Health Update

Thanks for everyone's prayers. Eliana is still in the hospital but we belive that she is past the worst of it. Friday night was touch and go, but last night noticed improvement. She still is very lethargic and the occasional fever. Margaret is spending the day with her while I am pulling the night shift. We have a translator to help us and have hired a nanny and an extra hotel room for Olivia. In addition Olivia has broncitis and had to get an IV at the hospital. She seems relatively well though and is staying with us at the hotel.

We are hopeful that we might be able to fly to Beijing on Tuesday (according to our other group members already in Beijing the hospital there is much nicer and English speaking Doctors are available) this will potentially allow us to still make our flight on Thursday back to Canada. All of this will depend on how things go with Eliana over the next 24 hours.

We know that the Lord is in control and our confidence is in Him.

Lucas Update

Andrew and Margaret asked us to post this update. Eliana is currently in the hospital in Guangzhou with bacterial pneumonia so they do not have time to send updates. As a result of her hospitalization, they are unsure of their return date to Canada. They appreciate your prayers.

Graham and Elizabeth Faulkner

Some goings on

Well there is not that much to update this week really. We’ve had the past couple of days with the girls, doing things like shopping and going to the zoo. Some photos attached.

The zoo was very hot and the girls did a lot of sleeping. So I think Andrew and I did most of the animal viewing.

We also spent some time in the hospital, getting treatment for Eliana this week. After going to an International Clinic – we found out she was fairly sick and needed different treatment than the Chinese hospital recommended. Now after her checkup today, she is finally appearing to be on the mend.
Tomorrow (Friday) is our last day in Guangzhou, so it is also a packing day. It will be interesting to see how we manage packing with Eliana and Olivia on our hips J. We leave early Saturday am to fly to Beijing for 6 days before returning home.

So Many Firsts!!!

The past 2 days have been fairly quiet from an “exploring” China perspective, but great days of our girls exploring many things (including us) and us getting to see many firsts in our daughters in such a short time.

New today is that Olivia now has a ready smile for us when we play (not as freely as Eliana but we’ll take all the smiles we can get!). The smiling for her is very new as she seems to be the introverted one that is analyzing everything and trying to make sense of all the changes in her life.

Some of our firsts include seeing the two of them go from lying on their stomachs to sitting up on their own (not completely stable yet though), seeing their beautiful smiles (no gut laughs yet…), seeing them respond to their names, we bathed them for our first time, watching them play on their own now, hearing their little sweet voices in self-talk (they are SOOO sweet), and seeing them reach for us to hold them or crawl to us to get the bottle.

Eliana has become a mommy’s girl very quickly that wants to be held by me whenever she sees me. She is very content with Daddy also – she just prefers mommy when she gets the choice. She will also crawl to where I am standing just to put a hand on my foot or ask to be picked up. Today she pulled herself up for the first time – cool to see!

Olivia has this great “flying” mode when she lays on the ground. She’s on her tummy with her legs and arms raised, flapping away. She has the greatest mouth/lip pucker thing she does – so adorable! She has frequent baby talk conversations now when she plays by herself.

The night sleeps are getting shorter as it seems one or the other is awake, or coughing which is turn is keeping us up. (the amazing thing is that one girl wailing loud will not disturb the other!) Both girls had a cold when we got them and we had to visit the hospital for a couple of related things. But Olivia’s cold is mostly gone, Eliana’s persists though which is making her and our sleep difficult. Eliana does also have a sore on her head (that is why the gauze in the one picture) that we are treating.

Their energy level is now amazing – wow – busy girls!!! Especially Eliana. Olivia seems a bit more independent, but interacts very well with us and loves our attention.

Enjoy some photos

First Full Day as a Family

FRIDAY
Here are some highlights from our first day as a family. If you are not sure which girl is which the easiest way to tell is the amount of hair. Olivia has hair, Eliana not so much.

We decided to introduce the girls to the family, starting with Eliana. She has already studied up on the St. Pierre cousins and has moved on to Grandma and Grandpa. Aunts and Uncles are on the agenda for tomorrow.

