8/19 9am China
“The Noodle and the Smile”
But first where did we leave off? Oh yes Jill was writing a post in the blog and Alia was sat on the floor wailing. Well….we let her sit there and cry herself out. Over one hour later she finally stopped and sat there playing with her paper cup.
We scooped her up, put her in her stroller and went out for our late afternoon walk.
After buying some more supplies including soy milk and more gifts for Jill we returned to the hotel and were about to go for our nightly beer at Roses when it started to rain. Instead we went to the hotel bar. Alia likes bars and was happy to sit there watching the scene.
That night as we had already had Chinese for breakfast and lunch we decided to go back to the Japanese restaurant in the hotel.
No high chairs at that restaurant so we just sat Alia in her stroller, Jill sitting next to her and Robert on the other side of the table.
Our first dish came. Udon noodles in soup. Jill decided to feed one of the long thick noodles to Alia, it hung out of her mouth as she tried to suck it in. That was kinda fun….let’s do it again.
“Oh my God…I think she tried to smile” said Jill. I stood up so I could see her across the table as another noodle went into her mouth and lo and behold our baby daughter smiled!
Not once but twice and three times and again and again! I gave her a thumbs up and she tried to imitate me and stuck a finger up, again and again. It was like a great wall had lifted. We cried and got emotional.
Now don’t get us wrong here, we know that this was just one extremely important moment in the life of our daughter, and as I can attest to at this very moment as I am typing this the days of crying and wailing endlessly are not over, and let us also remember that it was a Japanese “Udon” Noodle and not a Chinese Noodle that made her smile.
But this was the day of the “Noodle and the Smile”
After dinner the happy trio returned to the room and once again put Alia to sleep with out too much ado.
She slept 9:30pm – 7:30am

We gently woke Alia and she awoke a little less grumpy that usual, we played hair brush and thumbs up with our groggy baby for a while sitting on Jill’s lap.
When Jill went to get dressed I took over baby duties and she once again wailed. Did not want me at all. I played with her for a little bit and then sat her on the floor to let her cry it out again.
I started to write this post and let her cry for another 20 minutes while Alia rubbed her cookie all over her face.
She finally calmed down and now it’s time to play again and go for a later than anticipated breakfast.

Robert and Jill