A little bit more about adoption day

Monday we met Timothy for the first time, at the Nanjing Civil Affairs office.

We were supposed to be at the government building at 2:00 PM to meet our son at 2:30 PM. But guess what! When we got there, the babies were already there. I followed Jin, our facilitator like a hawk and went into the room where our little babies were sitting with their caregivers. The room was soooo hot and our little ones were bundled up as tradition -- cute little baked potatoes.

Our little man was a tired little guy but he was a brave trooper all day. Feeding was our greatest worry, and we’ve had to try several different bottles to figure out what would work. With his cleft palate he isn’t able to suck like most babies can. Still a work in progress but we’re learning.

He’s eating table food too. Egg, rice porridge, watermelon and of course cheerios. He seems to like pretty much everything and isn’t picky at all.

Timothy is a big ball of mucus. He’s had a bit of a cold and cough since we got him poor little guy. Our agency guide, Jin, took us to see the Hotel doctor who gave him a clean bill of health (and us some herb & snake cough syrup to give him – haven’t tried that yet!).

Here He Is!!

More pics and details later.

Timothy has been wonderful and all are doing great!

Paperwork Resolved

Dear Jill and Gregory,

Thanks for your e-mail. Here is to confirm that we have received your updated visas 37 with valid CIS approval and fingerprint record.

Have a nice day!

Adopted Children's Immigrant Visa Unit
U.S. Consulate General Guangzhou
Phone: (86)(20)85187653

Phase Two – From Beijing to Nanjing

So we successfully bowed out of the trip to the Imperial Summer Palace much to the dismay of our logistics director Jack but gave ourselves plenty of time to be organized and ready for our next phase – on to Nanjing and to our son.

But first – we were joined by other families! Carol from Md (her daughter Emily is at home with her grandmother) and the Dickersons (Stephanie, Chris and their daughter Morgan) from Connecticut. We got to meet each other and catch up over breakfast – so nice to get to meet after hearing about each other from our agency.

We did have a bit of drama at the airport – after parking and hauling all of our stuff in two different vehicles to the airport – it turns out that only one of the families was actually flying Air China in Terminal 3 and two of us were on Hainan Airlines in Terminal 1. So we had to haul all of our stuff to Terminal 1 which turned out to be several kilometers away. No taxi would take us – so we had to take a shuttle and we were cutting it a bit close running back and forth throughout the airport with cartfulls of baggage. Once we got our stuff to the right terminal and the right check in line one of our checked bags kept setting off the alarm. So the staff had to examine the bag and all the contents – send it through and the alarm would set off again. We think it might have been either the zipper or the handle. But Jack and Greg and the airlines staff were all trying to figure it out -- they actually had them come behind the counter and translate an explanation of all the contents (baby food, baby medicine etc etc). Never did figure out what was setting off the alarm but finally they let it through anyway after much lobbying by Jack. When we finally finally finally got to the gate they were boarding the last passengers. So it all worked out fine just like we all knew it would – but my body would not believe my mind – my heart was racing and I was tense. Jack, poor man, felt so bad and was sweating like crazy. Christina, our tour guide of all things, was very calm and helped Jack tremendously, she was a champ. All of us, meaning Carol, Greg and I were all in middle seats in separate rows but so what – we were on the plane to Nanjing! And it helped us bond with Carol, she’s great.

posing with Jack in Beijing:


We love love love Nanjing! Of course that means what we saw of the city on the drive from the airport to the city center which took about an hour. Nanjing seems to be a mixture of DC, LA, San Francisco, Miami and New York all in one place. Aggressive angry drivers – many lights were flashed and horns were blared. And this was Sunday night!

Our hotel is fantastic! Very posh and sanitized water available sink side for brushing of teeth! We have a little crib in the room! Tomorrow we are to head to the government offices at 2:00 PM to meet and receive our little son at 2:30 PM. We cannot wait! As you can tell by the number of exclamation points I have used in this post just how excited we are – but our little man is going to have a rough travel day of five or six hours traveling by car or bus to meet his mama and daddy – right at feeding time!

