A Little Bit of All Things Crazy!

Sunday we didn't have anything on our list of things to do. I REALLY wanted to get over to  ShaMian Island, a place for shopping that all the adoptive parents talk about. Our plans were to hang out, eat lunch get in naps and go out! Wellll that didn't happen. Before lunch Isac was climbing a lattice in our room and before we could grab him he fell and hit his head on a medal door stop that was on the ground and had sharp edges. IT was a bad cut but THANKFULLY not on a temple and nothing we thought that would cause a concussion. Josh took him to the clinic in the hotel but the doctor was out and the nurse said he needed to go to the hospital. Blah, we've heard about hospitals outside of the US, even US ones have obvious germs everywhere, but we needed it to be closed up. Josh called our guide and she got to our room as soon as she could. I will stop and say our guide in GZ has been AMAZING!!!! She is so good at what she does!! Such a breath of fresh air! So Josh took Isac and I stayed with Nina, who was NOT happy baba was leaving. I prayed hard God would show me how to love her without pushing her as she doesn't reject me, but she is definitely a daddies girl right now. After he left she cried, I tried holding her, but that made her more mad. She went and got her coat and begged me to put it on. I put it on but tried to tell her we weren't leaving. She finally gave up and went and sat on the bed and I just watched from a distance. I was praying so hard as I really wasn't sure what to do and was so nervous. Do I go love on her and try and hold her? That just made her more mad, and because of her seizures, I was very nervous to do that, or do I just sit back and let her grieve in her own way. I watched her in the other room as she calmed down. A few minutes later she looked over at me a smiled.
A small part of us wonder if in her own little mind she was resolving that, that is just what happens in her world, people leave, and its time to move on. I went to her and we spent the time dancing, coloring, playing with her doll and kitchen stuff and eating snacks. It was a great time for both of us to bond more. I was super relieved when Josh called and told me everything was fine, he got 3 stitches and they were on their way back. And when he walked in the door Nina was even more excited I think than I was!
JOsh said he had such a great talk with our guide Grace. He said she told him the first time she did the travel for an adoption family she didn't like all the exchanging of money, she said it seemed too much like buying and trading the children. Then she said she had the chance to visit and orphanage and just saw how the kids just clung to her from the moment she walked in and were just begging for attention and love because there just wasn't enough help, that she changed completely to doing adoptions. Such a heart she has to want to bring these children to a forever home!
The rest of the day went pretty smoothly. We went out and got dinner despite the fact that Isac looked like a wounded war vet, because I needed to GET OUT!
Monday we again had no plans! We thought we would try again to go out to the island. We had gotten the chance to Skype many friends and family and were going to get ready to eat lunch and put the kids down for naps when we noticed Nina itching. My first thought was scabies, a bug sorta like lice in the way it spreads and they way you kills it, but it is on the skin! I looked it up but the bumps didn't look like scabies so I breathed a sigh of relief. But the poor girl was itching like CRAZY! She didn't really have anything different and was wearing clothes that she had worn before so we thought it was either from getting too hot, or just the change in all of the different things she was coming in contact with that she never had been before. We gave her a bath and they seemed to go away, but by the time we got all that figured out, it was too late to try and go to the Island.
Later Nina and I hit a VERY rough patch! I will spare you all the details but it was UGLY! I was so ready to swim back to the US it was that bad. She went to Baba and all was well in her world, but I sat in the bathroom and sobbed thinking about how I was failing at this role. How was I possibly called to something that I couldn't do?! Josh held me and let me cry and reassured me about what a couple that we had just met in the hallway and hour before said. They had told us that they adopted two boys and it was miserable! They said they never would have given up on them because they knew they were the ones called them to, but one was so far off what is medical reports had said and they said they had felt like they had done everything they could possibly do wrong. But now just 2 years later, the boys are thriving and God had called them back, so they must not have been too far off. That did bring comfort. Then I was able to chat with a mom who had adopted before and was here now again who reassured me nothing about this process is easy and to give myself a break. It is what it is...hard!
To love a child who doesn't know how to love the way your biological children do. To be patient with a child who doesn't know your language, who never had so much freedom and so many boundaries, toteach them to trust that every morning you will still be there when they open their eyes. IT's rough, it's beautiful, is ugly and it is amazing, all at the same time.

Later that night we were able to wonder around with another couple adopting and went to KFC and Haagen Dazs. We asked for it to go and they put dry ice in it?! You can imagine how much fun Josh was having with that! We waited till the kids were asleep to break out the ice cream! We needed the treat!
We had to go to bed early since we needed to be ready for our Consulate Appointment to start the process of our kiddos being US citizens!!!