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!
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Wednesday in Schjiazhuang
Wednesday morning was a great improvement upon Tuesday, as Bo woke up feeling OK and he didn't turn down any foods at the breakfast buffet. Directly across the street from our hotel is a large supermarket on the two basement levels and a mall in the remaining 6 levels. This was the same building that the Pizza Hut that we went to resides in, but neither of us could really tell what else they had there based upon our initial visit. Shopping with Bo wasn't real bad, as we picked out a car for him, which he held in his one hand, and he picked out a Ultraman dvd which he held in his other hand. Alison still had to drag him everywhere and say 'no, no, no' as they made their way down each aisle. He acts as if he has eaten all these strange foods (lots of sugary jells, fruit drinks, etc), though he may have just seen them advertised and now has the opportunity to eat them, etc.
After this trip we returned to the hotel room to eat more noodles. Lunch went smoothly and we quickly found that he REALLY enjoyed the Ultraman dvds. We found that they really altered his behavior and really brought out his kicking, biting, scratching side (at least with me) during our dinner - and those dvds have been put up for the time being and we might aim for something a little softer - like Finding Nemo or Madagascar.
During the afternoon we went to the indoor pool and attempted to coax Bo into the water, but it did not work and he kept his racecar in his hand and his sweatshirt on.
Next we made our way to a children's park that is a few blocks away. The weather was very cold and we had sleet coming down for most of our visit to the park. The park itself was really neat, and was quite busy with adults everywhere (doing group exercises, tai chi, and a number of older gentlemen were playing a game where you have a whip attached to a stick which is used to spin a large top around). The children's portion of the playground wasn't real memorable other than the fact that it seemed very dangerous with rusty metal and un-rounded edges everywhere. The students at the local school were still in-session as we walked by on the way to the park, which helped leave the playground fairly wide-open.
For dinner, we joined the Smith family and went to a traditional Chinese restaurant that we had found during our earlier visit to the mall. Here they served everything hot-pot style, so we selected four different meats, a few vegetables, and noodles which were all cooked right in front of us. Towards the end of our meal, Bo decided that he needed to use the restroom once again (and yes, we have gotten better about making sure he goes before we go anywhere), so I began to lead him down a hallway. When we found that it was a dead-end, Bo just whips it out and suggests that he will just go at the end of the hallway in the mall. We have a definite habit to break before he comes to Louisiana. I ended up quickly pulling his pants back up and carried him to a restroom without further incident. When we returned to the table I found that our total bill was 100 yuen (or approximately $14 U.S.) which was split between the two families. When we left a tip on the table, the hostess tracked us down after we left the restaurant and gave us our money back. We knew that the tipping culture for food service was a bit different here, but didn't know it was non-existant in some cases.
After a rough dinner we returned to the room and after watching another episode of Ultraman, Bo was given a bath. He then watched one more episode then crawled into bed with me at around 8:15 and quickly crashed out.
I am typing this by the light of the computer screen, and don't want to wake Bo up by attempting to download photos from our camera, so we will make sure to post photos in a few hours after we wake up and catch breakfast (approx. 8pm Eastern).
Ryan
After this trip we returned to the hotel room to eat more noodles. Lunch went smoothly and we quickly found that he REALLY enjoyed the Ultraman dvds. We found that they really altered his behavior and really brought out his kicking, biting, scratching side (at least with me) during our dinner - and those dvds have been put up for the time being and we might aim for something a little softer - like Finding Nemo or Madagascar.
During the afternoon we went to the indoor pool and attempted to coax Bo into the water, but it did not work and he kept his racecar in his hand and his sweatshirt on.
Next we made our way to a children's park that is a few blocks away. The weather was very cold and we had sleet coming down for most of our visit to the park. The park itself was really neat, and was quite busy with adults everywhere (doing group exercises, tai chi, and a number of older gentlemen were playing a game where you have a whip attached to a stick which is used to spin a large top around). The children's portion of the playground wasn't real memorable other than the fact that it seemed very dangerous with rusty metal and un-rounded edges everywhere. The students at the local school were still in-session as we walked by on the way to the park, which helped leave the playground fairly wide-open.
