tired

Just now able to catch up from the past couple of days. Tomorrow we fly to Guangzhou which is the final leg of the trip. Yeah! Yesterday we were able to visit Ethan's orphanage. It seemed like a nice place (of course they were expecting us and limited our visit to only 2 rooms) Still, a valuable piece of Ethan's history that we will be able to share with him later. It was very similar to what I remember of NiNi's orphanage. Housed about 130 kids as well as some disabled people and elderly. He walked in like he owned the joint and started playing with his favorite toys. We took pictures of him with 2 of his buddies, one of his nannies and the director of the orphanage. When we initially received his file, I was under the impression that he lived in Beijing most of his life at the New Hope Center. They told me in fact that he was only there during the time that he was recovering from his two surgeries (so a month or so each stint). The SWI in Luohe was indeed his primary home. They treated us to a fabulous lunch in the "cafeteria" and asked us to please keep in touch and send pictures of Ethan as he grows up. It was a 4 hour round trip and on the way back the car we hired blew out a tire. We were stranded for almost an hour on the side of a busy highway while the driver and Chris and the two other guys in our travel group tried to figure out how to use the jack. Must've been manufactured during WW II because no one had ever seen anything like it. Got the car jacked up and tire changed no problem, but then couldn't get it down again. After scratching our heads for almost 30 minutes, we suggested that where we're from it's perfectly acceptable to go "Dukes of Hazard" style and just drive off the jack. Luckily we finally got it down the boring way. Ethan's cough has gotten worse. He started running a fever last night and his breathing was sounding a little like a pterodactyl. Thank God for our pediatrician who sends us to China with antibiotics to use "at our discretion." Hoping the meds work and his breathing doesn't continue to worsen. We have slept very little the past 48 hours. At about 2:00 this morning I decided I am too old to have any more children...not to birth them, but to actually take care of them. Let's see, how can I describe Ethan. Imagine a miniature land-dwelling octopus (except warm-blooded and much cuter) who is FAST as all get out, has NO feeding schedule, NO nap schedule, and doesn't understand a word you're saying. Oh, and throw in the fact that he has decided he sleeps much better at night when he can use some part of my body as a pillow. No, we are not "family bed" kind of people, but someone didn't get the memo on that. Oh well, sleep is highly overrated anyway. And he's so darn cute it almost makes up for it. The bonding is going great. He will search us out in a room, preferring these two caucasians-wearing-glasses to any other caucasians that he sees. He will sit in our laps while he drinks his bottle and will SOMETIMES let us hold onto the bottle with him. But try to hold the bottle for him, taking away his control and it's all over. Today he spontaneously walked over and plopped himself onto my lap which almost made me cry. Please continue to pray that he can get healthy.