Ladybug Adventures

Tuesday, November 08, 2005 10:51 AM CST

Subject: Photos and Update

Ni Hao from Beijing!

Today was a nice relaxing and fun day. We started out by have a slow relaxing morning in the room and taking our time getting ready. We went down to breakfast around 7:30 am and then met our guide at 9:30 am. She took us to Wal-Mart where we shopped for clothes, a stroller, DVD's, CD's and books for our girls. After getting everything we wanted for rediculously low price, we headed off to lunch at a traditional Beijing Noodle Shop. This was quite an experience. When we first walked in, all the waiters started yelling something in Chinese. Once we were seated, our guide explained to us that whenever someone enters the noodle shop, the head waiter announces you to the restaurant, something like "4 people entering". Then the rest of the waiters respond to him, by yelling something back. The food we had was all very good. But we didn't look very good trying to eat noodles with chopsticks. :)

After lunch, we came back to the hotel where our guide dropped us off. Our guide Annie help Xue Zheng out of the van and when Lisa got out, Xue Zheng started reaching for Mama. We thought this was a very good sign. Then when our guide got back in the van to leave and we didn't go with her, Xue Zheng had her first melt down of the day. She was so extremely sad to see our guide go. We think part of this was that she was tired and hadn't yet had her nap for the day. But we think it is also partially due to her knowing that Annie is her only link to communicate with us. She seems to understand the fact that we don't understand Chinese. It only took us about 5 - 10 minutes to calm her down today instead of the 30-60 minutes yesterday.

After Xue Zheng calmed down, housekeeping came, wanting to clean our room, so we decided to go for a walk with our new stroller. Xue Zheng enjoyed that very much. She seems to love being out and about and she is very observant, watching everything and everyone around her. We made our way to a mall a few blocks from our hotel. It was the same mall we visited 2 years ago when we were here for Emilie's adoption. We returned to the hotel around 4:00 pm and Xue Zheng and Lisa took a short nap.

Around 6:00 pm we headed to a restaurant next door, where our guide had made reservations for us and had already pre-ordered everything for us. It was the same Peking Duck restaurant we went to in 2003. Everything was very good. In fact, we both thought the duck was better this time than it was the first time we tried it.

Finally we headed back to the hotel and gave Xue Zheng her first bath. This brought about her second melt down of the day. She definitely did not like having a bath. I'm sure that will change soon enough, as we know Emilie didn't like baths to begin with either, but she loves them now.

After playing in the room for a bit, Xue Zheng went to bed by herself and is now sleeping soundly. Besides for the two melt downs, she really has been a very happy girl all day today. She has even started giving Mama hugs. :) She also laughs uncontrollably when daddy asks for a hug and gives one to Mama instead. :) I think she
is going to be just as much of a clown as her big sister.

I have spent a good share of the evening catching up with the pictures and have finally gotten several uploaded to the group. I hope you all enjoy them.

Emilie, mommy and daddy miss you and love you very much!

Hope you are all doing well.

Love,
Steve, Lisa and Xue Zheng

Monday, November 07, 2005 6:08 PM CST

Subject: Our first morning

What a blessing we have!!! God is so good! We have really felt everyones prayers and appreciate the support from all our friends and family.

After a two hour nap yesterday evening, Zheng Zheng woke up very happy! She has been giggling and laughing ever since. Our guide had dinner delivered to our room last night. It was all very good and apparently Zheng Zheng thought so too. She had three bowls of noodles. :) We are finding that she loves to eat. ;)

After we ate, we spent some time playing with Zheng Zheng with some of the toys we brought and the photo album. She loves dolls and she loves looking at the photo albums we have brought. She is also repeating many English words for us as well.

When we got her ready for bed last night, she just snuggled up with her towel and went right to sleep. She only woke up one time in the night and cried a little, but went right back to sleep. And this morning she has woke up very happy again. We are praying this continues. :)

We will try to get some pictures posted later today. We have heard from some of our travel group that the pictures are very slow to upload here, so we will see how many we can get up.

Thank you again for all the prayers. Hope you all are doing well.

Emilie, mommy and daddy love getting to talk to you everyday because we love you and miss you very much. Your little sister liked talking to you too! You two are going to have tons of fun when we get home.

Love,
Steve, Lisa and Zheng Zheng

Monday, November 07, 2005 4:44 AM CST

Subject: Gotcha Day!

Emilie, you have a little sister!!! ;)

We started out this morning by meeting our new guide, Annie. We met her at 8:30 am this morning in the lobby of the hotel. She first took us to the Bank of China, to exchange money since all of our fees today needed to be paid in Chinese Yuan instead of U.S. dollars like our last adoption.

From there we proceeded to the Beijing Childrens Welfare Institute where we were taken into a meeting room and Xue Zheng (Nikole) was brought into the room. She is beautiful!! She looks just like her pictures that we have been looking at for the last few months. (Including the shaved head)

We then spent the rest of the day going from office to office doing paperwork to complete the adoption. It has made for a very long day for Xue Zheng, as she didn't even have time for a nap this afternoon.

When Xue Zheng was first brought into us she was a little bit shy and quiet to start out with, but immediately latched on to the little chinese doll we brought for her. Once she realized she was leaving with us, the expected melt down started. She has had moments on and off all day of crying, but we have also had a few smiles and laughs as well. The crying mostly came when the chinese officials or our guide would leave us But through it all, she continued to clutch her new doll.

Today Xue Zheng has let both mommy and daddy hold her and does not seem to show a preforance. When Steve got up from the lunch table to use the restroom, she even asked our guide where her baba (daddy) was
going? We have been showing her pictures of our family and she has been extremely excited to see pictures of her jie jie (big sister), Emilie. She has even squealed in excitement a couple of times when looking at the pictures. :) She has even been extremely excited to see the pictures of our Yorkshire terrier, Gizmo. And has taken to calling her Mo, just like Emilie did.

When we got back to the room today around 4:00 pm, she began to cry once our guide left the room. She was pretty much inconsolable until we got out the potato chips. Snacks have worked wonders for her all day. :) We knew she needed to sleep and after about 20 minutes of trying we remembered they told she slept with a bathroom towel as her comfort object at night. That did the trick. Once we gave her a towel, she went right to sleep and is still sleeping now. Our guide has had dinner delivered to our room, and we plan on just taking it
easy and relaxing in the room this evening.

Tomorrow, we meet our guide at 9:30 am and she is taking us to Wal-Mart to do a little shopping. We were orinally scheduled to go to the Forbidden City, but asked if we could bow out of that one since we have been there before and thought it would be a bit long and boring for Xue Zheng. Then on Wednesday we are going to the Beijing Zoo to see the Panda bears.

All in all, so far the transition for this adoption seems to be going pretty well. I'm sure we will still have some moments of tears, but hopefully a good nights sleep will help.

Just in case many of you are wondering, we have named her Nikole as planned, but since she is older, speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese, all she knows right now is her Chinese name. So for now, we will be calling her Xue Zheng or Zheng Zheng (her nickname here) and will transition to Nikole when the time is right.

Thanks to one of the families in our travel group, we do now have our laptop up and running. So hopefully, either later tonight or sometime tomorrow, we will be able to post a few photos.

Emilie, mommy and daddy love you and miss you very much. And your little sister can not wait to meet you!!!

Best wishes from Beijing,
Steve, Lisa and Xue Zheng