today

i've been remembering to breath. it helps.
last night i went to bed early. waaay early. in fact, my bedtime started mid-sentence while i was telling the boys a bedtime story. they love the one about shamu, when he kissed my mom at sea world back in 1983. well apparently, one minute i was talking shamu, and 3 words later i said something about fire pokers and marshmallows. "mom, why are you talking about fire pokers? i thought you were telling us about shamu??" foster questioned. i suddenly woke up and we had a good laugh about crazy mama who falls asleep telling stories. i shuffled into bed at the ripe hour of 7:15pm. i awoke at 3am fully dressed in what i wore the day before. at least early to bed + jet lag gives me lots of time to take a shower, organize a few things, and catch up on emails that have waisted away for nearly 3 weeks.

i was determined to have a peaceful breakfast this morning. aside from me pestering clint about the apartments we are deciding on, this morning was the best yet. no spoon throwing, just lots of eggs and cheerios for jing liu and blueberry pancakes for the boys. pancakes seem to solve problems of all kinds.

i decided to give the grocery store another go (since we never made it yesterday).
and we survived. in fact, it wasn't nearly as bad as i was anticipating. 8am at wegmans is perhaps the most peaceful time on earth. we were one of 5 people in the store, so we could mosey and take our time. the boys convinced me that a car-cart would induce good behavior, and little lady rode front and center in the mai tai. although, these little yummies saved the day in a pivotal moment for all 4 of us. and we discovered that jing liu LOVES them!!

oh and these helped on the ride home :) as a small amount of screaming ensued.

 and then this happened. oh goodness. her laugh is suddenly out loud! until now, it's been more of a silent laugh, but i caught the last few moments of her belly giggles on tape. eek, she's precious!! and so is mr. rowie who comes in at the end :)

oh, and avert your eyes from the chaos that is my mom's dining room, er uh, playroom :)

warning. honesty ahead.

2 cups of coffee and a semi night's sleep are keeping the morning going around here. my first few days as a mom of 3 have been great. great laced with "geeze, this is really hard!"

i'm struggling to figure this new normal out. i know, it's only been a few days, but i'm usually great under pressure. i expect myself to think on the fly, roll with the punches...but one thing i'm learning about myself is that i don't handle stress as well as i think i do. the mornings around here are usually filled with laughter and giggles and telling silly stories at breakfast. since we came home, it's looked a lot more like a circus act, but the kind that ends up more like a train wreck. like how one child won't eat cereal if the spoon is too big, and he chucked it across the kitchen table in an act of cereal defiance this morning. or how another child refused to eat breakfast, unless he could eat what i was eating (the last serving of the most amazing homemade granola/chobani yogart/fruit that my dearest denise brought over on saturday. we have each indulged in giant helpings and i awoke this morning with dreams of polishing off the last of it's deliciousness.) instead, i had a bowl of cherios. and my little lady, well, she's quite happy, unless she's not. and then i struggle to know what she needs. i'm discovering that if i don't figure out what she's asking for quickly, then she becomes irate and won't calm down no matter what we do. although she likes walks. so we walk. a lot. otherwise, she's turning out the be the easier of the 3. my sweet rowie. oh he's such a mama's guy...but he's upset a lot since we came back. he wants daddy. he asks all day long when daddy is coming home. i LOVE that he loves daddy, but he's never done this before. he's always been happy and content being home with mommy. but now mommy has an appendage, and when daddy is home, he gets more attention. i keep trying to be purposeful about spending time with him, but it's proving harder than i anticipated because of all of my running around and figuring things out.

is this what 3 or more kids is like? you feel all day long like one of them needs you but you can't get to them in time?
i know i'll find my stride. i know i haven't practiced 3 kids yet. it takes some routine practice to find the one that fits. i know that. i'm going to keep focusing on the things i can do, the little things. we're going to try out the grocery store today, just so i can prove to myself that we can all get in the car and go somewhere. and then i'm going to bed early with a glass of wine and The Office reruns on netflix :)

it's official

i'm exhausted. and i wake up at 3am starving. must be some sort of mean jet lag jetti trick. hungry at 3am doesn't bode well for the waistline. exhaustion + hunger = no will power. last night i ate a bowl of cheese it's, an ice cream sandwich and a slice of mozzarella cheese. at 2:30 am.  and i thought KFC gave me a stomach ache! how is it possible that jing liu can sleep and we can't? somehow she has adapted seamlessly! tonight, i'm vowing to ignore my stomach rumbling, down a few tylenol PM's and hope for a night of rest. life is getting hazy. must sleep soon.

