the hardgrave family

We’re getting ready to fly to our last stop in China today, the city of Guangzhou, where the US embassy is. There, we will get Lily’s final papers for us citizenship.

Going out continues to be pretty hard. Yesterday brought some major issues. Strangely enough, as soon as we stepped into the room and it was just us three, Lily’s behavior was almost heavenly.

We still don’t know most of what Lily is saying and we can’t use our guide, for rather than just interpret for Lily, she just tries to take her out of our hands. We know that our guide, Lily, is really well-meaning, but this just seems to really hurt the bonding process of parent to child. We’ll get a new guide in Guangzhou, so we are really hoping and praying that this is the end of that problem.

Today is probably going to be tough. Thanks for your prayers.

Our Chinese Adoption Certificate

Our family picture on the certificate

Shooting Video – -could this show up somewhere soon . . . keep tuning in!

Sippy cup of favorite juice . . . priceless!

The Whitlock Family children, our traveling buddies!

Sorry its been awhile since our last post. We’ve had two very full days and jet lag finally caught up with us yesterday and fell like a ton of bricks. Thankfully Lily was sleepy too, so everyone got a lot of sleep. Praise the Lord!

Well, after completing another round of paperwork on Tuesday to apply for Lily’s passport and finalize the adoption paperwork that will be taken to the US embasssy, we came back to the room for what would start a rough night and day. We have been told that the 2nd and 3rd days could be hard and they were in several ways. Thank you so much to all those who have left comments to let us know that you are praying for us all.

As the Lord would have it, it turns out that Lily is very linguistically advanced for 20 months. We’ve discovered that much of what we had earlier mistook for “standard” baby/toddler talk was actually pretty sophisticated communication (for a 20 month old at least) in Chinese. This has, understandably, left Lily a bit frustrated at times. Given that the Orphanage director (a kind and friendly lady) and our guide have been with us most of the last 2 days since the adoption, Lily seems to often prefer them when we are all out somewhere. Both the guide and the orphange director, while well meaning are, probably without meaning it, accomodating this in sweeping in and picking up Lily to talk with her when she can’t communicate and sometimes to give her things that we think she shouldn’t have, (like another cookie right before lunch.)

All that said, when back in the room with just us, Lily remains however as affectionate as ever and loves to play and even snuggle! You see pictured above that she slept with Angela last night very happily and below, loves playing “Horsey” with me (David).

The building we are standing in front of above is the ophanage where Lily lived until December 2004 when she went into foster care. We found out a good bit there about Lily’s likes and dislikes as well as her life with her foster family. From everything we can tell, she was well taken care of and loved.

Pictured with us here are some of the orphange staff and the Whitlock family, Mark, Kaye, Elisa, Micheal and their newest daughter, Meileah. They have been great friends and traveling companions on this leg of our trip. You can follow their story at www.Meileah.com.