For dinner, we joined the Smith family and went to a traditional Chinese restaurant that we had found during our earlier visit to the mall. Here they served everything hot-pot style, so we selected four different meats, a few vegetables, and noodles which were all cooked right in front of us. Towards the end of our meal, Bo decided that he needed to use the restroom once again (and yes, we have gotten better about making sure he goes before we go anywhere), so I began to lead him down a hallway. When we found that it was a dead-end, Bo just whips it out and suggests that he will just go at the end of the hallway in the mall. We have a definite habit to break before he comes to Louisiana. I ended up quickly pulling his pants back up and carried him to a restroom without further incident. When we returned to the table I found that our total bill was 100 yuen (or approximately $14 U.S.) which was split between the two families. When we left a tip on the table, the hostess tracked us down after we left the restaurant and gave us our money back. We knew that the tipping culture for food service was a bit different here, but didn't know it was non-existant in some cases.
After a rough dinner we returned to the room and after watching another episode of Ultraman, Bo was given a bath. He then watched one more episode then crawled into bed with me at around 8:15 and quickly crashed out.
I am typing this by the light of the computer screen, and don't want to wake Bo up by attempting to download photos from our camera, so we will make sure to post photos in a few hours after we wake up and catch breakfast (approx. 8pm Eastern).
Ryan
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Day Two Recap
Hey everyone,
Just a quick update from me today.
After our drama yesterday morning, the rest of the day went well. Bo may have turned down every food we offered in the first three hours of our day, but he made up for that real quick by eating a ton of noodles, yogurts, fruit cups, juices, cheerios, chips and crackers. In between meals, we walked around quite a bit and managed to track down a memorial park. There they had no children's equipment, but plenty of gated room for Bo to run free. It was cold enough to snow a bit here last night (we have decided to call it a combination of smog and snow - smow).
After mulling over whether to try to the Spiced Donkey Meat from room service or eat more popcorn chicken from KFC, we went with KFC for dinner (especially since our English speaking friend was on-shift once again). Our hopes are that Michael, our guide, might possibly have a meal with us at some point today so that we can have his assistance in translating, etc.
We wanted to hit the pool yesterday, and we stopped by to investigate the facilities - and Bo was not real keen on the idea of going into that big tub of water. He may just require the coaxing of a very warm Louisiana summer day to get him into a pool of water.
I imagine that Bo was prepared by his caregivers very well for the day that he would leave the orphanage, and the first few days (first full day alone with us) he has done admirably well. He communicates with us using gestures and simplified speech, and he is learning his first English words (like 'No' each time that he puts a LEGO in his mouth or attempts to plug in the headphone adapter into the wall outlet).
Thankfully, we all went to bed no later than 8:30 last night - though that might mean an extra early day for Bo!
If you have audio on the video clip, you can probably hear me call Bo 'ru-ru' (as well as Boo-Boo - I must stop calling him Bo-Bo altogether as I will inevitably confuse Bo-Bo with Boo-Boo on occassion). From our understanding, Ru-Ru is the equivalent of 'chubby boy'. After reading Heidi and Jason's blog about their boy being 'nu-nu' and not 'ru-ru', and initially seeing Bo in his 3 layers of clothes and housing candy bar after candy bar, Alison and I joked that we adopted the ru-ru. We have since found out that he is a skinny little guy, but his eating patterns may still earn him that nickname.
Based upon Bo's pre-disposition to grab any thing he can get his hands on at the store, I am not looking forward to our shopping excursion that is planned for today.
It is now 3am so will try to get some more sleep before our very energetic boy awakens once again.
Just a quick update from me today.
After our drama yesterday morning, the rest of the day went well. Bo may have turned down every food we offered in the first three hours of our day, but he made up for that real quick by eating a ton of noodles, yogurts, fruit cups, juices, cheerios, chips and crackers. In between meals, we walked around quite a bit and managed to track down a memorial park. There they had no children's equipment, but plenty of gated room for Bo to run free. It was cold enough to snow a bit here last night (we have decided to call it a combination of smog and snow - smow).
After mulling over whether to try to the Spiced Donkey Meat from room service or eat more popcorn chicken from KFC, we went with KFC for dinner (especially since our English speaking friend was on-shift once again). Our hopes are that Michael, our guide, might possibly have a meal with us at some point today so that we can have his assistance in translating, etc.
We wanted to hit the pool yesterday, and we stopped by to investigate the facilities - and Bo was not real keen on the idea of going into that big tub of water. He may just require the coaxing of a very warm Louisiana summer day to get him into a pool of water.
I imagine that Bo was prepared by his caregivers very well for the day that he would leave the orphanage, and the first few days (first full day alone with us) he has done admirably well. He communicates with us using gestures and simplified speech, and he is learning his first English words (like 'No' each time that he puts a LEGO in his mouth or attempts to plug in the headphone adapter into the wall outlet).
Thankfully, we all went to bed no later than 8:30 last night - though that might mean an extra early day for Bo!
If you have audio on the video clip, you can probably hear me call Bo 'ru-ru' (as well as Boo-Boo - I must stop calling him Bo-Bo altogether as I will inevitably confuse Bo-Bo with Boo-Boo on occassion). From our understanding, Ru-Ru is the equivalent of 'chubby boy'. After reading Heidi and Jason's blog about their boy being 'nu-nu' and not 'ru-ru', and initially seeing Bo in his 3 layers of clothes and housing candy bar after candy bar, Alison and I joked that we adopted the ru-ru. We have since found out that he is a skinny little guy, but his eating patterns may still earn him that nickname.
Based upon Bo's pre-disposition to grab any thing he can get his hands on at the store, I am not looking forward to our shopping excursion that is planned for today.
It is now 3am so will try to get some more sleep before our very energetic boy awakens once again.
Reality Hits!
This is Alison now. It's the middle of the afternoon here and Bo and Ryan are busily coloring with crayons and playing with Star Wars legos. Bo's first picture he drew was of a house with a big sun in the sky, which he promptly gave to me. Today wasn't all so happy and comfortable though. It started off with the crazy high blood sugar Bo had last night, probably from all the food his nannies kept letting him shove in his mouth when we met him. I knew he shouldn't eat that much but it was relaxing him through the very stressful event of meeting us for the first time so we just sat back and let it happen. His blood sugar was 490 pre-dinner, probably why we had to stop the van so he could pee (on the side of the road) twice on the way to and from Baoding. I gave him his regular insulin dose at dinner and then two hours later I tested him and he was still 410. I decided that was too high (and he ate a ton of fruit at dinner) so I decided to give him 2 units of Novolog, a fast acting insulin. At bed time he was already down to 250 and since Novolog acts fast I assumed it was done working. Well, when he woke up this morning he started whining and crying a little. It was sort of normal morning grumpiness and with the big day we had yesterday and waking up in a new place I decided it could just be that but I also decided to test him anyway. He is such a trooper about blood tests. He just sticks out a finger and lets me do it. So even with him tired and whimpering he gave me a finger and I checked his blood, and it was 55! Yikes, definitely low and so I asked Ryan to bring a coke and some cookies for him. He wouldn't have anything we gave him. I even put a straw in the coke (he loves straws) and he took one baby sip and then stopped and covered his mouth with his hands. This was not good. So I gave up and let him lay back down for 15 minutes and then test him again. 15 minutes later I went in with the glucometer and again he promptly stuck out a finger. This time he was 50! Now the war was getting worse. I pleaded with him and showed him everything we had in the room and he said no. We stripped his PJs off of him to wake him up and then about 10 minutes went by and he still just wanted to sleep. He kept pointing at his belly too. Next I decided we had to go to breakfast in the hotel, there must be something there he would eat. SO we dressed him in a track suit and I headed for the elevator, carrying him still half asleep all the way. When I got to the first floor and got off our guide, Michael, was there waiting to pick up the other family traveling with us to take them to do paperwork. I frantically told him the situation and asked him to tell Bo that he had to eat some sugar, NOW! They had a brief conversation where Bo kept saying Bao-xuling or something along those lines which is Chinese for "no way". Then he started to choke and I knew what was coming. I put him down and ke threw up on the floor. When he was finished I picked him back up and I told Michael to tell him one glass of juice and then he can go back to bed and he nodded yes to that so I went running for the breakfast area straight to the juice machines. Now we are staying at a very nice hotel for this region and the breakfast is packed with Chinese businessmen. I plopped Bo down at a table that wasn't even cleared off from the last guest yet and Ryan got two different glasses of juice. Still it was "bao xuling". So I went to the food and made a plate of fruit, steam roll, and a bowl of congee. Still "bao" and grabbing the belly. At this point I gave up and we went upstairs to the room. I tested him again and he was 45, time for business. Out came the glucagon pen and I mixed it up and injected him. Then Ryan got in bed and layed down with him for about half an hour. Then voila, he opened up his eyes and smiled, giggling at us as we both stared at him in dismay. We were 5 minutes away from grabbing the phrase cards and going to the front desk to ask for a hospital. Ever since he woke up he has been perfectly fine. We went for a walk to a grocery down the street and he grabbed a bunch of ramen noodles and a juice box. I heated up the noodles back in the room and he was 150 at lunch. He ate the entire bowl of noodles, I should say inhaled the noodles, and he was so happy afterwards. After lunch he put his ski hat back on and pointed at the door so we went for a walk and found a nice public park, or atleast we assumed it was public as the signs were all in Chinese and no one told us to leave :) Here are some photos from the better half of our day.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Ryan's Recollections from Bo - Day 1
Yes, yesterday was absolutely insane here. I was absolutely exhausted with everything that went on. Plenty of stories to tell. No tears were shed by Bo or us, which was nice.
