A Day for Missing Home

It was overcast and rainy today - makes for a hard day for a girl who has left everything she has known for their whole life. It also makes for a hard day for Mommies and Daddies away from 3 of their children. We began this rainy...(what day is it?)...Wednesday up in the dining room for breakfast. We got a table by the window to watch the raindrops and the busy working people below. We were excited about our previous easy-to-bed evening and our solid night of sleep (at least Daddy and Hadley's solid sleep that is). We actually came to breakfast w/o a camera and we were lamenting this decision as Hadley decided to feed herself some breakfast foods for the first time. Up until now, she would only allow me to feed her. We didn't know if she could or would. We were deciding whether to go back to get the camera to capture the moment when our excitement about this step forward turned to sadness as Pat noticed that her stirring of her congi (rice soup) began to get slower and slower. She stared down for a while and then with that very sad face began to cry. That two handled cup, small spoon and feeding herself must have taken her back to the orphanage - she was missing her family. Funny thing was, I had a big lump in my throat looking at the raindrops thinking about my three kiddos at home and wondering how they were doing today. This was the start of a very hard day for our little girl and for her parents watching.


We scooped her up, went back to the room to shower and get ready for the field trip to the Provincial museum. I don't think they had Hadley in mind when they choose this for the outing. In some ways Chinese culture does not cater children, ours does too much.




We got through the museum. Hadley was melancholy and sleepy because we had given her some cold medicine that had made her tired. We stopped by a tea shop on the way home to feed her lunch and buy some green tea to bring home. Anhui Province is famous for green tea. During our tea shopping Pat had a blast being led around the store by Hadley. She was holding his finger and smiling as they played together. She allowed him to toss her in the air and tickle her. She did have some happy moments in the morning. We came back home and got ready for her nap. She cried a little but went down pretty easily. Unfortunately about 30 minutes into her nap construction noise next door woke her up. She cried but allowed me to pull her onto my chest and rub her back until she fell asleep again. She slept for another 3 hours. We finally decided it was time to wake her up.


We woke her up and brought her into the den to have some milk and a snack. She was crying a lot. I grabbed a plastic cup that has two handles (now I know what you are thinking - didn't we learn from breakfast, but she had used it yesterday and it didn't bother her) and put some peanut butter crackers in it. Pat had fed her some PB crackers the previous day and she loved them so I thought this was a good choice. She whimpered some and wouldn't eat. I decided to give her some smarties which have been the biggest hit with her thus far. When I emptied them into that cup she was holding, that was it - the flood gates opened and they wouldn't close for a while. All we could do, is pray for her heart while I kept holding her and telling her that we knew it was hard and we loved her. We let her have some time to get it out and then we got out of the room. We walked in the rain and all enjoyed being outside. We have only had one hot day here because it has either been rainy or cloudy and that is fine with us.



We walked back to Walking Street and decided surely Hadley could eat some spaghetti noodles while we enjoyed Pizza Hut, again. Nothing like comfort food. She did not like the naked noodles with cheese, but when we added the sauce, she loved it and used a fork to feed herself for a while. Pat learned the hard way that Chinese spaghetti sauce doesn't really equate to Italian spaghetti sauce, but Hadley loved it. We left to go buy a few things and ended up with one small shopping bag with carrying strings. Hadley would use this for the rest of the evening as her purse with straps pulled up around her elbow and arm bent like a 40 year old woman on a shopping spree. People were stopping to look at her like crazy. They keep telling us how beautiful she is. Pat and I know we now have two beautiful daughters in our family. At bed time she whimperred a little, but no full blown meltdown. We are thankful because she needed a break today.