US Consulate Appointment & The Pearl Rive Cruise

Yesterday we got up early, we had to leave the hotel at 7:40 AM, and went to the US Consulate to apply for Annabelle's visa. There is only one picture of us before leaving for our appointment for the US Consulate because we could not take a cellphone or a camera. We could only take ourselves, wallets, toys without batteries and any other small, limited number of things for our child.

Outside of the US Consulate was a mad house! There were hundreds of Chinese waiting to get in so they could get temporary visas to travel to the US. Our guides said it is like this every day, all day long. We were able to get past the crowd and take an entrance for adoptive parents. We had to go through security, then we took an oath as a group, then we submitted our paperwork and everything was finalized.

Between the US Consulate and our evening activity, Brooke and her friend Dorinda went on a shopping extravaganza with a local guide. But that is a blog post in it's own right and Brooke will post that later.

In the evening yesterday we went on a river boat cruise on the Pearl River. We had Papa John's pizza delivered to the ship and we ate on board. Then we cruised around the Pearl Rive for just over an hour.

Here are some pictures of the scenery from the cruise. The tall tower that is in different colors is a TV tower here in Guangzhou.

Today we will get Annabelle's visa and then we can travel. Late tonight we leave for the Guangzhou airport with our flight leaving at 1:15 AM (Thursday morning). We will arrive in the US (IAH in Houston) on Thursday morning at 7:50am. Yes, we are traveling back in time. 

It has been quite the journey here in China and we could not have done this without our excellent guides and the other families who we have spent our days with here. We will miss all of them.

See you soon.

- Jeremy

Chimelong Safari in Gaungzhou

Yesterday we went to the Chimelong Safari, which essentially was a zoo. This zoo is famous for their panda triplets and everyone was excited to see them. We started by going through their drive-thru safari in a little train; notice the Mercedes-Benz logo on the front? I didn't know Mercedes made little vehicles like this, part of me wondered if they just slapped those on there so they would look classier.

The drive-thru safari was very good, the only negative I had was that people could drive their own cars through and they would block our view from the train. The animals were right there, you could literally reach out and touch them if you wanted to, except for the dangerous animals who were behind a big ravine. 

The zookeepers would come out and feed the carnivore animals, like the bears, wolves, lions and tigers by throwing meet to them. It was awesome! We saw the bear stand up to catch his meat and it was very cool. 

This place was huge! After we got off the drive-thru safari we had 2 hours to explore and it was not enough time to explore this massive zoo. We first saw some Red Panda's, which I did not know existed, and they are very cool. Cute and cuddly, kind of a cross between a cat and a raccoon, I started calling them catcoons. The we went and fed some giraffes, yes, we fed giraffes. For 15 Yuan, which is less than $2, we bought a twig with leaves and fed the giraffe. It was worth every penny!

I heard somewhere that a family that feeds giraffes together, stays together...or something like that. Besides feeding the giraffes you could feed pretty much any animal in the zoo for a few dollars. One of our friends fed the tigers by throwing chunks of steak and chicken at the tigers. I saw one dude who was trying to feed the elephant a banana by throwing it at his mouth - he missed and hit it in the head. 

The only other thing here that was not good was the food, which really would apply to China as a whole. First thing we saw when exiting the drive-thru safari was a popcorn stand and we were so excited. Popcorn! Really!? Awesome!! Only it wasn't butter popcorn, it was caramel popcorn, which wasn't very good. Major let down. Really craving some good ole buttery, salty popcorn. 

We passed on the "American" Hot Dog, one because Brooke can't eat it and we wanted to share and second, look at it. Need I say more? We settled on a grilled chicken with white rice. Sounds good right? Wrong. It tasted like chicken that was cooked in Spaghetti O's sauce. N-A-S-T-Y. It earned the eternal nickname of Spaghetti O Chicken.

The other big part of this zoo was the panda exhibit. They had something like 12 pandas, which includes triplet kid pandas. 

This post is getting long, so I will leave you with a couple of funny signs we saw at the zoo.

You Can Slip, Just Do It Carefully.

Read the Notice

Shamain Island

January 25, 2015

Today we went to Shamain Island which is about 15 minutes from the hotel.  It was beautiful!  There was a lot of European influence around plus beautiful tropical scenery.  We felt like we were in New Orleans.  There were beautiful gardens and brass sculptures all around.  The most famous one was with the missing child.  It’s tradition to have your child stand in that spot and get their picture.   

 There was also this beautiful Catholic church on the island.  They were closed so we were not able to go in but I imagine the stained glass was stunning.

 For lunch, we ate at Lucy’s. This is another traditional stop for adoptive families to eat lunch.  The menu was a site for sore eyes!  Hamburgers, peanut butter and jelly, grilled cheese and more American food!  One of the families had a 4 year old American boy with them who screamed with joy when he heard there was peanut butter and jelly. The Asian influence food looked great too.  The food was great but the service seemed to take forever.  It’s very strange at all the restaurants we’ve eaten at they just bring you food as it comes ready.  Everyone had completely finished their meal before my quesadillas came out.

 After that, we came back to the hotel and “rested” a little in the room.  This child is FULL of energy.  She loves to play and play all day long.  She has to keep moving and does not appreciate it when we like to stop and soak in all the scenery or shop.  She is letting daddy get more involved which is a huge answered prayer for this tired momma.  Staying busy helps keep her entertained and keeps us from not thinking about how much we miss our family back home. 

 

Here are some more pictures of the European architecture. 

 

Guangzhou

We arrived in Guangzhou, China in the Guangdong province late Friday night. One weird thing we have experienced here twice now while flying on a major Chinese airline is that they do not empty the plane at a gate. Once the plane gets off the runway , they taxi for a little while and then they stop, we pile off and cram onto a bus with no seats. We get crammed into these buses with all our carry-ons and then we drive for about 5 minutes and they let us off and we walk into the airport.

We had to get up early Saturday and take our kiddos to get medical check-ups so they can be approved to leave China and enter the USA. I was not as bad as I thought it would be, but still not a walk in the park, although they did have Mickey Mouse on the floor. They also had Christmas decorations and a Christmas tree up which helped make things festive.

We had to go to four different rooms - one for checking weight, height and temperature, one for general check-up, one where they checked ears, nose and throat and last a TB test was administered That was the hardest one because they actually. took Annabelle from us for about 4-5 minutes to inject the test and the poor thing screamed her head off, but all ended well.

You could also buy booze from the vending machine in the lobby for about $10 to $30 a bottle.

After I sat through a 2 hour meeting to get our paperwork ready for the US Consulate, we ate dinner at a Japanese restaurant. You had 2 American couple with their Chinese children eating Japanese food while Christmas music was playing in the restaurant - that is not something you will see every day.

We then took a Taxi to the local Carrefour (French Wal-Mart) with some friends and got some things we needed to finish the week here. We like Guangzhou, things are going good, we're keeping ourselves very busy and we're ready to come home! Missing my boys!

- Jeremy

Carrefour in Guangzhou, China

Getting to know Annabelle

I have several people asking how Annabelle is doing and appreciate your patience for my response.  Since we are bonding, I have not had many moments to be able to sit down and write.  First, I want to say how imperative it was for us to have read The Connected Child by Dr. Purvis.  If you are in the adoption process and Dr. Purvis is having a seminar near you RUN don’t walk!!  Going to Dr. Purvis’  

weekend seminar changed our parenting completely even with the boys before we got Annabelle.

With that being said, it’s important for us to treat Annabelle like a newborn from the day we get her.  The orphanage was still giving her a bottle, so I gave her bottles, burped her and kept her close to me at all times just like I would have my boys when we got home from the hospital.  For the first few days anytime I would walk away even to go to the bathroom she would shut down and cry. (If you noticed the picture from her sign language post you would notice that the bathroom has a clear wall around it so she could still see me even when I went) Shutting down is when she curls up into a ball, clinches her hands and just sobs.  The whole concept of a family and having a mother is foreign to her.  At first, she looked at me like a fun care giver that likes to play with her.  Over these few days she has learned that I console her when she’s sad, pick her up when she falls, laughs with her, cries with her and am her biggest fan. 

Here’s what I’ve learned about her: On the first day, she discovered the bath tub.  They don’t have these in the orphanage and she was in heaven!  She would brush her hand through the water and pull it up like “WHOA what is this?!”  She would notice her fingers getting crinkled and her eyes would get big. On day 1 she laughed for the first time in her bath.  This child would stay in the bathtub all day long if I let her.  So far we are taking at least 3 baths a day just sitting in the water and playing.