Our guide told us that Bo would not meet us until we arrived at the next location that we were going to this morning, so we were surprised to see him walk through the door - but it all went pretty well. He came with these 3 pairs of clothing that he had on, the bag that we sent him which included the disposable cameras (that look like they were used), two books that have traditional mandarin and pinyon (which is the phonetic pronounciation of each word in English characters), a Power Ranger-style toy that was evidently his favorite toy and the one he decided to take with him when they allowed him to take only one, and some workbooks that show evidence of him learning to write English letters, etc.
After a short amount of confusion as to whether or not we could follow him into the adjacent room and meet him, Alison brought him a stuffed tiger (the lsu mascot) which he didn't have much response to. He was very pleased to have a large bag of 'treats' that he was travelling with (about a dozen boiled eggs, hot dog/spam sticks, salty crackers, and sugar-free candy bars). We were definitely concerned about his diabetes and the fact that under the watchful eye of his caretakers from the orphanage must have had like 6 of the sugar-free candy bars (not small bars by any standards). I must have fought with him over those things at least 3-4 times before we finally made that bag disappear (though I was disappointed to find that we still have the bag in our hotel room when I returned - thankfully he doesn't know that).
We finally got his attention with the second toy that we selected, a matchbox car (Air Products tanker truck), and he was fine with rolling that back and forth with us or Aaron Smith (first-grader who is travelling with his family to meet his new sister, Chen). Funny story with these two is that Aaron had a very nice matchbox racing style car that he pulled out and tried to introduce to Bo. When the car was passed Bo's way he immediately pockets Aaron's car, and gave us difficulty in retrieving it.
From these instances with the food and the matchbox car, I quickly realized that I may have felt prepared by writing down various phrases that I might need to know, etc...but I never once thought to write down a phrase like - "Stop hitting me!" or "Do not bite!". Thankfully no blood was lost - but his attempts were fairly clear within the first few hours.
Other than the car, he really gravitated towards our camera. Thankfully we have these small 'affordable' digital cameras that we didn't feel too bad in letting him handle without giving him directions - and he must have taken two hundred photos between the waits at the notary and our long car trip to Baoding.
After the notary visit, we were instructed that we would leave for Baoding for his passport photo at 1:15 - but we quickly found out that this gave us about 20 minutes time to return to the hotel room, quickly test Bo's blood sugar (after the numerous carb loaded candies), and grab a needed lunch. We got into our hotel room, and Bo initially was a bit concerned over the appearance of the Glucometer, but he accepted it and did not fight his mother in her attempts to test his blood sugar (he was about 146 at the time - which was not bad at all considering the amount and types of food that he ate). One moment that I enjoyed was his interest in a Red Sox cap of mine that he found on a table. He quickly began reaching for it and once he got it he put it on and became attached to it for the remainder of the afternoon. No coaxing necessary!
