With a little help from our friends

It’s a little after 3:30 Thursday and Emma just went down for a late nap. Nap attempt #1 was foiled when we brought her little sleeping self up to the room about 1:00 after an outing to the park and she woke up as we surreptitiously tried to change her diaper (wouldn’t you?) We are happy that she wants to try nappy again, though, even if it means a later bedtime (although the other day when she napped from 3 to 5, she still was out for the night by 9:00).

Tomorrow is our last full day in Wuhan. Emma’s adoption paperwork is being finalized by the provincial registry office; we get her passport tomorrow and then the Chinese end of things will be done. Then we’re off to Guangzhou on Saturday morning to take care of the U.S. end of things (Guangzhou is where the U.S. consulate is and where we will get her visa to come back to the U.S.)

It’s good we’re progressing through our stay here in China, but I will miss being in Wuhan. It just seems like authentic China – not a tourist destination, not full of a zillion other adopting families (like Guangzhou will be). It’s fascinating to walk down the streets and be such objects of attention. Judy told us that Hubei is not a big adoption province, so folks don’t see Caucasian parents with Chinese babies very often. People stop and stare at us as we walk by – looking at the baby, then at us. A few Chinese folks who speak English have stopped us and said the baby “looks Chinese” and when we tell them she IS Chinese they seem surprised. If Judy happens to be with us, then she explains what’s going on.

Joe and I have taken a few walks up and down the street the hotel is on with Emma in her umbrella stroller. I feel like we’ve been plucked out of Salt Lake and just dropped at random on the other side of the world. Wuhan, China! I mean, I’d never even heard of this city until we found out we’d be here for the adoption. It’s a city of 8.5 million people; huge! The streets are packed with people, buses, scooters, bikes, school kids. The street the hotel is on is lined with tall white-barked trees with sage green leaves that cast the street in a kind of eerie light. We took a walk yesterday evening and saw the little shops – many of them like booths where you just walk up to a counter – lining the street. Some people put chairs in the middle of the sidewalk and sit and watch the crowds go by. There were lots of spikey-haired teenagers, some of them buying food on the go from the shops. There are all kinds of little booths selling unfathomable looking items – odd-shaped pieces of fish and fowl, something wrapped up in what looked like a tortilla, big aluminum steamers full of dumplings. We looked in on a tae kwan do class going on in a big room opening off the street – saw lots of pre-teen kids going through their maneuvers as their instructor barked commands.

The other evening when we took a walk we saw a group of about 30 ladies fan dancing on a street corner. Their leader was in front with a headset microphone; it was like Chinese aerobics. Another group of ladies was dancing in the middle of the sidewalk. It looked like folk dancing or something, little groups of four women dancing to cymbal accompaniment. It’s just surreal. I looooove it and am kind of sad we have to leave real China.

Emma is a sweetie and we are besotted with her. When I wake up in the morning and look over at her in her crib I can’t believe we have her – she’s such an adorable little person. I think Joe and I have moved from the “highly suspect” list to the “I’ll just keep an eye on ‘em and see what they do next” list. We don’t get lots of smiles yet, but we can tell she’s feeling more comfortable with us and there are times during the day when she kind of lets her guard down and I can tell she’s having a good time in spite of herself. And when I blow raspberries on her stomach, she acts like she doesn’t care but I think she secretly likes it.

Emma does have a temper and she’s not afraid to indicate what’s bugging her. She is a young lady who knows her own mind. She is also a chowhound and will eat anything, in seemingly unlimited quantities, that we offer her. A finicky eater she is not. Although she seems really healthy, she’s also pretty thin. She loooves food and plenty of it and I predict there will soon be more padding on her frame. When we were out the other night, a group of Chinese ladies dancing on the sidewalk came up and gathered around our three families and oohed and ahhed over the babies. Judy was around to translate. They thought that Emma looked to be two and when I told them she was about a year and a half they seemed surprised. They examined her legs and said she is tall like me. She does have long slender legs.

We’re having some trouble accessing our website. China has a lot of internet firewalls and you can’t get on any ol’ website you want to. I think most blogs are blocked. When we first got here we were able to access the webpage where you can post a blog, but we couldn’t get on the actual website to read our comments. Then Joe, in all his computery smartness, figured out kind of a backdoor way to get to it, so we’ve really had a good time reading all of your comments. But today, for some reason, we can’t access anything, not even the page to post this entry. So I’m e-mailing this to Barbie and asking her to send it to Andi or Angie or Dave or someone who knows how to post to Blogger, so we’re hoping you can get it that way.

We’re having a great, unbelievable time, and love you all so much! Can’t wait for you to meet Emma in person.

Love, Denny