American Citizen, Rats, Pierced Ears, and School!

May 1, 2014

 Whew!  We have been home for 2 weeks now!  And I ‘m sure you can imagine that we have been busy…. Lucy was a good little traveler.  We flew from Guangzhou to Beijing, then from Beijing to Los Angeles and from Los Angeles to Denver all in about a 24 hour time period.  We got hung up in Los Angeles getting through immigration and had to get on the next flight to Denver, which put us an hour and a half later than our original itinerary.  As soon as we landed on American soil, Lucy became an American citizen! One of our bags got here the next day, but we are all home safe and sound.   On the way home from the airport, we stopped at the Cherry Village Asian Grill for dinner.  Lucy ate well!  The next morning before she got out of bed I went to the doctor.  Whatever virus I had was not really getting better and my eyes were continuing to be gooky.  The doctor put me on a round of antibiotics, some cough syrup with codeine in it, and a steroid eye drop.  I am feeling better but Dave now has the same thing! 

By Easter Sunday, we had all seven of our children home!  Lucy got to meet all of her new sisters and brothers, dye Easter eggs, go to church for the first time, hunt Easter eggs, have an Easter basket with candy in it, celebrate Erin’s birthday, meet one set of grandparents, catch wild baby bunnies in our backyard, and play with other Asian kids in the neighborhood that speak Mandarin.  Other things that have kept us busy initially have been getting her to the pediatrician, buying her some shoes, getting her hair trimmed, and getting her ears pierced!  She wants to do everything yesterday!  We have an appointment for the orthodontist as well.  It is as if she has been waiting to get on with her life and wants to do everything right now!  After we were able to explain to her through a very dear young lady from Chengdu, (the city where Lucy is from) that lives in Lakewood, that wild bunnies are not a safe pet, she let them go and we got the cage cleaned right away and went to the pet store to get some rats!  So now we have Noodles and LuLu.  Lucy and Zoe just love animals, but we are not up for the commitment of a dog, so they settled for rats!  You should have seen the excitement at the pet store!  Since Lucy is doing so well and eager to get on with things, we decided to have her visit the school and the ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher.  She was up for starting school for half days.  Things are going well, but I think we will need another week of half days before we see if she is ready for a whole day!

More things we have learned about this little Lucy Chenguo as we are getting to know her:  she loves the color blue, she is learning what static electricity is, she is experiencing dry skin and lips, she is very sensitive to the bright sun because in Chengdu, the pollution was so bad that there aren’t very many sunny days there. She has been nauseous in the car.   She likes things orderly.  She flirts with Ethan, she is a tease, and she loves hot sauce.  We are still trying to figure out what she will eat.  She loves bacon.  She is very comfortable giving and receiving hugs and kisses and she likes to be mothered!  She does not seem to have any red flag issues that as adoptive parents of older children, you prepare for.  She is an amazing standing long-jumper (67”), and she beats us at Chinese checkers. Lucy had fun trying some skirts and dresses on the other night.  She loved twirling around in them.  She also likes to play with dolls and change their clothes and she loves to take pictures on the digital camera that Abby no longer uses. She loves watching the Disney movies and could be a Nexus addict if we let her!  She likes using technology to aid her in her acquisition of English.  She is claiming her spot in the birth order and Zoe is starting to get used to that.  At first Eli was very matter of fact about the fact that Lucy Chenguo had come home, but now I think he is acting out because all of the attention is not on him.  We are hoping that this subsides…

We were home about a week when I started feeling better and then I realized that we had made it!  We had been looking at Lucy Chenguo’s picture for almost a year.  We did all of the grueling paperwork and waited on each step.  First for China, then for the US then for China, then for the US…then we did the fundraiser through Adopttogether and raised $!0,640! Then at last we got TA, the Consulate appointment was made and airline tickets were bought.. Abby and I were on our way to China to bring home this little girl that we knew very little about.  The day came when we finally met her, then when she was officially our daughter, then when we were able to visit her finding spot, then we finally got her US visa and were on our way home just barely getting through each day because of sickness, but trying to ignore it…coughing all the way home into a pillow on the airplane and finally back in the arms of our family…it has indeed been a journey so far and will continue to be!

Our two major initial hurdles to jump will be helping Lucy to acquire and master the English language and to find foods that she likes and will eat here.  I’m sure we will be adding some new recipes to our collection and shopping at an Asian market more!

