Strollers may be the greatest thing ever invented

First, let me thank all of you for your devoted prayers. We felt an amazing burst of energy today, like we had been given new bodies! Everything seemed to go well today and we know that the Lord lifted our spirits.

Second, let me say thank you for continuing to read what I believe has become a kind of strange blog, now that I look back at it. We are in a unique situation, trying to learn how to be parents, learn how to parent a 2 year old, learn how to parent an adopted child who likely has an overwhelming amount of emotional scarring and baggage in his past, AND do all of this in a foreign country in a hotel. When I sit down to write at night I usually just let whatever is in my head flow onto the page and then I use the pictures of the day to remind me of some other things to include. What is in my head each night just happens to be the questions and answers to the learning processes listed above. This is also the only way we are directly communicating with our families. As a result of all of this, the blog has become part story telling, part sounding board for parenting questions, and part direct comments to friends and family. I have gotten such great responses with ideas, encouragement, and the like. Again, thank you.

Third, let me announce that today is Stephanie's birthday! Happy birthday Stephanie! Thanks for the email and facebook posts wishing her well. The four CWA families all sang to her tonight on the tour bus and our tour guide then sang to her in Chinese (he's a pretty good singer!) Stephanie had a merchant give her a free bracelet and our guide had a birthday cake brought up to the room tonight which was great. Her biggest present, of course, is the little boy in her arms!

Today was a great day. We got up and had a delicious buffet breakfast in the White Swan Hotel. Cheese eggs, bacon, and French toast were all hits with Maddox! We had heard that one of the nearby stores offered strollers to borrow while families stayed in the hotel. The idea, of course, is that you will come back and buy things and maybe even buy the stroller. We weren't sure how this would go over with Maddox, but we had a successful high chair meal at breakfast so we were hopeful. Stephanie went out and got a stroller and with a little apple juice we settled Maddox right in. As you may have guessed, he loved the stroller. I have decided that strollers are one of the greatest inventions in the world and am hereby saying that I have, until now, grossly under appreciated their value!

We went to his medical exam, in which Stephanie and I were keenly interested. They did a fairly cursory exam but pronounced him good to go. He did not enjoy it too much. They doctors were very nice and very, very good with him. He is still a little boy, only 10.6 kg at 23 months. We are packing on the calories (see breakfast comment above), so hopefully that will start to change soon!

We walked around in a stroller for a while and he fell asleep. It was only 1130 and we hadn't fed him lunch yet. Oh no! This was not on schedule! We had just arrived at a patio restaurant with 2 of the other couples so we asked a veteran mom what to do. She wisely said "let him sleep". Excellent choice. We ate and he slept for about 1 hour. He woke up and we got grilled cheese "to go" for him which he devoured later. We filled out a lot of paperwork in preparation for our return U.S. visas and I felt a huge weight lifted off my back (we have been carrying around all of these documents and safeguarding them like they were made of gold, so it was nice to turn them over to our guide, finally). We shopped this afternoon and got Maddox a couple of new toys. He is so happy and so well behaved. We are so blessed to have such a great child.

Love and blessings to you all! JP

P.S. we have now taken over 700 pictures in China!