today has been a more difficult day. i'm not sure what it is, but all of the sudden 3 kids seem to be all needing something different all at the same time, all day long. one of which can't sit by herself without doing an Eiffel Tower lean-then-topple maneuver. it's rather cute, and she gets a kick out of it. but it won't be so cute if i need to put her down while put something in the oven or chop chicken. oh, and we gave away all of our baby stuff last year, thinking jing liu would be a lot older when she came home. i found our bumbo seat in the barn, but that doesn't really promote much activity. she looks like a tiny, smooshed blob when she sits in it! thankfully, a friend offered a bouncer seat for us to borrow until she can sit without falling. otherwise, i'm bound to pee with a kid on my lap, and at least 1 other kid barging in asking me to get them some juice or preform toy emergency surgery or get silly putty out of the carpet.

i'm hopeful that we can find our stride this week, since clint will be going back to work tomorrow. i'm so thankful to have him home for 4 days, but i have a feeling it may take me a bit to figure out our new normal. i need to get my act in gear and plan out some activities. i'm usually able to whip up a last minuet project with ease, but with my hazy brain, i'm starting to wonder if i'm losing brain cells. feel free to pass on suggestions of busy boy activities! i forget all of the crafty sites i used to peruse.

i found this while i was unpacking some of the chinese clothes we bought jing liu...check out the tag!!

and then there's this...asia's most incredibly tall ferris wheel. i'd no doubt have a panic attack and pass out at the top! oh, how i hate ferris wheels!  

wait just a hot second. i hear silence! all of the kids who were once stirring are eerily quiet. i'm going to snag one last ice cream sandwich, a book, and pretend to read while i fall asleep :)

exhausted

chopstick breakfast

soaking in the splendid

we've been doing a whole lot of nothing for the past 2 days, which in turn, is actually something really awesome. if i'm being honest, we've had an incredibly calm and delightful transition home. i can't even believe it myself! there has been very little crying and jing liu has actually slept straight through the night for 2 nights in a row! seriously? girl, you rock! clint and i haven't fared so well with sleep, but hey, who cares about us...if she's happy, we're happy!!  she's been very calm and chill. i can tell she is still soaking it all in, and hasn't yet shown us her silliness like we saw in china, but it will come.  i'm on day 2 of hanging floor side, with emery on my lap, watching the boy's many shenanigans. oh how i love their shenanigan ways, and so does little miss liu-liu. i've been MIA from the internet, from my phone, from my camera, from everything but these 3 kids. i feel so blessed to be their mom.
jing liu is so fascinated with her brothers, and has been fully entertained for two entire days. they grew up so much since we were gone. i'm not sure how, but they feel like they gained 15 lbs a piece and sound so grown up. i missed out on stories and adventures, and all kinds of stuff. the bits and pieces i get from them are funny to hear because of the adorable details they remember. the china gift boxes were a HUGE hit! i wrapped 17 gifts for each boy  because i didn't know how long we would be gone, so they have a few more days of gifts. today it was "toot slime" from the $1 store. seriously, the best invention ever. they must have laughed 75 times joking about which one of them smelled like a toot. they are going to need serious detox from getting to open a gift every morning...i need to get creative and think of some fun things for us to do next week. they are already asking me what will happen when the presents are gone. real life, boys, real life.

since things are going so well, i'm feeling more and more like i want to keep hiding away for a bit. i love that she is attaching so well, but there are still a lot of people going in and out, and i really want her to feel settled in our family before i throw her into the craziness that is a playdate.


