A Walk in the Park

Apparently I must have done a good job picking pictures and posting yesterday, because I got the duty again tonight. And according to the comments and some emails we have been getting we have some devout followers and self-claimed stalkers :) - so I don't dare miss a night.

Today was the perfect day. This morning we had a different guide (TingTing) who took us to Xuanwu Lake Park. We walked along the City Wall and although it was not as amazing as the Great Wall - it was quite a sight to see - it is over 600 years old. And it overlooks a beautiful lake. Then we walked along the lake for a couple of hours. Matthew fell asleep, but Abby walked the whole way! It feels like she is growing up so much on this trip. We are so glad that we brought her along on this trip - she is experiencing so much. At the park she got to see women doing the fan dance, which is a dance that the older kids do at Cricket Academy (the Saturday Chinese class that she goes to ). When we were in Beijing she saw the ribbon dance which is the dance that she does and they were even playing the exact same song that she dances too. That was pretty cool. She has also been using some of her Chinese (hello, thank you, you're welcome, good-bye, numbers, some animal names, etc.). A few times people have assumed that she could speak Chinese fluently and started asking her questions and then she got a little bewildered. But Helen, our main guide said that her pronunciation is very good. I am including a few pictures from the park because my mom has been our main photographer since our hands are a little full. She has done an outstanding job and has taken most of the pictures we have posted.

Then Ting Ting took us to a Western restaurant. Matthew was hamming it up the whole time. He truly is quite the character and a meatball just like Abby! The waitress brought us three plastic dishes for him to play with and he was putting the cup in his mouth without using his hands and putting the plate on his head. He has a great sense of humor and thinks that he is riot. He even snorted once and Rob teased that maybe he was related to me! We think he probably already has our number because the orphanage said that he could feed himself his own bottle and we have yet to see him do that - I try by putting the bottle down and making him pick it up and he will grab my hands and put them on the bottle. If I don't - then he cries. And you know how moms are about that - and Grandma Buettner would say, "Oh no, real tears." Also if you stop feeding him with a spoon or stop doing something such as rubbing his back or patting his tummy, he will grab your hand and put it back where he wants it to be. Seems pretty smart to me.

After lunch Rob was brave and agreed to keep Abby and Matthew back at the hotel while TingTing took us "shopping". Oh my gosh - I don't even know if I can describe the "supermarket" that she took us to. It was like several supermarkets put together, part of it was underground and then another part was seven stories of stores. Mom and I were completely overwhelmed. There was no way we could have found this place by ourselves. Ting Ting said she even gets lost in the market sometimes. It was like nothing I have ever seen before!

Okay last piece of news and this is really for Grandma and the aunties (read ahead at your own risk): Matthew is eating great! We get a free breakfast buffet at our hotel and it has both Western and Chinese food. He LOVES rice congee and sweet corn congee. (It's like a watery soup. The rice congee is really bland and the corn congee is a little salty.) But I don't think he has really even spit out anything that we have tried to give him: pineapple, ham, muffins, bread, chicken, etc. Oh and he had his first (and second) BM today. Hey, I warned you that it was for the relatives - but that is huge news in our world!