Beijing - Day 3

Hi, Sorry I haven't written for a couple of days. It has been a bit rough lately. Hildy has figured out that these changes around her are permanent and she has not been very happy. Since we were on the plane from Wuhan, there has been a lot of crying and she has been very unsettled. She is ok during the day as we are busy and she likes being in the baby carrier, nice and warm, and held tightly. At night, she cries a mournful cry and will not stop. The night before last she basically cried on and off all night. It is heart breaking that I try to console her and she just pushes me away. She falls asleep but then has these little fits where her arms and legs are flailing and she is just crying her eyes out. She arches her back and pulls away and continues to grieve for her losses. Last night was a little better. She will not go into her playpen here that the hotel has provided. It is very different than the crib she is used to and just will not go into it. I held her and put her in the bed right beside me last night tucked in close to my body and held her with my arm and she slept. i think she slept from 8 - 4. She woke at 4, had a bottle and then slept fitfully on and off until 5:30 so we just got up and started our day. We had a bath together...she will put up with the water now...she definately doesn't like it but at least she doesn't scream anymore. Yeah...take each little positive. I am trying very hard to just take it one day at a time knowing that she will get better, will get used to me and will eventually be happy and feel safe again. That probably won't happen until we are home as there are so many changes between now and then.. We shall see. We were supposed to go to the Great Wall yesterday but it was raining so our guide postponed the trip until today. So yesterday we went to the Hong Qiao Market. They sell everything from electronics to pearls, jade, china, porcelin, silk...It is very overwhelming. People are shouting and trying to get your business. People are everywhere. We all got a few things...no one in the group likes haggling so we aren't buying very much. I bought a few things for Hildy to have from her home country as she gets older.... I thinkdad cried a little when I bought a beaded, blue silk clutch for her wedding day. He put a few yuan in it for luck. While we were there we caused quite a stir as always. Lots of people stopped us and tried to talk to us. We showed them the information card that explain we adopted the girls, that they were abandoned. Lots of smiles and thumbs up. We met a couple of 20 something girls were we bought some jade. They had lots of questions about the girls and about their life in Canada..would they still be Chinese, would they ever move back to China, would they speak Chinese. As we were leaving their shop, the girl held Norah's hand and said, "Lucky baby. In China, they treat boys like princes and girls like dogs". That brought tears to my eyes. How many other girls in this country feel this way about their situation?

We came back to the hotel for a couple of hours for the babies to have some play time then we went for a walk down Wangfujing Street, the premier shopping street in Beijing. There was lots to see...all kinds of brand name stores as well as silk, jade, toys, tea, etc. We wandered down the alley where they have "street food". you can buy anything you can imagine to eat...literally. We saw rice being sold from a wagon; people would come up with their stainless steel bowls and fill up, candied crab apples on a stick, skewers of pig hearts for bbqing. Skewers of giant beetles and live scorpions !! That's when dad turned around...he had seen enough and wanted to get back to the safety of things known... So we came back to the hotel for dinner and then bath and bed for the babies.