Our Little Extrovert

It's Day 4 of us having our little Xiao Xiao and
we're starting to see the evidence of the little extroverted child that was described in her growth report. The past few days have been wonderful. Amelie has been a trooper in all the tours and new experiences we've been exposing her to. She takes it all in stride and quietly observes all of the people around her when we're out and about. When we're in the room as just the immediate family, her fun, extroverted personality shines through. Today, that personality showed when we were out on a tour of a famous university up on the mountain of Yue Lu, also a famous mountain. It is an old school where famous scholars, including Confucius came to lecture. We got to see a performance of Chinese classical music. Amelie just loved this part of the tour and really started dancing and hopping around in my lap and making very appreciative, somewhat loud noises to show she truly does like music.

Early this morning outside of our hotel, we took a little detour on the way to breakfast. There was a large group of people in the courtyard all doing ballroom dancing. Old and young were out either learning or teaching the art. Off to the side was a group of older people doing Tai Chi using large, bright red fans and swords as part of their art. What a thing to get to go out and see. Baba and Xiao Xiao got to dance with the ballroom dancers and even Nana and Papa gave it a shot. The whole group of us were quite a spectacle as being the only non-Chinese people out there dancing. Xiao Xiao is quite popular around here, and you can see part of that by the crowds of people around Baba as he is holding her.


Living out of a hotel room does have it's challenges with a new baby, but I will miss being around Amelie's culture and people who have a true appreciation for what it means for these girls to have a family. When we were at the school, a group of Chinese people came and oogled over Amelie to exclaim how beautiful she was. One woman probably doesn't know how much she made my day when she said in genuine surprise how much Amelie looked like me. Another lady said that Xiao Xiao is "lucky girl". I smiled and told her we were the lucky ones. Someone else said how we have big hearts. It was wonderful to have such a positive reaction to us adding China's children to our families.

Before we went to the school, we went to the Hunan Embroidery Museum. Embroidery is famous in Hunan as it really became known and well organized here. The artwork that is done with the silk embroidery is truly amazing. We saw such large pieces of artwork of people that really looked like photographs and animals that looked like they had real fur on them. Some of the most famous artwork is the embroidery that looks beautiful on both sides of the silk. We saw one that when you looked at it from one side, you saw a beautiful panda. When you rotated it to the other side, it looked like a tiger. Both sides were exquisite.

Baba is quite happy because he has gotten a lot of quality time with Amelie today and she is definitely smitten with her father. Mama had to learn to share and let Baba carry her around. It's amazing how you can walk around for hours with your new baby strapped to you and end the day with every muscle in your body being sore. What a wonderful ache to have! I think we can cancel our gym memberships though!

We are very curious to see how Xiao Xiao's personality evolves over the next few days. She is already so popular here. One man at the concert was even trying to get pictures of Amelie. I can see how much the local people are taken with her. She is really starting to turn on the charm too and flashing her beautiful 4 tooth smile more readily now. Hopefully Baba will be okay when Amelie gets to be a teenager...

Here are the pictures:

• Xiao Xiao and Baba go ballroom dancing
• Xiao Xiao is very popular
• Who can resist this face
• What a beautiful smile
• Xiao Xiao loves her Baba