Shades of Red Chief

My son catches people's eye wherever he goes, whether he's laughing delightedly and jabbering away as he takes in the sights or screeching and throwing a fit.

The other day, we were in a shop on Shamian Island, and Asa kept pointing to a mannequin and saying the same thing over and over again.  I asked the shop keeper what he was saying, and she laughed and said "He wants to know why she isn't talking.  And her hands are no good!"

When we took a trip to see his orphanage and meet some of the people who cared for him for the first years of his life, he stepped out of the elevator and proclaimed, "We are here!  I am a little, handsome boy!"  Life with the wee man is never dull, for sure.

Yesterday afternoon was one of the most memorable of the trip.  We were on Shamian Island again.  For those who don't know, Shamian is an island formed by the Pearl River.  It is home to the hotel that used to be where all adoptive families stayed, so has all kinds of shops on it that cater to adoptive families.  It's also beautiful and peaceful.  We like to walk there from our hotel and shop and relax.

So, anyway, we were there with Asa in his stroller.  He's mostly potty trained, but when we're going to be out for long periods of time, we put a diaper on him in case we can't find a bathroom when he needs one.

Here's Asa outside a shop--Jordon's--on Shamian.  By the time we got to Jordon's, he was getting pretty tired of sitting in a stroller, so he got out, and I asked the girls to watch him while we did a bit of shopping inside.  A few minutes later, Cayanna rushed in and said she that she thought Asa needed to go to the bathroom because he was taking his diaper off.  I ran out to find pants down, diaper shed and my son peeing in the lovely flower boxes that line the walkways.  Well, I should say he was peeing in the flower boxes, in the air, on his shirt, on the walkway, and as I got closer, on me.  The kid has horrible aim.  There was nothing I could do at that point but shield him--sort of--from the stares of passers-by.  Then he loudly proclaimed that he needed to "lei shi" as well.  Well, that was NOT happening on the walkway, so I grabbed him, streaked into Jordon's and found the next-door bathroom--a squatty potty in sort of a janitor's closet with a sink and a shower in close proximity.

I helped him use the bathroom, and as I was standing there trying to clean us both up after the whole debacle, Annika turned on the faucet to wash her hands and accidentally grabbed the wrong nob.  Yep, the shower came on instead, drenching me from the waist down.

So, how was YOUR afternoon?