Great Wall and Ming Tomb

As Scarlett O’Hara once said, “With God as my witness I’ll never be cold in Beijing again!” Following this as my creed I wore three layers rather than typical two layers – long undies and jeans and sweater with two long sleeve cotton tees just wasn’t cutting it. So today I wore two pairs of socks – one of them wool, long underwear, my flannel pajama bottoms and jeans (please remember this when viewing all photos, thanks) along with a camisole, two layers of long underwear (one of them Greg’s) and a sweater, scarf and my cute but lamely unwarm hat. And so the weather was less windy, so all was good. I even unzipped my jacket for a brief moment.

Today we are heroes for climbing the Great Wall of China says Chairman Mao. Of course, you can get this official certificate at the very first stop on the Wall, which seems overly democratic of him, because you can go much further to five towers beyond and more. Climbing the Wall is much like climbing Mt. Everest in that there are long lines with crowded sections (hereto referred to as the Hilary Step) of folks just sitting down in the middle of climbing to the flat sections. I advise looking down at your feet at all times so that you a) don’t fall to a brutal and painful death and b) so you don’t see how much further excruciating pain awaits you and awaits you. We were given a choice to go to the more popular Great Wall site with a lovely tram to the top or to the less populated site that is much steeper but less busy. My sister warned me about the first choice, that it was akin to Gatlinburg i.e. very touristy, crowded and cheesy, so we went with the second site. Of course, on this particular day most folks went to the same place: the “less populated” site with a steep climb. My lungs expanded to new capacity filled with smoggy Beijing air congestion to last me the next two years.

Many tourists from all over the world were there – Russians, Americans, Indians, Australians and well as many Chinese. The easiest to tell apart – all Russian men smoked on the way up and down the world’s steepest steps and the women wear fur coats, big sunglasses and high heels. Boots of course, but with heels and darned if they didn’t go almost to the top in those things. If that were me, my funeral ceremony would already have happened. We got up to about the fourth or fifth tower but like David Brashears always says about Everest you don’t just need to be able to go up to the top, you have to get back down to the bottom. Greg could have gone all day, seriously.

By the way, Chinese are very similar to Americans in that the opportunity is always available to make a buck. So on the way to the Wall, we stopped at a jade factory that happens to sell lots of jade items that are very pretty, high quality and important for you to buy. We were followed around and around quite oppressively. Finally I could not take it anymore and made for the “factory” exit with our guide and driver trailing behind. Never mind as we had more opportunity to spend throughout the day. The “how to make” part lasts about 5 minutes and the opportunity to shop part is open ended until you buy something and they’ve got all day. By the way, now you know that your Christmas present will likely be nothing of jade.

We also went to the Ming tomb where the guy who is buried there isn’t really buried anymore ‘cause the Communists liberated his body from the coffin and gave the loot surrounding him to the People, or so we are told. Mainly what we saw was a reproduction.

I’m trying to be funny of course but we really did have a great day, if not overly long. They seem to like to keep us as occupied as possible, hopefully spending money, until we beg and plead for rest. We’ve tried to beg out of a tour tomorrow morning of the Emperor’s summer palace before our noon flight to Nanjing – and got a room call at night from the front desk asking why and offering to work with us to fit in an abbreviated tour. We haven’t had a chance to be nervous about the baby as we literally have had no down time. But tomorrow we leave for Nanjing and we cannot wait! Just one more day before we get to have our little emperor.

No new news on the paperwork in Guangzhou. Hope that we have internet in our room in Nanjing (we don’t here in Beijing), as we hope to provide many more pics of little Timmie.

Beijing in Color

It’s 11:30 PM on Friday, December 05, 2008 and we don’t have an internet connection in our hotel room. We did go to an internet hole (I mean bar, but with no drinks but plenty of smokers) located in the basement of a building. The cashier is a young girl that broke into song with the radio while giving us access to their network. Quite strange. I tried I really did to get access to our Google account to post a blog entry, without success as all the directions were in Chinese and I can only go thru Google to get to my account. Anyway it turns out we are still having trouble with our paperwork and so had to dedicate our time to sending another email to officials at the National Visa Center in New Hampshire and to writing our Congressperson Jim Moran to ask for assistance regarding our paperwork and asking for his intervention on our behalf.





Today we went to Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, Drum Tower and a local haitong (or neighborhood and I’m spelling it incorrectly) for lunch after a tour via to a Silk Factory (consider it an opportunity to buy something after a 10 minute explanation of the silk making process with salesperson following you throughout the store) Temple of Heaven and then a hot-pot dinner at a packed Friday night place clearly very popular with Beijingers. You may think you’ve had a hot-pot dinner but was it a traditional hot-pot meal versus the less superior electric hot-pot meal.