Here we are at the Civil Affairs office to finalize the adoption.

Both girls had there 1st pooh today which was great considering it can often take several days following placement. Of course Olivia decided to wait until we had just put on a fresh diaper before wincing up her face and screaming that pooh out. Both were in fairly good spirits today (Olivia in top photo, Eliana bottom).

For the most part they are eating, sleeping and playing well. They are solid sleepers so far and even when their sister is screaming they don’t wake up. Thankfully, so far they seem to take turns making a fuss which is nice since two fussy babies is not something we are eagerly desiring.
Some twin handling skills.

Forever Family Day

The moment we have been waiting for.

OUR FOREVER FAMILY DAY
We are holding in our arms 2 precious little girls – Eliana and Olivia Lucas. We received our daughters at 3pm today and what an exciting time it was! It actually still feels very surreal. We weren’t sure how we’d feel at this moment but just plain excitement is the best word. Eliana fell asleep right away as she is a little sick but Olivia wanted to see the world. The girls don’t like to be set down right now so the snugglies have become invaluable very quickly!!! They love music so the lullaby music we brought and the sound of our own voices seem to sooth them. They do need all of our personal attention right now so the extra days we decided to spend in Guilin turned out to have been a wise decision as our energy reserves have been topped up.

All of our hotel rooms have been great but this one is quite large – LOTS of room. The 2 little cribs they set up for us will hopefully be successful in bringing rest to Eliana and Olivia tonight J.
The restaurant had great lunch today also so so far so good. Well we’re off to the department store to buy formula. We bought strollers and diapers earlier today.

We’ve attached some pictures for you to see our new family!

P.S. Happy Birthday Jacob, Mark and Kaleb. We hope you had a special day!!!

FRIDAY AM
It is 6:00 am and after putting the girls to bed at 8pm last night – they are still fast asleep!! Hopefully this is repeated night after night J. Of course Andrew and I didn’t sleep the same as all of their small sounds while they slept made us sleep lightly. Hopefully we’ll get used to it very soon and enjoy that long rest with them.

Only 1 more sleep!!!

TUESDAY

It is now Wednesday morning for us. We just came from another amazing breakfast buffet with both Western and Asian food options. The service at this Sheraton Hotel is amazing – you won’t wait a minute for anything.

The Li River cruise yesterday was absolutely beautiful. In 4 hours we saw incredible scenery with the many and very unique Karst hills. This is the 2nd cleanest river in China and is most versatile as it is used by water buffalos, Chinese fishermen, bathers, laundry washers and one man on a meagre bamboo raft ~ while chatting on his cell phone!! They even offered snake wine on board – yep, with the snake in it. Needless to say – we declined.

Our tour to the countryside was great. It was however INCREDIBLY HOT. Seeing the rice growing and production process, visiting with a local farmer in his home and being harassed (yes – this is the best word) to buy things as we walked about were all a great learning experience. It has been a blessing being here with our group of 7 to experience all of this together. Last night we went to the local shopping strip but the heat was still somewhere around the low 30s so we packed it in early. WEDNESDAY

Today we went to see Elephant Trunk Hill and the Seven Star park where President Clinton made a famous (for the Guilin-ites anyway) speech on the environment. While at this spot, Andrew and I were asked to be in several photos with some Chinese young adults - we felt important, if not just for a moment...

We then went to the local Pearl Museum and Market, as Guilin is famous for its salt water pearls, and successfully left "lighter" than when we arrived :) We wanted to buy real pearls for the 3 females in our family as we all have the meaning "a beautiful pearl" in our names. We are taking this afternoon off to pack for tomorrow, and then we are having our final small group dinner tonight and off to see the Cormorant Fishermen show.

TOMORROW...

It is amazing to think that we only have 1 more sleep to go – and then we catch an 8am flight to Guangzhou! The next time you hear from us – we will be parents to 2 beautiful girls! Word is still that we will meet them at 2:30pm China time (2:30am Canada time). No promises on how soon we can post but we’ll do our best.

