Summer Vacation: Hilton Head Island

I seem to be jumping around all over the place in my blogging, but there are certain things I want to remember from the past four months, and recording them seems to be a priority over organization at the moment.

I don't know if my family would agree with me or not, but this year's summer vacation was one of my favorites.  I had been feeling growing stress in our lives and in our relationships with each other, and I really wanted to spend a whole week focused and loving on each other. 

As a kid, one of my favorite places on the planet was Hilton Head Island because my family vacationed there frequently. I have so many precious memories from my childhood there, and Tim and I had been talking about taking the kids there someday.  I found a great deal on a little condo near the beach, and voila'.  HHI here we come.

One of the things I was most looking forward to was the food.  (Hudson's... yum.)  We ate a lot of my old favorite restaurants (Ben liked my favorite pizza place so much that he said he hoped to take his kids there someday), and we found a few new favorites too (hello, Kenny B's fried shrimp).

Much time was spent swimming, jumping waves, and digging holes in the sand.  More than anything, we just spent time together. It was so so good to be free from distractions and to just be.  Together.  We learned new things about each other. We had important conversations.  And we slowed down.  Which was awesome.  Oh, and did I mention that the condo didn't have internet access?  I had no idea how great it would be to be disconnected from the rest of the world.  It was awesome.  (Have I mentioned that it was awesome?)

I wish we could take trips like that more often.  I had no idea how important it would be for me to reconnect with my kids, and I can already feel the stress of the school year, work, and busy schedules pulling at those connections.  But my hope is that I will find small ways to recreate those moments where we turn the phones off, look each other in the eye, and talk.  Plus, I am still hoping for some time at the beach next summer!

Confessions of a Bad Blogger

Since I have been overwhelmed with life in the past year lately, I may have passed up a few bloggable moments.  But there are a few things I would never forget to tell you from 2012.

1. I would never forget to mention that Will learned to ride his bike this past spring.

2.  And I am sure that I remembered to post photographical evidence that we actually did spend a week at the beach with Tim's family. No?

 3. Likewise, I would never fail to blog if Kate learned to read.

4. If Ben had continued to write funny comic strips to amuse his teacher and me, I would post every single one.

5.  I am sure that if Will had visited the local newspaper office and become inspired to write his own newspaper, complete with cover story, sports section, interviews, comics, and puzzles, of course I would have told you about it!

6. I got a new camera just before Thanksgiving, but if a tall, skinny stranger tried to eat my youngest while I was messing with the settings, I am sure I would have remembered and posted a photo.

7.  I always remember to post the Annual Cousins-on-the-Stairs pic, especially if it is Jack's first one.

8. And if Kate ever won an award at school for never giving up or quitting, I would have taken the time to blog about it.

9. We didn't do anything fun like decorate gingerbread houses. And Jack-Man did not eat his house before it ever got decorated.  (Thanks again, Lilly!)

10. And of course, Jack did not fall on his face shortly before said gingerbread adventure, getting a large contusion on his forehead which is still visible more than two weeks later. 


I am also sure that the astute readers among you noticed that I still failed to mention our Christmas celebrations, but maybe I will get to that before the spring thaw. Or maybe I won't. Who knows what you will get from this bad blogger. 

Day 13 (& 14) Home

Possibly one of the greatest travel ideas ever is the airport adjacent hotel.  Are they overpriced?  Yes.  But there is something wonderful to be said for stepping out of your hotel room, walking down the hall, and checking in at the flight counter.  Especially when you are flying out of Hong Kong and it it takes almost two hours to check in, go through security, and go through customs.  By the time we got to the plane, it was mostly loaded.

The flight was smooth and on time, but that's about all you can say positive about a 14 hour flight.  Oh, and the movies were good and mostly appropriate for the children.

The last leg from Chicago was also smooth and without incident.  Unless you count Jack screaming for most of the hour-long flight.  He did great on the big plane - all the kids did - but the last leg put him over the edge of his I'm-so-tired-I-just-want-to-cry meter.

We got home safely, stuffed some Chick-Fil-A into our faces, took baths, and went to bed.  We had decided to put Jack in a pack-n-play next to our bed for the first few nights so we could comfort him if necessary.  It didn't take long for me to realize that it was going to be a loooong night.  We ended up putting him in bed with us simply because it was faster to pat his back and put him back to sleep than any of the other alternatives.  Jet lag does not make for patient parenting.

After being up half the night, he ended up sleeping until 1pm.  The rest of the day he was in a fairly good mood, and he eats really well, but after dinner it was clear he was ready to crash.  I kept pushing him to stay up longer, in hopes that he would sleep through the night.  We shall see how that works out for me.  I keep dozing off at random times myself, so I understand how he feels:)

I know it looks like he is upset in this photo, but he was really excited about throwing every single Little People doll we have across the room.  His smile face and mad face are pretty similar, but he was laughing and saying, "Ah!" over and over again (short a sound, not ahhhhh) which is of course his favorite noise. 

I have to give one last thanks to all the people who have prayed us through all of this.  Jack is doing very well (I hope to write about that later, when I have had enough sleep to do more than simply write down what happened each day - for now, see Tim's blog), and I have gotten to focus on him because I have such a great support system.  Mom and Jacob took care of the kids, Tara and Vanessa took care of the blog, and when we got home I found that Christa, Tia, and Sarah had been at work in my kitchen, buying me milk and freezing meals.  (Yummy chicken pocket thingies, btw.  Will says I must make them for him again sometime.)  I cannot thank all of you enough.  You're the best!

Day 12 Guangzhou/Hong Kong

There isn't a whole heaping lot to tell from Tuesday.  We slept in, took a cab over to Shamian, and did a little shopping.  Those of you who know me well realize how ridiculous it is that I spent significant time shopping for three days in a row.  I loathe shopping. But we have a tradition in our house of giving Kate a small gift from China on Kate NaNa Day.  It's never a huge deal, but I needed to stock up so I would have a similar gift for Jack for the next 18 years. 

One of the shops we went to was Susan's Place.  On Shamian, all of the shops are named after whoever runs them - well, their assumed English name, anyway.  There is Jenny's Place and Amy's Place and Michael's Place and... you get the idea.  Susan's husband is Dong.  And he is hilarious.  He immediately drew in Jacob and Tim and started telling them stories and pouring tea for them, and the longer they talked and drank, the longer Mom and I shopped.  Brilliant strategy, I tell you.  I walked out of there with things I didn't even know that I wanted, because Dong never stopped talking and pouring tea.  I finally started sending people out of the shop, one by one, to get us out of there.  They really were delightful, but very savvy. 

After a Cantonese lunch on the island, we headed back to the hotel to finish our packing.  At 4:30 we loaded into vans and drove to Hong Kong.  Did y'all know that you still have to use your passport and go through customs to get in and out of HK?  I sure didn't.  And so I did not think it was a big deal when we pulled out of the hotel (me and Kate and Jack in one van with another family, and the rest of my family in the other van) that I carried all of the passports.  Thankfully someone else figured out the problem before we were out of Guangzhou, and they pulled us over to get the passports from me.  Immigration disaster averted.

We arrived at the Regal Airport Hotel, exhausted but safe, about 3 hours later.  There was internet in the lobby, but I was not motivated to go that far for you all.  Sorry about that.


Day 13 is coming...

Day 11 Guangzhou

Today was our consulate appointment.  We were up and out early to make it on time.  Thankfully Jacob stayed at the hotel with the boys, while Tim and I did the paperwork.  Mom and Kate came along for moral support and pearl shopping later on.  The oath and paperwork took only minutes, and we loaded back on the bus and went shopping.  We have the entire day free now, and have nothing to do until 4pm tomorrow.  Don't worry, I am not claiming boredom.  I am very happy to have this down time.  Everyone but me and Jack are at the park playing.  We are thinking of ordering out for dinner.  Tomorrow I will try to finish up shopping in the morning before leaving Guangzhou at 4:30.  From here we go to Hong Kong, and then fly home on Wednesday.
 
