FRIDAY JANUARY 26th - DAY 9

This morning was really nice. I felt a whole lot better and I got some alone time with Flower. KG has started to get my cold so he took some Nyquil last night. So as he lay comatose Flower and I got to spend some time together. It went really well. We got along great. We went down to breakfast around 9:30 am. Flower has really started being a picky eater in the morning. The first day she would eat pancakes, eggs, fruit and dry cereal. But now all she will eat is a banana. I think she is trying to test us. She is still eating well at night, and I know she will not let herself starve. But its kind of annoying that all the waiters in the restaurant are always watching us. They always seem happy to see us and like to play with Flower, but I don't like knowing that there are always eyes on me. After breakfast we came back to the room. Flower had a nasty poopie diaper. I lost a bet to KG so I am supposed to change the next 10 poopers, but he has still been nice enough to change some of them because I am sick. Anyway, I changed her this time. The way these diapers are sometimes the sticky tabs will stick to Flowers leg. So when I tried to pull this diaper off it got stuck, I pulled harder to unstick it and the huge ball of poo flew off the diaper and onto the bed spread. I started to scream for KG's help as I tried to hold back the vomit. He scooped it up and took the diaper away as I sat there gagging. The poor housekeepers are really going to hate us. =) Around 11 I took a bath while KG and Flower lay on the bed watching Finding Nemo. They fell asleep during the movie. We met Jo in the lobby at 12:30 to go get Flower her last immunization shot. We took a taxi to Amanda's. There was a little tension between Jo and Amanda. Jo is not aware that we have been over to Amanda's or that we have been spending time with her. We are not telling her because of the whole issue with Jo's company and the fit they threw when they heard our plans were to stay at Amanda's instead of a hotel for part of the time. So Amanda is already annoyed with Jo just because Amanda had several heated conversations with Jo's boss, Chris. I think Amanda was a little hard on Jo today. Jo is pretty annoying about some things, like it takes her forever to say goodbye and leave after we are done for the day. So Amanda was offering to give us some of the chocolate milk from her apartment for Flower. Jo told her that she is familiar with the brand and can just take us to the market afterwards to buy our own. Amanda snapped at her and said "I will give them milk if I want too, is that ok with you!" It was a little uncomfortable but we just had to let them be and stay neutral about the whole thing. We walked from Amanda's to the hospital. When we got there we found out that Flower has already had all her shots and did not need another one. So we took a little trip for nothing. Oh well, it was a pretty day and a nice walk. KG, Flower and I left with Jo and had lunch at Pizza Hut. The pan pizza tasted exactly the same. But trying to order a custom pizza was a huge ordeal. Jo tried to explain to several waitresses and a manager that we wanted a pan pizza with Pepperoni, Pineapple, Green Peppers, Mushrooms and Olives. The same pizza we order everywhere. These people could not figure out how to do that. They were trying to figure out if it was easier to place the order as a pepperoni pizza and add four toppings, or as a super supreme and remove 6 toppings. It seriously took Jo 10 minutes to explain this order until it was finally figured out. I really don't know what they ended up doing. The meal came to about 125 RMB which is $15.64 which isn't too bad for a large pizza and a bowl of soup. With the receipt we got some sort of scratch card. Jo scratched it for us so she could tell us if we won. We actually won 5 RMB. I was kind of excited about that, until KG explained that was only $.64 but free money is free money! We went back to the hotel and let Jo go on her way. We called Amanda, after changing Flowers diaper again, and she met us outside in a taxi. We went to the Muslim market near the center of Xian. We bought a ton of stuff for gifts for family and some for Flower to have when she is older. We shopped for several hours and only ended up spending about $220. Not bad for the amount of stuff we left with. We took our bags and headed over to the Britton's for dinner. Last night after the little branch dinner they had invited us over for tonight. We had a nice evening with them. They are a very nice family. In fact they are the ones that contacted Heinz Dickens in Beijing to set us up with a ride and a place to stay there. The one observation we made today is that Flower acts up a lot worse when she is around Amanda. At Amanda's apartment Flower will cry and whine because all the nannies and Amanda just do whatever she wants. And again at the Britton's she got really fussy. She wouldn't eat anything. She would just whine a lot and constantly want to go to Amanda because she would do whatever she wanted. We feel bad because we don't want to appear as "mean" parents in front of these people that have known Flower almost all her life. But we also don't want to appear like we are complete pushovers. It is difficult to balance. It is almost making us feel like we would rather not get together with Amanda because it seems counter productive to our bonding process. But we don't want to hurt Amanda's feelings because she is the most attached to Flower and has had a closer relationship to us than any of the other adoptive parents. Knowing that we are already supposed to see Amanda again tomorrow at a little farewell party for Flower and then again the next day at church is making me wish we were going home tomorrow.
Day 9 Photos