The Birthday

Wanted to share the photo on the left of our Chongqing travel group of momma's and their babies!! :)

The Birthday
(video below)

It was a fun gathering of the families coming and going with their little ones. All of us got to kick back a bit and share in the birthday cake Aly and I purchased at a little bakery Marie had pointed out to us when first arriving in Chongqing. We simply took over the "sitting room" on the 30th floor of the Golden Resources Hotel and turned the kids loose!
A few folks walked past us and smiled and you could see the puzzled look on their faces as they tried to figure out exactly what was going on :)

Tonight is our last night in Chongqing. Tomorrow morning we catch our flight to Guangzhou and take care of the final piece of paperwork before heading back to the States! We're hoping like everyone else that the little ones do well flying. If Alyzabeth does have her meltdown, well, she just has her meltdown. I'm sure it'll drive everyone around us crazy but you know, we control what we can and try to do our best. We'll see...

Alyzabeth does great during the day. She is playing more. She has napped the past two mornings after falling asleep in her stroller ride with mom. Loves to have me lift her high in the air, which every daddy must do, it allows the angels a closer look and she likes pony rides on my leg.
I can't just reach down, pick her up and walk around but she does come running towards me with open arms to play. We just have to make sure she can see mom or actually, she wants mom to see her :) She will stay in the same room with me without crying when Aly uses the bathroom. Hey, as said before, we celebrate everything around here :)

Going to bed at night and first waking in the morning continues to be hard for baby girl. However, once down last night, she slept for 9 hours!! Woke up crying but then settled down once we left the room to go have breakfast. At breakfast she insisted on getting out of mama's lap (she will not sit in a high chair) and running around before circling back for another bite of steamed egg - yum yum...
It was good for her. She smiled, laughed and generally had a good time and she did eat well, just always on the go :) It was early enough that only a very few people were there so it was easy to gently herd her back towards mom every now and then when she strayed too far.
Alyzabeth is making great strides and so are we :) We're all learning what it takes to be her family. We make our mistakes and we have our moments of doing it right. We don't mind sharing both. It may be painful for some to watch or read but we didn't go into this expecting it to be a rose garden. Even our beautiful rose comes with her own set of protective thorns :)
We're convinced that given time, Alyzabeth will have us trained up just right...

At some point I plan to do a bullet list of our China observations. It is a unique culture to say the least. Fascinating and puzzling all at the same time. Then again, I would imagine they would find a trip to America to offer much in the same. The contrasts are both beautiful and sobering.
Our journeys abroad have always helped us to view our everyday world in a more open light. We find it's best for us not to view one culture as better or worse than the other but to view them as they are. To be more tolerant of their individual nuances. We can and do love our country without wanting or expecting each country to be as our own.

That's it for now.
We love reading your comments and wish we had more time to read our favorite blogs. Hopefully, we'll post again soon. If you happen to have any questions we hope you will feel comfortable in asking them.

For all you in The Wait - get ready for the ride of your life!
peace
ac & fm & aa
Monday @ 11:10 AM