Today, we went to a wonderful local bookshop. You know I love books! I bought several music CDs (a lullaby album for Laney & Landry) and movies, as well as some flash cards for learning Mandarin and other books for Laney and the kids. I also bought a beautiful picture book showcasing Guangxi.
Tomorrow, we'll be getting up early, packing and heading to the airport at 10:45. Our flight for Guangzhou leaves at 12:30pm. I think the flight is only about 45 minutes. It should be a good 1st flight for Laney. We received her Chinese passport today and our official adoption certificate. We are headed into the 2nd leg of the trip now. In Guangzhou, we'll be filing for her visa and going to her medical exam. We will miss Nanning very much and our guide, Michael. He is a gem of a person and will be someone I will email and keep in contact with for a long time. I had an extra KC Royals ballcap with us, and we gave it to him for his son, who is 8. Michael loves US sports team hats/shirts and wears them all the time.
When we received our referral for Laney, I immediately sent a care package to the orphanage. I included an outfit for her to wear, candies & lotions for her nannies, and I also included two disposable cameras. I hoped the nannies would use them to take pictures of Laney, so I could see more of her life in the orphanage. I asked them, in the note I included (translated into Cantonese) to please bring the cameras when I came to get my daughter. When we were given Laney, the orphanage director handed us a bag full of things. (I can't remember if I wrote about this before or not...Gotcha Day was such a happy blur..). Among them were a precious stack of about 35 pictures of Laney...from the time she was 2 months old until the present! Each one was clearly marked with a date. I couldn't even look at them when she gave them to me. I knew I would cry without stopping. What an incredible gift! I have baby pictures of my daughter now! Some of the pictures are difficult to look at. The conditions in the orphanage are not very good. But, Laney looks adorable. So sweet...so patient...just waiting for her family. Also in the bag I received were a stack of pictures of Guiping (very special!) and the two disposable cameras I sent! They said they used them and filled them with pictures.
Tonight, we received the cameras back...fully developed and we also got a CD with all of the pictures on it. I've uploaded three of them for you to see. These were Laney in June of this year...at 15 months old. What a sweet girl! I am so thankful she is in my arms, and not playing on hard tile floors anymore.
We've noticed she moves her hands in very interesting ways and bangs her legs on the floor back and forth sometimes when she is happy and laughing. Many of the orphanage babies do this (even some I've noticed that are staying with their families here in the hotel now.) In the orphanage, toys are a very slim commodity, so hands and feet become a baby's toys. Laney can play with my fingers and touch my face...far more fascinated by that than any of the toys we've brought for her. The first night when we brought her to the hotel, I laid her down in her crib and I noticed she was rocking back and forth gently. She was rocking herself to sleep. I reached down, picked her up and held her. I said, "No more rocking yourself to sleep baby girl! Never again. You have a Mommy now who loves to cuddle and love on you. Just relax and go to sleep." She snuggled in and went straight to dreamland in my arms...and has every night since we got her.
So, that's it for today. We love and miss everyone! We'll be writing to you next from Guangzhou....at the Victory hotel.
Three pictures of Laney, in the Guiping orphanage, taken by her nannyin June 2007:
