Amazing Day

Guangzhou is beautiful. There are lush green trees everywhere and plenty of parks to walk to where there are lovely statues and carvings to look at, and plenty of local people doing their Tai Chi or morning dancing routines. Seriously, there are ladies doing the waltz in the park almost every morning and some people do sword routines or an interesting racket-ball dance where they gracefully swing the racket to music and the ball rolls around and sometimes goes up into the air. It is quite nice to stroll around down there and watch everyone. Yesterday we saw some little girls practicing gymnastics, cartwheeling again and again, and there was a group singing some traditional Chinese songs. It was great! I kind of wish we could go and see more of the city, but all the car rides have been pretty traumatic for Alice (and us) so we've decided to just relax and not go too far from the island.

Today was an amazing day with Alice. She only had a few fussy moments (to be expected with any 20-month-old) and she let me hold her several times. Another friend from my email group had arrived and we met up with Nina, her husband and their sweet little Jaedyn - what a cutie! We walked them around half the island to show them some good shops and met up with them later for dinner. Alice ate a lot more food today. She liked the beef jerky I had brought from home - I broke off teeny tiny pieces and she gummed them before swallowing. We don't think she really knows how to use her teeth. She saw that I had a whole box of Cheerios when I filled the snack container and I think that's why she ate so many today - she knows there's plenty more where that came from! At dinner she really blew us away by eating noodles, been sprouts, some green spinach-looking thing, a bit of her rice congee, and (Grandma will be happy to know) several pieces of mushroom!

Earlier in the day, we asked Dong (the tea shop owner) what happened to the rain. He said the typhoon had missed us (Typhoon?!) and it would only rain a little bit today and tomorrow. We had thought it was only a monsoon passing through so we were very surprised to hear it was a typhoon all the hotel staff were worried about. No wonder they wanted us to stay inside! We decided to not try and make Alice go down for a nap after lunch (that hasn't been too successful) and felt a bit adventurous so we headed over to the market again. This time we went without our guide to buy some more Mum Flower Tea to take home. We are becoming quite the tea connoisseurs... After we found what we were looking for, we noticed that many of the shop owners were covering their outside wares and figured they must be expecting a little rain. As it started to trickle we ducked into another tea shop and met a cool guy named "Star" who said we could sit out of the rain and drink some. We were very glad because it was quite the downpour, and many of Star's friends came to join us - Alice even had a little tea! He gave us jasmine flower tea because watching the flower open up was very impressive, and then he gave us what he called "Kung Fu" tea which was also good but needed to be refrigerated so we didn't buy that one. He didn't speak much English, but he had a translator on his phone and we got along just fine. We've picked up a little Mandarin - enough to be polite and make them laugh in good humor when we try unsuccessfully to pronounce things. :) Everyone in the shop was very friendly and after several cups we decided we'd better just make a run for it and got completely soaked on the way back to our hotel room - I held our only umbrella over Alice, and a nice guy helped us carry the stroller up the stairs.

I have to tell you about this evening though because it was very special. I kissed Alice's feet while I was changing her diaper and she liked that, so I put her feet on my cheeks and kissed her nose and she giggled. So sweet! She then helped me put her pj's on by pulling her arms out of her onesie and placing them into the the arms of the sleeper. So far each evening we've been muddling through the bedtime routine - the last couple of nights Phil has taken her for a short stroller ride until she's asleep and then lifting her into the crib. Tonight she decided to teach me what works for her! After I picked her up off the bed and took her into the bathroom to brush her teeth, she pointed to the bottle and so we made her one. (This was a big step, because so far we've only got her to drink one in the middle of the night after a few hours of sleep.) Then she leaned back and took a few sips and then looked at me and pointed at the crib. OK... So I laid her down, and handed her the bottle and she had some more. Then she handed it back to us when she felt like she was done, rolled over and went to sleep. Really?! Can it really be that simple? Seriously. Amazing.