4:00 A.M. is an ungodly hour to be awakened by a blood curdling scream. But I guess that Patrick Hao doesn’t know how to tell time yet. Mary was able to get him back to sleep with a little rocking. But at 5:00 A.M. Lucas Ming was done sleeping for the night. Mary kicked me out of bed to take care of Lucas. She has not been feeling well in the mornings for a good portion of the trip. This seems to diminish after she gets something to eat. But today it is the worst that it’s been.
I fed Lucas two bowls of rice cereal and a half of a banana. At 7:30 A.M. Patrick Hao woke up but was not ready to eat. We got the boys dressed and went down to breakfast. It is a pleasure having them in highchairs.
We met Nancy and the other family in our group at 9:30 A.M. and headed out for today’s tour. We started out at Nanjing Xuan Wu Lake Park. This is a beautiful area that is in the middle of the city. Parts of the remaining city wall surround the park. The entrance to the park is through one of the original gates. Ming fell asleep just before we got there so we put him in the stroller and he remained asleep for most of the park visit. Today is actually bearable, it is about 90 degrees with a slight breeze.
Our next stop was the Nanjing Museum. We were looking forward to some air conditioning at this point. When we arrived they gave us a second stroller, this was a really good thing. This museum contains cultural artifacts that date back more than 2800 years. The collections are amazing. Jade has been used throughout China’s history for everything from axe heads to currency. And I thought that Stihl chainsaws were expensive. There were several large groups of children who were on tour at the museum. We started to walk past one such group when one of the chaperons asked if they were twins. Next thing we knew we were surround by at least 30 kids and 10 adults. All of them were amazed that we had twin boys with blue eyes and curly hair. At first, the boys were good with this but quickly became overwhelmed. We were able to escape unscathed. Next we went into the museum gift shop. The sales staff was a little pushy and the boys began a major meltdown. Exit stage left.
We got back to the hotel at 1:30 P.M. and the boys went down for a nap. The time got away from us and we did not get a nap. We are going to have to work on timing this better. At 5:00 P.M. the boys were up and Cindy came to the room. Cindy had a small flashlight with her and was shining it on the floor. The boys tried to step on the spot where the light shone. Eventually the boys were dancing after the light. This was quite the site. Nancy took me to the post office so that I could ship some of the gifts that we’ve purchased home. We are trying to keep the load as light as possible. I had 3 choices for shipping. Express service which would get the package there in one week. Regular service which takes about a month and the Slow Boat from China Service. This takes between one and three months. I chose the regular service, hopefully we will receive the gifts before the boys graduate from high school. After dinner we gave the boys a bath. We are thankful that the boys love the bath. They play and splash and when it comes time to wash their hair they love having water poured over their heads. We put the boys to bed at a little after 8:00P.M. Patrick Hao continues to be a problem putting to sleep but he finally is out like a light. Lucas Ming is long gone. We are not too far behind, this parenting stuff is wearing us out. Tomorrow we have a big day, we are heading to the boys orphanage.
