Funny Face

This is a photo taken by our friend Sandra, of Laina in China. She made this face all the time which cracked everybody up. She still does this one, as well as a lot of new ones she has invented! We have a lot of laughs playing mirror games.

Imperial Dinner

One night when we had been in Beijing for a couple of days, we decided to break away from the group and go out to a restaurant.This is before we had the babies. Our friend, Sandra(aka Peeps) found it in a travel guide, I believe it may have been called the Imperial, but I'm not sure. The taxi cost about $2 and it seemed like we drove all around the city. We had been a bit disappointed by the food served to the group in the hotel, it seemed "cafeteria style" and very americanized, there was nothing exotic or unique to us. This place was incredible, it was on Beihail Lake, with an impressive entrance manned by guards and women in full traditional dress. We were escorted to the restaurant down a lovely walkway lit by Chinese lanterns. There were meals to choose by the group, in other words, you would order together a "page" from the menu that would be served to us on the center "lazy susan" for evryone. There were 14 courses and it cost about $12 US. Jacqui and I ordered tea and the waitress served it to us in a beautiful, long-spouted teapot.Must have been a hard technique to learn! I am posting and using some pictures taken by Sandra as well as some I took myself. This is the place that offered "Camel Paw, Deer Lips, Deer tendon," and all kinds of crazy sounding stuff. I don't remember exactly what we had (not those things!)but it was all delicious!

Laina Lately

Hi everyone, here's some new pictures of Laina. We went to a BBQ hosted by our friends John and Jacqui, who traveled to China with us to bring home their daughter, Roma. It was so great to reconnect with them and now we are more anxious than ever to see the rest of the group at our reunion in August. Laina has 2 new teeth on the top as you see, and she is growing by leaps and bounds. We have been able to turn her carseat around as she weighs over 20 pounds now! One of the photos is of her under the couch, this is her crawling method, unfortunately she pushes backward and often ends up under things. Another is of her and her Aunt Betsy, one of her with her first corn lolly, and of her in Roma's kiddie-pool(she loves the water!) and maybe more...

Kids in China

Although there are children abandoned and in orphanages in China, when we were there we saw only people who cherished and adored their kids. There is no doubt that the people love their babies. The policies that control the number of kids a Chinese family can have are strange to us and hard to understand. One thing our guide Glenn told us was that when someone had twins , it counted as only one birth. I saw some adorable twins in a shop one day and here is the picture. Another strange story...we received a photo album of Laina as a gift from the orphanage director and when we opened it, there was a picture of her with an IV in her head. It freaked us out, of course, we were worried that she had had an operation, or had a medical condition that nobody told us about. Our guide explained to us that it is common practice to receive an IV treatment, at any age for a cold or flu. The IV's are put in the babies' heads so they won't be as inclined to pull it out. We were near a hospital one day, when going to all the kids' "finding spots"; one of the girls was found right outside the emergency room under an umbrella. There, we actually saw a cute little boy walking around with his mom, with an IV in his head! Later, we saw them heading home, so we felt reassured about it. I took his photo too. I am also posting a photo of a group of school kids in uniform, walking down the street one morning. There is a man on the sidewalk, I thought he was a beggar but Jimmy thought he was praying..maybe both? I'll see what other pix I can find of kids too.

Time Flies

Wow! I can't believe a week flies by so fast. Laina is a fascinating person, quite distracting in the best sort of way. She is great, has gained a few pounds since she came home. She has to be rear-facing in her car seat until she hits 20 pounds, so Jimmy is fattening her up! It will be more fun and more comfortable for evryone if we can see her, and she can look at us. Here's some new pix of our little beauty, she has recently attended an art opening, a wedding shower, and a wedding, so we have had the chance to dress up a little and get out some of her cute chinese outfits. She also likes playing with my big straw garden hat too. After this, I'll tell a China story...oops, I messed up a photo, I'll do it again but you may get 2 the same, I'll try and fix it.