Touching Base From Hefei - April 23 Photo Added
Sunday local time here in Hefei.
Weeee!! I'm A Happy Girl....
Sitting on uncle Wei Zhong's
Lap is fun!!
We landed Thursday evening on time, with a pleasant flight, and checked in to the Novatel Hotel in downtown Hefei. Emily did fantastic on the plane flight. We fed her right before flight time, and she relaxed for the first part of the two hour flight and then after just a couple of fusses, she dropped down into a nap for the rest of the flight.
The Novatel hotel (4 star hotel) is the local "baby hotel" in Anhui province. The hotel is very nice, rooms are clean and modern though a bit smallish. Room comes with a crib, free in room broadband access (fastest local broadband I have seen anywhere in China, based on access through the business center here which should be comparable to rooms).
We have been spending the last few days with Nancy's family, eating, chatting, etc. They always love seeing Nancy and now with Emily here, they are double delighted. All the family have pretty much surrounded Emily since arrival. Being a sensitive little baby, while she loves strangers in general, too many stranger pressing too close makes here a bit fussy, so it took a day or so for her to warm up to everyone. Now she is cooing buddies with everyone and seems to enjoy all the attention. The family insists on spoiling us with great food and conversation (most of which goes over my head since it is all Mandarin, but the food is truly awesome). Everyone in Nancy's local family it seems are excellent cooks.
Emily continues to do very well. She has had a bit of a head cold the last few days. Seems all the babies in our group were passing one around (though all seemed pretty healthy when received them), and I guess Emily decided to grap on on the way out of town. On the bright side, each day we see new perkiness in her personality. After receiving a baby that allegedly could sit unassisted at 5 months, yet was a little flopper the day we picked her up, she now sits well with little or no assistance. She also loves to stand on her own two feet with just a lift and assist with mommies or daddies fingers in each hand. She indeed does have a very loud and enthusiastic laugh as Nancy discovered a couple days ago while sitting Emily between here legs and wiggling mommies toes in front of Emily. Emily would just yell out full blown laughs of delight!
We took a walk in the Hefei Lao Ban park in downtown yesterday and Emily just loved the outing. In general, she loves any walk-a-bout we do, but the park was particularly mesmerizing for her yesterday. It is a very nicely renovated park with lakes surrounded by walkways, little gardens, and arching footbridges over the lake from one side to the next. All in all, when strapped to mommies chest (ERGO baby carrier for the win) she is in total bliss on virtually any outing. Many local giggle and like to comment at the little baby in the kangaroo pouch :)
Now that we have the adoption completed and immigrant visa in hand, our pace in China has slowed to a pace where we are less tired and baby gets better scheduled nap and feeding times. We have Emily fulling converted now to Similac (lactose free version) now and she just devours it. Our standard recipe is Similac + 3 scoops of Gerber rice cereal, and 1/4 container of Gerber fruit baby food (currently pears as we ran out of bananas). Mix it all up in very warm water in the bottle and Emily will down 8 oz in about 5-7 mins, 4 times a day.
We finally found the secret to feeding Emily steamed egg. China babies supposedly will squeal with glee for steamed egg. While some of the babies in our group did in fact devour steamed egg, for Emily it was reallyn ho-hum. One day quite by accident, we rubbed a spoon across some fried rice and let her lick it to see what she would do. Wow! Bingo! baby has a taste for salty foods and an actual aversion to sweet foods (such as fruit baby food). So when we got to hefei, Nancys aunt made a steamed egg (perfectly cooked I might add) with a little salt added. Emily wolfed it down. So we now conclude that the orphanage nannies may have been giving food with a little salt added in their afternoon feeding of steamed egg. Since Emily so naturally responded with enthusiasm on a spoon held in front of her, we also conclude that her nanny may have been letting her lick a spoon that had been rubbed or touched in something salty to encourage her to spoon feed as well. Nancy's aunt and cousins were not surprised at all as in China, it is customary to introduce salt into the babies diet as they believe it encourages strength in the baby for muscle development. Don't know if it is true, but the dots definitely connect up here. So many little experiments, so many new discoveries for us each day!
All in all, we are all doing well, bonding fabulously, and genuinely having fun on the last leg of our journey in China. But we very much look forward to flying home later in the week. There is no place like home after all.
Weeee!! I'm A Happy Girl....
Sitting on uncle Wei Zhong's
Lap is fun!!
