Wuhan Day 5

Well, got up this morning and went for breakfast amongst stares and smiles. People, especially older people, seem to be happy to see us with the babies...they give us the thumbs up sign and say, "lucky baby". Get some stares from younger people and always wonder what they are thinking when they see us with the girls. Anyway, went to the Buddhist temple across town this morning. Took a tunnel under the Yangtze river...that was cool...how often can you say, "Yeah, i was under the Yangtze river this morning, how about you?" ha ha. Went through traffic for about 40 minutes to get there...if traffic could be more insane today than yesterday, then it was. I don't understand how anyone could get behind the wheel twice in this town...one try would be enough for me! Went by this huge market...stuff everywhere,people everywhere...absolute insanity...Anyway, got to the temple and wandered around looking at things. Got lots of attention from little old ladies that came up to touch the babies and smile at us. Some would try to talk to us, some would just give us the thumbs up sign. Overall a very positive response to us having the babies... Of course we get stated at but that is ok now... got used to it. When we went through this one section of the temple, there were a bunch of little old ladies in blue robes. They stopped us and asked us who we were and our guide Kathy told them we had adopted the girls, that they had been abandoned and that we were from Canada. They got all excited, pulled up chairs for us, poked at each of the babies, smiled and chatted away with us, then they went and got peanuts that had been blessed by the monks and put them in each of the girls' hands, (symbolic offering to always be blessed with abundance) then performed a blessing together for each of the girls. They were so gracious and excited about us... It was a very cool experience... so the girls have officially been blessed.. Felt pretty good about that.
From there we went on to the Hubei Provincial Museum to see some lacquer artifacts that were over 1500 years old and the contents of a tomb that was excavated in Hubei and contained artifacts, etc that were over 2000 years old!!! Very cool to be standing beside things that were carved that long ago...mind boggling,really. Dad enjoyed that... glad to be able to do that for him.
Anyway, the girls are doing well. Hildy has her moments when she is very quiet and sad but then comes out of her shell, laughs and plays. Today I was singing while she was playing on the bed so i could clean up a little and i looked over and she was dancing with a big smile on her face. Priceless . She loves to be held, to be propped up on the pillows and played with and to have me hold her hands so she can stand up. She is very wobbly but she loves doing it!
Norah is still struggling a liitle. She prefers to be with heather but will now let Tom hold her. She seems to be struggling also with a little cold so that is making things a little tricky too. Through it all, Tom and Heather have big smiles on their faces. Tired smiles, but full of love. Heather and I were sitting in the back of our crazy little van while our driver was weaving in and out of traffic, horns blaring, people yelling, smog swirling around us and we were just holding our girls and taking it all in...we looked at each other and knew exactly what the other was thinking: we made it. Through all the struggles, heartache and waiting, here we were, in the middle of chaos somewhere in Hubei province, holding our sleeping little girls... Looking into Hildy's big, dark eyes and hearing her little butterfly voice erases the four years it took to get to her.. Today was a good day.