The Canfields in China

Ok, so there is a Toys’R'Us in Shanghai now, and like almost every other western company their venture into the vast 1 billion consumer potential marketplace of China isn’t exactly like home but it will do. This particular branch of the store resides in multi story mall (one right next to the River across the street from the Pearl Tower ~ PearlTower and a block away from the JinMao building ~ J’Mao ) This past weekend we braved the Subway system and the local bus with Emma for the first time to let her experience Toys”R”Us.

We even had lunch at BK! It took a little longer than we planned to get there ~ a bus ride to the subway, the subway itself and then crossing over a few streets to the mall, all with a stroller and various stairs/steps. the subway stations’ escalator wasn’t working so we became those people we laughed at in days gone by (people who push the stroller AND carry their baby anyway!).

All that leads to this (KEVIN THIS IS FOR YOU): We got into the toy store and of course Caleb was all over the place with excitement and quickly so was I, take a look at what I saw;

And for those who really want to know, I didn’t buy any of them but it was a blast to see GI Joes in China, these guys were a huge part of at least two generations of kids’ childhood mine included and when you get a little older those kinds of things can really be kind of comforting or something in a weird way and even moreso when you’re in a foreign place and don’t expect to see them side by side with this guy walking through the aisles:

Well I go back to work officially tomorrow but this evening Angie & Amy came over to bring a couple of gifts for Emma, and ended up staying for dinner! They’re both good friends of course and very sweet girls too. The beautiful dress Emma is wearing in the pictures is one of the gifts the girls brought by. A traditional Chinese QiPao!

We’ve been having a lot of fun the past two weeks obviously ~ however in the area of sleep we are still a little less than rested. Today marks two weeks from the day that Emma was brought to us in the hotel at Nanchang and we’ve had 3 full nights sleep since that great day…(insert yawn here) and last night was not one of them!

A side note; I remember reading a report regarding a study a few years ago wherein the researchers determined babies were cute as a means of self defense (seriously that’s what the “findings” lead them to conclude) Something about how the shape of a baby’s face was so cute that it made adults want to care for them and keep them safe….now how or why that might be totally escaped the researchers’ conclusions (I’m also certain that taxpayer money was used to complete this research) soooo if you’re scoring at home and alive to read this I suppose you should thank your baby cuteness for being alive (as opposed to just thanking your parents), otherwise some adult wouldn’t have been compelled to care for you when you were helpless. Because you know love for offspring/children/propagating the species couldn’t have possibly had anything to do with it!

Man do I love crazy studies that make no sense. I need a NAP

Ok, today we’ve got a picture in during a cab ride, another shot of Emma and a friend and some more pool shots! It seems like Emma really does enjoy the water and since school starts soon we’re trying to go at least a couple more times before I go back to work.

Emma & Molly               Ready to swim!                  Cab ride…

Hey we are again, I’ve never “Blogged” so much in all my days…of course up until a few months ago I’d never blogged at all so I suppose it really isn’t like I had a large sample size to compare overall ‘blog’ quantity against right?

So we’ve now taken Emma to 2 western style restaurants and 2 local places in the 11 days we’ve had her and the scenery and the people who work at these places have been sources of great, well great fun and some silliness for that matter. For example one of the places is on the 2nd floor of a place called Big Thumb Plaza because of the GIANT THUMB statue that sits in the entrance. While the thumb thing is funny enough we got off the elevator and turned right and immediately in our faces was the following figure to greet us:

What is that? Ok, well that was so shocking I took a shot from the front too:

Oh I see now

So yes that random bright pink weird dude holding a Huge pig was just randomly placed in the plaza…

In another place that we go to a lot they knew we were expecting a baby and the waitresses have been talking with Caleb about Emma for awhile, and they were excited when we brought her with us for dinner (so excited in fact they had trouble keeping their eyes open!):

We have eaten at this particular place since we arrived in Shanghai, it is convenient, inexpensive, the service is really good and the food is great ~ it’s true Sichuan food from people who moved here from Sichuan! We don’t often order the really spicy stuff (it’ll hurt you, seriously)and they know what we do like so it’s good all the way around. What is he writing? Caleb likes it

YEA Dinner!

