Guangzhou Day 9 - 2 steps forward, 1 step backward

Another day is almost done here, well it is done for the kids, they are fast asleep and we will be joining them soon ,,,

Thank you all for your prayers, the medical exam for Andrew was quite amazing.  We piled on a bus this morning with 4 other Lifeline families all with young girls (less than 2 years old).  Unbeknownst to me, Lois decided it was probably better to give Andrew advanced warning that we were headed to see the doctor.  When we got to the building and the bus stopped, Andrew jumped out of his seat and headed to the door; he never once showed any fear.  He did everything the doctors asked of him and never once seemed to be afraid.  When it came time for the TB test, he turned his arm over and handed it to the nurse, like he knew what was about to happen and it was no big deal.  He didn't even wince when they stuck him - watched the whole thing.  Then he showed everyone his arm (he was quite proud of himself, and so were we :>)  But there is more to this story (keep reading ...).  Here are a couple of pictures from this morning.


The medical offices have moved off Shamian Island into bright and clean new offices in the city.



Open wide and say "Ahhhh"

After the medical visit we came back to the Hotel and decided to treat the kids to some real western food - Old McDonalds (as Hannah affectionately calls it).  For better or worse, there is one just across the side street from our Hotel ...  Hannah, of course, was happy to see something familiar, and Andrew loves any chance to eat french fries, no matter where they come from ... On one of those humorous side notes, I took Andrew up to the counter to show him pictures in hopes he would give me some inkling of an idea of what he liked.  As is now common, he pointed to everything on the menu, sigh ...  I finally was able to coax him to make one choice, and he settled on Chicken McNuggets, an orange-like drink (non-carbonated, kind of Tang-like) and of course the french fries (he pointed to them more than once).  For Hannah, I got her the standard hamburger, though I didn't know how to tell them to make it plain - so we got to scrape off the ketchup and mustard :>)  The humorous part is that Hannah does not like the bread, just the hamburger patty, so we dutifully removed the patty and set the bread aside.  As we were getting Andrews food out for him, he started pointing and jabbering about Hannah's hamburger.  We tried to explain that he had chosen the nuggets and needed to eat those.  Finally, Lois offered a piece of Hannah's burger to see if that is what he wanted, and he shook his head no.  OK, what do you want?  Are you ready?  He wanted the de-hamburgerized buns!  And he ate most of it.  Now, how is that for being efficient - Hannah eats the hamburger, Andrew eats the empty buns :>)  He also ate some of his nuggets and most of his french fries, for those of you that may be horrified at the fact we let him eat the empty hamburger buns ...  Hey, at this point, we are just happy to see them both eat lunch :>)

We came back to the hotel and put the kids down for a nap.  After nap time is when things got "interesting" (this is the rest of the story from above).  At times, Andrew can be quite a conundrum.  He slept hard and didn't want to wake up.  After getting him out of bed and holding him for a few minutes, he laid down on the floor and just kind of stared off into space.  Lois finally coaxed him into the bathroom to change clothes, but couldn't get him to change his shirt, so she told him that was OK and then walked out of the bathroom to do something else.  All of a sudden, Andrew started howling and crying and screaming and kicking his feet while laying on the floor.  This was more than a temper tantrum - I haven't heard him scream and howl like this before; it was pretty gut-wrenching.  This is the 4th  time this has happened, but this was by far the worst, and lasted for about 45 minutes to an hour.  He finally calmed down, stopped crying and came and watched TV with Hannah.  Of course, by this time, Hannah was crying because she didn't know what was going on ...  Lois was able to calm Hannah down and then offered to take them both to the play room, where all was well again (I was off doing paperwork for Andrew's Visa in another part of the Hotel with the Lifeline staff).  We still believe this is all part of his grieving process - it's almost as if he is able to hold it together most of the time, until something happens that triggers these powerful emotions and they just all come flooding out.  All we can do is love him and pray for him as he works though all of these emotions; we covet your prayers for wisdom and discernment as well ...

Hannah and Andrew have both discovered my Android Tablet and want to play on it all the time now.  I have downloaded some preschool games and activities, and they just can't get enough.  Here they are just before we headed out to dinner.

Tonight we went out to dinner with our whole group (5 families in all, but one didn't join us this evening) to a Malaysian restaurant across from the Hotel.  Here is our group ordering dinner.

Well, that was our day - in general moving forward, but with all kinds of twists and turns along the way.

Tomorrow we get to go shopping - I'm thinking shoes will be involved :>)  Let us know how you are doing, we love getting comments and emails!  We love you all, thanks for praying.