We took a 5 hour family snowmobile ride which included a stop at a local bar for lunch. Bei rode with me and loved every minute of it! He was sad when Dan went riding the rest of the day with his friend John.
We are in the preparatory travel phase of the adoption journey for our baby. I've gone through all of Bei's old clothes and pulled out the ones that I like and washed them again. Dan saw me folding his clothes and said, "I can see the excitement on your face Liz." And I have to admit that I am getting excited to bring our little one home. The neat thing is that Bei was so darn tiny that I am assuming that the baby will fit into the same clothes that Bei wore while he was in China. In a way, I was lucky that Bei was so tiny at 27 months, because I feel like I have experienced some of his babyhood with him, so I don't feel so cheated. Man...he is such a great kid! Have I said that recently???? That kid makes me sooooooooooooooo very happy, happy!!! I just hope that he adjusts well to the baby...that is for another blog, not tonights blog.
We are planning on flying into Shanghai rather than going to Beijing. This means we will be on our own to navigate ourselves from Shanghai to Fuzhou city, we won't be with our adoption agency tour guide. The other night I mentioned to Dan that I really think we should consider taking the 6 hour train ride from Shanghai to Fuzhou, so that we can see the Chinese countryside. I told him that I confirmed with our adoption agency that a guide will meet us either at the Fuzhou train station or the airport, we just have to tell them the date and time. Dan was pretty exhausted from work and he listened to me without saying a word, then he smiled in his Dan Krueger way and said , "Liz, let me play this train scenario situation out for you. We will get on the train and for the first hour you will run around like a chicken with your head chopped off , jumping up at every stop asking if this is where we get off. Which nobody will respond because nobody speaks English, except me and you. I will calmly remind you that we have 5 more hours. After the first hour you will finally calm down and immediately fall asleep. At around the 5 hour mark you will wake up and I will be exhausted because I have entertained Bei for 5 hours! And at the 5 and half hour mark, we will hear an announcement over the train for the next stop that will sound like "Fuzhou", but we both know we still have half an hour to go. However as the train is pulling away from the station, we both will look out the window at the same time and in the sea of people, we will see a sign being held up with the letters K R U E G E R. We will have that moment that we lock eyes with one another and we both will say "Shit!" you will say 'I thought they said Suzhou' and I will say I thought they said Xuzhou! Then Dan went on to say "Liz, an airplane has one door, we see people getting off, we follow, we are in Fuzhou". Okay, point well taken...so much of what Dan described probably would be true...especially the chicken comment! Graceful under pressure...I am not! There is an inherent level of stress in adopting a new child, plus bringing Bei back to a communist country and then being on our own in a country where large parts of it you can't find an English speaking person for miles upon miles. "Alleviate stress" is my mantra, let's do what is easy and if we want to take adventures in China, we can do that later in life...after the boys can speak fluent Mandarin!
On a more serious note, please keep little Nick Nick in your prayers. Friday, March 5th he has a procedure at Mayo. On Monday he has a follow up appointment in New York City to see how the tumor in his eye has reacted to the Chemo treatment. Pray that the tumor is receding and that he goes back into remission or a miracle happens and the cancer goes away forever.
