Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday (Monday pics)

Sorry I am so far behind on posting!  We have had a busy schedule and some big challenges to deal with as well.  We have to be down in the lobby at 6:30am Thursday morning to catch a flight to Xian for an overnight trip, so I will try to catch you up quickly.

 

Monday we visited Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City.  Maya Mei decided this was a day to show her displeasure with us and everything about her situation.  I think that her screaming tantrum near the north gate of the Forbidden City may have been the most photographed site in the Forbidden City on that very busy holiday!  We drew a huge crowd.  We don’t have photos of that particular event, but here are the photos we did get prior to it:

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cohnfamily/sets/72157623443347144

 

Monday was also our friend David’s 40^th birthday.  We walked across the street from our apartment complex that night to have a Peking Duck Dinner, which Maya Mei was VERY excited about (‘Beijing kao yan’, I think she called it).  I think I have mentioned several times that she likes to eat. :o) We had a private dining room and a TON of food and a birthday cake.  The dinner was delicious. The children received their hom bao (hope I am spelling it right – traditional red envelope containing lucky money for the New Year) a day late, but they were very pleased with their windfall of Chinese Yuan and chocolate coins.  It was a very nice evening:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cohnfamily/sets/72157623319772871

 

Tuesday morning at breakfast, Maya Mei was in quite the mood again and escalated her behavior to include spitting in Adam’s face, pinching and threatening to bite.  I decided to make the call that Maya, Adam and I would have a day in the apartment while the rest of our group went about their schedule.  We sent Eliana with Aunt Lisa, Grandma Bonnie, Ben & Drew.  It was a good call.  We spent a quiet morning in the apartment, part of which we each retreated to separate areas to have some alone time.  After Maya stopped screaming and crying, she quietly looked through her photographs of herself in Wuhan and even laid down in bed and closed her eyes for a few moments.  Then she suddenly got back up and wanted to watch her favorite cartoon.

 

I made lunch in the apartment and then we called our guide to see where the group was and if there would be a good time to rejoin them.  We decided that we would regroup for dinner and a show at the Laoshe (sp?) tea house.  Our fabulous guide, Doyle, got on the phone with Maya Mei to explain what would happen that evening.  It became apparent at that time that even though we had tried to explain to her where Ge Ge, Mei Mei, Wai Po and Lisa were, that she had not realized that the rest of our group had gone on about their day without her that morning, and she was none too pleased.  Another episode followed, but I think that it was becoming clear to her that her actions have some consequences.  She does not like being left out! 

 

When she was able to pull herself together again, Adam and I took her to the nice little playground on the grounds of our apartment complex.  She is not comfortable doing things on the toddler sized playground that a 2 or 3 year old would do without a second thought.  It is not that she is physically incapable of doing it, I just don’t think that she has ever done these things before!  Like swinging, or climbing a very small ladder or rock wall.  Even going down a slide.  We encouraged her to try some new things and babied her a bit.  When we think about the progress she has made in the past 2 weeks, it is really remarkable.  She seemed barely able to go up or down stairs at that  time, and since then we she has done a ton of walking and stair climbing, we have seen her run and hop on both two feet and one foot and she even managed the Great Wall of China!

 

We met a very nice Chinese woman who was at the playground with her toddler son and who spoke English and lived there in the apartment complex.  We told her that we had just adopted Maya and we were surprised to learn that she had just adopted her son 3 months earlier!  Even though it was a domestic adoption in China, they waited nearly 2 years to adopt their healthy little boy.  She gave us her phone number in case we wanted to call her to help translate anything for Maya Mei.

 

After we rejoined the group Maya did very well.  Dinner was tasty, but in a very smoky (with No Smoking signs posted everywhere) locals-only type restaurant.  The lamb was particularly good. The Laoshe tea house, very close to the Forbidden City, was very interesting.  It was like a variety show – almost Vaudeville in style.  Unfortunately, there were little to no English translations, so we had no clue what was going on most of the time.  And it was HOT in there – boiling hot.  I peeled layers off of Eliana, including her shoes.  The upside was that Maya Mei LOVED it!  It was worth it all to see her laugh out loud and clap at the show.  And we all got a taste of how it has been for her – listening to conversations that you don’t understand and to other people laughing at jokes that you are not in on – not a very comfortable feeling.  There was a  funny host, several tea demonstrations, a magician, a two man comedy act, an act where two men whistled and made other noises with their mouths that mimicked lots of different things (riding on a train, birds in the park, an airplane taking off, etc), a scene from a Beijing opera, an acrobatics act and a player from the Sichuan opera with the changing mask faces.  We all enjoyed the acrobatics and the Sichuan opera mask man, which did not require any translations. :o)

 

Ben took pictures Tuesday morning of their outing to the Temple of the Earth and Beihai park and we took some at the tea house Monday night and I will try to get those uploaded and posted from Xian, along with Wednesday’s post and pictures.  Another interesting note was that Tuesday night was the first time that Maya Mei cried when she went to bed.  No anger or screaming, just sadness.  I laid in bed with her and tried to comfort her.

 

Today (Wednesday) was a really good day for us.  There were several times when we could tell Maya was gearing up for a tantrum, but then made a conscious decision not to do it.  Of course, we try to give her an easy way out of it with some distraction, or humor.  You can see the wheels turning as she tries to decide which way she is going to go with her behavior.  We had a few tense moments, but no real screaming or crying – just a bit of sassy back talk (which seems to be in a universal language – no translation required), and a bit of locking herself in the bedroom, but not a complete meltdown.  She cried again at bedtime, no anger – just sadness.  I will post more about  Wednesday’s itinerary and pictures when I can.

 

Next post hopefully will be from Xian!

 

Hugs,

Laura Beth