Our first day out in Guangzhou

Sophie Mei Lewis 12.23.2007

Well, right now I'm (Sherry) in Starbucks. When I left Sophie was playing with Marc, winding down for bedtime. They have had some good one on one time today. After our outing to the museum and park, we came back to the hotel, had lunch and then I had two hours worth of paperwork to do. One parent from each family had to meet with the director and his wife to do paperwork, Marc volunteered me. It was so funny to see all of the women in that meeting. It was mostly the moms who prepared the paperwork through the process, evidence of the passion of a women pursuing her child. After that gruelling process, we got ready for dinner and ate with most of the families at the Japanese restaurant. Tomorrow morning all of the babies will have a physical exam as part of the application for an American visa. After that we will go shopping together as a group. Then, the next day is Christmas!!!! We have a free day to celebrate however we want. Marc is trying to put together some sort of small Christmas service for everyone.

In case any of you wondered, Marc is an incredible Daddy. I'm not sure if we've ever told eachother we loved eachother so many times in such a short period of time. I think there is a very good possibility she could turn out to be a Daddy's girl. He is such a natural at loving, thinking for, and taking care of her. And, of course, he can make her laugh at the drop of a hat. Speaking of laughing, if you'll notice Marc is playing hackey sack with some people in the pictures. He just walked up to these older people (very impressed with the 50+ year old ladies playing)and asked if he could play with them, they were thrilled. We are both really enjoying our time here in China, we're ready to be home to introduce little Sophie Mei to everyone but this time has been so special and refreshing. Sophie is doing really well too. The very first night we had her she was a little shy and would even jerk her head away from us when we tried to talk to her. But as you can see from the pictures and video she is quite affectionate and personable. She is eating better and better. She is probably the smallest baby in our group. She was 11 months old last week but she isn't even thinking about crawling yet. We're working on that right now. In her referral it was noted that she was "obstinate". Some people told us that they will put the same thing in everyone's referral so we didn't think a whole lot about this description. We've since learned that she is, indeed, obstinate at times. She knows how to scream when she doesn't like something or if you're not moving quickly enough. She's learning to give kisses though, and that makes up for any screaming that's done. Kisses for Mommy and Daddy make everything better.

Well, for those of you who know me, its way past my bedtime, 10:08 pm, and my eyes are beginning to cross. I am hoping that staying up this late will help me sleep past 4:30 am tomorrow. We will be sure to send you Christmas pictures. Everyone have a wonderful Christmas eve tomoorrow.

Love you,
Sherry