Rambling Thoughts

Everyday seems a bit the same here in Guangzhou. The rest of our group is off in their child's respective province so we are pretty much alone here at the White Swan Hotel. Of course there are other adoptive parents that we have chatted with from time to time, but we basically are on our own with no real schedule. Yesterday we completed our paperwork for the Chinese government so as far as they are concerned Sage is ours! By the way, we are stilling calling her by her Chinese name, Yunyi (pronounced One-Yee) or her nick name YunYun (One-One). We will eventually call her Sage, but for now it seems appropriate. It really is the only thing we can say to her that she understands, it just doesn't seem right to take that away. She does babble a bit to us, but we of course we have no idea what she is saying. When our guide asks her a question in Cantonese she always shakes her head no. It has become a little game with us as well. We ask her a question and she shakes her head no. Then we laugh and say, "yes" and she grins really big. She has tried to mimic some words in English already. She even tried to say "elephant". Pretty cute. Right now she is enamored with pushing the light on the travel alarm clock. We might take her swimming tomorrow seeing as she spent an hour in the bath last night.

She has been sleeping fairly well, all things considered. We have a little crib in the room which we put her in a night. I rock her to sleep and then put her in the crib. She usually wakes up and cries, but I reach my hand in and hold her hand or rub her forehead. She wakes a few times at night crying, but as long as I touch her hand she goes back to sleep. At naptime I lay on the bed with her. She needs to know we are here. I can't imagine what a shock to the system this transition is for her. I've been away from home for a week and I can hardly stand it. We are taking her away from all she's ever known forever. She's gonna need lots of patience. And love. Good thing we've got a lot of that to spare.