Day four

It's hard to believe it's only been four days. Every day, there are huge gains, and some pretty noticeable challenges. I'm opening today's post with a picture of Kiyomi holding her latest favourite toy - we think she's trying to hint something to her new parents.

The little nipper's personality is coming out more and more every day. It's amazing the difference over the last few days alone. Initially, she was withdrawn and suspicious, but she's very slowly coming out of her shell. She reaches for toys and food easily now, although she's not exactly sure what to do with it once it's in her hand. She chatters away to herself happily and regularly, although she's still a pretty serious baby. It's a bit of work to get her to smile, and you're never guaranteed success. We were also pretty excited to see her imitate movements today - moving her head to copy Kohji or lifting a ball in the air after we show her how. She ate a good breakfast and lunch, but the drinking thing is still slow - so we made sure to include watermelon with every meal.

There were some challenging moments today as well. She had a major meltdown this afternoon/evening that lasted about two and a half hours. Everything we tried was fruitless. Finally, out of exhaustion, Kohji put her in the Snugli - first facing in, to no avail. But then we turned her so that she was facing out, and she started to calm. Needless to say, we've had every single meal in the room today. We suspect that part of the problem may be that she didn't really nap much today - she seems to like a couple of naps, 2 hours each, in the morning and afternoon. Today, we only managed half of that. By the time she finally feel asleep at 8:30, she was spent (and so were we).

This morning was a trip to a state-run porcelain store. Once again, we were quite the spectacle on the street when we all streamed out of the bus with babies in tow. JiangXi is known as the porcelain capital of China, and is promoted heavily in the area. The pieces ran the gamut from traditional Chinese designs, to almost modern colours and textures. The really fine China was lighter than air. I was scared to pick it up for fear that I would crush it. I didn't realize porcelain could be made so thin and delicate. I think every one in the group bought at least a few pieces, but we've become legends among the group for how much we picked up. We really wanted a few special things from Kiyomi's home province.

After the porcelain place, we stopped for a wander through the People's Park. It's a nice park in the heart of Nanchang. If it weren't for most of us being caucasian and the strollers (they don't seem to really use strollers here), we may have possibly blended in at the park. There were mainly families, with kids in tow, wandering the paths. Again, we drew many inquisitive looks and comments. One group of women started speaking to me, and I looked helplessly over at our guide, Jenny. She said that they were wondering whether Kiyomi was a boy or girl. Apparently, they thought she was very beautiful, but thought she might be a boy as I had dressed her in shorts! The drive back from the park was interesting as we drove past a market area. While some of the shops seemed pretty typical, I was intrigued by the people who laid down blankets or baskets literarly on the street and sold their wares - usually few. It reminded me that outside the city, th is province is primarily agricultural and poor.

The rest of the day was pretty low key. It was a bit cooler and overcast today, so I tried venturing out of the hotel. Everytime we got organized and I made it downstairs, it had started raining, so we had to abort. We need to get quicker on the draw apparently. I'm told that there will be a time when it doesn't take us half and hour to leave the room!

I was going to try to leave you with some extra pictures of Kiyomi as I don't think I'll be able to post much, if at all tomorrow, but blogger isn't cooperating right now and I'm too exhausted to wait it out. We get the girls' passports and leave for Beijing tomorrow afternoon. I don't expect we'll get to the hotel in Beijing until 9 or 9:30, so we'll probably all crash (or at least I hope we will). I'll try to add a few more pictures in the morning.

Good night, and wish us luck on Kiyomi's first plane ride. Should be a doozy, as she, and a number of the other babies, don't seem to know how to suck from a bottle (it's supposed to help with the pressure changes). I already feel bad for the other passengers on that plane!