Jack is in a great mood today.  He has now changed his mind about bananas and loves them.  He is also nuts about Raisin Bran, but only if it is from his Daddy's bowl.  He really doesn't want them from his own bowl.  He has giggled and carried on all day today, playing in front of the mirror and lifting his shirt for zerberts.  Right now he is napping - have I mentioned how easily he goes to sleep?  He fusses for about 3 minutes and then he is out like a light. 
 
I haven't taken a single photo today - no cameras are allowed in the consulate.  So today it is just me, being happy about our down time. I don't know when I will post again because of our travel, but I will drop by for an update if I have a chance. 

Day 10 Guangzhou

I know my blog has been less than warm and fuzzy lately.  I apologize for that.  The truth is that when I am hungry and/or tired, I can get really obnoxious.  And I will take everyone down with me.  At one point yesterday, Will suggested I needed to eat something because I was being mean to him.
  
Nothing like being taken down a notch by your 7 year old. 

Anyway, I got a full eight hours last night and then ate an enormous breakfast this morning, so today has been much better.  We met up with our group and headed over to the church on Shamian Island.  It was a lovely service in both Mandarin and English, so we got to understand what was going on.  Some of the songs were in English, but honestly, it was such a beautiful thing to listen to praise songs in Mandarin that I didn't mind at all not to understand all of the words.  The congregation has been there for twenty years, and it was standing room only - probably 250 people.

Then we headed to Lucy's, the American restaurant that caters to adoptive families, and then did some shopping.  I was expecting everything to be closed, but there were still quite a few businesses that were open. For dinner we decided to return to the island to shop a bit more and eat at the Italian restaurant.  Yum.  That's all I can say about that.

I haven't said much about Jack lately either.  He and I are still figuring each other out, which I am sure will be a life long process.  But I know that he is super-sweet.  He loves hugs and kisses.  Loves to put his feet in my face.  He has a crazy appetite and will eat until you leave the table.  Today he prefered his Daddy, but still let me hug and kiss on him.  If he is happiest when he is eating, then he is second happiest when he is running.  He is already getting more steady on his feet, and he ran around the playground like a mad man today, full steam ahead.  He is going to keep me on my toes.

His cleft lip repair looks great, and the cleft does not appear to go all the way through the gumline.  The cleft palate is pretty wide though.  He has some trouble hearing us in a crowd, but seems to hear us in the hotel room ok.  We are still trying to watch him and figure out exactly the extent of his hearing loss.  I am eager to get him to an audiologist.

He has spent the last couple days unhappy.  I'm not sure if it was the lack of sleep, or if he is finally grieving a bit, or a combination of the two, but he seems better today.  Which I am very thankful for.  He has a pretty happy disposition, so to hear him cry and not be able to offer a snack or drink or toy to make it all better is hard.  But that is part of parenting, right?  Mom and Dad can't always fix everything, but we do the best we can to love and to guide. 

Thank you to everyone who has been praying for us.  Today was so much better than yesterday.  Tomorrow is the consulate appointment. If the paperwork is all in order, they will process his visa by Tuesday.

Night:)

Day 9 Guangzhou

(Please check in on Day 7 later today.  My friend Vanessa has volunteered to help out posting pictures, so hopefully we can get that working again.)

The short version of today is that we made it safely to the hotel.  Keep reading for the longer version...

After I wrote the Day 8 post, I went out of the VIP lounge to use the bathroom.  When I returned, there was a group of men standing outside trying to get in. The glass doors were locked.  I went to the front of the crowd and stood there trying to figure out if I should start banging on the doors or just wait on them to open them.  The staff was standing on the other side and could clearly see me, but they obviously didn't want to open the doors.  After a few minutes of this, a couple of people needed to leave the lounge, so they opened the doors and I hurried inside.  About a dozen men followed me in and got through before they locked the doors again.  Several people tried to jam the door open with their feet or water bottles.  It was a little scary there for a moment.  The guide who was there got his family in and then spent some time trying to get the third American family in so that he could keep us all together.  Every time they opened the door people tried to get in, but it calmed down a lot after that. 

