Proverbs 14:23 - All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.

We're finally able to access our blog. Yea! But, now Skype is not working. :-(

Well we made it to Guangzhou, formerly known as Canton. Kate and I had our game plan laid out well last night for a smooth transition out of the Hotel Sofitel Zhengzhou and we were able to get everyone bathed, dressed, fed and packed up by 8:30 AM leaving plenty of time to get checked out before our ride to the airport. We bid Zai Jian to the Sofitel breakfast with Steve’s 30th slice of French Toast, Katherine’s 10th Brioche, Sheehan’s 50th piece of bacon and/or sausage and Josiah’s 18th pound of fried rice.

The airplane ride was … well … it was exhausting. As smooth as everything else has gone, the airplane ride was a challenge. Josiah is not a big fan of seat belts, and he wasn’t too keen on the roar of the plane engines during lift off either. But all of that paled in comparison to when Katherine went to the restroom … without Josiah. Wow! The kid can belt it out when he is unhappy. Let’s just say the entire plane turned to see Steve do his best song and dance routine with Josiah while Katherine took a brief two minutes to herself (with Sheehan). The good news is he has obviously begun his bonding with Katherine J.

We eventually arrived to the familiar White Swan hotel, where we reacquainted ourselves with the Japanese Carp and the inside waterfall, before heading to Lucy’s the Western restaurant where we had Pasta, Cheeseburgers and grilled cheese … oh yeah, and Josiah had an adult-sized plate of fried rice J. Then we went to the White Swan swimming pool where we enjoyed the kiddie pool.

Tomorrow we do some sightseeing and perhaps shopping, and weather permitting some more swimming. FYI - It was a high of 95°F today.

Next morning: We woke up this morning and both Steve and Sheehan are sick. Steve has a fever and probably will not be sightseeing today. Sheehan is iffy. They were both awake quite a bit last night coughing and just uncomfortable while Katherine and Josiah slept like peaceful babies.

By the way, Josiah has been singing “Happy Birthday to You” quite often since we sang it to Steve on his b-day. You can only make out the word, “you,” but the melody is definitely Happy Birthday. He’s quite a happy little boy that entertains everyone around him. He has adjusted SOOO easily so far. He’s very content with pretty much everything unless he asks specifically for something and you say no, then he cries and drops to the floor, but even that stops after a few minutes, so it’s been pretty easy. He’s learned the English words, “happy, sad (which he’ll actually act out and it’s quite funny), bye-bye, and uh-oh.”

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Psalm 133:1 – How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity!

Happy Birthday Steve! Today is Steve’s birthday. I was sad that he would have to spend it in China where nothing special is bound to happen, but things turned out much better than I thought.

We started the day as usual with the yummy breakfast. It didn’t rain, so we really could have gone to the zoo and it turned out to be really hot. I dressed the boys in sweatpants and jackets thinking it would be cool. Wrong. It was the hottest since we’ve been here. At 9:30am we went to the Henan Provincial History Museum. I was actually kind of bored. I don’t really know much about history, especially Chinese history and really it was all a bunch of vessels and figurines that were dug up in the Henan province thousands of years ago. That is interesting in itself, but I didn’t really know what I was looking at and I didn’t understand the significance of anything and after I’d seen 100 of the same pots, I felt like I had seen enough. After the museum we went back to the hotel b/c Josiah was falling asleep and Sheehan still wasn’t feeling well.

We ordered room service which was only $25 for 3 meals, two of which were kid’s meals, but were the size of any extra large adult meal. Just before our lunch, the front desk called and said they had a cake to bring up to Steve. They brought in a white cake with peaches and kiwi on top and an edible chocolate sign that said “Happy Birthday.” I wish I could have taken credit for all of this, but I had nothing to do with it. Steve thought I was pretending when I said I didn’t have anything to do with it. We still don’t know if one of the parents called the hotel or if the hotel staff got his info off the passport and this is just something that they do. The man who delivered it even put candles on it and we sang Happy Birthday. Josiah LOVED it and was clapping and smiling. Sheehan ran and hid under the pillows and kicked his legs, as he has some kind of fear of the Happy Birthday song (on his 3rd birthday he cried when we sang it to him).

