told her that we could set it up. She insisted that she do it and then promptly backed into a glass closet that shattered into a million pieces. The poor girl looked like she could burst out into tears at any second. We didn't have time to help her clean it up because we had to leave to go meet Paul.
- Me, being the organized adoptive parent that I thought I was had wrote out many questions to ask the orphanage about Paul. When they passed him over he was screaming so loud and so hard that I decided to ask the one question that I thought was the most important. "Does he still take a bottle?" Their response "No, you should not give him a bottle." Six days later we finally got the print out of his daily schedule. Of course he was still taking 3 bottles a day???? So not only did we rip him from everything he knew we also unknowingly broke him of the bottle.
- You already know that we left on of our suitcases at the house. One hour before we met Paul we went the store and bought diapers. Not until we had Paul back in the room we realized that we bought the wrong kind of diapers. These were the diapers that the Chinese use with their lovely split pants, so you "tie" these diapers on the baby. So here I am, the mother of 4 asking our travel mates who were first time parents for duck tape to try to tape these stupid diapers to Paul. YES DUCK TAPE!! Well the duck tape didn't work so Mike and Leigh gave us a few diapers to get us by until the morning.
- After I finally put a real diaper on Paul.....he was still screaming bloody murder. Who could blame him...some strange woman was trying to duck-tape a diaper on him. Well he was crying and crying and he had this horrible breath ( I think he had ate whole garlic cloves for lunch). I had a brief moment of "why in the world am I doing this? We had it so easy with 3 kids. Why am I torturing myself and this poor kid? Do I really want to do this??" Then I snapped out of it, reminded myself that this moment was not about ME. I can honestly say that was my only time of regret.
- Once again, we seasoned parents and second time around adoptive parents had to rely on the rookies, Mike and Leigh. When we went to the civil affairs office we totally misunderstood our guide on how much money we needed to bring. If I remember right we had to borrow about $275 from Mike and Leigh to complete the adoption. We paid them back as soon as we got back to the hotel. I felt like such an idiot.
- Our expensive room at the White Swan stunk!!! Even our travel mates commented on how stinky our room was. I tried to politely complain to the staff but nobody got the hint. Oh well .
- I actually told someone off on our plane ride home. I am not usually confrontational but "momma bear" came out and surprised not only myself but Ted too. The lady in front of us had the nerve to complain to one of the flight attendants about us. She was trying to sleep and we were being too noisy. HELLO!!! Later on she got up to get a beer and proceeded to tell the person she was sitting next to that "with all of the commotion going on behind her, she needed a drink." I tried to hold my tongue but I just couldn't. I put my head right over the seat and said "I think my kids are doing pretty darn good considering the long flight, Paul having just got out of an orphanage, lots of transitions in a short time, etc." She noticed that he was missing his arm so then she started being all nicey, nice. "OH, what great people you are...blah, blah, blah." Later on she gave Paul a cookie which made him happy but I was still seeing red.
- Last but not least we lost our van at the Ft. Wayne airport. For those of you who have never been there...it is a tiny airport and the parking lot is maybe a little bit bigger than a Wal-Mart's parking lot. I'm serious it took us about a half an hour to find the darn van.
Is Paul a perfect kid??? NO....just a few days ago he flooded the upstairs bathroom so bad that there was water coming through the ceiling fan in the kitchen downstairs. DON'T ASK!!
Do we live him like crazy???? YES
Will he be our last adoption from China??? The dear Lord only knows. Ted hasn't seen the title for our next blog. I'm sure it's going to make him a little nervous. So if you would like to keep up with all craziness of our house please continue to visit our new blog:
UNTIL OUR NEXT TRIP TO CHINA
http://www.untilournexttriptochina.blogspot.com/
