Gathering My Children: Goodbye Taiyuan

Tomorrow morning we leave Taiyuan for the final leg of our journey in Guangzhou. We will, of course, have fond memories of the place where we met our son for the first time, the place where he officially became our son. I suppose you can hear the "but" in my sentence so I will go ahead and say it. We are glad to be heading out! Our room as slowly gotten smaller and messier and we have run out of things to entertain ourselves with. The room attendants have been very good about cleaning for us, refreshing our bottled water, and our half roll of toilet tissue. What is it with China and toilet paper? We haven't ventured out much because we don't want to cause Timothy pain, which happens if he is too active. We've been to a cool park, the city square (seen from our window), McDonalds, and a very fancy Pizza Hut. We've shopped at the local supermarket, Spar, and a nearby WalMart. We've stared out the window through the ever present smog at the incessant traffic of buses, cars, bikes, walkers, and motorcycles in the crazy "roundabout" that circles the center of town. Still not sure why there haven't been any casualties. We've been photographed and filmed by random strangers and even posed in family pictures (with random families). Not much left to do but pack.

Timothy has learned to order the waitresses around and was almost whisked out his chair by one to choose better food than I had set before him
. I stopped her with the word for pain, pointing at his bag. He would probably been okay, but I wasn't okay with her carrying him off. It is bad enough that he loves BaBa more than me, I don't need strangers giving him better food than me. Yes, it is clear now that BaBa finally has a child that loves him the most. I have had to do all the painful things that must be done, like diaper changes, which truly are painful for him and bathing him and BaBa has been the fun go-to guy. Not fair, but I guess after all these children, he deserves to have one that dotes on him.