day 5

For those of you who are still following along on our Groundhog Day Blog Chinese Style, here's a recap of Day 5.

Honestly, today is day six and I have to think really, really hard to even remember what we did yesterday. It is all seeming like a big blur. Doesn't help that on a normal day in my life I can't remember why I called someone by the time they answer the phone. My memory is bad on a good day. Yesterday was not a good day.

Hope was (and still is but I'll think about that later) in full on I'm-going-to-battle-and-make-everything-difficult-for-my-so called-new-mom-and-dad. She pushes every single limit that we set. But keep in mind we're setting them in English with a whole bunch of overly exaggerated facial expressions and hand gestures. We think that she is just sick of hearing us babble on and on with stern faces and just decides to laugh and make a big joke of it. Again, repeat from day 4 and 3 and...I can't really blame her. But we end up feeling like we're stuck in some bad parenting demonstration class and we're the examples. The class is called "What not to do as parents 101". I think we've moved on to the masters classes now. And we're still the bad examples that people look at and shake their heads. Or at least that's what the Chinese people do while we're at a restaurant with Hope and she is dropping things off the table left and right and eating with her hands and falling out of her chair and a million other things. They not so quietly look over their shoulders and whisper things to each other. She does, however, have this incredible redeeming quality and it is called cuteness. She is beyond cute and everyone knows it. Including her. If we aren't being stared at b/c she is flipping out and making us crazy, she's being stared at b/c she's so incredibly cute. She sits in her stroller and waves a pageant-like wave and bats her eyes at everyone she passes. Which in China is like 15 million people. She loves the attention and we just love that at the time she's not causing us any problems.

For the last two years I've told people that ask us what it's like to bring a four year that speaks no English into your family that it's not easy but it's way easier than giving birth to an infant and going through those first several months. But I'm beginning to second guess myself on that one. I sort of feel like I'm in labor, emotional labor, and it has far surpassed any labor pains I've had with all three of our other children combined. And Day 5 was my breaking point. And Andy's. And Hope's. Not a good combination. So I'm glad to be on this side of the day and be done with it. It was hard. Today hasn't been much better but I'm not writing about that for now.

As far as what we did to keep ourselves busy, we went to the Panjiayuan Antique Market in the morning. And I bought nothing. That's how out of sorts I was. I. Bought. Nothing. Mark it in the record books. Then we had lunch and it was less than ok. It actually kind of made me gag. It was a duck restaurant but I wasn't in the mood for eating duck. I'm not sure when I will be but it is on my list to do before we leave here. There weren't a lot of options to choose from so we ended up here b/c the menu had English on it. Anyway, the chicken we ordered was something like cashew chicken but some other nut. But I could not tell which parts were nuts, which parts were the meat of the chicken and which parts were the random "parts" and fat they mixed all in it. Oh, it makes me want to gag just thinking about it. I left hungry. Andy left still in shock that I hadn't bought anything in the market. And Hope left a mess because 50% of the food she eats ends up on her clothes, skin, and hair.

Then we took a taxi to Beihai Park. It was beautiful but hot. It's cheap to get in (like $3.00) and close to our hotel so we only stayed a little while. We ended our day eating at a new restaurant and walked around in the evening. Kind of how we end every day. Eat. Walk.

Click here for today's photos

And that was the day that looked lovely in photos but kind of didn't feel lovely.