Year of the Dog

My sister Liz sent Thuy this cute little t-shirt that says Year of the Dog. Thuy is a Dog for the chineese/Vietnamese calender. On the back if you can't read it, it says, "Loves attention, very loving and cuddley, but sometimes can be a cry baby, very loyal, especially to Mom." I think its so adorable. She got it from Red Envelope I believe. The only problem was when she was wearing it everyone kept asking if she was a boy or a girl. I guess the red confused them. I should have put a bow in her hair.

She was such a good baby all day today. We ran her all over town doing errands with Oma and our family here in VN then met up with the group this afternoon to go to the embassy for our first interview. They informed us the paperwork will now go to Ho Chi Min City to be approved and if no problems, it comes back, then we will schedule the second embassy interview. The second interview should be fairly short and simple with just some paperwork to sign. Then we'll apply for our visas which should take approximately 24 hours. So after the second interview we should be on our way home in 24-48 hours. But they did tell us today it may take 10 to 14 days till the paperwork returns from Saigon. Good news is that will give us plenty of time to do some things like possibly go to HaLong Bay, Sa Pa, museums, etc. The bad news is we may be getting home a little later than we thought. We're flying Korean airlines and had our return for next wednesday, but we'll just change them. We have tickets that allow us to change dates with no charge. We checked on this specifically before we left. We booked straight through the airlines and didn't use a travel agent because when we talked to several travel agents they all told us once we were in VN and needed to change dates we'd just call the airline directly anyway, so we cut out the middle man to save some hassle.

I now have caught Thuy's cold. And so has one of the other Mom, not Thuy's cold, but her own baby's cold. I feel rather lousy, so I now know why Thuy was so fussy these last few days. I'd be more fussy if I thought it would help. But Thuy's nasal drainage and cough is getting much better. Another thing not to forget is a bulb suction and nasal spray for your baby. Lots of the kids have a cold. So a few drops in each nostril to loosen up the yuck then use the bulb sxn.

Several of the families asked Bill come to check their kids. So he's been the doctor on call. All the kids look great, except for the cold of course. I will say Thuy looks so healthy, I'm so happy with the love and care she received at the Lang Son orphanage. She doesn't have any scabies, diaper rash, bug bites, or anything. She looks perfect minus the scratch she got on her nose with us and a little forhead acne. She takes after me with the breakouts I guess.

This afternoon after the interviews we stopped by the Trang Tien book store and purchased a book on ethnic minorities of VN with some great pictures. And a few blocks away in another book store I found quite a few VN books with English and VN. I bought ones that covered colors, alphabet, numbers, and shapes. They are cute and Oma read through the vegetable book with me to help me with the pronounciations.

Tomorrow we are meeting with Martin at 10:00 am to go to pick up Thuy's Vietnamese passport that we had expedited. Then hopefully we'll be able to get squeezed in this week for her medical exam at the SOS clinic. And we're possibly thinking of renting a van this weekend for our cousin to drive us and some of the other families up to Ha Long Bay.