Orphanage and finding site visit

Talk about a very difficult day! Today was by far the hardest yet. We had a very late night with Mariah. She was very restless and woke several times. As soon as we got up this morning I could tell it was going to be a tough day for her. I already knew it would be tough for me.  

Mariah has been really congested since our Gotcha Day and today was no exception. However, as I dressed her for the day, I found more of the slight rash I saw last night when I bathed her. To put it mildly, she was pretty miserable. She barely ate breakfast. Below is a picture of what she looked like for our trip. Keep in mind, there are no car seats in Ch*na. 

We left to visit her orphanage around 9am. The drive took about 1 1/2 hours to drive from Nanjing to her home city of Changzhou.  Today her grieving was really bad. She only would go to Jeremy. She preferred him yesterday but today it was only him. We agreed that Jeremy would be the designated baby- holder for this visit.


Well..........she got sick on the way and threw up all over Jeremy. Poor thing, it was pitiful. We were kind of glad she only had a few Fruit Loops and water for breakfast.


As we drove up to the orphanage gate we were welcomed by a sign. Of course, it was in Mandarin. Our guide/facilitator read it to us.................
"Warm welcome to Chang Lu Ping and her new American family."

Today our daughter walked through those front doors of that orphanage as a visitor, not an orphan! More importantly, she walked out of those doors with a family! What a beautiful story! 


I was prepared for Mariah to enjoy her time there. And she did! The Half the Sky Nanny (who is very "grandmotherly") came over to her and Mariah lit up. I was happy to see that. She reached for the nanny and went to her. I did really appreciate the nanny making such a huge effort to let Mariah know who we were. I was more impressed that when they asked her (in her Changzhou dialect) where "mama" was......she pointed to me! Then she pointed to Jeremy when asked where "baba" was.  Then what really surprised me was they asked her where gon gon was......she looked around the room and her eyes stopped on my dad! She did the same for my mom. Her eyes tell it all.

This sweet nanny got Mariah to call us Mama and Baba. That is the very first time we heard her say that. It was sweet to hear! When it was time to get back to work the nanny offered Mariah to Jeremy, which Mariah went to gladly, and the nanny ran out of the room crying. I feel blessed that my daughter was loved.


Then the orphanage director and assistant director gave us a quick tour of their facility. It was heart breaking to see all those babies just lying in their cribs. Eerily, there was hardly a sound coming from the baby room.


I was allowed to take a picture of the crib that Mariah stayed in for the first 18 months of her life.  Here was the entrance to her bedroom.

That bedroom was shared with 24 other children. Then we were allowed to take a picture of her crib. Interesting that she was the very first crib in the room. Notice the little one lying in her crib diagonally? That is LuXue! Her mom and dad are leaving in a few weeks to get her. She is only 9 days younger than Mariah. Don't be fooled, she was supposed to be sleeping but was wide awake in her crib! I did get pictures of her for her parents.

The tour continued into the playroom. It is large and has many toys for the children to play on and with there were screens in the windows but no air conditioning. It is very hot and humid in Changzhou during the summer.

This was a very fast tour. You don't waste any time with the officials. They were nice with us but it was obvious they did not want us there much longer. Then we were invited for lunch with the director, assistant director, a nanny and several other orphanage administrators. The meal was amazingly huge!!

Let's see if I can remember what was served. A tomato dish, mushrooms with veggies, fried fish, fried chicken, dumplings, stuffed pastries, a beef dish, tofu, a shrimp dish, fried rice, a whole fish (head and all), and fish soup. I believe 12 items in all. I'm probably forgetting something too. It was quite the feast. Oh....I remember what I forgot.............

Do you see the fish at the bottom center of the picture? Directly to the right of that dish is another dish. Eel! No, we did not eat that. They actually asked us if we eat eel and we said no. They were sweet and picked up the dish and set it off to the side.

As we sat down to eat, I was told that a nanny wanted to feed Mariah her last lunch there. I did not argue. She ate very well, so I was glad.  

Lunch went well. We had a quick lesson on proper use of chopsticks. Jeremy already knew but we did not. The discussion was completely in Mandarin but the Changzhou dialect. That was even tough for our guide to understand.  

It was a difficult day but necessary. We are that link to Mariah's past. Without that, she will always wonder what orphanage life was like. 

We also visited her finding spot. Wow! We both had such a tough time with that. Just to think that our baby girl was abandoned at only 1 month old. We are amazed that God has blessed us with the opportunity to be her family. The orphanage director kept telling us how lucky Mariah is. I quickly told her that we were the ones that are blessed!

We leave for Guangzhou tomorrow. I hope it has fresher air than what we have seen.  The polution has been horrible. You cannot even see the surrounding mountains in the distance. Maybe some sunshine will help Mariah. 

I spent part of the evening on the phone with her doctor at the International Adoption Clinic in Cincinnati, OH. She was so sweet and agreed that the antibiotic needed to continue. Mariah also has a terrible itchy rash all over her tummy. She is scratching like crazy. Of course, the one medication I did not bring was Benadryl. Jeremy and my dad took the adult Benadryl that we have here for adults and went shopping. We figured if all else failed they could look at the bottle and ingredients. They went to four stores and no Benadryl. So the doctor told us how to make what we had work. We are hoping it works. I also gave her some ibuprofen. After I told the doctor that, she was glad I did. No reason not to for now. It could be a multitude of problems....ears, throat, chest, joints etc. The doctor said to just keep the ibuprofen in her system.

Signing off for now from China. I need some sleep.