Changed any diapers recently?

We haven't, (and I don't think Daren EVER has) so tomorrow we are going to an all day baby care class at a local hospital. That's right folks, between the hours of 8 and 4 tomorrow we will be mastering the art of the diaper, among other things. This class is geared towards all adoptive parents, so it will cover infant care for those adopting domestically and toddler care for people like us. There will also be a baby bathing demonstrating with a real baby, oh yes, no dolls used here. Hopefully, all that we learn tomorrow will not dissipate prior to our China trip, but I don't think any babies have ever died from having a diaper on backwards, right? I don't know if they're going to give us the rectal thermometer demonstration, but even if they do, I think we're gonna get one of those new ones that you just put in the baby's ear. I just don't see us ever doing that! So wish us luck tomorrow, if anything I hope it gets Daren over the nausea he's experiencing just THINKING about changing a poopy diaper!

Ni Hao!

That means "Hello!" We really enjoyed our first Chinese class last night. We learned about 15 simple phrases all together and it was pretty funny to listen to five Americans and one Englishman truly butcher the Chinese language. Fei (our instructor) spent a little extra time making sure we knew the difference between pronouncing the word "Baba". Pronounced one way it means "Daddy", but put the emphasis on the second "ba" instead and you've just said "poop". She said that she didn't point that out to her very first class and everyone was walking around in China saying to their kids "I'm your poop" instead of "I'm you're daddy". Pretty hysterical! I was really proud of Daren last night. He was the first student that had to attempt to introduce me to everyone in the class (in Chinese of course), poor guy, but hey he gave it a good effort. He seems to be really getting into this and after class last night we were practicing back and forth and he's been emailing me today with a few Chinese words.

Fei also gave us little cards with Chinese writing on them for us to bring to China which basically say "This is our daughter (Chinese name) and we have just adopted her. We are bringing her back to the United States with us and where we will provide her with a loving home". From what Fei says and from what I've read, while we are in China with Lily we are going to draw a lot of attention from the locals. People will be very interested in us and the baby and we can use the card to just kind of let people know what's going on. Although China has the one-child policy which results in so many babies being abandoned, the people there truly love children and will consider Lily to be very lucky to be adopted by us. So it's not a bad kind of attention, it's more of a curiosity. With that being said, can we go tomorrow? I wish!

Just Enough Chinese

Since we'll be traveling to China for two weeks when we go to pick up Lily, we thought we'd better learn at least a little bit of Chinese. You know, just conversational stuff like "hello", "thank-you" and more importantly "where's the bathroom?". So we came across a Chinese woman that teaches a course geared towards parents adopting from China called appropriately, "Just Enough Chinese". The instructor, Fei Yang, used to work in China for the Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs (this is the government office that controls all things related to Chinese adoption), and now works for a local adoption agency as a China program coordinator. We've met her once and she's young, nice and actually quite funny, so we signed up for ten classes (tonight is our first class). It's all conversational and in addition to basic travel vocabulary, she also will teach us how to tell Lily that we love her and other comforting phrases. We will be going on a couple of field trips with the class, one to a Chinese restaurant (where we'll have to order in Chinese) and the last class is at Fei's home where she will prepare a traditional Chinese dinner. We're looking forward to it!

We're up and running!

With all of our family and many of our friends so far away, we made the decision to create our own blog to keep everyone up to speed on our adoption process. I feel so computer savvy! Yes, that's right, I've created this blog without the assistance of Daren. Now if I could only figure out how to post pictures etc., oh well that will have to wait for Daren to figure out. See we're starting early with the sharing of responsibilites in respect to Lily. So let me cut to the chase...the question that most of you are wondering and that Daren and I get asked on at least an every other day basis, "So, any news about the adoption?" Simple answer, "We're waiting". That just about sums it up. Nothing further to report probably until the end of January or early February. That's when the BIG NEWS arrives....our referral from China. Until then it's hold tight and get ready mode. We actually just took a huge step in the getting ready process over this past weekend, we cleared out the guest bedroom and set up the crib! I would post a picture of the crib right now, but then again....that's what Daren's for!
So that's about it for my first post. There's tons of stuff to talk about so stay tuned and I'm glad that we have this blog set up now. One more thing off my checklist!