Thanks for joining us again.  We’d like to take this opportunity to tell you we appreciate your patience.   Our schedules are off (thank you jetlag) and thus we fall into moments of deep exhaustion followed by manic exhilaration after which one of us will say, “I just had a wave…” and the other one of us will respond, “me too.”  This happens when you’ve spent so many years together – your minds meld into a symbiosis that is not unlike what twins experience.  After a long day of running after a 2 1/2 year old it’s been easy to, well, go to bed.  She’s doing much better, thank you, and sorry for not tying up that loose end at the end of our last cryptic post.  Didn’t mean to leave her future hanging along with our review of the pumpkin soup.  It needed a little bit of salt but was otherwise excellent – sweet, but spicy with a hint of ginger.   The soup was excellent too.

When we went through the gauntlet of administrative appointments while in Guangzhou we met with three different sets of officials, two at the adoption centre and another at the police station.  Through our interpreter we were asked to swear that we would love and cherish this child and give her every opportunity to succeed in life.  One of the translations resulted in the awkward question, “Do you promise to not torture this child?”

She came to us with a bump on her head and a rash on her legs.  When we asked the caregivers what they were, the response was, “It’s a bump. It’s a rash.”  On day two I sat her too close to the edge of the bed (it didn’t seem too close at the time but I’d forgotten how far a toddler, whose head takes up roughly 1/3 of its body height and weight, can launch during a tantrum).  She landed on her forehead and above her left nostril, both areas getting a nice little rug burn (the forehead mark was conveniently close to the bump that she came with so, if asked, we planned to just chalk it up to institutionalization).  Then she whacked her head off the corner of the notary’s desk (lucky the notary had a good sense of humour). During this whole time we were starving her before we figured out how to mix formula (our experience heretofore had been with our son, who was breastfed until he was old enough to ask if he could add ketchup with that), so we fumbled badly enough that when we got invited to the orphanage a couple of days after picking up the child, they gave us a lesson in formula-mixing.  Baby ate like she was starving, which she was.  Then we treated her to a three-hour plane ride to Hong Kong, a 3 hour layover in the airport and then a 15 hour flight to Toronto.  All of this exacerbated the cough she already had (she had a terrible cold from the day we met her) .  By the time we reached TO, the dry cough had morphed into a very wet one and not one hour after we arrived home we had to take her to Sick Kids.  They admitted her immediately and then put her into a medieval torture device, the plexiglass maiden, a tube designed to keep toddler arms UP, so that the chest can be x-rayed.  They thought either turberculosis or pneumonia, and it ended up being the latter, probably from aspirated food one of the times she coughed while WE were feeding her solids, so we could encourage her good health so she would never have to go to a hospital.  Then she was forced onto her back so the medical team could instruct us on how to ventilate her for her bronchial inflammation, which involved holding her down with a mask against her mouth while she took twenty breaths – made more difficult because crying and screaming prolongs breathing.   Then we were given a prescription for heavy antibiotics and steroids to be given to her a total of 4x per day for ten days.   6 millilitres 3x daily for 10 days, 20 millilitres 1x daily for 3 days.  Anyone ever tried to medicate a toddler?  We looked on the bright side – her strength of body and lungs, her ability to fight back for all she is worth proved that they didn’t break her spirit.   But we were doing everything in our power to do just that. Then she smashed the back of her head against the steel bars of the crib three times in quick succession while in hospital, and then fell face first against the bathtub and split her lip.  Our answer to the question was, “No, we will never torture this child.”

Like any time we travel, when we return we feel compelled to keep those experiences and pleasures close at hand; things to savour when the mundane routines of the days, weeks, months settle in.  Memories of our past return, Irish music seisuns and French language lessons; we apply for, and get, European citizenship through an uncomprehending bloodline in case we want to move to Europe; we look at west coast real estate listings. We look for the next big adventure.  So we’ve been to China. The thought of never returning is unbelievable.  Our daughter was born there and some time in our future we will make a homeland visit.   We’ll have many adventures in the meantime, but we look forward to our return.

Coming up:  More China stories, including signage, late nights in the 5-star hotel elevator, the top three Chinese wishes since the Cultural Revolution, and included in our Top Ten list of things that make us Guilty Vegetarians (a hint:   French Onion Soup – can we find a vegetarian broth alternative? Can we duplicate celebrity chef Marc Thuet’s First Place choice of Coquine’s offering?  Will we succeed?)

Stay tuned!