It’s almost a blur of all that has happened over the last the few days, but we’ll keep to the subject at hand and that is our precious daughter Anli. Now we may a bit biased, so bear with us through the growing love that we have for this precious little soul that we’re bringing back home to the US of A.
She has completely stolen our hearts and we love and cherish every moment that we get to see her grow. However, on the other hand, we have thoughts and we see the sights of all that she will never know of her native land through her upcoming years.
Obviously we’ll be back to China to grow our family in the near future and hopefully she will be able to join us for the adventure. But as of now, we see the heartache and pain that she is enduring of leaving one comfort of her known existence and the entry of her new beginning of becoming one of our own. We will never let her forget her heritage and birthplace as we both agreed that this is what will give her some solace in her life to come.
AnLi has come a long way in her short existence with us.. yes, she is almost one year old, but in her life with us she is only five days old. Imagine starting life all over again. She has completely attached herself to Kayla and we are making great strides with Brian. The most important thing at this juncture is getting her to attach to one of us. Thank goodness she has done this. She obviously will learn to love her daddy, or as Anli says “da da”.
Weekend events, at least what we can recall:
On Saturday we toured the Hubei Provincial Museum. Among 2,000-year-old relics, it houses one of the eighth wonders of the world…the biggest chimes ever. It is a sight. We were treated to a concert of the chimes, and AnLi clapped through the whole thing (something Daddy taught her). As we mentioned previously, we are across the street from the park that is alive and hopping all day long with dancing, Tai Chi, kite flying, among other things. AnLi loves to go there, and has the hugest smile the whole time, along with lots of clapping! Brian bought her a bubble making machine and she absolutely love’s it. Imagine that, Brian buying toys… what’s the saying, toy chest is about full…. Well, it’s time to make room for someone else’s toys besides his.
We’ve had some concerns about AnLi being so clingy to mommy. We talked to Wendy about it, and she reassured us that this is normal. As she put it, although AnLi doesn’t physically remember being abandoned, her heart does and always will. We have no idea about her foster care, how many families she’s been to, etc., and she’s just scared someone else will leave. It breaks our hearts to think of the pain she’s gone through and is still going through. AnLi doesn’t know that we would never abandon her; it’s been done before, so we understand and can only imagine her pain.
AnLi still has the runny nose and pulling of the ears, but we’ve attributed it to the teething. As you’ll see in most of the pictures, she’s drooling quite a bit. She is one of the most active babies, always trying to walk. She despises this hotel room as much as we do at this point. Every time we come in here, she takes us by the hand and walks us to the door. Needless to say, we’ve done a lot of laps up and down the hallways.
More to tomorrow. Sorry if we haven’t gotten back to you on the e-mails. The Internet connection is extremely slow here. Keep ‘em coming. We love hearing from home.