Josiah had fried rice and fruit for lunch. He really seemed to be shoveling it in, like REALLY shoveling it in, especially the watermelon. It has us concerned that maybe he wasn’t getting fed enough at his orphanage. He eats so much and so fast and such huge bites. He hasn’t thrown up yet, so we’re thinking that what we’ve fed him has been ok. We’ll get more info back at home when he sees Dr. Andy on July 3rd.

The boys then took a nap and at 4:30pm, Miranda walked us over to pick up our laundry. As we were walking (I forgot my camera, of course) we saw a woman selling goldfish and bunny rabbits from a cart. PETA would have had a fit. The white bunnies were in tiny little cages with no room to move. She had about 20 of them. They were so cute.

For dinner, we celebrated by eating at the hotel restaurant where we eat breakfast. We have eaten at the same table every time we’ve been there (at least 6 times). It’s kind of behind a make-shift wall where all the tables are non-smoking. It’s good because when Josiah starts yelling with excitement at the top of his lungs, he doesn’t stand out as much.

It was the last night of the Seafood Festival. Wow! I’ve never seen seafood like this…ok, maybe on our honeymoon, but that was it. After dinner we took the kids to the little play area in the restaurant which amounted to some kiddie picnic tables and a bunch of stuffed animals. It was here that we witnessed another side to Josiah. It was like someone snuck five soda’s or cups of coffee to him when we weren’t looking. The kid was pure adrenaline. He was running, waiving his arms around, he even went on top of the picnic tables, grabbed Katherine’s hand and jumped right off … another difference from his conservative brother.

Before bed, we all got the cream treatment for Scabies. Katherine is really starting to itch since she has already had it before, plus she has been sleeping with Josiah.

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Brotherhood and Chinese casual dining

Psalm 133:1 – How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity!

Today was rather uneventful. We started out by going to breakfast, which is absolutely my favorite time of the day. I don’t know what it is about the breakfast. The selection? The overly attentive staff (we literally have a person standing next to our table taking our debris away all the time, refilling our coffee, picking up the napkins, forks, spoons, etc. that the kids (and adults) drop.)? The not having to cook? It’s all good. But, it seems extra special in the morning.

I should also mention that the baked beans and corn on the cob that we made fun of on the first day has been on the Zhengzhou buffet every morning as well. In my American-centric mind, I think that everyone is supposed to cater to us. Maybe Chinese people actually enjoy these items for breakfast. I have enjoyed having fried rice for breakfast every morning. Yum!

After breakfast, we updated our blog and slides (via my mom and sister) and at 10am we met Miranda, who took us over to get our clothes laundered. It was about a 5 minute walk. We also picked up some diapers and a new bottle for Josiah and then came back. Then we played with the boys for a while, I did some of our other laundry, we ate noodle bowls in the hotel room for lunch and then took the boys swimming. Josiah preferred to sit on the side of the pool rather than be in it. At one point, I was taking pictures and Steve had turned around to attend to Sheehan and Josiah slipped right in the water. Yikes! He didn’t cry, but he definitely didn’t enjoy going completely under water. He’s pretty resilient. The water was much colder than a few days ago and the boys were getting cold (so were we), so we left.

Then the boys took a nap. At 3:45pm they woke up and we went downstairs to receive Josiah’s birth certificate, etc. from Miranda. Then we went to dinner at a Chinese chain restaurant (New Island Coffee) that serves western food.

