Thursday, March 5, 2009

Greetings from Gloomy Nanchang




Hi Everyone, We've spent most of the last 2 days just spending time with Natalie. We're skipped the Temple and Museum tours (and from what we've heard, we didn't miss much). Instead, we just did some bonding with Natalie.

Also, to give everyone a little context, Nanchang is not exactly the beautiful part of China. Since we arrived, it's been just above freezing, cold, damp and rainy - every day - always. Chinese buildings are also not well heated and of course everyone smokes. In other words, going out into the cold and smoke is not really appealing unless we absolutely have to - it also helps that the hotel has a pretty nice baby play area where we can hang out with the other families. We've posted a picture of a good weather day so far to give everyone some idea of what things are like here.

Now on to the part of the blog that everyone is interested in - Natalie!

We finally got everything notarized here and now we're really just waiting for Natalie's Chinese Passport, which should arrive shortly.

Natalie is doing very well and shows us a new aspect of herself almost every hour. Before, she didn't speak, but now she babbles. Before, she was afraid of Matt, now she looks for her Daddy. Before, she wouldn't take a bottle, now she takes several each day. She's also working on standing and tummy time.

The things that have been consistent are that she loves to sit up, she loves to eat (pretty much everything) and she loves to watch TV - she's almost made for America. We've also learned that she does not like to go to sleep - she really fights going to sleep - in fact, she can be quite a handful.