First thing that it is important to know – it is FUH REEEEEEZING here. Emphasis on the FUH! So we were walking around the Forbidden City and our guide Christina would be explaining an important fact about the Forbidden City such as the difference between the two large lions outside one of the main gateways and I would be thinking, “Oh, so the male lion has his paw on the world, while the female has her paw on the baby….Oh God I am sooooooo cold, I’m so very cold! I wish I was in the sun. Wow this is really colorful. So yellow is the color of the imperial court and this is where the concubines slept. Wow, it is very cold. I am so very cold” Etc. Multiply this times my entire day.



We have a whole team dedicated to helping us maneuver Beijing. Our driver’s name is Kou, the logistics director is Jack (he is NOT familiar with the nursery rhyme) and our tour guide Christina. The driver drops us off, Jack goes with us to get the tickets and Christina is our information resource, except for in the haitong when our guide was a young fellow by the name of Golf. She is very young and energetic and completely dedicated to giving us a wealth of information about each site we visit in Beijing. We understand most of what she is saying but are still lost some of the time this being dependent on the amount of recent coffee consumption. So since we only drank coffee this AM we were able to follow less and less as the day wore on. And we’re still very much adjusting to the 360 degree time change. There’s only so many times you can say, “what did you say, I don’t understand” before you adopt a frozen smile and nod and just go with the gist of it.


The Beijing of the post Olympics so far just seems as a very large modern city with the exception being the toilet situation. I’m not a squeamish person but for some reason I am unable to use the public toilets (or holes in the floor – very smelly and very wet). It has not gotten to crisis levels yet and have only held it for the most today at two hours until returning to our Western style hotel bathroom.

Quick impressions of all we have seen – Chairman Mao’s portrait is very very large and repainted each year. Forbidden City is quite crowded given the chilly weather. Although we are generally the only Americans no one gives us a second glance even at the local non-tourist haunts. There seem to be many Russians. Everyone in Beijing is freezing, not just us, as the weather just turned frigid. The Temple of Heaven is beautiful as well as surrounded by a community park where the local retirees play cards, majong and dance. That was pretty cool as in amazing as well as very cold. Did I mention it is FUH reezing here.
Must go to sleep. Take care all. Much love to you from the east coast of China.



We have many pictures which we hoped to include but are having some trouble getting them up -- sooo sorry but we'll have them up soon. Were in a bit of a culture shock and getting used to how to do things. Not quite up to speed.

Also - today the Great Wall and perhaps the Ming tomb if we feel up to it.

A little bit more about Timothy

We've asked Timothy's caregivers some questions about him so that we know what he's been eating, if he's been sick, what kind of formula he eats, when he takes naps.

So I'll share a little bit of what we've learned about him:

He takes naps between 11:30 AM - 1:30 PM

Main meals are at 4am, 8am, 2pm, 7pm; snack 10:30am, 4:30pm

He's also eating some soft table food like: congee (sweet rice mixed with all kinds of beans very soft); soft noodles, minced veggie and meat and fish, rice soup, cakes or cookie snacks, fruits, have to be soft, but eats everything - that's good to know! We'll see if this lasts.

His hernia hasn't been fixed yet and his surgery caused him three days of pain - poor little guy!

He loves cars, legos, and being cuddled. He also (and this kills me)
likes dolls, being talked to and holding him. Ahh - isn't that so sweet? We looked for a cuddly doll for him today but could only find a white baby with blond hair. We think we'll try in China to find an Asian doll. I'm sure he'll deny his interest later in life, but I just think this is the sweetest thing.

We are finishing up all of our shopping - seemingly trying to improve the economy singlehandedly. We've been to Target half a dozen times, Babies R Us, Best Buy (mainly for us - to keep us entertained with music for our MP3 players on the very long plane ride). Our suitcases must weigh at least 90lbs each, a lot of which isn't our fault but we're bringing presents over for the orphanage and various officials and caregivers.

The Hanoi consulate did have our paperwork and has fedexed it to China. Hopefully everything that's needed is there and we'll have that headache behind us before we travel.

Tomorrow is the pediatrician meeting when she'll hopefully give us a prescription for amoxicillin, that we're certain to need only if we don't have it. It's finally starting to be real to us - that we are actually picking up our son and that we will be with him at this time next week.