We made our way into the KFC (I am not a fan personally, but knew it was either that or nothing as it was directly connected to our hotel building). As we walked in we diverted the first street vendor of toys that we found, but I had a feeling that this was not the last time that we would encounter him. As we walked to the counter to order, the cashier burst out laughing as we began to attempt to converse with her, but one of our heroes for the day stepped right-in and was able to speak a bit of English with us. The order may not have been everything we wanted, but it was effective in getting us food. Alison ordered milk for her and Bo, and we found that they only serve warm milk - which Bo thankfully enjoyed (as well as ketchup and french fries).
We wrapped everything up after a few minutes of eating at our table and took the remainder to-go as we were sure to be running late. Once outside, Bo made sure to pull his way over to the toy vendor, and after determining that the prices for his toys for 5 yuen (approximately $.80 cents American), I handed over money for Bo to pick one toy out. The street vendor then quickly confused the boy into enjoying a number of the toys by winding them up and what-not. Bo was eventually whittled down to 4 toys, and the vendor was paid (4 toys for less than 4 American dollars could have been much worse than it was). Once again Alison and I determined that our communication barrier with Bo and the vendor led us down a path we didn't want to go today, but it could have been worse I suppose! Besides, we didn't have much in the way of entertainment prepared for the long car trip we were about to take.
We loaded up into the car with our new toys, and Bo was relatively pleasant on the way up. After drinking both milks and water, Bo had to pee about 1 1/2 hours into our car trip, and we quickly pulled over while Michael in the front row of the van was able to make his way outside with Bo (this also happened on our return trip and is something that Alison and I must learn to be prepared for).
One funny story that we have from this trip to Baoding is that Michael, our guide, asks Alison and I to prepare the money that will change hands, and Bo catches his mom counting money and reaches his hand out for some. I decided to responded to his request by giving him a crisp $.10 cent valued bill. He thought this was the greatest thing in the world and made sure to make his way around the room and wave it at everyone that he could find at the passport location in Baoding. I had no idea what I was to do with this ten-cent bill, and I found a great way to get rid of them (thankfully I have a few more as well as some 50-cent bills). On the return drive (approximately 2 hours) we succumbed and allowed him to play the Nintendo DS, which he seemed to take a liking to.
We returned to our hotel after a very long day at about 7pm, and after checking Bo's blood sugar (high 400's) and giving him an insulin injection, we made a decision to go to a Korean restaurant in our hotel for dinner. If I would have been thinking at the time of this decision, I would have selected room service in a heartbeat, but the ladies at the restaurant were wonderful in all aspects of Bo (including some much needed translation - like I don't want rice, I want noodles. Good to know for next time I suppose!). I talked Alison down from going to the grocery store last night, and I think we are going to let him freely wander the breakfast buffet to tell us what foods he likes, wants, etc. He attempts to eat EVERYTHING with his chop sticks, and hopefully we are able to teach him more effective ways to eat things like soup! He also particularly enjoyed playing the drums with his chopsticks, so I have no doubt that he will be playing the drums while ba-ba is on the guitar playing Rock Band.
After dinner, we returned to our room and immediately began removing his layers of clothes and dropped him into the bath. He was OK with this and was pleased with his new toothbrush and pajama set. He eventually crashed out on the bed alongside me, but when Alison hopped up to get a blog published before bed (for all of you who wanted something to read in the A.M.), Bo jumped up to help her out and I crashed out on the bed.
As Alison mentioned, the scrap book really did help, as his care takers looked at it with him and went over each picture to help jog his memory and help bring across the point that we were the same people. I was surprised to see that Bo's reaction each time the care takers left was of understanding, I think that they prepared him pretty well for this day. Communication will be frustrating at times, but it can only get better (one would hope).
Today we have nothing on our itinerary, so I hope that we have a relatively peaceful day lounging around the hotel's indoor pool, etc. Wednesday is a shopping day, which may not be a real good idea, based upon our communication troubles with Bo and the street vendor! We will have to work on the phrase 'One toy' (yi banshu)!
It is now 2:30 am here, so it is time to head back to sleep. Will make sure to post more photos during our free day today.
Ryan
Our guide told us that Bo would not meet us until we arrived at the next location that we were going to this morning, so we were surprised to see him walk through the door - but it all went pretty well. He came with these 3 pairs of clothing that he had on, the bag that we sent him which included the disposable cameras (that look like they were used), two books that have traditional mandarin and pinyon (which is the phonetic pronounciation of each word in English characters), a Power Ranger-style toy that was evidently his favorite toy and the one he decided to take with him when they allowed him to take only one, and some workbooks that show evidence of him learning to write English letters, etc.
