More pictures of our little Sasha

Monday, Sept 24

Ray and I did a few errands today trying to get a few things done before he left for home. We ran up and exchanged quilts at Vietnam Quilts, went to the bank and bought a duffel bag at a store by the lake. We bought a nice duffel bag (I forgot the brand name and don't know if it was a rip off, but it looked nice and seemed to be good quality) and a small North Face backpack for $24. Again, back pack might not be North Face, but it is good quality and I really like it. I needed it to use as a diaper bag for the next week and a half or so. I can wear that and have Sasha in a front pack or sling. We had a 1:30 appointment at the Embassy. There were several families there with the agency PLAN. About eight families. CUTE BABIES! We didn't wait that long and the meeting or appointment was only about five minutes long. He asked us simple questions like what was our referral date, what did we think of the orphanage, were the people in country with our agency helpful, did the director or anyone else at the orphanage ask for money or anything else, did we see any other chidlren, how many were in our group...easy questions, nice man. He said they would send the paperwork to HCMC who would contact them to set up the next appointment. He said it usually took 4-6 business days. I was hoping they would see that we were nice people and say forget about the next appointment and hand us her visa. Didn't happen. Oh well.
So Ray left at 4:00 pm for the airport. I wish he could have stayed because we finally have nothing to do but relax until Thursday when we have the SOS appoinment. We never can relax at home so it would have been nice. I don't know if we know how to relax, we always have so many things going on at home, with friends, or with work. But he needs to go home and get back to work and to take care of our kids. I'm sure my mom, sister, and older children are ready to have him take over!
I went down to the store and bought some groceries. I bought pasta, spaghetti sauce, cookies, a large water bottles, microwave popcorn, peanut butter, jelly and a loaf of bread for about $14. I had peanut butter and jelly toast for dinner and it was wonderful! The restaurant stays open until 12:00 and they told me they do room service. Wow! I'll be using that. I just felt like pb & j tonight. Sasha and I enjoyed walking around the hotel instead of going out tonight. Tomorrow is the Mid Autumn Festival and it was crowded outside. It also started raining a little, which was nice. When we finished shopping we came home, played for a while, I gave her a bath, a bottle and she went to sleep. She is such a sweet baby! She has calmly gone whereever we wanted to go and been peaceful and sweetnatured through it all. We know how lucky we are!

Sasha's first bath

Sunday's Visit to Lang Son

We received paperwork giving us information about where Sasha was found in Lang Son, so we had a van take us up there again today. It was only $80, which is a great price since it is about three hours away. There was a driver and a woman interpreter who actually helped out a lot by finding the right place. It was even prettier than when we went the other day to get Sasha. It is so green and lush. As soon as you leave Hanoi it gets prettier and as you head up towards Lang Son it gets really nice. It is a very poor area though. It was a nice drive there and we took a lot of pictures when we got to where we wanted to go, but the way back was l-o-n-g. Our driver went so slow that everyone passed us. We didn't mind as much on the way there, but on the way back we had been in the car too long. We stopped on the way back for something to eat. They had asked us if we wanted to stop and we said okay as long as it was at a hotel or big resteraunt. Well, we stopped at a place along the side of the road. It was buy, there were probably twenty or thirty people there inside and out, but we just drank Cokes. Why? Because in the case you look at to chose dinner our options were cow tongue, cow brain, some kind of big fish, cow intestines and other internal organs. It was interesting to people watch though. We were gone for about seven hours altogether. We are really glad we went though, we got a lot of good pictures.
I was worried about Sasha the last few days. She would only drink about two ounces at a time and would go a long time (sometimes five hours) before I could get her to take more. We heated it up like we knew she was used to, she would just loose interest after a couple of ounces. She is pretty tiny, three month clothes fit her and the six month size I have to roll up. So she doesn't have any chub to spare. I started writing down how much she ate and the time as well as how often she slept starting yesterday. She might have slept through the night last night but she started tossing at some point so I made her a bottle. I finally woke her up so I could feed her and go back to sleep. Anyway, I started writing it down and then we went on our trip. I had brought four four once bottles. All she did on the trip was sleep and eat. In those seven hours we were gone she drank all four bottles and then had another as soon as we got back to our room! She had that bottle and one more before I put her to bed around 8:30 pm. WOW! I guess I don't have to worry anymore. I will keep an eye on it for the next few days to make sure she doesn't go back. She was 12 1/2 pounds adn almost 26 inches when we brought her to the SOS clinic the first day. We know she has grown. She also smiles much more easily and quickly. We have noticed that she has started preferring me over Ray the last two days. I wasn't sure at first and thought I may just be hoping she was attaching to me, but she really has started looking around for me if he has her and tonigt she reached out for me when he was holding her. I just want her to start attaching and am very happy she is attaching to me! Ray goes home tomorrow afternoon, so I have to go so we can start packing.

Saturday, Sept 22

We moved out of the Melia today and moved over to the Somerset. It's about a five minute walk away. Maybe less. We were sorry to leave the Melia because it is so nice and we had just really walked around and seen how nice it was last night. The pool area is really nice and so are the hot tub/relaxation/massage areas. We sat down in the bar/lobby downstairs and listened to the band for a little while. It was nice. So today we moved to the Somerset and wound up really liking it. We have a two bedroom suite that has two bathrooms and a kitchen. We like the family room area as well. We are sorry that we didn't move over sooner. The Melia is nice, but this place is more family friendly for a long term stay. We had lunch at Jaspas, the resteraunt here, and liked it. We ran into a couple from another agency who we had met on the plane ride over here. After lunch we ran into another couple fromour agency (Julie and Steve) with their two boys and two new little girls. We went to the Museum of Ethnology in the afternoon and enjoyed it. It was very interesting. I am sure that there is always something going on there, but it was pretty busy outside. They were celebrating Autumn Festival. A lot of young families and teenagers were outside on the grounds doing various arts and crafts in the different booths. We came home and relaxed for a while. Sasha took a long nap. We decided to go to Bobby Chins for dinner, but when we got there we realized we weren't that hungry so we walked around the lake for a while then took a taxi home. I gave Sasha her first bath in the sink. Before this I had just given her sponge baths. I didn't know if it would scare her and so I decided to wait. She seemed to like it. She smiled at me a few times and never cried. She even let me rinse her hair without getting upset. I put her pjs on and she fell asleep pretty soon after that.

Sweet baby girl

Sasha doesn't like congee