Tuesday in Shenyang

It was another great day.  Sorry about all the typos in that last post.  I literally didn’t even read through it.  J  Also, for some reason, the blog is not letting people comment.  I’m not sure why, but sorry about that.

Today we had to get up early and go to the Civil Affairs Office again to finalize the adoption.  Jia Mei Degan is officially ours!!  We are so thankful and humbled to have this sweet little girl. She is perfect for our family and already fits right in.  She has already blessed us so!

I forgot what life was like with a 5 year old.  For example, we raced out of here early today and didn’t wipe her face, blow her nose, or even comb her hair.  Oops.  (My other girls do those things these days.)   I noticed on the ride over how “messy” she looked.  I knew that our guide and the nanny, who was back at the Civil Affairs Office the paperwork, noticed and by the time we got to the passport place, the nanny made the guide pull out some wipes so we could clean her up.  Unfortunately, her hair was sticking straight out to the side and the picture was not quite what those two would have liked.   Not making a great impression!  I need to start waking up a bit earlier to get myself AND my toddler ready!

Tomorrow, we visit the orphanage, so I’ll be sure to have her cleaned up nicely.

Other observations from today…

It’s cold outside, but not crazy cold.  But…inside, it’s sweltering.  Every building that we’ve been in has been about 80 degrees, which feels about 90 degrees in all these layers.  I could feel sweat rolling down my torso under the back brace.  It doesn’t seem to bother anyone else.  They all have their winter coats on indoors as if it was perfectly comfortable.  For some reason, our room temperature increased too, and we can’t turn the heat down.  We were all miserable last night because it was so warm.  It wasn’t like that before we got Jia and I’m wondering if they turned the heat up in our room because we now have a child with us.  We actually had to open a window!

Jia is saying lots of words already.  She’s got pee-pee down.  She says OK and uh-oh a lot.  She also repeats lots of words.  She can say ‘on’ when she turns the camera on.  I got so excited this morning when she figured out pee-pee that when I brought her back to our breakfast table, I said, “Tell Baba you said pee-pee!”  So she kept saying, “Baba pee-pee, Baba pee-pee,” over and over.  

She is missing one front tooth and I figured it was because she lost a baby tooth.  But, the nanny said that she had a seizure about a year ago and she fell and knocked it out.  It was a baby tooth, but we’ll have it looked at as soon as we get home.  Thankfully, our pediatric dentist speaks Mandarin, so that will be a huge help.  She also has a gigantic cavity covering the front of her other front tooth.  (Did I mention she has a thing for sweets?)  I think we’ve got several dental appointments in our immediate future. 

I have her scheduled with a pediatrician that specializes in international adoptions and a pediatric neurologist.  She hasn’t had a seizure since January and hasn’t been on meds since June.  I’m curious to see what’s going on with her.

I think we’re going to take her out exploring in a bit. She loves her new boots and wants to go out.   Maybe we’ll go back to that arcade and play some little kid games. 

Here are some pictures from today.  I’m sorry that the pictures are not uploading to the Shutterfly link.  It’s taking forever and I don’t have much time to spend on that.