She LOVES to color and play with stickers.  Also, from day 1 she took to her Mulan doll and we use the doll to play scenarios like doctor, nap time, eating etc.  It has helped her see what we do from day to day.  She LOVES my ergo carrier.  She sings so loudly when we walk down the street and is as happy as a lark.  It took her a while to get use to the stroller but yesterday she finally rode in it as long as I was pushing her.  My back was very appreciative!  One of her care givers told me she was mostly potty trained and gave me the Chinese phrases to use so she could go to the bathroom with us.  I wrote those down but knew that I wasn’t going to push that at all.  I changed her diapers like I did my babies and anytime she had a dirty diaper, I could tell she would look at me to see if I was disappointed.  I praised her and showed her it was not a big deal.  I did take her to the potty to see if she was interested.  We treated it like a game.  She would sit on it and just look at me then we would get off.  We did that several times just for fun.  Yesterday (day 4) when she was having one of her baths she started making a poopy face (you know the one I’m talking about!) I picked her up and said “LaPapa” which is poopoo in Chinese and she repeated it back to me.  I took her over to the potty and she went!!!  We had a big poo poo celebration in the bathroom!!  She was so proud of herself as were we.  Also, when we got her she weighed 22 pounds.  That put her in the 3% for her age and weight.  In the orphanage they gave her congee (like oatmeal) and bottles.  This child can EAT!  She will eat 4-5 fruit pouches each meal, 2 cups of mashed potatoes (we learned on day 1 she likes KFC mashed potatoes) and yogurt.  The orphanage said she drinks 120ml of formula twice a day.  With us, she is drinking 300ml THREE times a day.  I’m VERY happy to report on day 4 when we weighed her she gained TWO pounds YIPPIE!!!!!

To all you future adoptive dads: (and some moms) It’s important to know that most children bond with one parent first.  That wasn’t the case with our little group because the other two boys bonded with both parents.  In our case, Annabelle was terrified of Jeremy.  He’s the big, scary white dude with a scratchy face. (she wipes her mouth every time she kisses his cheek LOL)  For those of you who know Jeremy well, you know what an amazing father he is.  He’s incredibly involved, gets up with the boys at night, fixes breakfast, lunches, dinners, coaches their sports teams and loves them with all of his being.  I watched as his heart broke the first couple of days seeing his daughter reject him.  He loves her so much and wants so bad to protect, love and cherish her.  She won’t have any part of it.  (Sounds familiar with our relationship with God doesn’t it?)  He has learned to just sit back and let her observe him.  We’ve been told through our training that this is very normal and is not long term for her to be like this with him.  She has to learn to trust him and that takes time.  What is working for us is this: She will let him feed her, dress her, and play with her as long as she is in my lap.  I make it a point for her to witness me kissing him, holding his hand and telling him how much I love him.  She is slowly warming up to him.  I’m sharing with you so that the future adoptive parents can read this and understand that everything will be ok and not take the process personally. 

Another barrier we had was getting her to sleep.  For the first night we were like new born parents all over again.  She didn’t sleep much at all and ended up running a fever from crying off and on throughout the night.  We gave her a warm bath plus Motrin and the fever went away.  The second night she went to sleep in her crib without a hitch and slept for 12 hours straight.  The 3^rd night she screamed, kicked and punched when I put her in her crib.  I would hold her, rock her, sing to her and try everything I could think of under the sun but nothing worked.  She eventually laid down and I played with her hair while singing before she fell asleep.  Yesterday, we had more bonding and I was dreading the bed time scenario again.  I couldn’t figure out why this was happening.  Finally, last night a light bulb went off.  She didn’t want to go to sleep because she wanted to play.  Now, normally I would put my foot down and say no play time because we are going to sleep but this situation calls for different strategies.  In her little head she is thinking if she goes to sleep this will all go away tomorrow.  She’s terrified that she will have to go back.  The first couple of days she mourned wanting to go back.  Understanding that first makes me feel so good that she loves us enough that she doesn’t want to leave and second I am now able to figure out how to fix it.  We walked around the room talking about our toys.  I showed her suitcase FULL of bows, clothes and toys telling her these belong to you.  She pulled out a few shirts with the biggest smile on her face.  We walked into the bathroom, pulled out a few bath toys and took them with us to bed.  She laid in the crib and started crying again until I started talking to her.  I explained that we are her forever family.  We are not going anywhere. YOU are coming home with US! You are now a Cartwright and will forever be one of us.  Now, my brain tells me she has NO idea what I was saying but my heart said of course she does.  She just stared at me while I talked to her and got calm (fists OPEN) and fell asleep while I sang to her. 

In our adoption process I believe it is so important to share the good, bad and ugly.  I want to encourage all of you who are in the process or are considering adoption.  It’s not an easy route but what path is?  This journey is not about our little family.  It is about giving our heavenly Father the glory in the mission he chose us for.  I am very honored to have each of you become a part of this with us and use our experiences to grow His kingdom.  We will need you when we get home and helping you understand is vital.  I pray everything we post will encourage and uplift you.