the hardgrave family

Us and the Whitlocks on our last day in Changchun City at the old imperial palace.

We are so happy to be the southern town of Guangzhou, but it’s not just the weather.

Where to begin, where to begin? . . . Today has been absolutely wonderful!

Just as we expected, the plane trip yesterday had some rough spots, but all in all, it could have been much worse. As I think we alluded to earlier, our major issue has been that Lily has been, in public, prefering anyone who can speak Chinese over us. We have expected her transition to be a rough one, but none the less, it has proven to be hard on us emotionally as well. The plane ride was a good example of this.

Once Lily began to get frustrated with the 4-hour confinment of the plane ride, her tempermant began to go south and once again wanted just anyone but us. She had been playing with the passengers behind us, so during the first tantrum, she keept trying to leave us to get back to them. During a later tantrum, she tried to leave my arms while walking her down the aisle to go to a stranger who held out her arms to her.

Thankfully, however, no one “swooped in” to pacify her and, as we had hoped, she decided after a while that we weren’t that bad after all. After the end of the series of plane tantrums, she was pleasant the rest the day.

When back in the hotel room in Changchun, we had discovered that a very effective way to set behavoiral boundaries (without giving her reason to doubt our love for her) was the classic “time-out” in the crib. We’ve had to use the crib for a “time-out” just a few times today as well. Thankfully, she is not quite big enough to crawl out of the crib during a tantrum, hence this works beautifully and I might add, very quickly.

Having now had just over 24 hours to consistently establish behavior boundaries, Lily’s public disposition has improved amazingly. On Thursday, she was hitting our faces screaming calling out to anyone who would try to take her out of our arms and today she was talking to store clerks in Chinese telling them that she is very happy and pointing out Angela and I as her “Mama” and “Papa.” In addition to this, she resisted the invitation of a stranger to hold her and moved quickly to Angela. I can’t tell you what this did for Angela. A diamond necklace wouldn’t have made feel better.

We can tell that you are praying. Today has been a breath of fresh air. Thank you friends and thank you Lord!

On a different note . . . we have no idea if she’ll continue like this once she deals with the shock of going to the states, but it’s hard to overstate how socialable Lily is for 20 months.

She seems to immediately become the darling of just about any store we take here too. She loves to play peek-a-boo and will start a game with almost anyone who makes eye contact with her. It is really a precious thing to watch. She just loves to laugh and just like most preschoolers, does it with her whole body. It is just so fun.

Well, please enjoy the pictures below. Tomorrow will be church, shopping and more paperwork. Hopefully smooth sailing. We’ll see . . .

PS- We’ve put together about a short video of highlights from last Monday when we first saw and adopted Lily. There are some incredible moments. Our web support friend, Jason, is working on getting it up on the site, but it is proving to be a bit tricky. If it can’t go up on the site this weekend, you should get to see it if you are a part of our church family or in the Montgomery area and would like to worship at MorningviewBaptist Church this Sunday Evening (Jan 22, 2006). As the Lord’s providence would have it, we are doing an Adoption emphasis and the plan is currently to use the video during the service.

Lily teaching us the Chinese word for “fish”

Some Shopping pictures . . . we had a great time!

A local artisan doing a granite etching of a picture of Jesus . . . wonder how she got the orginal?

Going to the French version of Walmart in China. Surreal.

Lily watching TV in a stroller, she loved it!

Lily pushing her bear in the stroller. She really thought she was “big stuff!”

Some pictures of us playing “peek-a-boo” with Lily in her new red dress, complete with a generous helping of good old-fashioned belly laughs!