All I can say at this point is that when people have been waiting for a flight for 6 hours, they get very agitated.

The guide let me know that the plane that was supposed to be there at 12:30 hadn't taken off yet.  I later learned that there was a big hail storm in Guangzhou preventing take-off.  I settled in to get some sleep at that point, with Tim staying awake to monitor things.  At 2:30 I woke up to find that they were going to board us at 3:00, but when we got to the doors of the plane, they wouldn't let us on because we hadn't gone through security the second time we got tickets.  We had stayed in the boarding area.  Only at that point we didn't know what the problem was, so I just started praying they would let us on the plane.  Finally a security person who spoke English came and explained they had to check our passports to see if we matched our boarding passes, and then they let us on. 

And then we sat on the runway for another hour.  For those keeping score, we spent 11 hours at the airport before we took off at 4:30.

We made it to the hotel about 7:30, with enough time to eat breakfast, shower, and brush our teeth before getting Jack to his medical exam.  Jack was not a fan of the doctors' office.  He was exhausted from spending the night at the airport and less than cooperative. 

And then we crashed.  The only other thing we have done is eat dinner.  Jacob and Mom and the kids have had a bit more free time and went to the pool after waking up.  I hear it is lovely.

Tomorrow is church and shopping on Shamian Island.  I am looking forward to going back there, but Alison says that everything is moving off of the island and that many businesses have closed.  Still, I think it will still be a peaceful place to walk around and relax. 

We are staying at the China Hotel Marriott.  Very fancy schmancy.  And jam packed with adoptive families.  Everyone who used to stay at the White Swan now stays here apparently, although I think there are still people who stay on the island at the Victory.  I would have loved to stay on the island again.

I am way too tired to tie this up in a neat bow.  Sleep time for me:)

Day 8 Photo Dump

I will update about Day 9 in a little while, but I wanted to try to load the photos from Day 8 first. 

My dear friend Tara, who has been my backup blogger, has had a family emergency.  Her dad has had a heart attack, so everyone join me in praying for Dub.  Obviously she needs to focus on him for awhile, so the pictures may be more sporadic. Thank you, Tara, for doing such a great job!

Day 8 Nanjing

Thankfully we didn't have anything planned at all for today – I say thankfully because I needed a full day of peace to recover from yesterday and to prepare for tonight, when more chaos ensued. But I will get to that later.

Right now, I will tell you about the relaxing part. I woke up about 6:30 because Jack was crying in his sleep. He calmed down before I got to him, so I decided to get online and see if anyone was on Skype. I saw that my friend, Kelehua, was on so I called her and we chatted for half an hour or so. I introduced her to Jack, since he was up by this point, and while we were sitting there he opened his mouth, leaned in, and gave me a big ole kiss right on the mouth. I was so surprised and excited that he did it four or five more times for good measure. Of course, as soon as Tim got the video camera out he stopped, but I have Tim and Kele as witnesses that it happened.

 After breakfast we put a movie in for the kids, packed up, had some lunch, and took a walk around the Confucius Temple shopping area behind our hotel. It was nice to have nothing on the agenda before the bus picked us up at 4 for our 7:15 flight.

Which was when the chaos ensued.

Our guide told us that the flight was delayed until 9:30, but we still had to go and check in so they didn't give our seats away. About 8:00 they posted that the flight had been cancelled. Thankfully there were a couple of other American families waiting for the same flight – one had their guide with them, and the other had a phone. We called our guide to let her know about the situation and then sent the dads to figure out what to do. They got us onto a 9:15 flight that was already delayed.

As I write this, it is 10:30. They told Tim that the flight from Guangzhou should arrive here about 12:30am, and that we might be able to board around 1am. Jack has slept a total of 20 minutes since 7am. He refuses to lie down or rest at all, so we are taking turns walking him up and down the hall. Tim just passed by singing, "And I would walk five hundred miles and I would walk five hundred more…" with Jack strapped onto his body. When it was my turn I hummed "Yankee Doodle Dandy." It is good marching music.

 Right now the rest of us are sitting on the floor in a corner. Large groups of people keep coming over to see about us. They are incredibly nice and friendly (helping me load Jack into the carrier for instance, or telling what a beautiful family I have), but also very nosey. They keep asking how many children I have (How many Chinese babies?), but they don't believe me, and I have to point out all of them and tell them how old they are, using a combination of Chinese, English, and pantomime. They also want to know what video games the kids are playing and are leaning over to see what I am typing.

I am considering asking the children to do a song and dance number to entertain them.

I am thankful at this moment that I am a pastor's wife. We have very thick skin and are used to living in a fish bowl. We can laugh at things that would drive normal people insane. I would like to post this immediately so that all of you fine people could pray for us, but if you are reading this it means that I am not at the airport anymore, and I am probably checked into the China Hotel in Guangzhou. Let's hope that's where I am.

12am Update: Not at the hotel, but an extremely nice airport official asked us to sit in the First Class Lounge so we could be more comfortable. The Chinese are very warm people, and I should not be ugly. Jack is asleep in the chair next to me. The other three kids are still kicking.

Day 7 Suzhou

(Post written Thursday night - It didn't go through, so let's see if I can email the photos to Tara and get it to work that way. Sorry for the delay!)

I can't even begin to explain how tired I am right now. But you know me. I am always up for a challenge.

After breakfast we loaded up and headed to Tongli Town. Suzhou is known as the Venice of Asia because there are canals throughout the city. One of the areas where this is most prominent is Tongli. It is an old area that is very similar to Venice in that there are canals everywhere, narrow streets, and cars are not allowed. It was nice to walk through the town because the traffic in most parts of China resembles nothing so much as a giant game of chicken between cars, motorbikes, and pedestrians. (We are always in awe that we still haven't seen an accident.) But in Tongli you only have to watch out for the motorbikes and hawkers. We took a gondola ride around the area, browsed in shops, and ate a tea house that we remembered from last time. It was very nice.

After lunch we went to the Master of the Nets Garden. The guide said it was the oldest and most famous of the UNESCO gardens here in Suzhou. It was the former home of Someone Very Important.

I strapped Jack into the pack on my chest, but unfortunately, the visit coincided with his naptime. Every time I stopped walking, he started crying. I paced every corridor of that place while waiting for our guide to explain the reason this window or that painting displayed harmony or high social status or whatever it was supposed to mean. Honestly, I usually eat this kind of thing up, but when we have the kids, please just hit the highlights, lady. Bless her heart, she didn't know what hit her with our crazy family's shenanigans.

The looks on their faces really say it all.

Anywho, after that, we were shuffled to the train station about 3:30. Our train didn't leave until 7. So we spent the next 3 ½ hours in the train station. Entertaining three children and one baby. The big kids did fine. The baby was hungry. And bored. And tired. And could not understand why no one wanted to walk the length of the station with him. Or why the man in the next aisle should not give him his snack. Or why he couldn't eat crackers off the floor.

 

We finally made it to the hotel about an hour ago, and bed never looked so good. Well, there was one thing that sounded better. While I have been writing this, Tim went to get me ice cream for supper. It has been that kind of day.

Blessings to all, and to all a good night!

Day 6 Suzhou

After breakfast, we headed to the Suzhou Social Welfare Institute.  It is a home for both seniors and orphans, but they are currently building a new orphanage where the children will move to by the end of the year.  That is one of the reasons that we really wanted to come and visit Suzhou.  We wanted Kate to see the SWI with children in it and to be able to ask questions.  It is a very pretty campus, if a little institutional in places.  The seniors walk around enjoying the fountains and gardens.

We went up in the office building, where they served fruit and tea and let us ask a few questions.  I asked them if they had gotten any of my emails or letters, but the only one they had received was the one I sent with the package for Jack.  I also asked where Jack had learned to dance to Chinese opera music, and they said that they watched that on TV in the baby room. 

