Lanzhou

Well, I believe we're finally back to ourselves and starting to feel adventuresome. The first two days here were nothing short of exhausting but now nothing can slow us down.

Yesterday we made it official that Julianne is our daughter! We spent about two hours completing paperwork, being fingerprinted (Julianne's footprint), and of course, dishing out some cash. During all of the officiating, we met a very nice family from Paris, France who are adopting their first child and he was in the same orphanage as Julianne, so of course, I took many photos for Julianne's memory book. After this, we went back to the room for a much needed nap and stayed in the hotel for the rest of the day. We ate in the restaurant in the hotel (pricey but we didn't care at this point) and had a ham and cheese sandwich with fries. I know - I know we should try new food but our stomachs were a bit uneasy and needed some comfort food at this point. Let me tell you, Julianne is a bottomless pit! She will eat whatever you put in front of her - oranges, congee, eggs, watermelon, tofu, noodles, m&m's :0), peaches.....on and on. She is not a lightweight either! The girl has fat rolls on her thighs - who said she could have "failure to thrive"? So far from the truth!!!

We went to bed early and finally finally slept a decent sleep. We are so grateful that Julianne sleeps through the night which is quite a change from her sisters. She is such a joy and so laid back and easy going unless you are changing her diaper or putting her on her belly. She does NOT like that.

Today was awesome! We went to Five Springs Park which is at the foot of Five Springs Mountain. There were probably several hundred older folk doing morning exercises together - tia chi . We drove up and as soon as we got out of the car, heads turned and we had crowds of people around us as if we were Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt (you know, with the adopted baby, and all.) TiaChi was not the only activity. Now I know why Asians are not fat (we have only seen one heavy-set Asian since we have been in China - really!!) They were playing hacky-sac, Chinese yo-yo's, bad-mitten, etc. etc. Very cool to witness. Also, we saw several Buddhist temples within the park.

We then headed to the Lanzhou Zoo which is in the park. Quite a very sad zoo; it is very old and animals are in concrete cages with a chain-link fence around them. We were face to face with puma, wolves, jaguars.....Seriously, you could get bitten if you put your hand through the fence since there is only a fence separating you and the animal.

We ate lunch at a place that served Lanzhou's famous beef noodles....oh my! There is nothing nothing nothing like it in the world. I need that recipe and trust me it would put any Cincinnati restaurant to shame. Oh, so good...even Jon loved them. Actually, the "beef" was Yak!

Ok.. enough about our day. Let's talk about Julianne so here are some things we've learned about her so far:

* She is a great eater and sleeps well.

* She thinks she can walk and will start with absolutely no balance at all. She does not want to learn how to crawl since she hates being on her belly.

*She loves to be sung to and does not mind that I can't sing.

*She has the best smiles and crinkles her nose when she does.

*She is starting to discovering her short hand and often tugs on it. Keep in mind that her hand was usually covered. She has quite a grip with her fingers on her helper hand which is great news! However, we can tell that there are bones inside her thumb but the bones don't seem to be connected to anything.

*She is somewhat serious but is really starting to show her personality more and more each day.

*She has not shown any preference between Jon and me.

*She loves to take a bath - I am not sure if she has ever had one before. Maybe just a sponge bath.

Well, I think we may venture outside tonight and do some touring on our own! Oh, a minor tragedy...my hair straightener died even though we were using a converter. So my hair is quite scary!