when we started all of this a few years ago, i knew we loved her. i knew it would change our lives in an amazing way, but i never could have imagined how much joy one little girl could bring, not just to me and clint, but to foster and rowan. they are crazy crazy in love with her. they don't look at her, they gaze. foster told me so many times today "oh mom, she's just soooo adorable! i think she's the most adorable girl i've ever seen!"  he is constantly looking after her, and keeps asking me if he can babysit. "mom, i'll watch her and take care of her. can you go get some stuff done?"  in the car today, he said "mom, i can't really even see her cleft lip anymore. it kind of looks like it's blending in. i don't even notice it."  funny, that's what i think too! oh, he's a quick one. he doesn't miss a thing and he is so sensitive to his sister's needs already.

he loves to sit behind her and catch her when she falls over.

actually, he adores it when she falls on him, and giggles hysterically. i have to keep reminding him not to pull her backwards on purpose :)

he was also overly concerned about her getting to hot, and insisted she be covered in shade.

rowie has given her a million drive by kisses and rubs her head and face gently. he brings her toys and talks sweetly to her. he's also fascinated by her cleft bottle and really really wants to try it out for himself :)

but i think he missed clint and i so much, he really needs some time to soak up with us. i've been doing some extra snuggles, and hugs and talks with him. i spent a long time tonight telling them stories at bedtime, and i snuggled rowie while he fell asleep. oh, his little precious hands on my shoulder. he's such a tender soul, and at the same time, such a wild man! he did a face plant into our tennis net and split his lip open this morning. even a mouth full of blood didn't stop him from eating a cookie :)

we spent the afternoon on a blanket, letting jing liu touch and feel the grass, watch rowie shoot incredible hoops, and listen to foster cantor on in the shade about their chinese umbrellas and how they are the perfect size to protect sister from the sun. oh those chinese umbrellas. best 3 for $3 i've ever spent :)

i'm bursting with love and exhaustion. if there has even been a time in my life that i am in love with, it's right now. i know there may be hard times ahead. i'm not trying to pretend like it will always feel this easy...but geeze louise...day 1 and day 2 have been oh so splendid. i'm beaming.

ok, time for bed. as i type, i keep finding myself completely asleep in mid sentence and random keys pressed down from my exhausted fingertips. so if this post is rambling, at least you know it was written in a partially asleep state :)

homecoming pics!

i just realized nicole posted the pics from last night, and i literally screeched with excitement! i can't ever thank nicole enough for capturing such an amazing moment! i'll forever remember last night, not just because of it's incredible wonderfulness, but knowing that my sweet friend (and her dad!) drove so far to give us such a priceless gift!!! wow, i'm crying my eyes out seeing it again!

she posted here and here...oh incredible!!

baby girl slept until 8am!!! we've had such a relaxing day! jing liu is taking it all in stride and the boys are SOOO excited. they want her to do everything with them. they just keep saying "mom, i'm sooo glad you are home from china!" and then they slide tackle something and do a drive by kiss on jing liu's cheek.

i'm not sure what the night will bring...clint and i are feeling a bit exhausted, but i'm hoping the gal will continue her awesome night routine that includes lots of sleep :)

(check out nicoles flickr set!)

home!!!

what a delightful word. home. i just flopped myself in bed,
after taking the worlds longest shower, whilst slurping up as much shower water as humanly possible. I followed by brushing my teeth with faucet water. oh the little things. they are always the most striking.

I can hear the sweetest little breath sounds from the crib beside our bed. every once in a while a snore escapes. can it really be true? all 3 of my kids are sleeping under one roof?? glorious!!

earlier today (or was that yesterday??) I thought home would never come. the 17 hour flight from china (2 hours of which we spent sitting on the tarmac waiting out a storm in shanghai) was pretty awful. jing liu did so well, but there are only so many things one can dream up to entertain an exhausted and antsy 14mo old. we had moments of tears, but overall, it's the sheer volume of hours on end with nothing new or exciting. we've spent a week and 1/2 doing tons of new and exciting....then all of he sudden we sit still for 17 hours. heck, i had a harder time than she did. it seemed that no matter how long we had been airborne, how many times I paced the airplane with a semi snoozing baby, no matter how many meals we sloshed on the surrounding passengers, 8 hours always remained. (sorry 16j - that chopstick full of noodles as actually meant for my consumption, not your lap. I swear it was the baby. see? how cute? oh and can you pass me that ring toy that rolled under your chair... again :)

thank the Lord for kind stewardesses who brought us tons of extra meals to keep baby girl fed. even ice cream from first class... which, by the way, had fully reclining bed/chairs and food served on real china. I'm sure in first class, you feel like you just awoke from a spa day upon arrival. i was reaaaly hoping we would somehow, someway get bumped up. no such luck. we were able to get bulkhead seats, though, which was a lifesaver. even had enough room for us to make a little bed on the floor for jing liu to sleep for an hour or two.

