It's a Small, Small World of Firsts

We had lots of firsts with Collins today. Everyday is a first for her, but today seemed loaded with them. It's fun to watch her little brain turn to try to figure out this

crazy, new world.

We had some good clothes breakthroughs today...we wore our first dress, CUTE, PINK tennis shoes AND a ruffle bathing suit. We swam for the first time, ate ice for the first time and experienced our first automatically flushing toliet. But the biggest first was our first trip to Disneyland. We had no intention of going to the park, but when your're staying at the Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel, how can you not go see Mickey? It turned out to be a great way to end an already memorable trip.

The Disneyland Hotel Hong Kong

The View of Hong Kong from our Deck

The Pool

Fun with Daddy

So Cute!

Diet Coke and Dress

Cinderella's Castle

She found these flowers on the ground and made us wear them all over the park.

She looked like Princess Lea.

She loved the carousel!

We're East Side in China. Anyone get it?

Daddy's a Sucker

Adios, China!

Whenever Jerod was trying to talk with someone who only spoke Chinese, as a last ditch effort to communicate, he would start speaking Spanish. It never got the point across any better than English, but without fail he would try. It was entertaining to watch, but I'm glad we're head back down South where we can understand the language and twang much better.

We fly out this morning (tonight for you) and get into Birmingham at 4:35 on Friday the 29th. Could there be a worse time to land? 4:30 Friday afternoon???? No pressure at all, but if you want to come to the airport we would love to see you. I have no idea what shape we'll be in but, hey, why not make it a party? We'll try to post here if something changes or atleast to Facebook. Thanks for sticking with the

saga for 16 days!

Much love,
Allison and Jerod

The Jebster

Jerod and I were looking through pictures of our trip to Guatemala. Really can't believe that Jeb has been home 3 1/2 years. He's still as cute now as he was then!

Our View from the orphanage, Eagles Nest

Jeb and Ella Bullock

Children at the Orphanage

Bye, Bye.

I had forgotten that we had this video. After watching it, I remember asking Jerod to get Collins waving bye bye, but didn't know how much else he got.

There's nothing all that impressive in this video except for Collins saying such a sweet goodbye. Nonetheless, the video says a lot. It gives you a great feel for where Collins has spent the past 2 1/2. The bell ringing for lunch, the disabled people all around and even the dreariness of the day all come together to give you a snap shot of life for these kids. Really, the only "colorful" things we saw there were the kids playroom and playground.

As we walk out, you can see the red brick building that was the original orphanage. It's amazing to me that God still blesses today what was done years ago. These children are a testimony to that. Outside of the mercy and protection of God, there's no explanation for how they leave the orphanage as un-scarred and healthy

as they are.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxp4gljSl3g

A Video is Worth A Lot of Words

I've been trying all week to get some videos of Collins uploaded. Finally, last night I got them up on YouTube. Here are three that show you the Collins we've been getting to know over the past week.

"I Love my Friends" is Collins when she was seeing her friends for the first time in the orphanage. (Sharon, you have to watch this!) "Here Fishie, Fishie" is her running to see the fish in the Japenese Garden at our hotel...she loves the fish! "Scary Collins" is from the other night when we played "scare" about a thousand times.

Here's Collins in action

http://www.youtube.com/user/allisonakerssinclair?feature=mhsn

Baby Steps with Mini Me

It's amazing what tiny, seemingly insignificant actions are actually really important moments with an adopted child. In a new and different world, comforts from the past are hard to let go of. Even well adjusted adults crave familiarity, so much more so for a child who has spent 2 1/2 years in an orpahange and lost all "control" of her life in one day. That's why this morning was such a big deal for us.

This was the first morning that Collins has woken up and not checked first thing for a sticker on her head or run straight to the stash of them. It's also the first morning that we haven't had to put on our obnoxiously bright yellow Crocs before we left the bedroom. And I got my first kiss from her, too. I was kneeling down to get her out of the stroller and I tipped backwards taking her down with me. She started laughing and just leaned down and planted two big, drooly kisses on each of my cheeks. When we go to sleep at night, she'll hold my hand and rub my arm. At first she wouldn't even really let me touch her, but if my arm comes off now, she picks it up and puts it back over her.

She's also come a long way with Jerod. This morning she went over to say hello to him after he woke up. Normally she just stares at him like he's an alien and walks away. Jerod will do his typical silly things or even "scary" things and she just laughs at him. And when Jerod came in and squirted water on her, she grabbed a cup and threw water back on him. He's already hooked.

Everyone that see's us and knows that we've only been with her for 6 days is so surprised at how comfortable she is. It's really like we've always had her. Well, except for that we can't even talk to each other. We'll have our bad days for sure, but right now we are all just having a lot of fun together.

Starbucks Chocolate Biscotti and A Good Three Layers of Stickers

Making Faces

At "The Paddy Field" the Irish pub behind the hotel. (She didn't drink the Guiness. Promise. And, Michele, it felt just like Dublin.)

Collins' first boyfriend. She meet him at The Paddy Field. Gabriel is half Irish and half Singaporian. And he's a cutie!

Coloring with Fun Daddy

Really Bad Bed Head

It's Like Child Birth

It's the things they don't tell you that you really need to know. I'm all about lists right now, so here's another one on things you should know if you ever plan on

traveling to China.

1) Finding a Diet Coke is like searching for a bargain at Saks. Pointless. They don't drink them here. The Chinese think it tastes like the herbal tea they drink when they're sick. Bring your own, or get to know Coke Zero.

2) They drive on the right side of the road....just like in the States. Hong Kong on the other hand drives backwards. Well, not backwards, but you know what I mean.

3) There are lines on the road, but no one stays in them. Really. You just cross the street where ever you want, stop when you feel like it, and switch lanes whenever. Somehow it works here. In Alabama, we would have seen 100's of people die by now from road rage.

4) Egg rolls are not egg rolls. Egg rolls here are more like pastries. If you made a sweet-ish, egg "dough", made it into a crepe, and then rolled it up, you'd have a Chinese egg roll.

5) If you are Chinese, you like green tea or you're a loser. There's green tea everything: ice cream, gum, hand wipes, Kit Kat's, you name it, it's made with a green tea flavor or scent.

6) When old people exercise, they walk backwards and clap. They think doing that makes you smarter and more balanced, but it looks really funny and not so smart.

7) Kids go to school from 8-5 with a 2 1/2 break for lunch. The work day is the same. Everyone goes home for lunch and a nap.

8) Here are the rules for foreigners from the police. Number three totally ruined my plans for the day, so I went shopping instead.

Mini Me

I have a Mini Me. Her name is Collins.

She LOVES my sunglasses. She looks like an old Jewish lady. And the skirt came off about 3 minutes later....

Where ever we go, she is right beside me. Can't even ride in the stroller without holding my hand.

If I brush my teeth, she brushes hers.

Always in my lap. Always.

And this is just a cute picture. Whenever she does something she is proud of she puts her hand on her hips and starts swishing back and forth.

Jumbo Puzzle

(I don't know what happened to the spacing with this post. Sorry, it won't let me fix it?)

It's weird to be thrown into life together with a 2 year old. Jeb was a baby when we adopted him. At six months old, he was fairly flexible in his routines. As long as you met his basic needs, he was ok. But with Collins being 2 1/2, she has come into this family with certain expectations from life lived in the orphanage...some good, some bad. Here are a few of the things that we are learning about Collins more and more everyday.

The shoe obsession is more than just a love of shoes. She has a total melt down if we try to walk out of the bedroom without them on. Apparently, in the orphanage, she always had to wear shoes. The floors were concrete so that's probably the reason.

Yesterday she had to get 4 immunization shots. She woke up in the middle of the night and had a fever. She was restless all night and one point she woke up crying yelling what sounded like "gaga." My head went to a million places of what that word meant but in the morning she said "gaga" and pointed to her forehead. Somewhere a sticker on her forehead has become a really important, I guess fun, thing to her. Always a sticker on her head. Everyone in China thinks we are weird Americans that are doing awful things to her like making her wear Hello Kitty stickers on her head.

The girl will not put on a skirt or dress. Pants only. All I brought were skirts and dresses! She's never worn one and I'm thinking she feels like she's in a 1980's taffata bridesmaid's dress in it. She's ok with bows though...most of the time.

When we were flying here the other night, I sat her in her seat and started to buckle her up. She lost it. Tears streaming and arms reaching for me. The video we got of her in February showed her straped into a potty seat....basically a chair that has a pan underneath it. I'm sure she would have to stay strapped in for long periods of time and the airplane seatbelt reminded her of that. We had the same problem with the stroller yesterday. Heartbreaking.

She loves to be clean. Always telling me to wipe her mouth and hands and she will take a baby wipe and clean her whole body. The clean, neat, follow-the-rules kids are the favorites in the orphanage.