Thanks to everyone who has been posting comments - we are excited to be able to read them and "connect" with home when we log on! Hopefully the hotel's business centre in Guangzhou will work as well as the past 2 hotels for us to do quick and easy updates for you.

We can read all of your comments

Just a note to let you know we can read all of your comments that you add to our blog as they are automatically emailed to us when we check email. So feel free to comment away as we love to read them and stay "in touch". Just add your name so we know who you are:)

Our last 2 days of “vacation” begin.

MONDAY

We left smoggy Beijing this morning for a very hot Guilin – a record temperature in Guilin of 38 degrees! Our Beijing guide, Jenny, was able to check us in at the airport and we were able to take all of our extra luggage for no extra cost! Though the flight to Guilin was delayed by 2.5 hours, we at least had our group of 7 to wait with.

When we arrived in Guilin, we were not too late to see the Reed Flute Cave as planned (see cool cave photo below), and we saw a Chinese version of Cirque de Soleil tonight. Both were great.
In Guilin we have our own air conditioned tour bus for just the 7 of us on this 3 day tour and we have a dedicated guide, Jeff, so we are being well taken care of.

We have not ventured out too much on the food yet, but we've learned that yellow furred dog is the best dog meat to have ~ if we chose to try it:) and brown furred dog the worst. So I guess Jethro is safe then St. Pierre's! (they assured us they don't eat pet dogs anyway:)

TUESDAY
It is Tuesday morning now and we just came from an amazing breakfast buffet - all with live piano music! We are now off for the famed 4 hour Li River boat cruise, and we're negotiating a trip to the rural area to see the rice fields and a farm. Tonight is set for shopping. Today is forecasted to be cooler – just 36 degrees. Thank goodness for the invention of air conditioning!!

Only 2 more sleeps until we hold Eliana and Olivia for the very first time!!!!

We expect to post again Wednesday pm (Wed am Canada time), at the end of our time in Guilin.

We have arrived!

After a long 13 hours we finally arrived in China. We arrived at the hotel around 5pm local time, which since we are 12 hrs ahead was 5am on the internal clock. As you can imaging we are both very tired and eargerly awaiting a good nights sleep. Tomorrow is an early start having us up for breakfast at 6:30 so we can depart back to the airport at 7 for a 9:30 flight to Guilin. Didn't get to see much of Beijing however we will be back again for the last 5 days of our trip.

We had trouble getting our laptop to connect to the internet from the room so this message has me clunking away at a keyboard in the "Business Centre" of the hotel. Hopefully we will get the laptop to work in Guilin, otherwise this blog might not get updated as often as we would like.

The current weather forecasts

In case anyone is wondering - yes the current forecasts for all 3 cities we will be in in China is low to high 30s (plus humidity), with evenings still in the mid 20s. It is also calling for thunderstorms in each city we are in, while we are there, next week. Not sure what that does to the site-seeing but we'll see how accurate their forecasts are.

You can see the weather forecasts at http://weather.yahoo.com/regional/CHXX_G.html, and select any of the 3 cities we will be in (Guilin, Guangzhou, Beijing).

Well rain or shine - we'll meet our sweet daughters either way!!

(now this is REALLY the last update before we go....we think...)

The final blog posting before we leave

It is midnight Thursday night and we have managed to complete our packing for 19 days for the 4 of us (that is A LOT of stuff!) - save for a few final additions Saturday am. We are within Air Canada limits but double that of the 3 in China flights so we'll have to see about options when in China. Maybe our Canadian flag luggage tags will gain us some favour in China???

Margaret finished work Wednesday, and Andrew is done on Friday. We then fly out Saturday afternoon. The flight is 13.5 hours direct to Beijing - not the most exciting part of this journey due to its length but necessary unfortunately :)

We have updated our itinerary in the previous posting below with the latest info.

We will try and get a posting up when we settle in Guilin on Monday or Tuesday of next week, assuming the internet is accessible in our hotel there.

Until then - see us in China :)

Andrew & Margaret