Lisa here -
It has now been raining non-stop since Monday night here. Everything from like sprinkles to heavy downpours with flooding streets. Supposedly, this is the non-rainy season, but I seem to be doubting it. Due to the weather, we ended up at the Hubei Provincial Museum yesterday and are supposed to head out for the Yellow Crane Tower around 9 a.m. today, but that seems doubtful now. The tower is completely outdoors.
It's been a long few days. Ashley's foster mother continues to call our guide every morning to just "check in" to make sure that everything is okay with her. Her foster grandmother told him that he wants us to email her a picture of Ashley smiling after she joined our family since she was screaming so hard the other day. She has not been eating or going to the bathroom very well, so when Grant asked the foster mother about that yesterday, he was told that we were not feeding her enough and that she needed a bottle of formula between meals, too. She also refuses to hold a bottle by herself for more than a second and she sips it like she doesn't know how it works (but she won't use a cup or sippy cup either), and she'll push your hand away. I guess that her family would spoon feed her both the formula and all of her food. Now, she is 21 months old, so hopefully she will take to these things more once she is home. You can that all of her needs were very well taken care of.
Ashley really wants very little interaction with me and definitely doesn't consider me the "mama" in any way; she will even ignore my picture when it's pointed to in the photo album. When she cries, Dylan will tell me that she wants the "other mama" and Kyle will say that she will only smile for everyone but me (which is true) - little children can always put it very directly for you! Kyle was definitely a bit like this when we adopted him, but Ashley's situation is more different due to such a strong foster family bond.
She is also extremely friendly with all of the other Chinese in the hotel and our guide. She does not seem to have any stranger anxiety around them. She will go up to all of the children that she sees. The other day she met another adopted little boy in the hallway, who is very shy, and she was right in his face up close, so Dylan says "Ashley, move back, you are in his space!" We were laughing very hard.
She will allow Charlie to hold her a little bit more, but she doesn't want him to carry her at all. Luckily, she adores the boys and will allow Kyle to help give her a bottle and for Dylan to help console her when she gets changed (she doesn't like diaper changes at all either). She constantly follows them around and will try and monitor their DS screens very intently when they are playing. They are extremely caring with her. Hopefully, over the next few weeks, she'll become a little bit more open to us.
She is a very sound sleeper and will sleep for 10-12 hrs. at a time with some naps thrown in, if we are out walking or riding, so that has been very good.
She will be signing up for the Major Leagues as she has a wicked arm on her and when she is done with food or toys, she will hurl them to the floor and/or at you. At times, even Puppy and Lumpy have been hurtled at the boys.
We just got 4 rolls of film developed yesterday from cameras that the foster mother gave us the other day. She took lots and lots and lots of pictures. She also gave us a photo album of pictures from the first days that she had Ashley (March 2009) through each month after that. She told our guide that she had scanned (very high tech here) every photo that we had sent to her while we were waiting for Ashley and I gave her one of her photo books to keep with her.
Off to breakfast now. Charlie will post more about our wild and crazy adventure to dinner last night - we took our guide and driver to an "American style" eating place which was a very new experience for them! I'll let Charlie fill in all of the crazy and funny details, though.
Thanks for all of the posts, too. We enjoy them!
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