I hope I can find time occasionally to add an update to our blog from time to time, but as we all are adjusting we will also be in the final stages of preparing for Erin and Neal’s wedding in July!

Again, thank you to our parents, children, friends and family that have supported us on this journey.  Words are truly not enough to express the deep, heartfelt gratitude that we have experienced as we have tried to answer the call to life over the last 13 or so years….and again, thank you to all of our generous donors who helped us complete Lucy’s adoption.  The fees and costs are really overwhelming and there was such a burden lifted as the donations rolled in!  Thank you for your response to the invitation to help make a difference in the life of a child.  Amen.

Shaimin Island, Lucy’s, and US VISA!!!!

Just a quick entry…we have to leave the hotel at 6 am for the airport and it is after midnight.  Today was our last day in Guangzhou.  We took a TAXI to Shaimin Island to walk around, do a little shopping and eat at Lucy’s!  At 5:30 pm we got Lucy’s Chinese passport with US Visa in it…so we were jumping for joy!  The paperwork is done!...at least for now!  The bags are packed and we are ready!  See you all back in the USA!  Thank you all for your love, support, babysitting, and prayers.  I will post a couple more posts before we get down to business when we get home!

The Long Awaited Consulate, FrenchFries, and Eye drops

First on the agenda today was a quick stop at the building where we went for Lucy’s medical exam.  Our guide ran upstairs to pick up her results from her exam in a sealed envelope.  It was the last document that had to be put in our clear envelope of important documents going to the US Consulate.  Next……the US Consulate appointment!  We had to take our clear envelope and passport to the appointment.  No cameras or bags.  We took a group oath and then they called us each up one by one so we could turn our clear envelope in.  They go through the docs and make sure everything is just so, and it was…our guide triple checked it!  Then we sat down again and then they called us up again for our fingerprinting AGAIN!  That was it!  Back outside we grabbed our cameras before leaving the secure area to take a quick picture!

For lunch, I figured that we would take Lucy to a noodle place that was real close to McDonalds.  The plan was to get her whatever she wanted to eat there and then Abby and I were up for another cheeseburger from McDonalds.  I don’t know if Lucy understood the plan, but when we got to the noodle place, I asked her if she wanted to get something there…she nodded her head, no.  I asked how about McDonalds?  Her face lit up!  She pointed to a sundae on the menu.  I said eat food first holding up one finger and pointed to ice cream and I said, second holding up 2 fingers.  She understood.  We ordered her a spicy chicken sandwich, fries and coke….then a strawberry sundae!  She ate every last bit of it all!  Can you believe it?  I think she likes the ice cold drinks as well!

Needless to say, when we met up with the guide to go for some really good Chinese food, she was still not hungry!  And only ate a few bites right before we left that restaurant…oh no!  What have we done Abby?

On the “How are you feeling today?” report:  Lucy doing fine!  Thank goodness.  Abby’s ear pain fluctuates throughout the day…she has a cough, but otherwise is hanging in there…McDonalds changed her attitude!  Me?  Still have swollen glands in neck, tight cough, and the eye drops I borrowed were barely keeping my eye/s from being totally uncomfortable.  I felt like if I were to stop the drops, the gook would be all over the place.  That would just be lovely on the long flight home!  Not to mention, contagious!  Anyway, I asked the guide to go with me to the pharmacy to get some antibiotic drops for eye infections…over here they sell them over the counter….as I was putting them in, I told Abby that I hoped I could see when we got home!  They stung like crazy for about 30 seconds, then they seemed to be working…I will put some more in before bed.  I am very optimistic!  Sometime today a sore appeared on the bottom side of my tongue!  Honestly!  Glad we have one more day to let our bodies mend before getting on the plane home!

Lucy was having fun with the rolling desk chair and Abby came up with the brilliant idea to push her up and down the hallway outside our room…until we looked up and saw all kind of security cameras!  Uh oh….hope they missed it!

Abby transferred some pics from my phone to my computer tonight.  The picture of the chocolate waffles was taken in Chengdu the first day we were there.  We ate at a coffee shop right next to the hotel there and this is what Abby ordered for dinner.  She wanted you to see it, David!  I personally thought they looked better than they tasted!

Tomorrow we go by taxi to the island to walk around there, do a little shopping and eat at Lucy’s!

Goodnight