We're Home!

We made it back Ok.

Travels were smooth, no delays. Neela became an American Citizen in Detroit.

We are exhausted but we had a nice reception. An added bonus was getting to meet Nicholas, our dear friends Steph and Will's son that they adopted from Guatemala with a gotcha time of about 8 hours before we had our gothcha with Neela. That is one cute kid!

Neela had a bit of a rough night. Mostly over-tired.

We have a Pediatrician appointment today and will see the Orthopaedic doctor on Monday.

We'll keep you posted on progress.

Thanks all for all the well wishing and support!

Going Home Tomorrow!

We've been swimming on the roof of the Victory Hotel. The water must be at least 90 deg but it's still cooler than the air temp. Neela seems to enjoy the water and Mia had a great time as well.

We had our embassy appointment today and all went well except for Neela hosing Merri in the van with vomit on the way there. She felt much better after that (Neela that is).

Tomorrow we leave bright and early for the airport.

We've appreciated all the comments you've been making on the Blog, we look foward to reading them daily.

It will be a long road for Neela to catch up both physically and mentally with her age. We see improvements on both fronts daily. It is like an infant going through an accelerated development.

See you all soon!

We're in Guangzhou

This is a couple of days worth of stuff in Guangzhou.

Neela has been making great strides every day. Feeding her formula has been no problem but we are limited to just that at this point and it must be from the bottle and nipple from the orphanage. There must be something to a nipple that's been chewed on by 50 other kids.

Between Nanjing and Guangzhou, Uncle Zhou has been to at least a dozen stores looking for the exact formula. We finally found some tonight in a large department store. Hopefully that's enough until we can transition her to other food.

Smiles are now pretty easy and giggles don't take as much work. We are giving her more time out of the brace and her legs are just giddy with the extra freedom. Nap time has been compromised with her newly developing skills, she is always finding new ways to play with her toes and feet so time in the crib has come down to quiet play time.

Night time sleeping is pretty good except for her cough that is still hanging around usually wakes her up in the middle of the night but she goes back down fairly easily.






Visiting a Buddhist temple. This is just before Mark nearly sets Zhou on fire.





Always time for a playground.




We visited Yuexiu park in Guangzhou. It's been close to 100 deg the last few days and very humid. Our shirts are not soaking wet from rain.






Big sister loves having little sister sit in her lap.



We've ridden the subway in both Nanjing and Guangzhou. They are very clean, modern, air conditioned and on a full car, someone will always give up a seat for someone carrying a baby.












We've had some great meals with Uncle Zhou's guidance. Mia has been trying all sorts of dishes including fish, snail and eel.


Mia offering Neela a noodle.






Neela eating a Noodle!!!

Last Day in Nanjing

We made it to the Nanjing zoo and saw a pair of pandas.
Mia working on her chop stick skills

I didn't drop any rice in her ear

Finally getting her to eat

We were quite worried about her eating. She had not eaten for 2 days and minimal fluid intake. After talking with some physician friends we were ready to go back to the hospital and get a feeding tube.

We had to sign the official papers first. The Assistant orphanage director brought a bottle with the formula they use at the orphanage after Zhou had given her a call.

It took a little "influence" to get her started, but she sucked down the whole thing. The particular bottle and the formula was the ticket. They ran out a couple bags of the formula from the orphange for us. We've gotten 4 bottles in her today and we can see improvement in her interactions and focus already.

The caretaker and a doctor from the orphanage came out and we got a lot of questions answered.

We have Neela!

Sorry for the delay in posting pictures. It's been a bit rough the last couple of days.

Neela is beautiful! Problems we've been having is with feeding her. She has eaten nothing and has drank just enough to keep thirst down.

Since she had been in a body cast for 6 months, apparently she did not have much stimulation so she is quite delayed physically and mentally. She does not babble yet. She also just finished a course of IV antibiotics for broncitus (which is not totally cleared yet).

She is in a brace that will be required for approx another 30 days for her hips.

Yesterday we got to spend the day in the Nanjing Children's Hospital for some additional evaluations.

Hopefully today we'll have more success feeding her. Yesterday she had big strides in interacting, playing and some giggles.

Flowers delivered from Aunt Betsy and Uncle Tim

Mia in preperation for the olympic sport of bed jumping

Feeding the Lions.

Feeding the carp with Poppa and Uncle Zhou

Mia and Shu Shu Mark

Mia playing with bubbles with a new friend

We had a great day touring Shanghai today. For those of our friends that are going to Pennsic, yes Shanghai is that hot if not hotter, and yet at the same time totally cool!

We got to vist some of the old city, the Yuyuan Gardens, haggle with merchants, eat street food (and not get sick...yet) and saw the only cat we've ever seen in China.

We topped the evening off with a boat ride on the Bund to the mouth of the Yangzee river. The day was spectacular!