How is she doing?

Here is an update on how Nina's last couple of days have been. To make it a little more poetic and a little less painful, just imagine this: A cloudy day, with lighter and darker clouds covering the skies, an occasional outpour of rain, but amidst the gloom an occasional burst of sunshine that breaks through the dark cover.
That would describe our little Miss.
Ever since our outing to Martyr's park on Wednesday our little girl has been grieving terribly. She is just very withdrawn, solemn, and every so often she just starts crying. She still lets me (Mike is still on the outskirts of her circle of trust) hold her and comfort her during these times, but it's just so sad. To top it off, she was not feeling well at all yesterday. The fever she had from her cold returned and her cough was getting worse. I was able to get some antibiotics from another family, and they are helping quite a bit so far. I'm thankful for that. I think she is still waiting for the day we take her back, and she cried this afternoon after Daphne left (she had brought us all of our adoption documents). We bought Nina a small backpack this afternoon, and she loves it, but I have a feeling she interprets it as getting ready to go home. And in a way we are, but not how she envisions.
She appears to still be Mama-shopping, or is at least on the outlook for a familiar face.
This afternoon though we had a few fun-filled hours, where we saw the little girl again that we saw on Monday. She loves balloons, so we played with those for quite some time, and she packed and unpacked her backpack MANY times. She loves to throw stuff around like you would not believe, and once her attachment to us grows, we will definitely have to address that little habit. We do find things that she seems to enjoy - she likes the xylophone in the hotel's playroom, she enjoyed taking a bath with me and play with the stacking cups, she really likes Curious George (did you hear that, Lena??), and we have been watching it a couple of times at bedtime. She will actually snuggle up to Mike during that time, which is very cool, so we might be watching lots of curious George the next few days. She giggles during the movie and it seems to calm her down. She was so sad tonight when I got out her PJ's, as I truly think that she was ready to head out the door.
She is so sweet, so loveable, but we are so looking forward to her showing us some love too. We might have to wait a while yet, and that's okay, but not always easy.

I can't believe that we are leaving Changsha tomorrow. I really don't want to go back to Guangzhou, and it seems so final to leave Nina's birth province behind. Will we ever be back? I sure hope so, because this is a beautiful place, and I would love to see more of the countryside (I'm getting a little City-ed out).

I'll leave you with a couple of pictures from today (from Nina's happy moments with her new backpack), and then it's "Good night". We will have a busy day tomorrow!



*****Deutsche Version: www.chinagirlswitzerland.blogspot.com Titel: Wie geht es Nina? ****