after a looooong wait in immigration when we landed, we trudged out of baggage claim, greasy and exhausted...only to be greeted by the most amazing and wonderful surprise!!! truly one of my favorite moments of life and such an incredible gift...my family, the boys, and my dear and amazing friend nicole (who happens to be an incredible photog) were there to welcome jing liu home!! we were speechless...and shared tears of joy at last.
such a moving and wonderful moment...all captured with love. I'll post the amazingness soon, but now I must sleep. my heart is so full!!

shanghai and the layover

we are hiding out in shanghai at the moment. we have a 6 hour layover, which has included a whole lot of nothing. well, nothing and a quick stop at kfc because we were so hungry, followed by immediate regret due to the impending belly ache. i'm not sure why we come all the way to china and then eat the worst american food possible. somehow french fries call my name (ok, they always call my name) but it's harder to resist when someone is standing beside you eating shredded squid. no, not kidding. the lady in line beside us as we were checking in was chowing on a bag of squid. it made me dream of french fries, frapacchino and something along the lines of a turkey/stuffing/cranberry bobbie.

 

the little lady is cute as ever. she's been gazing a lot...gazing up at me from the carrier, and i get goosebumps. she's so darling and wonderful.

 

have i mentioned that this girl eats like a champ??? i had no experience with cleft lip/palate before we met her, and i had no idea how babies can eat when they have a big hold on the inside of their mouth. man oh man, this gal chows down anything we put in front of her. we literally feed her all day long. she couldn't feed herself the first day we got her, but she quickly learned how to pick up food and shovel it in. she's always famished. it makes me sad to see her so hungry...and then i realize what a fighter she is. she's probably been hungry for a long time, but she never gave up. it's awesome to see her with a full belly all day long.

 

our first flight this morning was mostly peaceful, followed by an hour of intense screaming. for some reason, her fretful shrills don't phase me. it's as if God has instilled some sort of new found patience within my soul. i'm sure i will test it out again after 10 hours of flight and maybe my patience won't be so surefire....but so far on this trip, i've been filled with compassion. i've been reading The Connected Child...i would HIGHLY recommend it. i read it on the plane ride to china, and it gave me such insight into how a traumatic start to life can effect the way kids cope and communicate. when this baby girl starts screaming and terrorising the surrounding passengers, all i can think is how hard it must be to have no way to communicate. no way to tell these two people who are holding you how you feel. what you want or need. that your ears hurt from cabin pressure. that you really want a drink, but they keep stuffing banana bread in your mouth. oh my sweet little girl. you can keep crying if you want to. one of these times i'll know what you mean. until then, let's keep figuring each other out. working our way to an even place of understanding. i'll wait with you while we figure it out. after all, you're my little girl. i don't scare easy. and the nearby passengers can put in earplugs :)

 

 

the red couch

our last day...then homeward bound

the past 3 days? i'll never be able to explain then. time slows in a way that you can't describe here. i'm not sure what it is, but we feel as though we have been here a month. i'm longing to see the boys and i'm wishing we had somehow been able to bring them with us. although i know for a fact that part of our closeness with jing liu is a result of us being here just the three of us, and i have LOVED such precious time alone with her. we know one thing for sure: we'll never come back without all of our kids again. there's so much you can't ever describe through photos or words. it's more than a trip, it's a life experience. something to take with you for the rest of your years. i'm excited for the day when we can show them this amazing piece of our earth...and for sister to see and hear and know her birth land when she is a bit older.

we met at the us consulate yesterday at a bright 7am. we waited in the lobby (walking past literally 100's of hopeful immigrants) for 1 1/2 hours. as we paced and tried to keep little ladies cool in the sweltering heat, it struck me how different life will be for this little soul in a few short days. the sound of chinese is everywhere. sometimes it's like music, and other times it's like a shouting match. there is a movement and a dance cars and bikes and pedestrians, horns and loudspeakers and shopowners chanting their wares. oh, and car seats! it still feels strange to have her bopping around with us in the back seat. i try to nonchalantly always have a hand around her, for fear that a fender bender will send us through the windshield. paranoid, yes. in reality, we don't see many (any?) car accidents. i'm not sure how that's possible, but i've maybe seen 2 or 3 in all my times in china. i have a feeling our first experience in a carseat will be "interesting" at best. but then again, she might just surprise me.

at the consulate yesterday, we took the immigration oath on behalf of our kids (with 10 other adopting couples) since our kids are immigrants to the US - strange to think she is an immigrant now, but will be a US citizen when we hit US soil. we also finished processing jing liu's visa,which will be couriered to us this evening. everyone told me that the oath was cheesy and overrated, but as we started repeating after the us consulate representative, jing liu grabbed my right hand (which was raised for the oath) and i got chocked up. she feels like we've never been without her. i look at her and see my daughter. she looks at us and sees her parents. somehow i had set my expectations towards what would happen if we got here and it was really really hard. if she cried constantly. if our attachment was difficult. it's been such a sweet and amazing surprise to see our little family be so connected right away. we are on the home stretch...and it's wonderful. one part of me wants to go home and hide away in a haze of love and jet lag, but then again, i'm dying to meet up with my amazing girlfriends. my little china girl has a lot of people to meet, and i'm so excited to spread her amazingness around.

i'm now going to smother the blog with photos. i'm out of time to keep writing, since we are packing up today and impatiently waiting for tomorrow to come so we can hop on home.
we met and spent time with so many people this weekend. we traveled to a nearby city with jones and his wife and daughter. oh, how we love them. jones is such a good time. all of their huge expended family was in attendance and we transversed the language barrier, ate eel, and shared many a laugh over me popping the head off of a shrimp. you will see from the photos what a loving family they are. everyone joins in life together. it was so incredible to see our longtime friends so happy and excited to have us.
they took us on a boat cruise for dinner on sunday night. and when i say boat, i mean circa 1932 tug-raft. and when i say cruise, i mean they literally fished our dinner out of river moments before we left the "dock" and cooked it using river water on the back porch of the "boat".  if i worked for the sanitation department, i would have had a heart attack shortly before passing out from the sheer volume of health and safety violations. i can now understand why "boat cruise" is not on the list of touring items for newly adoptive parents and their babies :).  it was quite an experience. and although i was insanely paranoid that jing liu would fall overboard in a freak accident, since there were no walls, just poles and a short railing, we were able to relax and enjoy the time with our friends.

everywhere you look around our hotel, there are women dressed up doing incredible photoshoots!!

the view from our hotel room!

jones with jing liu and jones with his daughter ava (9 mo old)

 on the boat:

on the boat, you choose the fish you want to eat from the local fishermen before you set sail. oh, and here's the eel we ate not even an hour later :)

everyone was eating these. it's a known fact that when you go to china, you don't eat fruit unless it's watermelon or cantaloupe (with a thick rind) - otherwise you are bound to be eating the water they were rinsed in. we sat down on the boat, and right away these came out. everyone dug in. i didn't have a choice. i had to eat them. so i popped one in my mouth, spit out the seeds, and thought to myself, what's one or two? they're actually really good...sort of like a lemon grape. after a few lemon grapes went down the hatch, i looked around and noticed EVERYONE was spitting out the seeds AND the skin!!! eesh. i ate 4 with the skins included.  maybe this batch was washed with that fancy fruit wash i always see at wegmans. yes. i'm quite certain the boat chefs use wegmans fruit wash. i think i saw it right next to the cleaver used to chop up the pigeon we ate. :)

the hard working boat crews live and work on their boats.

we were hit by a monsoon in the middle of our cruise. natural air-conditioning...it rocked

the night lights are amazing.

we are out the door at 4am tomorrow morning. we have a short hop to shanghai, and then shanghai to newark. should be "back to our sweet home," as our guide helen says, at 9pm. oh i can't wait. the reunion is near! i can feel it!!

so this is me signing out from china. i'm sure i'll smother the blog again this week, but next time it will be with 3 kids smooshed together is a pile of happiness :)