Getting to know her is like working a 1000 piece puzzle. One piece in the right spot can make you see clearly where everything else goes. Everyday we are just trying to figure out more and more who little Collins is. I guess it's going to be a life-long puzzle, but it's so worth it.

Waterproof Mascara and Shots of Three

Two days ago we visited Collins' orphanage. It was a crazy day. I had prepared myself for a day of grief and tears, but halfway through we ended up in an executive "lunchroom" doing shots of beer with high ranking officials of Fujian province....that's China for you.

Jack, the Director of Fujian Province Adoption and International Marriage, picked us up at the hotel at 8:20. Actually, he was there at 8:10 hurrying us through breakfast because it was rush hour and we had to catch the 9:00 train to Putian City. I threw some fried rice and bread in a to go box and we ran to the cab. After dashing through morning traffic and nearly dying 20 times on the way, we jump out of the car with Collins and two huge bags of clothes for the orphange in tow. I realized then why China has so many special needs babies for adoption (and I'm not joking about this.) They can't keep up. Everything happens at lightening speed. Really, may God be with the healthy person who sprains an ankle because they will miss a train and be run over trying to get there. Side note, Collins LOVES new things. She loves riding in cars. She loves Wal-Mart. Elevators, escalators, trains and weird food, she loves. She's totally fine in the midst of all this madness. I'm probably freaking out more than she is, but it's nerve wrecking

The high speed train is surprisingly clean and quiet and it's fast. What would have taken us 2 1/2 hours only took us 40 minutes on the train. It was nice to sit and be still for a moment though. Collins fell asleep and we talked to Jack about adoption and Fujian province. Who knew Jack was a really important person in Fujian and in China. He's on the news all the time and friends with the Vice Premier of China. For whatever reason, he decided to go with us to visit Putian. He said he hasn't been there in three years, so he's quite sure they will want to take him to lunch after our orphange visit.

Putian City

When we pull into Putian, Collins is still asleep. I wake her up and say a prayer for her as she has no idea what we are about to do. The day before we had seen her nanny and Dr. Li at the Civil Affairs office. She had been really good with it. She went to her nanny but didn't cry for her and everytime she needed something she came to me, not her. That was a great sign. She was starting to figure out who I was. But we were going to see them again today and see all of her friends. I wasn't sure how it was going to go.

When we walk up the stairs, her nanny and Dr. Li were waiting for us. Collins is still in a fog. Her nanny reaches for her, and she leans in to go to her. I walk close by and hold her hand. I have no idea where we are going first. We wanted to see her finding place as well as get pictures of Collins friend JingJing's finding place for our friends that couldn't see it when they were in China. After driving down a dirt road, we pull into the orphanage. I recognize it immediately. The orphanage is actually more like a compound. Several buildings with courtyards and sidewalks. Like the rest of China, it's dusty and run down. Collins is looking around a little confused but okay. She would look at me and then look around again wondering why her two worlds were colliding.

Putian City Social Welfare Institute

Dr. Li starts to walk us through to what I am guessing is the childrens building, but I still don't really know what the plan is. We walk up a ramp and pass an old, rundown playgound. Collins doesn't really pay much attention to it. At the top of the ramp, there is a very Western looking building. Turns out, it was the original orphanage building that was built by Christian missionaries. Totally threw me off, but it makes me happy to know that. We turn right, and I see a gate. Collins starts squealing and jumps down to run toward the gate. I then see two little boys standing staring at us. She is so excited to see them and immediately starts to play. We go through the gate and on the left is this tiny play room with maybe 4 other children in it. Two of the kids are on these rocking horse things and Collins goes straight over to one of the boys, pulls him off and starts to rock next to her friend. The funniest part was that he let her. I'm thinking she was the playground bully; they said she was always like that. The Original Orphanage

All the nannies were there and everyone is loving on her and saying hello to us. We stay and play for about 4 minutes and then it's time to go. It was a whirlwind. I'm going to have to go back and watch the video just to remember the details. I thought we were going to go see her room but we start to walk back out the gate. As we go, Collins is in my arms and in the sweetest little voice starts waving and saying "Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye." to her friends. No tears for her. It was like she knew she was always going to get out of there. There were lots of tears for me though thinking that some of those kids may never leave that tiny playroom.

We walk back to the van, and (quickly) off the Collins finding place. In hindsight, I think the rushing was purposeful. The orphanage was terrible. About 85% of the people there are severely mentally disabled. I have no idea, besides God's protection and mercy, how she made it out as un-scarred as she seems.

