A low-key day

It's Thursday afternoon and I thought it was time for another update.

Yesterday we had just a bit of paperwork to do in the afternoon which meant the rest of the day was free time - yahoo! We did a quick run to a great department store called GrandBuy for shoes for Ren because I thought all the ones I brought from home were a size too big. Once there, though, the ladies (you get swarmed by sales people wanting to help!) convinced me that he needed a bigger size. Sure enough when I compared sizes back at our hotel, I bought the exact same size we already had! Oh well, I know a girl can never have enough shoes. Maybe it's the same for a boy?

In the afternoon, we mostly just hang out in our hotel room. We had a dance party to Cantonese music and played with Kindermusik instruments we brought from home. That really got Ren going. All of us but Ren kept switching instruments but not him; he held on to his first chosen instrument the whole time. We've noticed that he does that with most toys and even food. Another game that we play again and again is the game where you sneak up on the other and then say "Boo" or "Peekaboo". He loves that! He and Claire also love just running back and forth to the door and the bed. When they lean hard against the door, it bangs, which prompted Claire at one point to put her finger to her lips and make the shushing sound. Sure enough, he copied her. He is going to learn a lot from his big sister!

I love kids in their jammies!

So that was yesterday. This morning was not as fun. We woke up around 6 a.m. to find Ren sick and we quickly realized it was in relation to his medical condition. To protect his privacy (I guess that seems ironic because we have a blog about him), we are not sharing his medical condition with many people so I won't go into that here, but suffice it to say that we thought his illness this morning and related things we've observed in the last couple of days were serious enough to warrant a visit to the doctor this morning.

We were able to see an international doctor first thing, and we got him some medicine. Hopefully it works. We're already seeing some improvement. We also learned that Ren's last surgery (done in August of 2007) was not done very well at all either functionally or cosmetically (in this doctor's opinion) and that it will likely have to be redone in Canada. It was very reassuring to see the doctor here, since it'll be two weeks or so until we see our own back in Canada. I am very much looking forward to all those appointments so that we can understand the full extent of Ren's condition and get him the medical attention he needs. It's hard to know if his condition is very mild - as we were told - or more serious because we don't have a lot of information about his history and of course, very little in the way of personal experience with him.

Anyway, today has been pretty low-key due to Ren not feeling very well. We were supposed to go sight-seeing today but unfortunately for our travel mates, the tour was postponed until tomorrow morning. In the afternoon, we will check out of our hotel and go to the airport to wait for our 6 p.m. flight to Beijing. We're really looking forward to seeing Beijing again, not only for the city itself but because of our fond memories there with Claire.