continued from part 1



Both days of formal touring with a guide, lunch was included in our tour and they took us to fancy restaurants that were a bit too fancy for the young ones. Caleb is starting to test limits and see how obnoxious he can be and decided to put his chopsticks in his glass, bang them on his gold plated plate, etc. We told him no, but he would grin and finally a restaurant manager came over and chewed him out in Chinese.

It will be interesting over the next few days to watch how Caleb's behavior changes since he thinks he can run the show and is finding out that he can't. We bought him an electronic dictionary and he promptly took it and password protected it. Since I couldn't access it, I took it away from him. He begged for it back so I made him show me the password which he did not want to do. Under the guise of communicating with me, he asked for it and then changed the password again so it is now permanently in my possession. He thought he was pretty clever and funny until I took it away. He will use the picture dictionary from now on since he is abusing the other. Unfortunately, the directions for the electronic translator are only in Chinese so we haven't figured out how to fully use it, but he has.




Since there are 7 of us here, we are divided into two hotel rooms by gender. The guys actually have a suite since there are 4 of them. Last night I went into the boys' room and thought I was going to throw up from the smell. They said it was from Caleb's feet!

Being in a separate room, I have not been able to monitor the showering, changing clothes, etc, and Jeff told me that he let Caleb do it on his own. He told me Caleb's feet smelled so bad because he wears his socks 24/7. I don't care if you have had socks on for 24 hours...they couldn't smell that bad from just one day.

I went to his closet and counted his socks and they smell so bad because he has worn the same ones for 3 days now!!!! I promptly took all the clothes he has worn for the past two days and put them in a laundry bag. I scrubbed his socks in the tub and took those away too and then insisted he come in the bathroom with me. He did not want to do it but I insisted and scrubbed his stinky feet.

He is very ticklish and was laughing and saying "No Mama!" the whole time. He was surprised I would scrub his stinky socks and said "XieXie, Mama!", thanking me. I washed his hands and face as well and then told Jeff to please make sure that Caleb showers well in the morning. I layed out new, clean clothes for him today and his clothes will have to be taken from him each night when he puts on his pajamas or he puts on the same ones. I am sure he didn't change his clothes daily in the orphanage, so that is another thing I had to convey through our guide. New leather shoes are also on the agenda because the new ones he came with appear to be out of man made materials...not conducive to clean smelling feet! It's a dang good thing I love him to death and that he feels like my son because I could not scrub just any child's smelly feet.

OK, we are off to Guangzhou to finish the U.S. end of our adoption and get Caleb's passport. I'll update you when we arrive.

Continued...