We landed Thursday evening on time, with a pleasant flight, and checked in to the Novatel Hotel in downtown Hefei. Emily did fantastic on the plane flight. We fed her right before flight time, and she relaxed for the first part of the two hour flight and then after just a couple of fusses, she dropped down into a nap for the rest of the flight.
The Novatel hotel (4 star hotel) is the local "baby hotel" in Anhui province. The hotel is very nice, rooms are clean and modern though a bit smallish. Room comes with a crib, free in room broadband access (fastest local broadband I have seen anywhere in China, based on access through the business center here which should be comparable to rooms).
We have been spending the last few days with Nancy's family, eating, chatting, etc. They always love seeing Nancy and now with Emily here, they are double delighted. All the family have pretty much surrounded Emily since arrival. Being a sensitive little baby, while she loves strangers in general, too many stranger pressing too close makes here a bit fussy, so it took a day or so for her to warm up to everyone. Now she is cooing buddies with everyone and seems to enjoy all the attention. The family insists on spoiling us with great food and conversation (most of which goes over my head since it is all Mandarin, but the food is truly awesome). Everyone in Nancy's local family it seems are excellent cooks.
Emily continues to do very well. She has had a bit of a head cold the last few days. Seems all the babies in our group were passing one around (though all seemed pretty healthy when received them), and I guess Emily decided to grap on on the way out of town. On the bright side, each day we see new perkiness in her personality. After receiving a baby that allegedly could sit unassisted at 5 months, yet was a little flopper the day we picked her up, she now sits well with little or no assistance. She also loves to stand on her own two feet with just a lift and assist with mommies or daddies fingers in each hand. She indeed does have a very loud and enthusiastic laugh as Nancy discovered a couple days ago while sitting Emily between here legs and wiggling mommies toes in front of Emily. Emily would just yell out full blown laughs of delight!
We took a walk in the Hefei Lao Ban park in downtown yesterday and Emily just loved the outing. In general, she loves any walk-a-bout we do, but the park was particularly mesmerizing for her yesterday. It is a very nicely renovated park with lakes surrounded by walkways, little gardens, and arching footbridges over the lake from one side to the next. All in all, when strapped to mommies chest (ERGO baby carrier for the win) she is in total bliss on virtually any outing. Many local giggle and like to comment at the little baby in the kangaroo pouch :)
Now that we have the adoption completed and immigrant visa in hand, our pace in China has slowed to a pace where we are less tired and baby gets better scheduled nap and feeding times. We have Emily fulling converted now to Similac (lactose free version) now and she just devours it. Our standard recipe is Similac + 3 scoops of Gerber rice cereal, and 1/4 container of Gerber fruit baby food (currently pears as we ran out of bananas). Mix it all up in very warm water in the bottle and Emily will down 8 oz in about 5-7 mins, 4 times a day.
We finally found the secret to feeding Emily steamed egg. China babies supposedly will squeal with glee for steamed egg. While some of the babies in our group did in fact devour steamed egg, for Emily it was reallyn ho-hum. One day quite by accident, we rubbed a spoon across some fried rice and let her lick it to see what she would do. Wow! Bingo! baby has a taste for salty foods and an actual aversion to sweet foods (such as fruit baby food). So when we got to hefei, Nancys aunt made a steamed egg (perfectly cooked I might add) with a little salt added. Emily wolfed it down. So we now conclude that the orphanage nannies may have been giving food with a little salt added in their afternoon feeding of steamed egg. Since Emily so naturally responded with enthusiasm on a spoon held in front of her, we also conclude that her nanny may have been letting her lick a spoon that had been rubbed or touched in something salty to encourage her to spoon feed as well. Nancy's aunt and cousins were not surprised at all as in China, it is customary to introduce salt into the babies diet as they believe it encourages strength in the baby for muscle development. Don't know if it is true, but the dots definitely connect up here. So many little experiments, so many new discoveries for us each day!
All in all, we are all doing well, bonding fabulously, and genuinely having fun on the last leg of our journey in China. But we very much look forward to flying home later in the week. There is no place like home after all.
posted by Emily's Parents at 5:35 PM
1 Comments:
Our Yiyanger loved anything salty or peppery when she came home at 11 months. Clearly had Hunan tastes. What we learned from a woman cousin when we went to dinner with the relatives in Changsha was how to feed her steamed egg from a Chinese spoon. Never knew how fast it could disappear!
Glad you are having such a good time with the relatives. Being rested before dealing with jet lag at home will be good.
Take care,
Meimei
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