After a short amount of confusion as to whether or not we could follow him into the adjacent room and meet him, Alison brought him a stuffed tiger (the lsu mascot) which he didn't have much response to. He was very pleased to have a large bag of 'treats' that he was travelling with (about a dozen boiled eggs, hot dog/spam sticks, salty crackers, and sugar-free candy bars). We were definitely concerned about his diabetes and the fact that under the watchful eye of his caretakers from the orphanage must have had like 6 of the sugar-free candy bars (not small bars by any standards). I must have fought with him over those things at least 3-4 times before we finally made that bag disappear (though I was disappointed to find that we still have the bag in our hotel room when I returned - thankfully he doesn't know that).
We finally got his attention with the second toy that we selected, a matchbox car (Air Products tanker truck), and he was fine with rolling that back and forth with us or Aaron Smith (first-grader who is travelling with his family to meet his new sister, Chen). Funny story with these two is that Aaron had a very nice matchbox racing style car that he pulled out and tried to introduce to Bo. When the car was passed Bo's way he immediately pockets Aaron's car, and gave us difficulty in retrieving it.
From these instances with the food and the matchbox car, I quickly realized that I may have felt prepared by writing down various phrases that I might need to know, etc...but I never once thought to write down a phrase like - "Stop hitting me!" or "Do not bite!". Thankfully no blood was lost - but his attempts were fairly clear within the first few hours.
Other than the car, he really gravitated towards our camera. Thankfully we have these small 'affordable' digital cameras that we didn't feel too bad in letting him handle without giving him directions - and he must have taken two hundred photos between the waits at the notary and our long car trip to Baoding.
After the notary visit, we were instructed that we would leave for Baoding for his passport photo at 1:15 - but we quickly found out that this gave us about 20 minutes time to return to the hotel room, quickly test Bo's blood sugar (after the numerous carb loaded candies), and grab a needed lunch. We got into our hotel room, and Bo initially was a bit concerned over the appearance of the Glucometer, but he accepted it and did not fight his mother in her attempts to test his blood sugar (he was about 146 at the time - which was not bad at all considering the amount and types of food that he ate). One moment that I enjoyed was his interest in a Red Sox cap of mine that he found on a table. He quickly began reaching for it and once he got it he put it on and became attached to it for the remainder of the afternoon. No coaxing necessary!
We made our way into the KFC (I am not a fan personally, but knew it was either that or nothing as it was directly connected to our hotel building). As we walked in we diverted the first street vendor of toys that we found, but I had a feeling that this was not the last time that we would encounter him. As we walked to the counter to order, the cashier burst out laughing as we began to attempt to converse with her, but one of our heroes for the day stepped right-in and was able to speak a bit of English with us. The order may not have been everything we wanted, but it was effective in getting us food. Alison ordered milk for her and Bo, and we found that they only serve warm milk - which Bo thankfully enjoyed (as well as ketchup and french fries).
We wrapped everything up after a few minutes of eating at our table and took the remainder to-go as we were sure to be running late. Once outside, Bo made sure to pull his way over to the toy vendor, and after determining that the prices for his toys for 5 yuen (approximately $.80 cents American), I handed over money for Bo to pick one toy out. The street vendor then quickly confused the boy into enjoying a number of the toys by winding them up and what-not. Bo was eventually whittled down to 4 toys, and the vendor was paid (4 toys for less than 4 American dollars could have been much worse than it was). Once again Alison and I determined that our communication barrier with Bo and the vendor led us down a path we didn't want to go today, but it could have been worse I suppose! Besides, we didn't have much in the way of entertainment prepared for the long car trip we were about to take.
We loaded up into the car with our new toys, and Bo was relatively pleasant on the way up. After drinking both milks and water, Bo had to pee about 1 1/2 hours into our car trip, and we quickly pulled over while Michael in the front row of the van was able to make his way outside with Bo (this also happened on our return trip and is something that Alison and I must learn to be prepared for).
