Who is Ren?!

We are still figuring out the answer to this question and I am sure we will be for some time!

For the first couple of days, he was quite withdrawn as I mentioned but we could coax him into smiles and laughter. He didn't make a peep. He didn't cry. He didn't show much emotion at all. After a couple of days, he became a bit more vocal with us. He often will say something like "Dai?" (sounds like dye) and point to things, but Becky didn't think that meant anything in Cantonese. If anyone knows (Kath? Marlene?), I'd love to hear a possible interpretation of it. We thought perhaps it means "What is that?" As of Friday, he is also saying something that sounds like "a-may" very often. No clue what that means and we don't have any Cantonese speakers here to ask. He is now talking quite a bit to himself, as well as repeating words that we say to him. It's great to hear his little voice.

On Friday, we began to see more outward signs of sadness from Ren. I'm sure he was grieving before but he seemed to be holding so much in. Now, his sadness seems to come when he thinks he's been left alone, like when I was in a noisy washroom getting a towel to dry my hands and I couldn't get him to turn around to see that I was only two feet behind him. Although I was only out of sight in that public place for about 10 seconds (and I could see him the entire time), I returned to find him silently sobbing, his face in anguish. That's how he crys. It seems typical of a child from an orphanage that if they cry, they cry only to relieve their sorrow, not also to get someone's attention or help. The moment I pick him up, his face immediately transforms into a huge smile.

He is still doing that hitting thing with the wild smile but now we're certain it's NOT done in exuberance but rather, done deliberately. It always happens when he's apparently very happy when we're having a lot of fun together. I'll have to check my attachment books on this back home but it kind of seems like he's testing us or the boundaries we have for him. Thankfully, he's only hit Paul and me - not Claire. That's another reason why I think it's some sort of test for us.

It's obviously hard to tell what Ren's personality is truly like with all the changes he is going through right now, but our guess is that he's a pretty laid back guy. He seems to pretty much go with the flow. He seems to have an amazing attention span, as he can play with the same thing for a long time. He loves playing with blocks (a huge favourite of his, we think), books and cars. He likes to put things in and out of bags. He's pretty good at kicking a ball around. We think he could play independently for hours, which is another typical attribute of institionalized kids. We let him play independently for a short while sometimes if it seems like he needs some time alone, but we intrude into his little world often and then immerse ourselves in play when we think he is ready.

We think Ren may be a little bit sneaky. One of my favourite memories of adoption day is just after he woke up that day. I could see that he was awake, so I quietly went to his side. As soon as I drew near, he closed his eyes and pretended he was sleeping. When I withdrew, he opened his eyes and began to look around again. Again, I drew near and he closed his eyes. I could tell he needed time to process his surroundings but it was so cute that he was pretending to be asleep that I tried it a few times. The other day at dinner, his sneaky side came to light again when we saw his hand slowly creeping towards Paul's cutlery. As soon as we spoke to him, he withdrew his hand and as soon as it seemed like we weren't paying attention, there went his hand again towards Paul's cutlery. Claire even thought it was pretty funny.

Another cute moment came the other day when it was time to put shoes on again after I had changed his diaper. I had put new shoes on him that day and they were right there beside us. I couldn't believe it when he picked them up, took them over to the area where we had all our shoes, put them down and chose the pair of shoes he'd been wearing the days previous! His preference was obvious!

Right now, we think he is equally attached to Paul and I - no preference towards either. I'm pretty sure he knows we are somehow special now - not simply strangers - and he does seem to be trusting us to some extent but I think it'll be some time before he fully trusts us. Attachment will take time and effort, but we'll get there. In the meantime, he's a fun, sweet, cuddly, laid-back, entertaining, and engaging geezer. We really look forward to all of you back home meeting him.

Oh, I should also mention that Ren's health seems to be okay and we saw a good sign of improvement today. It'll be an ongoing issue but his medicine seems to be helping and we're getting a better idea of what is 'normal' for him. For our friends who have offered to move up medical appointments for us, we are actually seeing Dr. B. on the 10th (only a few days after we return home) so we're good on that front. Thank you so incredibly much for your offers to help!

