Being Alone...

So I've almost made it through my first whole day by myself with the baby. I think you guys might hear from me more now, as when Chloe is napping, I don't really have much to do...

So today we went and applied for the babies' passports. This part of the government seems VERY efficient, more so than the US!!! Four families went to apply for the passports and we were in and out in about 10 minutes. Nice! Then we went to get the babies' pictures taken for the Visas and medical exam. That, again, took maybe 10 minutes. So we got everything done, and including travel, in about 30 minutes. I think that's the fastest we've done anything so far. We spent about 30 minutes earlier this morning doing paperwork. So we're done with all paperwork!!!!

So I thought we would have been more adventurous as far as eating goes. But really, we've been quite lazy. We basically have our two main staples, and then a few we throw in every once in a while.

Today I had cashew chicken for lunch. For dinner, a club sandwhich, french fries, and an apple crumble tart thing. Pretty good...

I talked in another post about how much I love the pineapple here. I try to stay stocked up in it. Chloe and I went for a walk today and got some more. While the lady was cutting it up, we got pounced on by the lychee lady. She unpeeled one and had me taste it. It was pretty good. You just peel the outside off, there's a seed on the inside like in an avocado, and the fruit that surrounds it is like the texture of a grape.

So the lady offers me this HUGE bag and tells me 20,000 dong. I tell her that's too much. Not the money, the amount of fruit. So she splits it up and hands me about 1/3 of the fruit...I ask her how much...she says 10,000 dong. (At this point, I'm wishing the pineapple lady would get done). I offer her 7,500 instead. She says no, 10,000 dong! I tell her to forget it and start to walk away. Pineapple lady hands we the pineapple and we start to leave. I still have the money in my hand and the lychee lady starts following me, hollering something. I turn around and she takes about 4 of them out, shoves the bag in my hand and snatches my money. I guess I can't complain too much, as it cost approx $.45, but I'm pretty sure that I just got ripped off by the lychee lady. I paid the same amount for these things that I paid for the AWESOME pineapple...

But what do you do???

Back to the post topic...being alone. We bought a stroller, so it's nice for going on some short walks with Chloe. We keep them pretty short, as she doesn't like being in it for long. But mostly I'm just hotel bound. (And Mark thought HE was stir crazy being in the room...) The other families here have been awesome, helping out whenever they can. I've had every meal delivered to my car, visits, help lugging my bag around, etc. So that is totally awesome.

Chloe is constantly crying...the only thing that soothes her is if I am standing up walking around with her, or feeding her. Most of the time only the bottle works. I feel like I am WAY over feeding her. But she throws up so often, I'm not sure if the bottles count! She also regular spits up. I've considered whether this vomiting is due to overfeeding, but I don't think so, as she's been doing it from the very start, and we've only been giving her 4 oz at a time.

I guess its unfair of me to say constantly. It just seems like constantly. She's such a funny baby. She's either REALLY, REALLY upset and crying, or she REALLY, REALLY happy and laughing. She's so adorable when she's happy. (She's adorable when she's not too :) ) I think we'll have a lot of real good bonding time.

So Chloe's "birthdate" is 01/02/2007 . Thuy elaborated that by birthdate, it simply means the day that they were found abandoned...they don't try to estimate the baby's age. For example, in our group, there are two babies' whose birthdates are two days apart...they are both just 3.5 months. But if you look at the two babies', they are so obviously further apart in age. So its possible that one was abandoned right after birth, while the other baby was taken care of for awhile.

Everybody (vietnamese) seems to think that Chloe is older than what she is as well. In about a week or so, she'll be about 5 months old. I really have no basis to say whether she is or not. She is small, especially in comparison to all but the little 3.5 month old baby. Some of the clothes that were too big for Chloe were too small for the other bigger 3.5 month old baby. So who knows... I just thought that was interesting.

Anyway, I'll end with a few pictures of the day: