Day Two with Pearl

Well, it's late afternoon on day two with Pearl.  She will now answer to Pearl though sometimes we still call her Yi Lin when we really want a fast response.  We plan on keeping her Chinese name as her middle name.

We have done SO much.  We weren't sure how much she would like to do because we figured she never did much of anything at her orphanage but when we got her they sent her with photos and we saw that she seems to have been taken out with the nannies - even spending time with their families.  So, sitting in the room wouldn't do - we needed to get out and do stuff!  Last night we ventured out for dinner and shopping.  We got her a stroller which she loves to ride around in.  Once we got home we still had hours before bed so we went swimming.  Pearl was in absolute heaven and showed us that she's pretty adventurous by challenging herself to put her face under the water.  She tried it again and again trying to do it for longer amounts of time.  It was impressive.  It was also really good bonding time because we could play and touch and have lots of skin to skin contact.

 After swimming we still had two hours to spare so we did a sticker game that we got and then we got out the glow sticks.  I would have to say that glow sticks are a must on every adopting parent's packing list.  She loves them.  We blew up some balloons and put the glow sticks inside and had a great time with the lights out.  At bedtime Pearl did great - she seemed to go right to sleep and she barely made a peep for nine hours.  We woke up way before her and anxiously waited for her to wake up.  We felt like parents of a new baby.

Today has been packed too.  This morning we went down for a breakfast buffet and watched our little lightweight put down tons of food.

 The rest of the morning were spent finishing up provincial paperwork and traveling to different offices.  She was pretty quiet and bored but well behaved.

We spent lunch in our room eating some noodles we got at Walmart and cooked up with our little plug-in kettle.  There was a lot of steam on the windows and Pearl made quick art of it.

This afternoon we went to a local park that had rides and fun activities.  We rode several and then spent time painting a ceramic figure - "pleasant goat" the cartoon character.  Pearl was in heaven though I do grow weary of being stared at so blatantly by EVERYONE!

 We then took the long way home just to use up some more time out of the room.  Right now Pearl and Mike are out swimming again.

All in all, our hearts are full.  We wish that we could communicate more with Pearl but we're all catching on an getting more comfortable.  Tomorrow we go to her orphanage which should be interesting for us all.  We are so grateful that we stuck through the hard times and took the leap of faith.  Pearl is now our girl and very soon Esther will be too.