The Beijing Zoo

Yesterday we had a good time at the Beijing Zoo. They now have quite a few pandas (quite a few were brought in before the Olympics) and they were fairly active which was fun to see.
Claire had a great time running around. She was pretty entertaining for us and the rest of the group, I think. Ren was confined to the stroller for the entire event - unfortunately for him, but fortunately for our arms. He walks fine but with a fairly clumsy gait and he's not great with stairs; I am sure we'd never keep up to the group if we let him walk.

Our family with our guide, Vivian:

We toured more of the zoo than we saw last time. Last time, we pretty much only saw the pandas and the big cats. This time we also saw birds, the elephants, lemurs and monkeys. I'm probably forgetting some animals. Even more than the animals, I enjoyed seeing the Chinese families at the zoo. I saw lots of grandparents with little kids holding huge wands of cotton candy. You could tell it was a special day. We saw lots of little girls with fake curly hair: pigtails, ponytails, etc. Now Paul wants to get some crazy curly hair for Claire or else cut a lock of MY hair to use in hers. I think he's losing his mind. The kids are napping right now (it's Sunday at 2:45) so I'll finish this post now and will do another if I have time.

Flight and arrival in Beijing

It was yet another day of firsts for our Renners on Friday with his first flight and first visit to Beijing (many more to come, I am sure!).

I'm happy to report that he seems to be a good flyer. He and Claire were really great on the flight and had a fun time amusing each other, Paul and me and basically everyone around us on the plane. (And holy moley, were we stared at on the plane! Not for a second or two but some people literally stared for a half hour at a time!)

Settling in with the travel Aqua Doodles:

To sweeten the first-time flight for Ren (and to keep the kids happy), I gave them both lollipops. Terrible stuff, I know, but I'm letting a few things slide on this trip! The really sweet thing, though, was that Ren kept offering licks of his lollipop to Claire:

Livin' it up in Beijing on a Friday night:

We are supposed to tour the Great Wall tomorrow (Sunday) but we've decided to do our own thing instead. It would be a very long day due to the long drive and a few stops for shopping along the way. Since we wouldn't be physically able to make it far on the wall anyway with these two hooligans, we'd find ourselves waiting around a lot trying to entertain them. We'll be taking it easy tomorrow, so I'll try to post again then, this time about how our little geezer is doing.

Last day in Guangdong, continued

On Friday morning, we toured the Chen Clan Academy which is known for its brick, stone and wood carvings on the actual building and the various kinds of carvings within (ivory, bone, etc.) It's a gorgeous compound with beautiful courtyards. Besides the Academy itself, one of the highlights was walking up to it through a park where people were involved in all sorts of activity: calligraphy (using water on the pavement), some game resembling hacky-sack, aerobics and something kind of like ping pong (?). Anyway, it was really fun to watch. I seriously could have spent hours sitting in that park people watching if I didn't have two toddlers to run after!

The exterior of the Academy:

Brick carvings on the outside:

One of its many beautiful courtyards:

After that, we walked around Shamian Island, a small island in Guangzhou (accessible by bridge) that is mostly pedestrian-only. It's home to the famed "White Swan Hotel", the place where all the Americans stay when they are adopting from China, because the U. S. embassy or consulate is on the same island. Carolyn and I of course had to visit the White Swan, which is practically the stuff of legend in many of the adoption blogs we follow. Sadly, it was underwhelming, but perhaps that's because we approached from the back and never even saw a sign for it until we spied the name and logo on a parking cone!

My gang in front of the waterfall at the White Swan:

Last day in Guangdong

It's Saturday night in Beijing and time to catch up on blogging!

We've had a very busy few days. On Friday, we spent the morning sightseeing in Guangzhou with our little Guangdong group, followed by a yummy lunch. We packed up our things early that afternoon and soon we were headed off to the airport to catch our 6 pm flight to Beijing. We arrived at our hotel in Beijing around 11 pm, got some sleep and began the rush of activity all over again today: citizenship photos and paperwork, group photo, group lunch and trip to the zoo, followed by a photoshoot of Ren in the same style we had done for Claire two years ago. So now I'm wondering, where do I begin to catch up in terms of blogging?!

I guess we'll start with our little Guangdong group, touring around Guangzhou on our last day there. I have pics of the actual sights we took in but I`m guessing you want to see people first, sights second!

One of my favourite sights: Paul with the kiddies! Here, they`re watching some folks play a kind of hacky-sack game with something that looks like a badminton shuttlecock.

The Guangdong group:
The Guangdong kids plus a Xinyu gal thrown in for good measure:

Claire leading us all on a parade on Shamian Island:
Carolyn and Marvin have been incredible to travel with again. It is so good having friends here to talk with about the heavy topics of adoption. It's been a good week for us, but a tough one in some ways, and our travel mates have really been there for us. I just hope we've been as good to them as they have been to us!

A little walk around our hotel block

Right behind our hotel, there's an interesting little street of shops. Paul had to take a picture of this shop selling only silicone. This is a shop for his dad, Walter! Other sights:

An efficient three-story parking lot:

"Peekaboo!"

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.

Smiles on adoption day

Today, Ren officially became ours and we became his. We spent the morning doing the necessary paperwork and then visiting the market with Becky, Carolyn, Marvin and Jaida to get some groceries and other items. Here's Claire at the adoption centre giving Ren a big hug.

Most of the morning, Ren had shown little emotion - in continuation of yesterday's mode. But suddenly at the market, he started smiling in response to Becky's attention and immediately, he was smiling in response to Paul and me too. He hasn't stopped smiling since. Also at the market (shortly after the smiles began), Ren repeated the word "Mama" and patted me as I had just done. A short while later, he also repeated Baba and Jie-Jie. He said the words a fair bit throughout the day but the only name he is saying spontaneously (not merely repeating after us) is Jie-Jie. He's quite taken with her, and they had a lot of fun together today racing in the halls, playing hide and seek / peekaboo and playing with toys.

We've had a good time today getting to know Ren a bit more. He's a gentle giant, I think, except for an odd habit of occasionally hitting things (and me!) with wild exuberance. I think it's out of excitement, though, as opposed to intending harm, because he hit my arm - with a huge smile on his face - immediately after blowing me a kiss in response to one I'd blown him. But we shall see!

Claire did really well again but by the end of the day, sibling annoyance had set in. We heard a lot of "He touched me!" and the like from her, even if Ren had merely brushed her as he walked past or reached for a book. This will definitely be an adjustment for her, but I already see how much she enjoys having Ren as a sibling.

Well, everybody is fast sleep here and I should be too. In closing, I want to wish my sister Stephanie a very happy birthday today! I hope you are having a great time in Vancouver with Geoff and Marlene!

And more!

Our guide, Becky, came to our room to do paperwork with us after we got back from the adoption centre. She took most of these photos of us 'horsing around'. (By the way, Becky is GREAT!)

A double horsie ride:

And side-by-side horsie rides:

In the picture below, I'm holding a receiving blanket my Grandma Pauline gave to my mom before my oldest brother was born. Mom brought all seven of us home from the hospital in that blanket and had it at each of our baptisms. We had it with us when we received Claire and we had it with us today.

More of forever family day

Well, it's just before 9 p.m. on Monday and the kiddos and big daddy are asleep. I probably should be sleeping but I wanted to relive the day by looking at pictures and then I decided why not take a few minutes to blog some memories and pictures.

It's been an incredible day in so many ways. Ren is amazingly cute and so incredibly sweet. He still has only uttered a couple of words (not sure what they were but a beautiful red dress in a shop window seemed to inspire them!) and he has not cried one bit. I wonder when the floodgates will open! He's very engaging, though, in that he is seeking and maintaining eye contact, looking amused quite often (although still too cautious for a true smile) and being ever so watchful of his jie jie, Claire. We were done our paperwork by 5 p.m. so we had time for dinner and a nice bedtime routine. We went for dinner in a restaurant called "Paradise" on the 39th floor of our hotel - a fitting name for a place for us to share our first meal as a family of four. It felt so easy and natural to have the two kids with us. Granted, Ren is still quite withdrawn so 'easy' might very well be a temporary thing!

As for Claire, she is an absolute hoot. Many people comment about how shy Claire is, and she certainly can be, but when she's comfortable, she can be such a clown! She has been a little entertainer for Ren. She's also been very nurturing, which is no surprise given her loving and gentle nature. So far she doesn't seem to be jealous of our attention to Ren but Paul and I keep reminding each other to be mindful of giving her plenty of attention too.

I'm really blown away by Ren's orphanage. We received back every item we sent and much, much more. We got an extra camera (a real 35 mm one, not a disposable), plus clothing, plus snacks and milk powder, plus gifts for him and us, and the greatest treasure for Ren and us, a CD of photos containing nearly 200 photos of Ren with his caregivers and little buddies. We received other items too but I can't remember everything at the moment. I am incredibly grateful to them for the good care he evidently received and for the gift of his past through photographs.

We were also blessed today to see Marvin and Carolyn with Jaida. We received Ren first and unfortunately I missed their moment receiving Jaida but I'm grateful for the opportunity to spend this entire week and next with them.

I also met up with Bernice, mother to little Yao Yao from Ren's orphanage. Yao Yao, now known as Olivia, is just a bit older than Ren and the two were brought together today from Zhuhai. We took a bunch of pictures of the two together but I didn't ask Bernice's permission to post the photos so I better not do so. Now I'm especially glad we took the pictures of the two kids together because the CD from Ren's orphanage contains many photos of Ren and Olivia together.

Well, I probably should get to bed. But before I sign off, here are some more long-awaited photos!

Last pic as a family of three:

Note that Paul is wearing his 'receiving shirt', the same shirt he wore when we received Claire!

First glimpse of our golden boy:

Ren wasn't too sure of me at first but once his caregiver Kitty helped move his hand from hers (in addition to whatever words she was speaking), he let me hold his hand and soon, he was leaning into me.

One happy pop:

Our little nurturer feeding cheerios to her brother:

I'll do another post with a few more photos right away.

Thanks again, everyone, for wishing us well!

"Lookit, we got a little boy now!"

So said Paul about an hour after meeting Ren.

Things are great! We've not heard a peep from our little fella yet but we can tell he's just taking it all in. Thankfully he's accepting our affection and watching with interest as we do our best to entertain him. He's totally enthralled with his big sister, we think. She's being an incredible big sister. We are so proud of our girl.

Ren was dressed to the nines for us, and he is such a handsome little guy. So soft and cuddly too. He's a total sweetheart. I think with Claire's help, we'll get him comfortable fairly soon and then we'll really begin getting to know him.

More later, but I just had to post something quickly for all of you back at home 'watching'. Thank you so much for all the comments and thank you also for the silent readers! We are so grateful for your kind words, prayers and support!

This is the day!

It is Monday morning here in Guangzhou and we will receive Ren sometime today after 2 p.m! I won't go into all the emotions we're feeling right now - I think I've said it all before. Suffice it to say that we're incredibly excited!

We spent a fun morning yesterday exploring a bit of Hong Kong: the Avenue of Stars overlooking the skyscrapers (obscured by mist or fog, unfortunately), and flower and bird markets near our hotel. Here are some photos of our adventures.

Claire thinks subways are fun!

Paul and another woman having her photo taken with Bruce Lee's statue cozy up. Claire's not too sure about this arrangement.

There's a gorgeous flower market near our hotel that goes on for blocks and blocks. The sights and smells were amazing.

Also near our htoel is a bird market. We knew we were approaching the market because of the increased bird song and the sight of people walking with covered bird cages.

Claire wasn't into the sightseeing too much yesterday. She kept asking, "We go to China now?" Wow, this kid makes more of a distinction between Hong Kong and China than I do! But we could tell she was ready to meet her little brother and start that new chapter in our lives. To that end, we boarded a double-decker train and journeyed here in the afternoon. We're now settled into our hotel (well, as settled as we can get in this standard-size room; this is no Galactic Peace International Hotel that we enjoyed in Nanchang!) and we're about to run a few errands before meeting our guide, Carolyn and Marvin and finally Ren.

Wish us luck!

Disneyland Hong Kong, continued

Okay, we have an adaptor now (minutes after I last posted) so here's the second installment of our Disneyland adventure.

Claire was really tired in the afternoon but fought her nap big-time. She couldn't even work up any enthusiasm when meeting Mulan.

After Claire's nap, we changed her into her Belle dress, a surprise for her that we packed from home. Paul said that she looked so proud when she came running toward him from the washroom after I changed her. Here she is moments after transforming into a princess:Once Claire was rested, she was finally willing to try some rides. Paul took her on the teacups and the carousel. He was hoping for more but that was as adventurous as she would get (which was more than me!).

It was definitely a tiring day but also a wonderful day, full of happy moments. It was our 'last hurrah' as a family of three and it definitely lived up to all expectations.