More Shijiazhuang

It's been a little while since my last post because we bought BoBo an Ultraman VCD and he watches it on the computer constantly. We realize that this isn't the best parenting technique but we are slowly introducing more barriers each day and hoping that it doesn't add to the trauma too much. Last night at dinner we learned not to kick and bite daddy when you don't get your way. Our other big struggle lately has been over food. BoBo was on a very restrictive diet in the orphanage and he is loving the new opportunity to eat in restaurants and pick things out at the supermarket. Then we get back into the room he wants to eat everything. I made the mistake of buying a few high carb drinks and snacks, mostly so we know what he likes when he gets low blood sugar, but he loves them and asks for them constantly. I just point at my watch and his glucometer and make a motion of giving him a shot and say no, basically saying "it's not time yet" and he seems to get that. But, he is only 4 years old and it's a fine balance between him learning that we intend to meet his every need as parents and us being the boundary setters. In biological kids you get to set the we are the nurturers role way before they start wanting things like Ultraman DVDs and sweet milk pops so it's not such a crazy all-at-once battle. He's a really smart kid though so I think he gets it and hopefully things will progress quickly once we have a normal routine going. Our hotel-living routine is wake up, get dressed, go to breakfast, come back to room and play for 30 minutes, go on a 2 hour excursion, come back and eat noodles and play for a few hours, go out again in the afternoon for about and hour for some exercise, come back to room and relax, go get dinner, come back and get ready for bed, play until sleepy and then read books and fall asleep.

Here's a recap of our excursions the past few days. We have photos from some here.

Tuesday: free day, we walked around and found the cemetery and a grocery store

Wednesday: morning shopping with our guide at mall across the street, then afternoon we walked and found the children's park (it was sleeting all afternoon, you can tell in some of the pictures), dinner at Hot Pot restaurant in the mall with the Smith family, cost for 4 adults 3 kids 100 yuan (about $16).

Thursday: morning excursion to special children's play area, it snowed last night so we had a snowball fight (Bo's first crying incident when one hit him in the face). The park used to be the zoo but they built a new one. There was an island with a pagoda which we climbed up to, even though it was very slippery with the snow on the ground. They don't really have guard rails anywhere so it is very scary walking around the park with a 4 yr old who loves to explore. Ryan and I take turns chasing after him when he gets too far ahead. He has also started this thing where he wants us to carry him, all 41 lbs of him!

In general Shijiazhuang is very smoggy. We called the snow "smow" for smog snow. The air actually looked a bit cleaner this morning so maybe the snow did that but right now at 2 PM it is back to the same brown haze. The people are nice but most don't speak English. I get a lot of stares, mostly from older women who look disapproving of me walking along with Bo. If they only knew the challenge he is!