The Farm Life Re:Defined: Guangzhou

We arrived in Guangzhou last night (Friday) around 9:30PM. Our guide, Richard, met us at the airport and drove us to our hotel, The Victory, on Shaiman Island in Guangzhou. First order of business was putting Ivan down for bed. He was tired and went down quickly. Unfortunately, our room was a frigid 20 degrees Celsius...that's 68 degrees fahrenheit...and Ivan woke up frozen. He spent the remainder of the night keeping us toasty in bed.

This morning (Saturday) we met our guide and another family to go complete Ivan's medical exam and complete paperwork for our consulate appointment. Ivan really had no taste for the doctor nor the TB blood test. To do the paperwork we went to the other family's hotel suite and they generously shared their milk boxes (like a juice box) and snacks with Ivan. In the midst of his water and juice boycott we discovered he LOVES milk! Great! By the time we put him down tonight he had five of them!

This afternoon while Ivan napped we enjoyed Subway subs on our room's balcony. Then we headed out to a mall our guide had told us had good restaurants. We eventually found it, via an outdoor market selling dried snakes, starfish, and sea horses. We picked up more milk boxes at the grocery store and then had dinner. We chose dinner at a Mexican restaurant. Funny enough, they gave us plastic gloves as an accompaniment to our meal. Ivan became enthralled by the plastic glove and we are pretty sure he may have a future as a lunch lady..err man. ;) The day ended in the best way possible - Ryan joined Ivan in the tub and Ivan developed a love (rather than his former hatred) for bath time! It really was a precious thing to watch Ivan splash and play with the toys instead of sob.

All in all, today was a pretty simple day, but probably one of Ivan's best so far. He definitely has a preference for Ryan at this point, but that makes this Momma's heart happy! We have also noticed he is slightly less clingy, and is more willing to walk short distances from us, then quickly return back to us. This is a hopeful sign from an attachment standpoint. He also had a couple instances of being overwhelmed/overly tired and melting to the ground. We know that developing a secure attachment is a marathon, and we aren't yet to the first mile marker.