Happy New Year!

We are about 4 hours away from 2009 here in China, but I can guarantee that none of us will be awake to ring in the new year! We just can't seem to get ourselves adjusted to the time difference. Dave leaves tomorrow night, so I suppose it is good that he never got used to being 13 hours ahead. He will hit the ground running with the boys on Saturday when my mom hands them off to him.

Today was our first day for sight-seeing, other than a walk around the city that Dave and I took Monday morning before we met Marley. We visited a beautiful park that is Dr. Sun Yat-Sen's masoleum. He is considered to be the 'Father of Modern China.' The park is very large and has many gardens, ponds, statues and ornate gates. I have a few pictures I'll post, but unfortunately the camera battery died while we were out. We took some pictures on a disposable camera, too, and will get those developed at home. It was a clear but cold day so we had to keep Marley bundled up all morning. She was very quiet and sleepy most of the day today. I think her little body needed to shut down for awhile and process the major changes in her life. She was calm and peaceful, but also a little withdrawn. Later in the afternoon, her spirits were up again and she is having great fun toddling around the hotel room right now. We had lunch at Pizza Hut, and let me tell you, if Pizza Hut at home made pizzas like they have here, it would be a new weekly special for the Huffman family! We had a pizza with so many yummy things on it and it was delicious. Dry salted flaky fish on top and everything! After lunch we visited the Nanjing Museum which has an amazing collection of jade and woven pieces. China's history is so long that almost every piece in the museum was at least 1000 years old. The jade was amazing and our guide gave us a good tour of the museum, but we were ready to come home and crash by the time we were done. Speaking of crash. . .we finally saw evidence that all of the crazy drivers, bikers, and pedestrians can actually collide once in a while. We saw a pretty minor fender-bender on the road near the masoleum. I will take some video of the streets around our hotel tomorrow and post it--it is truly bedlam at all times.

Several people have emailed me and asked how Marley is doing developmentally. Marley will be two at the beginning of February, which is based on an estimated birthday. I think a fairly accurate assessment would be that she is developmentally more like a 12-15 month old at this point. She is pretty much right where we expected her to be after receiving updates on her progress over the past nine months. Research shows that kids in orphanages fall behind one month of development for every three months they are in the orphanage (which made it that much harder to endure the long wait to bring her home). But it also shows that they catch up very quickly in most areas once they are with a family. She just started walking about 1-2 months ago, so she is unsteady on her feet, but she really likes to walk, and we are already seeing progress in her balance and her ability to turn herself around without holding on to something. Her stomach and back muscles aren't very strong compared to her legs, due to the amount of time she spent sitting/standing in a walker at the orphanage. But we've already started doing some tummy time with her and we'll get her caught up on that. She says a few words, which we of course cannot understand! The only one we know is "ayi" which is what they call the nannies in the orphanages. She doesn't seem to mind that she can't understand us and already knows what we're talking about when we say "where's your ball?" "kick it" "get daddy" and a few other things. She is a great eater, but only very soft things like noodles, rice, and she loves steamed eggs with sesame oil. We bought her some baby food because we were having trouble finding fruits she would eat, and although she really liked the pureed stuff, it gave her a bit of tummy trouble, so we're going to ease off on that. Not fun to have a very icky diaper in your hotel bathroom garbage can. Her cleft palate is not causing any problems for us at all at the moment. She is able to eat fine, and because she isn't talking yet, the speech issues that come with cleft palates aren't evident right now. The orphanage had told us a month or so ago that she was not using a bottle anymore, but we brought one just in case. It turns out that she is used to having a bottle at bedtime, but it has to be a special cleft bottle that is not available for sale in China. The orphanages only get them when foreign families donate them. We have been able to give her milk, water, and juice using a bowl and spoon. She is well-hydrated, and she has gone to sleep very easily each night without any kind of bottle, so we're not worried. She'll have surgery to repair her palate within the next couple of months, and then we can work on speech therapy as needed.

Most importantly, she's sweet, cuddly, funny, tiny, easy-going and we are smitten with her. She is as happy with me as she is with Dave, which is reassuring since he is leaving tomorrow night and won't see her until we get home on the 9th. We know that she has had this week to get comfortable with him and that will hopefully extend to home, too.

We are missing the boys so much right now, and although they are having fun at Grammy's house, I soooo wish that Marley and I were heading home to them when Dave leaves tomorrow. It is hard to be so far away from them, and from all of the comforts of home. We are the only family adopting in the entire province this week, so we have not met any other adoptive families in Nanjing. In fact, I could count on one hand the number of non-Chinese people we have seen since we got here Sunday night. We stand out quite a bit. Sometimes it is unnerving to me to have so many people staring at us and talking about us. We even had a guy walk up and take a picture of us today while we were looking at Sun Yat-Sen's tomb. Dave is not bothered by it at all, but it is hard not to feel judged a bit when every person who looks at us has a blank expression on their face. Our guide said that most Chinese people are very happy for the babies who are adopted because they know that life in an orphanage is not the same as life with a family. I just wish they'd throw a smile our way once in a awhile :)

That's all for tonight. I was finally able to get 7 more-or-less uninterrupted hours of sleep last night (thanks to exhaustion and Unisom) so I'm hoping for a repeat tonight. We don't have anything scheduled with our guide tomorrow, but are planning to go see an ancient drum tower that is near our hotel. The Nanjing University campus is also close by and it has a really beautiful tree-lined park, so we will probably check that out, too. Our guide and driver will pick Dave up at 5:30 to take him to the airport, and I'll be sad to see him go, but happy that he'll be home with the boys soon. This has been a short trip for Dave, but everytime I see him look at Marley, I know he wouldn't trade this experience for anything. Our guide took the three disposable cameras that orphanage returned to us and will pick up the prints tomorrow. I wish we had been able to get them developed on Monday so we could have taken them when we met with the orphanage staff again on Tuesday. We could have asked for names, places, dates, etc. so Marley would have a more complete picture of her first two years. But we are thrilled to have the pictures for her and can't wait to see her first home.

Happy New Year to all of you at home!