Once the crying stopped.....

There's a smile under that towel!

Once Milo started to get to know and trust us a little more (and scream a little less), we were finally able to explore Changsha and enjoy the rest of our time there.

On Wednesday our guide took us to visit the Yuelu Academy which was started in 976 (no we didn't leave out a number, it was actually started in the year 976). This Academy is the only ancient academy that is still used today as a college. Hunan University students go there to use the library and study in the peaceful grounds. It was raining pretty steadily when we visited, but it was still one of the highlights of our trip. You could just feel the history walking through there. It's hard to explain how much respect I now have for the Chinese culture. They really appreciate taking time to meditate and enjoy your surroundings. After how rough our first few days were, it felt really good to be in such a peaceful space.

Next we visited the Orange Island park, which had lots of orange trees that smelled SO good! It also a huge stone monument to Mao Zedong, who was born in the Hunan province. We finished the day with a great local dinner (the best meal we had in Changsha!) with our guide consisting of meatball and pear soup, steamed lotus root, steamed pork, duck, and steamed egg for Milo. 

 

It was a long day, but we were so glad we got to explore Changsha. Milo did amazing through the whole day! He loved being in the carrier and even fell asleep a few times.  

The next day Brian left us to visit Milo's orphanage in Hengyang. I was a little worried about keeping Milo entertained all day by myself, but we both agreed it was really important for Brian to see where Milo came from. He will be doing a separate post on his experience, but it was a very powerful day for him.
While Brian was gone, Milo and I played "how to entertain a toddler in a hotel room". I skyped with our family back home (skype was such a lifesaver while we were there, it was so nice to see friendly faces!) and we played and played and played some more. In the afternoon we were both getting a little stir crazy and thankfully I got a message from another adoptive mama (who adopted an adorable little girl) to walk to a nearby store with her. I was so thankful to have a reason to leave the room! We went to the "Friendship store", which was essentially a giant maze like mall with tons of stores. We literally got lost trying to find the exit!  
That evening, once Brian got home, we joined the same family at the restaurant at their hotel. The menu was huge, but you could tell we were all craving something familiar as we all ordered hamburgers. Although they were not nearly as good as the burgers back home!

On Friday we headed to Guangzhou via the high speed train. We had to wait until late afternoon to pick up Milo's birth certificate and our official adoption documents. It felt so great to have those in hand! Our guide and driver then took us to the train station. Our guide was even nice enough to help us carry our bags inside and point out which door we should go through to get on the train. She was so wonderful! The train station was really up to date. It had several restaurants and shops and we were happy to have some extra time to eat (yay McDonalds!). Milo ate his first french fry and loved it (although there wasn't much that he didn't love at that point). The train was a great experience. We had first class seats and were able to have our bags right next to us and have extra room for Milo to play. It was a very smooth ride and really fun to be able to see some of the Chinese landscape. I highly recommend it to anyone traveling in China!

 

Goodbye Changsha!

Ready for our train ride!

 

Next up are posts about Milo's medical appointment, a fast paced shopping trip and Milo's consulate appointment!

Thanks for sticking with us as we slowly recap our trip!

Family Day aka the craziest 24 hours of our lives!

This is the first thing I saw on my phone the morning of April 21st. Family day!!! We couldn't believe it was finally here! We knew that Milo had to wake up early that morning to take the train to meet us and our minds were filled with thoughts of how he must be feeling.

Right before we left for the Civil Affairs office. Look how well rested we look!

He didn't end up wanting anything to do with this crib, but it was ready!

At 10:00 we met our guide in our lobby. Quick note about our guide and driver, they were amazing!!! It was so nice to have friendly faces greeting us each day and especially nice to have someone to translate things for us and tell us about Changsha.
Once we left the hotel, we headed to a bank to exchange money for our orphanage donation. We have paid a lot of fees during this process, but this was one fee we were happy to pay. It was a small price to pay to the people and place that took in our son at only 4 days old, raised him for over a year, repaired his cleft lip and did the paperwork and effort that it takes to make him eligible for international adoption. Without the Hengyang SWI (social welfare institute, China's term for orphanages) and ICC, Milo would not be in the loving family he is in today.

After exchanging our money, we headed to the Civil Affairs office to meet Milo. Our guide warned us that the office was under construction (as is most of Changsha) and she wasn't kidding. The entrance to the building was mostly chopped up concrete and the every time we got in the elevator I was pretty sure we weren't going to make it.

We were told to wait in a small office and about thirty minutes went by. We both jumped every time someone came down the hallway.  Eventually Milo came in with an orphanage worker. It was indescribable to finally see the boy we had been dreaming of and praying over for so long. The woman that brought him to us wasn't one of his nannies and I'm not sure if that made the transition easier or worse. Poor Milo took one look at us and started crying. And crying. And crying. This crying wouldn't really stop for the next 24 hours. He was so so scared. He wouldn't even make eye contact with us. We had been told that he had bonded very strongly to his nannies and he was very afraid of strangers, so we were expecting him to be scared. Also, during our training sessions over the past year, our agency taught us about the grieving that adopted children will go through. However, hearing about grieving and experiencing it in the form of a terrified and screaming child that you are now responsible for are two very different things. We just kept telling ourselves that we had just plucked this little guy from the only life he had ever known and the only people he had ever known and we couldn't expect him to be happy about it. So we kept trying to feed him snacks, snuggle him and talk to him (although I'm sure the fact that we were speaking English wasn't very comforting).

The face of a little boy who has checked out and a mama who is wondering what she got herself into!

 

These are the clothes Milo came to us in. He was one bundled kid!

This is one of my favorite pictures from that first 24 hours as it really sums up exactly how everyone was feeling. 

We were able to ask the orphanage worker a few questions about what Milo ate, his routine and likes and dislikes. One of the things she mentioned was that he likes to play with a towel. We didn't think much of it until we got back to the hotel room (with Milo still crying) and our guide grabbed a washcloth from the bathroom and handed it to him. While the tears didn't stop immediately, it was obvious this was a source of comfort. He put a corner of it in his mouth like a pacifier and started rubbing it in his hands. It was such an insight into his personality and a huge eye opener of how little we knew about our new son.

The first night was rough. Milo wouldn't let us put him down, so he slept between us on the bed. He was (and still is) a very restless sleeper and I think we maybe got an hour of sleep between worrying about rolling on him and trying to get him to stop screaming.
We decided to brave our breakfast buffet the next morning, mostly because we were all desperate to get out of the room! Milo pleasantly surprised us with his good behavior. He sat on my lap and ate everything we offered him. This was most likely a coping mechanism and a sign that he was on auto-pilot, but we were still happy to see him take food from us.

Successful breakfast! And a teeny glimpse of a curious little boy.

Later that morning we went back to the Civil Affairs office to finalize our paperwork. The first 24 hours after you get your child are called the "harmonious period". This is the time that the Chinese government gives you to make sure you want to go through with the adoption. It is very rare for a family to say "no", but it unfortunately does happen. In our case, it was funny what just 24 hours of parenthood did to us. Even though we were running on very little sleep and Milo had cried and screamed at us for the majority of those 24 hours, we were in love. We knew without a doubt that this little boy was ours. We were honored to be able to make the commitment that day that we would always love and care for him.

The feelings from those first 24 hours are ones that we will both be reflecting on for a long time and are very difficult to put into words. Going from no kids to a toddler is hard. Meeting your child for the first time in a foreign country is hard. Adding in the grief, confusion and anger that Milo was feeling made it really hard. We had no idea what we were doing and very much doubted that we were doing the right things. Luckily, we have an amazing support system and received much needed words of wisdom and encouragement whenever we reached out. These words gave us the strength to focus and keep doing the only thing we knew to do, show him that we loved him. We held him close, sang to him, talked to him, did everything we could to reassure him that we knew how scary it was and that we were here to offer comfort whenever he was ready to take it. We knew we would have to earn his trust and we were prepared to work for it.

More to come on the rest of our week in Changsha!

And we're back!

We're home!!
Wow what a crazy 2 weeks it was! The trip had many ups and downs, but overall it was an amazing and life changing experience.
We're going catch everyone up by blogging about our trip over the next week or two. We want to make sure we write all of the details down before the sleep deprivation makes us forget! We also plan on making Milo a photo book detailing our journey to becoming a family, so these posts will help us organize our thoughts.

As we mentioned in this post, packing for this trip was crazy! Even with a mile long packing list, I still felt like we didn't have everything. And then we went to pack it all into 2 suitcases (each under 44 pounds) and 2 carry ons and of course it didn't fit. After much reorganizing and frustration, we decided that we would pay the extra fees to have a 3rd checked bag. It was worth it to us to feel like we had everything we might need. As it turned out, we didn't have to pay a single fee for any of our checked bags! I don't know if it was because we were traveling internationally or because we told people we were adopting, but we really lucked out. The only downside was having to carry all of those bags through customs, airports, a train and hotels. It really upped the difficulty when we added Milo to the mix, but we made it work!

One of these bags would not make the return trip home, stay tuned to find out the story!

Our first plane ride of the trip left early morning on April 18. We left Denver (with an emotional goodbye and a heartwarming prayer) and flew to Seattle. We had a 4 hour layover, which gave us plenty of time to relax and grab lunch. We got our boarding passes for the flight to Beijing and the airline folks gave us an emergency exit row, which was awesome for leg room! The flight to Beijing was 11 hours and surprisingly went by quickly. We flew on a Dreamliner (very jealous of anyone who can afford first class on these planes, it looked amazing!!) so there were individual screens for each seat and there were no less than 30 movies and tv shows. The food was.....interesting. As it was a Chinese airline (Hainan Airlines), the food (and announcements) were more Chinese than American. There was a lot of noodles, rice and bowls of stuff we didn't recognize, but it was all fairly good for airplane food.

We arrived in Beijing around 5 pm (China time, which is 14 hours ahead of Mountain time. It was very tricky to keep that time difference in my head while we were away). We had another long layover, but the extra time came in handy as we had to go through customs, pick up our checked bags, recheck them and then find our gate.

We finally arrived in Changsha at 10:30 PM on April 19. Thankfully we had arranged transport to the hotel as it was obvious we weren't in an English speaking country anymore. It was our first taste of riding in a car in China, which is CRAZY! Lots of honking, cutting off other cars and ignoring stop signs. We heard that driving was very different in China, but it's truly something you have to see to believe!
Our hotel (Huatian hotel) was very nice, although we were starting to learn that Changsha was not a city often visited by English speaking folks as very few of the hotel staff or public spoke English. By the end of that week we got very good at pointing and hand gestures.We did learn that many Chinese schools are teaching kids both English and Mandarin, which is very impressive. We are hoping Milo will take an interest in learning Mandarin and we can all learn some together.

The next day was free for us to explore Changsha. We didn't feel jet lagged at all, which was awesome! Our hotel had a breakfast buffet that had mostly Chinese options (fried rice and noodles, congee, pork blood, salad, steamed veggies that were foreign to us, steamed rolls, etc) and luckily a few more familiar options (yay for toast with peanut butter!). The rest of the day we wandered the streets around our hotel. Changsha is a really interesting city. Lots of small (like the size of a walk in closet small) shops and restaurants. There were very few signs in English. We tried to eat at a noodle restaurant next to our hotel, but even with the help of pictures we weren't able to figure out what anything was! We felt very safe walking around, even at night. We also got our first taste of the attention we would get in our 2 weeks in China. Many folks would stop to look at us on the street. Some people (especially teenagers and children) tried out their English by saying Hi to us. It was so sweet! We learned Mandarin for hello (Ni Hao) and loved interacting with the locals!

The next day was "gotcha day" where we met Milo, which deserves its own post! More to come!
 

Our first dinner at the "food street" at the hotel. It was an a la carte buffet with very few things we recognized, but there were a few things we enjoyed!

The view out our hotel room window

Breakfast! Well, at least the toast is breakfast food

We saw a lot of shrink wrapped fish in convenience stores!