We finally made it home from our China adventure to get Josie. Now that all of us (and most importantly Josie) are getting over the half-day jet lag, I’m conscious enough to update the site. Below are the girls together just a few minutes after they first met - everyone was a little (or a lot) bleary, as it was about 9:30 PM by the time we got home. Mad and Soph were already dressed for bed and waiting at Grandma’s when we arrived from the airport. Not only is Josie completely exhausted, but she’s still in shock that she’s not an only child, which we’re sure she thought during the 2 1/2 weeks we were in China.

But, let’s backtrack a little bit. Josie (formerly Gan Xing Feng, meaning “lucky phoenix”), is from a small orphanage in Jiangxi province. By Maddie and Sophie’s standards, the facility is small - 20 babies with 2 caregivers. However, this size seems to be more typical now, compared to the numbers from several years ago.

These photos were taken by the staff at Josie’s SWI, with a camera we had sent as part of a care package. We’re always grateful to have insight into the girls’ origins - Maddie’s was the only SWI we were allowed to visit in person, so for Sophie and Josie these kinds of photos are all we have to share with them later.

We traveled to Nanchang, a city of about 4 million people in northern Jiangxi province, to get Josie and complete the Chinese part of the adoption process. It is not a large city on the Chinese scale - even though it’s the size of Houston - and it is also a city that doesn’t have much reason for Western business or tourism. As a result, Andy and the rest of the non-Asians in our travel group experienced many long stares when outside the hotel. We made sure to take at least a few long walks in the city during the week we were there to get true feel for the area.

Day 1: We get Josie in the front lobby of the hotel, which is an unusual experience for us (Mad and Soph met us at a government civil affairs office). Josie was understandably subdued, though not upset. At 15 months, she looked much different from her referral picture with lots more hair! Andy noted that her demeanor was “like she was just too polite to let us know we were scaring her or doing something wrong.” That would change later, but it was a calm first afternoon and evening.

Sleep was a refuge for her - we were stunned that the very first night she slept over 10 hours straight, without waking up or crying.

Day by day she opened up, just like the proverbial flower. She certainly wins for being the happiest of our kids during the in-country “getting to know you” process.

For one, we discovered that she LOVES baths - check out the splash she’s slapping out here, maybe 2 days into our new family. During Sophie’s adoption, we never got out of a bathing ordeal without dramatic screams and writhing, so we were grateful for this small blessing!

The rest of our week in Nanchang was spend doing a little sightseeing…

…a little introduction to solid foods…

…and then before you knew it, it was off to Guangzhou in Guangdong Province for week 2, where we’d complete the American side of the adoption. This was much more familiar territory to us since both Mad and Soph are from Guangdong, and the hotel accomodations in Guangzhou have been the same throughout all three adoptions. The luxurious White Swan Hotel, known for catering specifically to American adopting families, has many interesting features including hallways filled with very expensive Chinese craft/sculpture/antiques, cigar boutiques, a 3-story indoor waterfall with koi pond, 2 outdoor swimming pools, a playroom just for the adopting families, etc. So on to the usual “American adoption rituals”…

The daily White Swan breakfast buffet with a view of the Pearl River. The first time Andy and I went down to this buffet in 2004 he declared that it must be “the happiest place on earth”, because over half the dining area had high chairs pulled up to the tables. The view of the river is not that scenic - downriver you can see a small shipyard (which is great for Andy but not for the layperson), and occasionally you can see people swimming in the river for exercise. I imagine that they may come away from that swim with some extra limbs or skin growths as the river isn’t particularly clean. However, neither is the air, so if one doesn’t kill you…This trip we met a number of families in the dining room on a “heritage trip” — meaning adopted children who were adopted as infants and now anywhere from 10 to 18, coming back to China to visit. We’re excited for when our kids are old enough to go back ourselves one day. And one more thing about the buffet - you end up being so spoiled that it is a really rude awakening that first morning when you wake up at home, you’re really jet-lagged, and you realize you have to cook your own breakfast. Ugh. That was 5 days ago for me!

Walking around Shamian Island. Since this was our third tour, we didn’t have to run around buying souvenirs, and we mostly spent our time seeing how the island has changed. As our guide put it, Shamian is not “real China” - it is architecturally very European, as a result of its history as a restricted area from which the European merchants were forced to run their businesses. The entire area is going through a facelift since Guangzhou is hosting the 2010 Asian Games this November (like the Pan-American games except for Asian and Middle-Eastern countries). We visited the new-ish Starbucks and were struck by how consistent their global branding is - outside of the special mooncakes they were selling, it could have been any Starbucks anywhere in the US. Same music, same posters, everything. Still, westernized as it is, Shamian can’t escape the “odd Chinese-to-English translation” humor you run into sometimes. For instance, a liquor store run by the hotel is pictured below. The name of the store is funny enough, but then if you look closely, there are small piles of American-Girl-type dolls on the left and right sides of the picture. WHAT?? Guess we should have walked in to find out but…oh well.

The Red Couch picture. This “tradition” has somehow always been part of the process - in which you torture your new children by lining them up on a red couch on the second floor of the hotel, by themselves, often sweaty and sticky dressed up in cheap traditional Chinese clothing, and then snap a bunch of pictures as they proceed to melt down. Isn’t it great?

Josie is at center in the green dress above. She was actually cool as a cucumber - just sat there quietly looking around (well, especially to her right) at the chaos. Mad and Soph both hated doing this picture, so we were stunned that Josie was so calm. In fact, we had shot our own “red couch” picture earlier in the week when we first arrived at the White Swan. It was after Josie’s very first plane ride, from Nanchang to Guangzhou, which ran late and we didn’t arrive at the hotel until 11 PM. She was completely unconscious, so we shot a “red chaise” picture in the downstairs lobby thinking that this would be the calmest picture she would have on any red-hued furniture that week. Shows you what we know!

Other than that, we just kept on bonding with Josie…like by not letting her sleep at night because we were too busy taking photos of her playing with her toes…

…teaching her how to feed herself…she got the apple slice to her mouth but the letting go with both hands part I think defeats the purpose…

…and more breakfast buffets!

Finally it was time to go…by train to Hong Kong…

…and then on that super-long flight back home. (By the way if you count the limo from the hotel to the airport, we did hit all three “Planes, Trains and Autombiles”!) We were lucky to score a last-minute seat change that had a bassinet for Josie to sleep in. I’ve never seen one that was built directly into the bulkhead; before with Maddie they gave us a soft-sided box that sat on the floor. This one looked a little like a padded coffin once it was opened up, but Josie managed to get some rest anyway!

In her waking hours she sampled the music stations (not interested) and the on-board cartoons (also not interested). Which left us just feeding her lots of snacks and formula to pass the time. 16 hours of that can get old quick!

Now that we’re back Josie’s finally getting situated. It was rough for the first few days since her body didn’t know whether it should be napping or night-sleeping, and her brain didn’t understand why we weren’t sleeping in the same room anymore. But she’s starting to get more rest now, and enjoy our everyday life, like playing with her new big sisters…

…getting a haircut (she had a little baby mullet going that we had to fix)…

…and tooling around in our new minivan.

We’ve even been swimming a couple of times already and she’s really comfortable (an extension of liking the bath, I suppose).

We’re just thrilled to have the family together, finally — welcome home Josie!