I shared Marigold’s adoption story, but I never shared the rest of our trip to China- both before we met Marigold and our almost two weeks in China together after the day we met. So today I’m going to share the Beijing part of our trip, up until right before we met Marigold. We arrived in China early enough to enjoy a long weekend together doing tourist things before we flew to Nanchang to meet Marigold. We knew this might be Nova’s first memories of China (she had just turned four before this trip) so we wanted to make it extra special for her. My sister, Emma, also joined us for the first two cities (it’s a three city trip- we visited Beijing, Nanchang and Guangzhou).
Our first day in Beijing we were pretty jet lagged. We went swimming (aunt Emma was the BEST and went swimming with Nova almost every day for a week straight). This is random but we used a lot of precious suitcase space taking Nova’s kiddo life jacket to China, but we knew it would be worth it because it’s something consistent we could do every day so she could get some energy out. We had so much fun!
On our first night in Beijing we wanted to sort of re-live a moment from Nova’s adoption trip and we went to the same restaurant for a traditional duck dinner. It was pretty surreal since only about a year and a half had passed since we were there to adopt Nova.
The next day we met up with our friend Meredith and spent a bunch of time with her. She was living in China at the time and she took us shopping, to The Great Wall and to this hilarious “Friends” replica cafe that was on my bucket list. It was super rainy. I remember we let Nova have rolled ice cream for breakfast haha and we visited some beautiful parks.
The Great Wall was as beautiful as I expected, SO beautiful. We were luck that it wasn’t too busy on the day we went. We took a ski lift (type thing…) up to the top. It can be a super athletic hike if you want it to be, but since we had a toddler with us we kept it pretty easy.
We took the toboggan slide down and it was SO FUN. I highly recommend it if you ever get to go. Jeremy rode down with Nova… it was so cute!
The Central Perk (replica) cafe was cute. We got lattes that said “How you doin?”
The breakfast buffets at the “western” Chinese hotels really are a thing of glory. It’s the only time in my life I can remember being really excited about a buffet. And they’re so random! Nova loved having noodles for almost every single meal. It’s one of the parts about our trips that gives me a lot of nostalgia. Maybe because we’re jetlagged and/or getting up super early with a new kiddo, so we end up spending hours at these breakfast buffets at like 6am.
In this photo Nova is writing letters to Marigold. You can see a video of it here… just be ready for your heart to explode.
We took this photo as we were heading out to catch our flight to Nanchang. We arrived there the night before our family day (the day we met Marigold). Our hotel was incredible, which was super comforting since we knew we’d be spending a lot of time there. The next morning we had our elaborate hotel buffet and it was so surreal because we knew that within just a few hours we’d be back at that same hotel, but this time with two children. We had no idea what was about to happen, we just knew our lives would never be the same.
You can read about Marigold’s family day here. I’ll be back soon to share the rest of our China trip. I’m somewhat embarrassed that it took me so long to write these posts, but I’m proud to do it now. The first six months home with two children was a completely blur to me- it feels good to revisit these memories now that our lives have found a new normal.
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It has now been a little more than two weeks since we’ve been living our best self-quarantined life. My friend said to me two weeks ago that whether we like it or not, this will be one of the defining moments of our lifetime. I have thought about that quite a bit.
It seems that each 24 hour period contains some of the most heartwarming, magical moments… but also some low points that can feel pretty heavy. Our children are thriving. Goldie said “please” for the first time this week (a word we had been working on for months) and Nova is the most loving and cuddly she has ever been.
She’s so precious.
Obviously some parts have been tough. As they are for everyone. For us… well there’s the normal worrying for our parents and grandparents health, loss of income from our bnb business and trying to get work done each day without childcare of any kind (and on top of that we’ve been moving, which Jeremy has done probably 70% of it by himself). I’m super aware how lucky we are that we CAN work from home, that we own our own businesses and that our income isn’t coming only from our bnb biz. I’m not complaining…. but I am tired. I mean- aren’t we all?
I’m doing my best to embrace this strange time. I’m glad it happened while our children are little because they don’t seem to notice or mind that we never leave the house. I’m so thankful. Today they are helping Jeremy wash the car and they think it’s SO COOL.
Hello! It’s been one week since we moved into our new home. We are doing a two-phase move because we left our previous home staged for showings. Now that it’s under contract (WOOO!) we’re planning to move the rest of our furniture within the next few days.