Things we learned at dinner tonight:

1. In Chinese restaurants you only get two napkins per table, unless you can speak Chinese.
2. If you don’t know the language, you probably won’t get what you ordered.
3. You don’t get any tableware other than a spoon and chopsticks. So, if you have two children and you order spaghetti and need to cut it up, plan on using your spoon or chopsticks to chop it b/c trying to communicate “knife” when you don’t know Chinese is futile.
4. Eating dinner on a couch is not really kid-friendly.
5. “Italian spaghetti” really means noodles with salty red sauce and when you say, “please put it on the side,” that really means give me extra on the side.
6. Josiah doesn’t like the word “no”…and neither does Sheehan (but we already knew that).
7. Josiah loves whipped cream…along with every other food … except for one exception below.
8. Josiah doesn’t love hot red peppers. Katherine made the mistake of giving Josiah, what looked like a red bell pepper. Instead, it was a flaming hot red spicy pepper and Josiah immediately spit it out and started crying and screaming at the top of his lungs in the middle of the restaurant. We quickly gave him water and more fried rice to ease the pain. He’s been drinking water voraciously for the past two hours, probably still trying to get rid of the spiciness.

By the way, (I don’t think we mentioned this) we’ve been thinking that Josiah has been saying a lot of “baby talk” and nonsensical words, but it turns out he’s speaking Chinese. Miranda said that at one point he was reciting his numbers and then said, “let’s go home and play!” Today, she heard him singing. We’re oblivious. Our Chinese is so limited.

Also, the orphanage (Half the Sky foundation) gave us a booklet full of pictures of Josiah and journal entries for about every 2-3 weeks.

The boys are getting along fairly well. Sheehan is not as jealous of Josiah as I thought he would be. Praise God! Sheehan is still very possessive of his toys however and enjoys bossing Josiah around. On their bad days, Sheehan is the fighter and controller while Josiah is the sulker and manipulator. On their good days, Sheehan is the helper and reminder of anything forgotten while Josiah rolls with the punches and is extremely conversational (in fact he is talking and singing himself to sleep as we type J). What a pair. They are both our little munchkins and we love them very much!

Tomorrow, we will visit either a zoo or museum or both. It’s supposed to rain, so we may axe the zoo idea. We’ll see.

Sheehan is beginning to cough and has a slight fever and I think we all have scabies. We got a prescription from the pediatrician before we left. It’s pretty common in the orphanages here. We’ll treat ourselves tomorrow night before we leave. Other than that we’re all pretty healthy still. Praise God! Still we appreciate any prayers for continued good health.

P.S. We hope to add video to our blog as soon as we have access to it, hopefully in Guangzhou (Saturday). We haven’t been able to send those to my mom b/c they’re too big.

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Jeremiah 29:11 – For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

Wow … yesterday we started our blog by saying we were parents of two boys … crazy. Today the feeling is … we are parents of two crazy boys J. It has taken very little time to realize that Sheehan and Josiah are polar opposites in so many ways. But one thing they share in common is a surplus of energy and a zest for fun.

We survived a lengthy eight hour round trip drive today to see Josiah’s orphanage where he grew up. This proved once again to be one of the highlights and lowlights as it did with Sheehan. We were introduced to the Orphanage Director, who was very pleasant, provided us with a lovely gift, and presented us with a crisp business card to boot. Then we went to see the nannies that took care of Josiah. One of the women was his foster mother and she was overcome with emotion at the sight of Josiah and held him weeping for several minutes (then, of course, Katherine started crying too). Josiah was very excited to see her. It was very moving and demonstrated the love these people feel for the children. Then we went into Josiah’s room, to see the crib he stayed in and to meet all of the children. Quite honestly, this is one of the most bittersweet moments we have experienced in our lives. To see the excitement and bubbling interest from these children on having a visitor, and the thirst for attention and touch is so exciting, only to see the sadness and pain in their eyes at our departure. They were very interested in seeing themselves on the video camera – we faced the tv screen in their direction as we taped. They were all in cloth diapers that looked like old rags. These children need homes, they need the attention every one of us longs for, and not just receive it if they happen to cry the loudest. Our prayer is that each of these children finds a forever family.

When we finally arrived back at the hotel, the kids simply had a blast. They kicked the beach ball, danced on the floor, jumped on the beds, and loved bath time. They loved every minute of it. In fact the only sad moment was Josiah being pulled away from the bath … he doesn’t like someone telling him bath time is over.

Now everyone is asleep except Steve and all is peaceful and quiet. Tomorrow is a very exciting day of doing laundry and signing some papers. J

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