Sunday evening in Guangzhou

Hi all:

It's Sunday evening in Guangzhou.  The boys are playing DS Games now, Ashley is trying to open the door to our hotel room and Charlie and Rita are out getting dinner at KFC. 

Sorry for the lack of posts, but we've had a very busy few days and are exhausted at night. 

As a catch-up, we arrived late on Friday night and did not hit our hotel room until after 10 p.m. Way too late with 3 kids in tow and very little dinner. 

We got up early yesterday morning to go back to Shamian Island for Ashley's medical appt. (mandatory) at the clinic office.  The office was packed when she arrived and she had to rotate between 4 appts - height/weight room, ENT room, general check room (more on that in a bit) and then the "shot" room.  When we arrived, we were told that Ashley would be getting EIGHT shots at once because she has never been immunized (due to her illness).  Most children "only" get six or less. I spent another good 1/2 hr. arguing with our guide and the "head" doctor about her getting too many shots, all at once, after an already harrowing week of too little food, nausea and serious bathroom issues.  The head doctor really could have cared less about what I had to saw, and I think that our guide was even getting more scared of me. 

As we rotated between each room, I kept arguing my case.  When we got to the general practioner in room #3, things got a bit more interesting when he could not find any surgical scars on Ashley even though all of her paperwork (which he only read on a cursory basis) stated that she had at least one surgical operation if not more, and we knew that she had at least one operation.  Then the conversations started between our guide and the doctor (all in Chinese), and then another Dr. was brought into the room (interestingly enough, it was the same Dr. that had seen Dylan last year at his medical).  More Chinese conversations ensued as they kept turning Ashley over and around searching for the scar.  The problem here is that when things do not match exactly to your paperwork, then you can have serious problems.

Finally Dr. #2 leaves the room and I just looked at my guide and said "What are you saying?!"  He said that "they cannot find any scars, so they don't think she has had surgery." Dr. #1 then says "she has a big belly, make sure that you get her checked in the US."  Once we confirmed that her medical issues are being monitored carefully and will be further reviewed, we were allowed to go sit in another line (for almost 45 min) for the "shot" room.

Once we entered the room, 2 nurses proceeded to stick her with 2 shots in each of her legs and arms in pretty rapid fire succession, as Charlie held her and Elvin and I tried to restrain her, too. Then once done, one nurse tries to hand her a HARD piece of candy so I shook my head and said "no!"  Then a cup comes out with what looks like a white cotton ball.  The nurse kept saying something that sounded like "pollen ball" to me. I was like "what?!!"  Finally, after much back and forth, we learned that they wanted us to stuff a gumball sized polo vaccination ball in her mouth.  Since she was shrieking, we decided that we would wait about 5 minutes before having to get that into her.  Luckily and very surprisingly, she took it and swallowed it quickly.  Then another 1/2 later, we were "released" back to the world of normalcy again. 

We spent another 1.5 hours just grabbing lunch at Lucy's on the island and doing a little bit of shopping, as everyone wound back down from the morning adventure.  Luckily, Rita was with us to occupy the boys all morning, so they ran off tons of energy on their island excursion and didn't have to witness the insanity of the exam.

Ashley had been sleeping most of the day and night from Friday onward (probably due to extreme grief) as she processed through stages of rage, scratching and ignoring me and then finally sleeping (and waking to hopefully find us gone!) She also pretty much had refused to eat much of anything all week and when she did eat, she either spit most of it out or got sick.  We were very worried that the shot adventure would put her over the edge and worsen some of the health issues that she has continued to have (her poor belly gets very bloated and swollen. Charlie and I even had the great pleasure of an angry Chinese woman tapping on it at McDonalds on Friday and shooting us bad looks, like we were horrible parents and didn't understand her issues).  Anyway, the shots (and maybe time) seemed to shock her more into her new family and future, as she got up this morning, ate two big bowls of some meat/mushroom congee, drank Kyle's orange juice, got right into our van and had a great day with us at our next adventure (which we'll post separately).

She still doesn't like us to hold her much, unless she is in the car or being carried from one place to the next. She has stopped scratching me, though, unless she is trying to get my attention and she is finally smiling alot.  She probably says "I guess that I am stuck with this crazy tribe of people so I better make the best of it!"  She loves riding the stroller and will climb into it herself.  She will also flop down on the floor when we get a towel out, scowl at us and get ready for her diaper change.  She still likes to be fed most of the time vs. doing it herself; however, she is getting extremely curious now and will climb on things, look in bags and try and get into the boys' things.  She can sort of say Kyle's name on occasion, too. She is mesmorized by their DS games and loves to watch the characters on the screens.  She weighed a whopping 21.3 lbs. at her physical and her body is so tiny on bottom that she'll need size 9-12 month pants; we had to rope on her 12 mth shorts today.  Luckily, her top is more normal sized the larger tops most of the time.

It is very hot and humid here in Guangzhou - probably at least in the 80's.  Very sunny, too, which we like after too much rain in Wuhan. 

Okay dinner has arrived (an as usual for us on this trip, the order was done incorrectly), so I will let Charlie post more later (we have several "new" stories that only he can properly tell) and we also did the Safari Park today which was wonderful, so he'll elaborate more on that later, too.

Thank you, too, for all of the emails and posts. We read them daily.