JJ smiles - and other notes

Hi all So I completely missed posting yesterday. All we did was go to the girls orphanage, shop for more clothes and a suitcase for JJ and spend time helping the girls adapt and rest up ourselves. Somehow that killed the whole day. But JJ has lots of cute new clothes with ELASTIC waists on the pants. This is key as we are trying to help her keep up the potty training. Some are way big, but I roll everything up. I'm sure they will fit soon enough. The orphanage is brand new and is very well built and cheerful. It was still sad, because the healthy children here are in foster care, the orphanage mostly houses SN kids with no chance of adoption. But I am going to say the facility was nicer than most in the states and the nannies very dilligent with the kids. Those who have done this will tell you that the whole experience is very stressful for the children (well parents too, but we signed up for this) and they are pretty shut down at first. JJ did real well when we got her, but I think on day two she realized this is a long term arrangement and she is not going back to the orphanage or foster family. So she is now a bit clingy. She will be just fine, then suddenly cry and need to be picked up. None the less we are now getting flashes of her personality. JJ is a very active little toddler, and I suspect she is smart. She tries to take everything we give her apart to see how it works. She will bring you everything in the room she can grab and laugh and giggle the whole time. And she likes pulling out daddies chest hair too. She is also facinated with animals. She LOVES the fish pond on the 8th floor of the hotel, and laughs and points to the fish. She also loves loves loves to eat - it is somewhat alarming how much she puts away. She has been trained very well, but in the chinese way. So she totally cooperates and helps us put on layers and layers of clothing. However, she does not feed herself - she can, but that is not the Chinese way. She fully expects we will feed her and will yell if we are too slow. Something to work on at home. We have been using the Ergo carrier, and it has been great. We will probably get a stroller down south, but here it is just too cold to have the baby that far away from your body. Joe is doing all long distance carry duty, bless him. It has helped with bonding and he got the first genuine "baba" out of JJ today. Baby proofing will be key once we are home. We already have to move all the trash cans in our room up high because she will go through them! Today was really fun - we went to the big Mongolian museum here - we scheduled for 2 hours and spent almost four. The history and traditions of this region and its relationship with Russia and with China over the centuries is facinating. We were all enthralled, and I think will have to do some serious study when we come home. The girls came of course in their carriers. This threw their schedules so they are napping late, which will probably further destroy their schedules. Oh well. A couple photos are attached, including one of JJ smiling to prove she does. It was hard to get this photo because she moves so fast.