Day and night

I’m having trouble getting this to send so I apologize if its on here 3 times!

 

On our last full day in Zhengzhou some of the families from our group braved the heat and went to the park down the street.  We were pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t too hot and there was a little breeze.  Even with the weather being cooler we were sweating from the humidity though.  We have to be careful walking in Zhengzhou because people drive motor scooters on the sidewalks.  I’m always worried about Lila getting run over.  I decided that it was too far to carry Noah to the park without assistance.  That meant using the Ergo or a stroller.  It was just too hot for the Ergo so I opted for the stroller knowing that Noah would NOT like that.  My hope was that once we were outside he would think it was pretty cool.  He never really got to that point but at least he calmed down once we were out and about.  As long as Mommy was pushing the stroller that is and not Daddy. 

 

There was a beautiful rose garden and a little river going through the park.  There were paddle boats on the river that you could rent.  Despite the girl’s pleas we didn’t do that.  There was also a fun little amusement park  with some rides for the kids.  The rides were nice and cheap so the girls got to go on a few of those.  The most entertaining to us was one where the car type things they ride in goes around and around and there are 3 fish in the middle that spit out ping pong balls.  The kids has nets that they can try to catch the  ping pong balls in.  This would break so many violations at home!   There were no seat belts and so the girls were reaching waaaay over the edge of the car to try to catch the balls.

 

Thankfully on this trip to the park there were no creepy men zeroing in on Lila as on previous trips that Greg and Lila took.   Perhaps its because there were so many of us.  On one trip in particular, Greg had one man that would NOT leave them alone.  He just kept walking with them.  I did however, meet a sweet older couple that was tooling around on a scooter.  The man spoke some limited English and between that my EXTREMELY limited Mandarin we were able to have a nice little conversation.  They had a really cute little puppy with them that the kids loved.

 

There were people all over the park doing their thing.  There was one lady doing some dancing, in another spot there was a band playing some traditional Chinese music, and in still another spot there was another band playing music.

 

After the girls went on the Avatar ride (yeah, pretty sure that’s not a licensed Avatar thing and neither was the one that had a Christmas Mickey Mouse and Hello Kitty on the same sign) the sun came out and it started to get really hot out.  We took that as our cue to go back to the hotel.

 

Noah has been doing much much better every day.  He’s interacting with Daddy more and seems happier.  It’s much easier to get smiles and even some laughs out of him.  He has the sweetest little smile ever!  Daddy still can’t hold him but playing is ok.  Our biggest challenge is nighttime.  First he was fine with the crib then he wasn’t so he moved to bed with me and was fine.  Then he needed to be touching me at first with a foot or hand but would push himself away from me throughout the night.  Even off the bed a couple of times.  Now he’s at the point where the only way to calm him is for him to be right on top of me.  Even then he’s not sleeping well and of course neither am I.

 

Tomorrow is off to Guangzhou!  We are not looking forward to the weather or the fact that we’ll still be in China for another week but we are happy that it’s a step in the right direction.  We like China very much but this job of adjusting with Noah would be so much easier in our own environment.