It's a new dawn..

It's a new day 
It's a new life 
For Jemma 
And she's feeling good...

Jemma has turned the corner!!! Who knew that all it would take was a tub of play-doh to change a girls life forever??? Yesterday afternoon in a moment of despair I took out some play-doh from my bag. When her little eyes saw it, her little face lit up! She actually shook with excitement! We played with it for about an hour and since then we are BFFs! TIGHT!!! She has not stopped talking and smiling since then!!! In fact, it doesn't stop at talking and smiling, try giggling, laughing, squealing, running, jumping, skipping, dancing, galloping!!! This little girl has been opening up her little heart to us in the last 36 hours faster than I ever thought possible!! We are utterly in love with her little personality! I know this was only made possible though by all the prayers lifted up on her behalf! Thank you to everyone for praying for our sweet girl!! I know there will be some more challenging days ahead of us, but to see her open her heart and start to trust us already is indescribable. 

Yesterday we packed our bags and said good bye to Hefei and flew on to Guangzhou!! We arrived at the beautiful White Swan Hotel late last night and just fell into bed we were so exhausted. Patrick has not been feeling well at all:( In fact he was unable to go with us to the medical clinic today for Jemma's medical. Please can you pray that he starts to feel better soon. He probably wont be able to go touring tomorrow either but we're hoping that by Monday he will be feeling better and be able to enjoy this beautiful city! Guangzhou is very different to Hefei. It is much warmer and the place where we're staying is not as crowded and busy as Hefei. 

Today I had to take Jemma to a medical exam. We were crammed into a room with what seemed like a gazillion other adoptive families, all there for the same reason. After 4 hours of being in that stuffy room, three vaccinations and one TB test we finally got out of there. Before we left for the exam I was really worried that it would make Jemma regress but the girl was in top form! Smiling, laughing, dancing while we waited! She was so adorable! She even handled the shots like a champ, she cried when they did them but then I whipped out a lollipop and it was all forgotten! No grudges were held.

We spent the afternoon just walking around outside, playing in the hotel and eating at a place called Lucy's. Lucy's serves american food, and one thing I have learned about Jemma, don't expect her to eat anything else if there are french fries on the table. The girl loves her some fries!

In the little park area next to the hotel there are many bronze statues of kids. Well we had to go say hello to each one several times before Jemma gave me the okay to head on home! She also plays this little game where she pretends we are on a side walk and the path in front of us is a road, we have to look both ways and then I have to pretend I am going to walk across the road, and then she squeals and jibberjabbers in Chinese about how I can't do that. After doing that a few times, she will look both ways and say "hulla hulla" which means we can now cross the "road". LOL, I guess it's a life skill they have to learn early in China! 

My favourite moment of the day by far though? The moment where she saw something exciting and said, "mama! mama!" and pointed for me to look! My heart about exploded with joy! 

She is now sound asleep in her bed. She still cries when she goes to sleep and I have to hold her hand and rub it while she whimpers herself to sleep.

Oh and one more thing.. the talking in Chinese?? I can hardly stand it! It is sooooooo stinkin' cute! And it is constant! She is a real chatterbox! 

Also, to my fellow Edward lovers.. a little treat for you in the pictures :) It made my day to find this in China!! :)

7 more sleeps!!! 7 more sleeps until I get to hug all my babies on the same continent!