One funny story that we have from this trip to Baoding is that Michael, our guide, asks Alison and I to prepare the money that will change hands, and Bo catches his mom counting money and reaches his hand out for some. I decided to responded to his request by giving him a crisp $.10 cent valued bill. He thought this was the greatest thing in the world and made sure to make his way around the room and wave it at everyone that he could find at the passport location in Baoding. I had no idea what I was to do with this ten-cent bill, and I found a great way to get rid of them (thankfully I have a few more as well as some 50-cent bills). On the return drive (approximately 2 hours) we succumbed and allowed him to play the Nintendo DS, which he seemed to take a liking to.
We returned to our hotel after a very long day at about 7pm, and after checking Bo's blood sugar (high 400's) and giving him an insulin injection, we made a decision to go to a Korean restaurant in our hotel for dinner. If I would have been thinking at the time of this decision, I would have selected room service in a heartbeat, but the ladies at the restaurant were wonderful in all aspects of Bo (including some much needed translation - like I don't want rice, I want noodles. Good to know for next time I suppose!). I talked Alison down from going to the grocery store last night, and I think we are going to let him freely wander the breakfast buffet to tell us what foods he likes, wants, etc. He attempts to eat EVERYTHING with his chop sticks, and hopefully we are able to teach him more effective ways to eat things like soup! He also particularly enjoyed playing the drums with his chopsticks, so I have no doubt that he will be playing the drums while ba-ba is on the guitar playing Rock Band.
After dinner, we returned to our room and immediately began removing his layers of clothes and dropped him into the bath. He was OK with this and was pleased with his new toothbrush and pajama set. He eventually crashed out on the bed alongside me, but when Alison hopped up to get a blog published before bed (for all of you who wanted something to read in the A.M.), Bo jumped up to help her out and I crashed out on the bed.
As Alison mentioned, the scrap book really did help, as his care takers looked at it with him and went over each picture to help jog his memory and help bring across the point that we were the same people. I was surprised to see that Bo's reaction each time the care takers left was of understanding, I think that they prepared him pretty well for this day. Communication will be frustrating at times, but it can only get better (one would hope).
Today we have nothing on our itinerary, so I hope that we have a relatively peaceful day lounging around the hotel's indoor pool, etc. Wednesday is a shopping day, which may not be a real good idea, based upon our communication troubles with Bo and the street vendor! We will have to work on the phrase 'One toy' (yi banshu)!
It is now 2:30 am here, so it is time to head back to sleep. Will make sure to post more photos during our free day today.
Ryan
Day One with Bo
We are now a family of three. Today was amazing, exhausting, frustrating but all in all exactly what I had hoped for. We met Bo in a very unconventional way at the civil affairs office. He walked in the door with the assistant director of his agency and one of his nannies. We hardly recognized him except for his smile, which is the only thing that hasn't grown a ton since we last saw pictures of him. He was a little shy at first but warmed up when we got out the scrapbook we had sent him and showed him that we really were those people and not just some crazy people off the street. He instantly started calling us "mama" and "baba" and talking a mile a minute in Chinese. We spent about 2 hours at the civil affairs office, then an hour at the notary office, then went back to the hotel and hit KFC for lunch, then boarded a van and went 2 hours up to Baoding to get his passport photo taken and to meet with his doctor and learn his care routine. We got back around 6:30 PM and went to eat dinner at the Korean restaurant in our hotel. After dinner we had the first bath and are now watching a Chinese variety show and attempting to wind down. I have so many stories to tell but my head is pounding and it's getting late so I will just post a few photos and then follow up with more detail tomorrow. We have no official visits tomorrow so looking forward to a good day of rest and trying to establish some sort of normalcy in our routine. Just one funny thing that you need to know to truly enjoy the pictures. Bo looked like he had gained 10 lbs when we met him and I was freaking out that nothing we bought would fit. Then when we go him undressed for his bath we found out he was wearing three layers on top and bottom: pajamas inside, quilted pants and then cargo pants on the bottom and a PJs shirt, a fleece jacket, and a snow jacket on top. No wonder he was sweating all day and drinking a ton of water. He fit just fine into the 5T pajamas I got him so he hasn't really gone all chub-a-lub on us. He just looks that way with a ton of clothes on. Good night, I will be much wittier in the morning so stay tuned :)
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