We had the best day in China, to date!! Yippee. This tired momma is happy to report that we are seeing huge improvements in Leos behavior!! Rocking him routinely (several hours a day) has really helped a ton. We had breakfast this morning,. and Leo did not throw any utensils or food. He called me names sometimes, but very quickly clamped his hand over his mouth and just as quickly said Sorry momma. Then he said Momma Hen Hao! (spelling??). It means momma is very good. Many times today Leo said Momma is very good; I think he said I was good at least as many times as he called me bad names. I call it even. Leo still hits and pinches himself regularly, which. to be honest, scares the crap of out of us, but he seems to know now that we don’t want him to hurt us or himself either. Cheng’s parents (Cheng was our exchange student 09-10) came to visit, and it took them less than a minute before they asked John what’s wrong with DangTong. John explained in Chinese that we’re working through some things, and, of course, they were just FABULOUS. They don’t know more than 10 words of English, but they are just wonderful people, and extremely supportive. They also brought their parents on this trip (a 5 hour flight) to meet us too!! Wow!! We feel so honored. We all went (several taxi cabs) to a botanical park to spend the day. It poured rain half the time, but they are all such great people we just hid out in a greenhouse waiting for the storm to pass. We had an elaborate and wonderful lunch, and we were all honored guests of Cheng’s parents. David and I took turns carrying DangTong, and the two grandmas kept trying to talk him into giving momma‘s back a break. He's 5 years old next week, and should really walk sometimes. No dice. After lunch (and we were soaked to the skin by the afternoon), we retired to our hotel. Cheng’s parents took John and Ben (and the grandparents) to their hotel, and the four of us rested in our room for two hours. When they all returned to our hotel at 5pm, we spent a few hours playing the card game UNO! No one was hungry, so we let the new little kids play legos while we all played cards. After KangChao and DongTang went to sleep, about 8pm, we left the sleeping children with John and met the Liangs (Cheng’s parents) at the lounge to really talk. We spent several hours attempting to talk with them,about adoption, our children, the economy, China, their son Cheng, and world politic. We just now (11pm) said goodbye. They are going to look for an activity tomorrow that is not outside. It’s supposed to rain again all day. Ugh. We just can’t seem to catch a break.