Last time we didn't see any children at all.  This time, we saw several rooms with children.  They were much less guarded this time, but I wonder how much was real and how much was for show.  We saw a room with several children with Downs Syndrome.  There was another room with cribs.  The room they let us enter had many small beds near the ground, and they pointed out the one that they said Jack slept in.  We still aren't sure if he was in foster care or at the orphanage.  They told us he was in foster care for a couple of weeks after his surgery and then came back to the orphanage, but we don't know.  He seemed to maybe know the Vice-Director, Ms. Chen, but other than that seemed oblivious to the whole thing.  Several of the workers in that room recognized both Kate and Jack. 

After this they took us to a very fancy lunch at a nearby restaurant.  Thankfully my children behaved very well, which helped as the SWI ladies sat there watching me.  I don't know about you, but I find it very difficult to engage in polite conversation while simultaneously using chopsticks to pick up foods that I don't recognize and feed myself and a child I have only known for 48 hours.  It's a good thing that I am thick skinned, but I don't think they were judging me too harshly.  They did a lot of smiling:)

I teared up when they said goodbye to NaNa.  The lady we remembered from last time was obviously moved by the visit, holding Kate's face in her hands before saying goodbye.  I'm not sure what Kate thought about that, but being the shy person she is I think she was just a little confused.

Later in the afternoon we started heading back to the hotel, when the guide, Sisey, said that we were near the fresh-water pearl market, and wouldn't we like to stop and see the pearls?  Oh. My. Goodness.  It wasn't an especially large place, but it was packed with tour guides showing large groups of Chinese people around the market.  The guides wore these microphones with speakers on their belts, and they were So Stinkin' Loud.  And it was all in Chinese.  Different sales people would pull you away and put pearls around your neck, hoping you would buy some.  Then we would say Bu Yao, and move to the next section.  By the time we left my head was completely spinning, and I was glad to return to the hotel a little early where it is very quiet.

Have I mentioned the hotel?  It is called the Garden Hotel, and it is just down the street from the Lingering Garden.  It consists of several different buildings that surround a traditional garden and pond.  Very relaxing in the midst of the chaos.  There are several large European tour groups here, and I am reminded that for people around the world Suzhou is a big tourist destination because of its many gardens and canals. 

Because of how we spent the first part of the day, we were all emotionally drained.  We kept saying it was a day for comfort food, but there are no familiar foods nearby, other than fried rice (which is delicious, but we have eaten some (with other things) for the last eight meals in a row). I was ready to break into my emergency stash of Jif, but my brother and dear husband decided that we should take a taxi downtown.  All of my life, Jacob and Tim have been the two people pushing me to be more adventurous and do things outside of my comfort zone, and tonight was no exception.  Cabs in foreign countries are definitely out of my comfort zone.

We knew from our stay here in 2008 that there was a thriving nightlife and Western food somewhere nearby, but we just couldn't quite figure out where.  So we jumped into a cab.  Turns out, it was about a mile away from our hotel - too far for the kids to walk, but only a 5 minute cab ride.  And there it was - a McDonald's right where we remembered it.  French fries and cheeseburgers never tasted so good.  (Don't judge - we ate Chinese food nine times in a row before that!)

Jack is still sweet and funny.  He cries when we won't take him for a walk, or when we won't let him stuff his cheeks like a squirrel, but otherwise he is a pretty happy guy.  We keep waiting for the grieving to really start, but other than the crying right after his nap that first day, there hasn't been very much.  I remember one of the best pieces of advice I got when we met Kate was from Tara.  She said, "If she cries, that's a good thing.  And if she doesn't cry, that's a good thing too."  I am trying to keep that in mind as we walk this road with Jack.

It was a really emotional day, for a lot of reasons - namely that we visited places that my son and daughter spent their earliest days.  It was hard to see little faces that needed a mom and a dad.  It was heart-breaking to realize all that my kids have lost in losing their first parents and their first languages, cities, and cultures.

Tomorrow is Tongli Town, where the canals are.  We are hoping it is a much more relaxing day, perhaps with a gondola ride and some more delicious Chinese food:)  (No sarcasm intended.  I got my American fix.)