Tomorrow morning we take Ryan to the train station and he is off to Beijing for his flight home. Part of me wishes I was on that plane too. It's great spending so much time getting to know Bo's home region but I miss my comfy bed and I am itching to get us to a more stable environment. Living in a hotel with a 4 yr old has its highs and lows. I think Bo thinks we live here all the time. I'm a bit worried about how well he takes Ryan's leaving tomorrow but hopefully our guide will be able to translate a conversation for us. Bo has gotten a lot more attached to Ryan over the past two days as I have tried to be a bit more of a disciplinarian. I am going to need him to listen to me when we are alone so hopefully I have made a little headway. In adopting older kids there is a concept called "family age" and we have seen a lot of it recently. Family age means that the child will sometimes act younger than their chronological age due to the shorter length of time that they have been a part of the family. Some of this we have seen in Bo is his constantly wanting to be carried, his tantrums where his whole body goes limp and he kicks and yells (more like 2 yr old) and today at the park he was more into the little kid games than the rides that were more his speed. He did warm up to the older kid stuff but he spent a lot of time on these silly scooters that were almost too small for him and he played on rocking toys that were definitely more 2 yr old appropriate.
We had a free day so we spent the morning in the room, then went to the children's park in the afternoon. Since it was a nice day (probably mid-50s and sunny) and it was the weekend they actually had the amusement park area open. Ryan and Bo rode bumper cars and then Bo rode a bunch of kids rides: cars, merry go round, and jungle gym area. For dinner we met up with the Smith family and went to the nice Chinese restaurant in our hotel. They had a very extensive menu and Bo especially liked the cucumbers I ordered, which were served with crushed ginger and soy sauce. He didn't eat much of his noodles though so I had to give him a sweet milk when we got back to the room. He was probably full from the pint of milk he drank before the food came. Ryan and I had hot chili chicken, stir fried rice noodles with beef, and I ordered a roast chicken in salt and it came out cold and fatty, not a good combo for chicken. You win some you lose some. Last night we had amazing wontons from a street cafe that Ryan brought back to the room so it was pretty hard to top that. Bo still needs a lot of work on table manners but the waitresses all love to come over and talk to him and he loves the attention. I wish we knew what they were saying. All I could gather tonight was that one of the waitresses was also from Baoding and she asked him some things about where in Baoding he lived. After dinner we played with a sticker game where you put numbered stickers on a grid and it forms a picture. Bo does very well matching up the numbers and placing the stickers close together. Not bad for a 4 yr old. Preschool, here we come!
No comments:
Post a Comment