1/3/2002 - 4th day with Anna

We have had Anna for 4 days. She has changed so much. We don't know if she was just never taught to do things by herself or she was just too shocked to do anything. When we first met her, she could even hold her own bottle and only could take a few steps humbly. In just a few hours, we taught her how to hold her bottle. By the next day, she played and laughed freely. She learned to offer kisses and started to share her food. She started to walk all by herself and enjoyed every step of it. She is showing up all her past year development in just a few days so we don't miss anything! It was hard for us to see her so far behind in her development at first. However, we feel it was God's will to let us to take care of her. We are glad that we have the chance to teach her all these baby things now. In just a few days, she already caught up a lot.

We have some hard times due to her teething right now. Her molars are just coming out, all four of them at the same time! She has also bronchitis from a cold she had before we got her and is on antibiotics now. Babies in our travel groups seem all doing well, however a few parents are sick. Joshua is one of the sick ones. There seems a virus going on in our group. Joshua had upset stomach. He is doing better now.

We went to a park on new year's day. We went to a department store to shop and to a residential area in the country side.It is crowded everywhere due to holidays here (or simply crowded even on a normal day). Firework was on every night outside the hotel for the past three days. The trip to the country side was nice. Sue enjoyed seeing all the old people there. Every one admired us having three children, two boys and one girl. We are proud too.

We can't visit our orphanage. We were told that our orphanage is not in any condition to host visitors and is far away. However, we will be allowed to visit Chuzhou orphanage tomorrow where other babies in our travel group come from. We hope we can come back to visit Anna's orphanage in the future when Anna is a little older. Since she is bonding to us so well, Berthold does not mind not to visit her orphanage to confuse her even more.

Yesterday, all the mothers in the group went out shopping. It was fun. The boys had good time with Anna in the hotel room. She is so fun to play with.

We all have "hotel" fever. There is not much to do here. We can't wait to go to Guangzhou and then go home. We are tired of eating the same food. Even Sue is tired of Chinese noodles!

But we have to be here for another three days. We have to wait until next monday for the domestic adoption to be final. We will leave here on the 7th. In 8 more days, we will be home!!