Emma is doing good, developing and bonding and eating SO MUCH… ok so the mandatory Emma update has been posted we’re clear to discuss other stuff. Although i’m not entirely sure what els to write about…I haven’t watched much tv outside of a few clips of the Today Show here and there in the morning, I haven’t watched a movie for over 2 or 3 weeks either for that matter. I did catch Bonds’ breaking the home run record, and I’ve read more about it than I care too.

I’ve caught plenty of Olympic coverage (from articles on espn.com to pieces on the today show or cnn about the preparations in Beijing to the other ‘issues’ surrounding the games being here in this country to begin with). It turns out that keeping up with a little one causes a lot of joy and is pretty time consuming too! I think I remember Caleb’s infancy being much the same…it was a long time ago though so it’s hard to remember exactly. Somehow without tv/movies/etc we’ve done just fine ~ we do listen to a lot of music and even Emma seems to enjoy that a lot.

I’ve also been thinking about the upcoming year a tiny little bit, primarily about our little weekend group and how it isn’t so little anymore. That is a great thing to be sure however it does present different challenges than one would have to deal with back home. I can only imagine how diverse the group in Corinth was with it being a port city with many different cultures probably represented, and yet I would assume that with their challenges they were still able to flourish and work together. In light of that I am looking forward to the ways our favorite carpenter will help us to meld all the different parts He’s adding to the group into one cohesive, encouraging loving body.  We are just glad to be a part of it really.

WE SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT! If you’ve been following along you’ll understand why that was in all CAPS. It was our first full nights sleep in over a week and wow did we need it, we’re wiped out but still going of course and a lot of our exhaustion has been caused by joy, blessings and peace as much as lack of sleep and moments of uncertainty.

Our night of sleep was so refreshing that we thought it would be a good time to go swimming at the rec center that’s part of the school/company where I work…because you know we weren’t worn out and thought “hey what’s a great way to get worn out before lunch? I know, let’s take the family to the pool for awhile. That should be fun AND extremely tiring all at the same time!”

So we went for awhile (pictures below) Emma had a wonderful time and splashed around in the kiddie pool with a lot of wonder, I’m sure our little girl had never been in a pool before. Last night we went to a local place for dinner and it was a treat as well, Emma handled it wonderfully using the plastic bowl and utensils to drum the night away while the rest of us enjoyed our food! She even discovered that if Caleb lays on the ground she can ride on him like he is a horse (pictures below).

Linna also left yesterday to head back to Guangzhou and we miss her already, she has been a great help this past week and we look forward to seeing her before long! She and Caleb even got in some UNO before she left!

Daddy & Emma         @ the pool
Caleb & Linna         playing @ dinner

“you mean I should eat too?”

Emma & Caleb

Well August 5th has come and one here, and for Emma it was her first time to get together with a group of folks on the weekend. She sang a little and spoke out when most of us were quite but overall she did great and everyone was glad to see her, and share in our joy over her arrival.

It was especially cool as it was also Amy and I’s anniversary (It’s crazy sounding but we just hit the 12 year mark!) I realized that some of the grade 6 students I taught last school year are younger than Amy and I’s marriage…that was a rather sobering realization I must say. The reality of our increasing “maturity” walked up to me tapped me on the shoulder and as I turned around to see what tapped me, the reality whacked me right on the head with a loud, “Hey I’m reality ~ YOU ARE GETTING OLDER!”  hahaha (and for those of you who read this who might know us from when we were kids, students or in some other way that makes you older than us I’m truly sorry for possibly writing something that will tap you on the shoulder…)

Hopefully having two children will keep us youthful. One thing that is working against our youth movement at the moment however is that Emma has only slept through the night once since we got her…and to be honest we woke up at least once or twice that night checking on her! We don’t know why she’s getting up but she isn’t shy about letting us know she’s awake and not too pleased about something. We’re hopeful that it’s just adjustment stuff and that we’ll get a good nights sleep sooner rather than later. Overall Emma is doing great and the tired Canfields are geting along well, thanks again for all your thoughts.

