Walking With Faith: Day 7...Zheng Zhou part 2

Well this afternoon has been a mixture of good and bad. After the pool, we attempted to lay Annabella down for a nap, and that did not go over well. We had a lot of this...

And it continued for most of the day. She was either all the way happy, or all the way not. The Smith family from Rienzi was also having naptime issues so we all decided to head to Pizza Hut for dinner around 4:30. Dinner went well, but as it was time to pay, Annabella got extremely fussy again and I had to put her in her stroller and take her outside and stroll her up and down the sidewalk until the guys paid and came out. After dinner we had to head to Wal Mart to pick up some snack food and diaper wipes. We also grabbed Annabella a small tambourine and a box of crayons. We let her have the tambourine, but the crayons we stuck back for tomorrow.

While we were in Wal Mart, we could not stop moving the stroller. Annabella was fussy and wanted to be constantly moving forward, and when you are trying to look at pictures of packages and decide on what snacks to buy, it is very difficult to manage a stroller in constant forward motion! We tried letting Greg stroll her, but she wanted me, and only me to do it. We finally wound up just grabbing a few things, and I read packages as we strolled down the neighboring aisle, then we would go back down the first aisle and place what we didn't want back on the shelf and grab the next thing we wanted to look at.

When she saw us pick up something we'd had as a snack earlier in the day, she had a meltdown wanting us to open it right then and there which we could not do. We were finally able to get her calmed down with a sucker. Although I HATE giving them to her, we have to calm her anyway we can when we are in public. We are under much scrutiny being Americans with a Chinese baby in China...lots of stares and glares, and though most people are really nice, and smile and wave, and seem to be fine, when Annabella is upset, that changes instantly. We calmed her down enough to finish shopping, but at the checkout she wanted out of the stroller and wanted to walk. We let her out, but she wanted to walk away where we could not follow her and so when we stopped her she melted down again. We could not calm her with anything we had so finally I just grabbed her and the stroller and we went downstairs to wait for Greg to pay.

By the time her came out she was in an even more epic meltdown, and was trying to bite me no matter which way I had her. Leaving her in the stroller was simply not an option. He took over managing the writhing screaming, overly tired baby as I put all our groceries onto the stroller and we headed out to the hotel. We finally strapped her back into the stroller for everyone's protection, and after a block or so she finally calmed down. By the time we made it back to the hotel, she was barely able to hold up her head! We immediately bathed her and put her into her pj's but she refused a bottle. We had a major battle royale in which I'm pretty sure we all cried, and finally she was asleep.

Tomorrow we will most likely talk to our rep here to see what we can do to help her nap. She is so happy and playful when she isn't sleepy, but just like any toddler, when she is tired, she is cranky. Well. I'm just plain worn out after the battles today. Tomorrow we may try to go to the park, or maybe to the playroom upstairs. I doubt we will venture out anywhere else, especially if she refuses to nap again.

We have given her a nickname today. Stinky tofu. That's what she smells like when she toots, and she has had some very major gas today. The change in her diet I'm sure has a lot to do with that, but let me tell you, when she lets one go, it could level a city block! We keep checking her diaper, but today she never pooped. Since we had the major blowout yesterday, we were expecting another tonight, so we will have to keep an eye on that as well. Well, I'm about to head to bed so I can grab what sleep I can to prepare for tomorrow. Please be in prayer for both Annabella's sleeping situation to resolve itself, so she can get the rest she needs, and for her tummy. I know that it can't feel super great, and we don't want her suffering in any way. Thanks as always for your support and prayers. They have meant so much to us, and we will never be able to explain just how much we've needed it. God Bless!!!