"The World is My Best Friend"

My new favorite picture of the beautiful baby!

You wouldn't know it from the picture, but Juliana has entered into separation anxiety phase with a vengeance - just in the past week or two it has hit full force.  If I even look like I am thinking about starting to leave the room, she starts crying.  Sometimes she can be distracted by someone else; other times she persistently continues to scream until I come back to rescue her.  Sometimes she is not even content to see me; she also has to be touching me or sitting in my lap or gnawing on my arm before she is content.  It's sweet that she likes me so much, but my goodness!

Fortunately, stranger anxiety has still been held at bay.  In fact, she seems to have the complete opposite of stranger anxiety.  This weekend we were at a bunch of tourist places in Xian, constantly surrounded by crowds, and for the most part, she loved it.  She was probably touched about 23322303254354 times in the past few days.  Maybe that's an exaggeration, but at any rate, she was definitely touched by hundreds of people.  She made it into innumerable vacation photo albums.

She was also given all kinds of free stuff: a tomato, a plastic castanet, an souvenir key chain, a McDonald's mini ice-cream cone.  The only thing she actually got to benefit from was the castanet, which she thinks is pretty fun.  Anything that makes a banging noise is a big hit.

Juliana is really quite a good traveler.  It was hot and she was tired and probably a little dehydrated and she was getting tired of being in the carrier, but at the end of the day she still flirted with the crowds on the bus.  She is such a ham.

In fact, sometimes she does better with all the attention than I do.  I feel like most of the time I am pretty laidback, recognizing there is no way I can keep a bazillion people from touching her hands unless I cloister her at home.  I know that most people around have never seen a foreign baby before and are completely awestruck by the sight.  And she is pretty darn cute, so I can't blame them for staring.  I don't mind people touching her hands, taking her picture, and stopping to admire her, especially since she doesn't seem to mind it. 

But after a while the crowds were starting to get to me.  There were those few incredibly pushy people...the ones who try to wrench your baby out of your arms because they really want to hold her.  One lady kept trying to shove me out of the way and forcibly turn Juliana's head so she could get a good picture.  Not okay.  I was pretty mad, but even at that point, Juliana didn't get upset.  She definitely lives in the right country.