oh and I think that someone behind you is about to tap you on the shoulder, ignore them to your benefit…

Couch! TOYS! TOES! (a lot like toys when you’re 11 months old)

More Toes! Couch time! Caleb holding Emma playing on the floor

Can I play with all this stuff? Emma (Lin Miao) and Linna

So as you can see from the pictures our good friend Linna is visiting us now. We knew she had a little time off of work and we wanted to invite her along to see us and be with us during this important time. Our little Emma’s name from the orphanage was Xiao Miao but for a long time we’ve wanted to use part f Linna’s name for Emma’s Chinese name…so her Chinese name is Lin Miao. Linna is very important and encouraging to us as a Sister and her example of sharing what she trusts in no matter the consequences is something we really hope to emulate and be thoughtful of for our entire lives. She is simply walking the path of her life’s journey and sharing the reasons for the joy she has in life. Our journey in life has brought us into contact with some great people everywhere we’ve lived, Linna is one of those people.

OK then, Linna actually met us in JiangXi the day after we got Emma. It was a great blessing to us and she stayed with Caleb while we were off doing the paperwork with Emma and the guide all afternoon. (We knew Caleb would have much more fun hanging out with Linna than running all over town with us!) The day we did paperwork was quite a whirlwind and at our very last stop it started to look like we weren’t going to finish…which wouldn’t be so bad however we had tickets back to Shanghai on the train the next morning (because they told us we would be done!) Train tickets here aren’t exactly refundable and the only other option may have been trading in our 5 hour train tickets for the later train that takes over 10 hours!

Needless to say a 10 hour train ride with a baby wasn’t on our agenda, the guide was frantically trying anything to get the people at the NanChang police station to take Emma’s picture without all the proper paperwork ~ and they said “impossible”. She explained our plight and they said “impossible”…Well then she asked if we had thought about flying, not that there were any plane tickets available for 4 adults and a baby the next day anyway. It was getting to be a bit worrisome, and there were more details involved to be sure but at that point we’d been in the station for about an hour and didn’t know what we would do so Amy just bent down and started talking softly under her breath…2 minutes later someone said bring her for the picture now quickly! So Amy ran over as I collected our paperwork then they took the picture and we left.

On our way home we learned that the driver who had been taking us around all afternoon actually went to the police desk and told the officer to take the picture for us, the officer told him the same thing he told the guide, “impossible” and the driver says hey you go and talk to your leader, these people are leaving town tomorrow and you’ll get the paperwork tomorrow so just go get the boss to say ok and then do it…and the officer did it!!! Amazing right? the officer listened to the driver and the boss said ok and then we were out of there, and able to come back on time to start the process of settling in with Emma!

Whew, so that was part of our Gotcha Day experience…Since then things have grown increasingly better among the four of us. (Today in particular I danced with my daughter to some Beatles music, talk about a highlight!)

Emma & Bet (oh and a doll)

Emma & her Aunt/Uncle Emma A Emma & Brian

what’s a “beard”? Emma B Emma in the “Queen’s Chair”

“I want that bottle right there, the one I’m pointing at”

Brian & Bet came over this evening (and brought some good food for dinner ~ thanks!) So we got a few pictures while they were here. Emma really studies Brian when he’s around and might be intrigued by the facial hair? Either that or his amazingly stunning good looks…yea maybe it’s the beard.

Emma has progressed SO MUCH in the last 3 days really, up until then she wouldn’t even let me hold her and to be honest it was really starting to get to me. We’d waited over 2 years to have her in our family and here she was; only I couldn’t hold her without her crying out for Amy. So a few days ago I was overjoyed when I picked her up and she didn’t cry, in fact she sort of smiled and I felt like everything was perfect, like all the skies opened up after a really long rainstorm…it may sound corny but that’s ok because I can’t really adequately describe just how great that short moment felt and how I look forward to so many more of them. Since that first great moment of holding Emma, she has grow more and more comfortable with myself and Caleb. We’ve held her and played with her and started to bond as a family. PTL!