Day 1 in Guangzhou, Ornery Boy and WORDS!

This morning we crammed and shoved and squeezed all of our Chengdu treasures into our bags BARELY getting it all in. I am down to two diet cokes and Chris didn’t make me drink them before we left. At the airport, our bags were slightly overweight and we were lucky or our fabulous guide Sandy said something sweet, because I still have two diet cokes and our bags were all clearly overweight. We were sad to say goodbye to our very wonderful guide, Sandy. She will remain in our hearts forever and we will definitely be keeping in touch with her.

Jack was pretty excited in the airport and insisted on carrying his little lunchbox through security and to the gate. We survived another gate change announced in Chinese. I have found a good strategy is to identify a “marker person” – today it was a lady in orange. When she moved, we moved. We got on the right flight and Jack sat nicely in his own seat and made mischief. He drew his first picture on the China Daily (and partly on the drop-down tray), read the safety card over and over, played I-drop-it-and-you-pick-it-up and ate the mystery lunch. He was very cute and garnered a lot of attention. Once again, when we showed people our explanation card, we got the “thumbs up.” He was a big smiley boy the whole way and didn’t nap.






We met our guide, Maggie and headed off to the White Swan. We understand that the US Consulate has moved since the last time we were here. Maggie says the only thing that has changed around the White Swan is that there are more stores – go figure. As soon as we arrived, we saw many of our Beijing group and everyone seems to be doing well. It was nice to see everyone with their children.

Jack has really opened up today. He is interacting with other people (he played “kick the beachball” in the hall with another little boy) and smiling a lot. He hung out with Chris outside some shops while I poked around and was perfectly happy (and Dad didn’t even have food). But, when we went to dinner, and he really showed his ornery side! He was grabbing stuff on the table and pounding things with the chopsticks and generally being a handful! He really does not like it when I tell him “no” and frowns or jerks away from me in defiance. A little pickle he was indeed!

So, when we get back to the room, I figured I would try to settle him down a little and grabbed the books and the photo album and sat down with him. I was pointing to the pictures and telling him who they were. We got to the last page, and I was saying, “grandma, grandpa.” He liked this page, so I repeated it several times. Then he VERY CLEARLY said, “rampa,” “ramma.” He said this several times and pointed to the correct picture each time! Wow! I even closed the book and he pulled it back, opened to the right page and repeated it several times! So, his first official verbal word is, “grandpa.” Then, he went on this little verbal rant, jabbering and slobbering all over the room. He pointed to me and said “mama.” He pulled out the little baby picture books and babbled his way through them. This is really the first sounds we have heard from him and if this is any indication, he is going to give Jaden a run for her money! He seems to be perhaps speaking some Chinese, because he makes the same sounds for the same pictures every time. His favorite pictures were definitely the cars and trucks.

Anyway, this was all a very exciting end to our travel day. We begin our visa paperwork for Jack tomorrow…