Collins was left at the SOS Children's Village which is set up like the Big Oak Ranch. It is a really nice facility and whoever left her I'm sure had hopes that they would keep her. We take a few pictures and I watch Collins pull on the gate and walk around totally oblivious to the significance of where we were.

I'm not as emotional as I thought I would be. Maybe it's becuase we were just jerked around the city without much time to reflect inbetween. I had no idea that the craziest part was about to happen.

Jack had warned us that when we go to lunch that the hosts would want us to drink beer with them. I'm not a big beer drinker, but it's percieved as rude if you don't, so ok. I'll do it. We walk into a private lunch room which looks more like a board room with a round table. I didn't know there was a head of a round table but I was quickly ushered to a new seat when I tried to sit there. We start out with some appetizers on the big lazy susan on the table. Jerod is loving the dried minnows and I'm still trying to get past the shrimp eye balls and head that I have to take off. Collins, on the otherhand, is eating it all. Amazing. The rounds of odd food keep coming and the toasts begin. We toasted to everything from the health of Collins to the health of the pinkie toes of the world. Every toast we have to drink a shot glass of beer. By the end of the day, we were doing toasts in groups of three. Apparently, if you want to be really, really, really good friends you take shots of three together.

30 bottles of Beck's later, we head back to the train station. We get in our seats and in about 30 seconds Jack and Collins are both asleep. I just stare out the window of the train and thank God for waterproof mascara on a day like today.

You Know That 10 Foot Wall In Front of You?

Well, I've hit it. I am so tired and emotionally spent. All I want is a Milo's cheeseburger and I don't even like Milo's. I have so much to tell you all but don't think I have it in me to write it all right now. We leave in 2 hours to go catch another flight to Guangzhou, too. But, I wanted to post some new pictures of what's going on in our Chinese world. Collins is doing great though. In fact, I titled our pictures from today "Mini Me"....where I go, she goes. I'll write more soon but, until then, here's a glimpse into our day.

Jerod and Collins playing Playdoh

Us on the train

The bulidings around West Lake right outside our hotel

The amusement park across the lake. This is Marine World which was actually pretty cool. The seal show was surprisingly impressive!

It's Like Christmas Morning

I love waking up and reading everyones comments. It's so odd to be 1000's of miles away with no Chick-fil-A to eat at or Ross to shop in or no "War Eagle!" or "Roll Tide" to be heard. The only thing that is keeping me connected to home is this keyboard and your sweet words. So, even though I may not respond quickly or get to respond at all, I'm reading everyone of them and loving it. Love you guys!

Allison

10 Things I Know About Collins Today That I Didn't Know Yesterday

1.) The girl loves shoes! We have to have our shoes on all the time. And not just any shoes, our bright yellow Crocs. Nothing else.

2.) When she goes to sleep, she sucks her thumb, clasps her hands and wiggles her fingers.

3.) She is bossy! This morning I had her picked out this cute, pink dress to wear, but she would have no part of it. She showed me the shirt and pants she wanted to wear. At dinner she tells me which French fry to give her and which is just not good enough. When we walk, she just starts pointing at things she wants to look at. I guess she's never had anyone to boss around....

4.) She's an extrovert. All of her paperwork said that she was an introvert, but if she's an introvert then I'm the Pope. She has not stopped talking today. Of course I can't understand her, but she's always telling me something. One of the other guides that was with us today said to me "She looks like you. She acts like you, too." I asked what he meant? He said "She's full of energy and is always having fun." Scary......

5.) She loves to eat. And she can eat noodles amazingly fast. We got some video of it, but it won't download. You all have to see this if I can get it too work.

6.) She's just like Jeb...she loves her things. Anything she can put in a cup or shake in a box or stir with a spoon she loves. Here is her "domain" with all of her treasures. And she's eating while she's playing.

7.) She loves me already. Tonight at dinner, everytime I would have to scoot away for some reason she would scoot closer to get by me again. This morning she wouldn't share her fruit snacks with me but by tonight I was in the "She's alright enough to share my snack" club.

8.) She loves to shop. Thank you Jesus! We will have a lifetime of fun together. Today we went to Wal- Mart to buy snacks and things. I was nervous because she has never been outside of the orphanage before and I'm overwhelmed by Wal-Mart. She wasn't sure about the buggy at first, but had fun in the end. As we went through, she would point to things, I would give them to her and she would toss them in the back of the buggy. Love it!

9.) She has the biggest, cutest dimple on her right cheek.

10.) She's really funny and super sweet. Jerod and I have laughed at her all day and she has giggled with us. I mean like belly laughed. It's such a change from all the pictures we saw of her and I love it.