My little girl's first full day back in "my Ti-nah!"

This is gonna be short cause my eyelids keep closing...

All three of us had a good night's sleep last night! Kylie zonked out on us around 7:30 pm on the way back from buying bottled water and slept through the night ~ with a brief awakening around 1:30 am when she told me, "I not seepy anymore. I want to watch Ni Hao!" I never turned on the light and told her that she could have some milk but that it was time to sleep. Thankfully within about 15 minutes she was peacefully sleeping again and even I slept until 6:15 (I had gone to bed around 8:30).

It was an exciting day as a mother to watch my child be so excited about being back in her homeland! Even breakfast was exciting to her, she'd smile and say, "I eat nu-nus for breakfast in my Ti-nah!"

Not too bad with the chopsticks ~ looks like she is gonna be a lefty!

After filling up on noodles, bacon, and fruit, we headed out for a full day of sightseeing. We started at the Summer Palace. I didn't listen to much of the history this time as it was more fun to simply watch Kylie ~ besides, we were just here 21 months ago... One major difference for us this time is that the lake was full and in water form vs. frozen solid! It is quite a beautiful place!

Kylie and Darby at the entrance to the Summer Palace.

The unfrozen lake.
(Kylie's fake smile brought to you by Starburst...)

The Long Corridor.
Pretty impressive ~ 728 meters long with thousands of unique paintings of Chinese folklore along the ceiling.

From the Summer Palace it was off to the jade factory (we bought a pendant for Caleb and earrings for Kylie) and then lunch at a Friendship store where we picked up silk outfits for the red couch picture of our kids. Next stop, the Great Wall! As we drove out there, we noticed that we passed the section of the wall we visited last year and went to a different area. It had fewer steps and more of the smooth (but steep!) area. We were also blessed with a very clear day and today I got my views of the Great Wall stretching off into the distance!



Kylie was so excited to be there and kept saying, "We're at the Great Wall!," but every time we broke a camera out she'd clam right up. I think we may have gotten it on the camcorder, but I'm WAY too tired to figure out how to load that onto the blog! Anyway, Kylie wasn't interested in stopping for pictures ~ she wanted to go, go, go and climb the mountain. And so after forcing a shot with the girls and their daddies, we did!

"Okay, okay, so I looked at the camera ~ can we go up now?"

She walked up holding my hand...

And then holding Ian's hand...

And was quite irritated when we decided that we had a while to climb back down!

Several Chinese people stopped and watched her as she picked those little feet up to step up the big steps! They thought she was so cute and such a little trooper! One mother even (at least this is what we decided from body language) scolded her 7 or 8 year old son who was whining. She pointed at Kylie and seemed to say, "If she can do it, you can do it! Let's go!"

Pretty impressive when you realize that Kylie's little legs climbed up to the tower just below the highest one pictured (to the right of the flag, just to the right and below the highest point on this section of wall)!

We will go to Tianamen Square, the Forbidden City and the Olympic Village here in Beijing tomorrow, and then we have a 6pm flight to Wuhan! Oh my goodness, only two more sleeps until we meet Caleb! Kylie is pretty excited to finally be seeing her brother!

PS ~ we're praying that Traci and Adam's (my sister and brother-in-law) yard sale to help fund their adoption from Taiwan is going well! We wish we could have been there to help! Traci is also going to be selling journals, copies of Fireworks and Fireflies (the book she wrote and illustrated for Kylie), and other adoption related items on a website soon! I'll let you know when we have the website up and running! Believe me, you'll want to check it out!