Our new daughter!!!

We received our referral!!!! On the day before Thanksgiving! What timing! We are utterly overjoyed! We made ourselves wait to tell the entire world until we had formally accepted, we have and are beside ourselves with delight!

She was born on Nov. 11th! Her name is Hsin-Yen which means hearty, pretty girl. That she is! She's was over 8 pounds at birth! Just look at those cheeks!!

Jia is exactly two years and three months older than her sister. Perfect. I showed her photo to Jia. Jia looked at it intently. I waited anxiously for a response. Jia then thoughtfully said, “She has poopies!” She said that she would hold the wipes while I changed her diaper. Jia later spontaneously said “I love you” to her photo and then pretended to feed her with a spoon.

We celebrated by getting Chinese take out and they happened to give us four fortune cookies. We each took one and I told Jia that one was for her baby sister. We three ate our cookies and then I opened the last one. I read her fortune and then said to Jia that she could eat her sister's cookie if she wanted because she wasn't here yet. Now Jia isn’t one to turn down a cookie, but she burst into tears and said that “the cookie belongs to my baby sister!” She refused to eat it! She is protecting her already!!!!

To reiterate the process, her adoption is not final yet. We have to first complete the court process. This will take approximately 5-8 months. We will hopefully travel next spring!!!

Enjoy!!!!

We give thanks

We have so very many things for which to be thankful: family, friends, food, shelter and SO much else. It was a treasure of a day.

We spent the morning doing hair.

When my friend Khatra visited her family in Kenya, she returned home with gifts for us, including this outfit for Jia. It was hand-woven by the Masai people and has little shells adorning it.

Khatra joined us for Thanksgiving so we made sure Jia wore her special outfit. Jia loved to twirl around to hear the shells!


It was Khatra's first experience with Jello! She liked it enough to take some home for later!

Wishing you and yours a Happy Thanksgiving!

Nicknames

Jia has given herself a nickname: JiaBaby. We have discovered that we call her this now and then. She has embraced it wholeheartedly. She called her friend "LilyBaby" today. It isn't just reserved for youngsters though, as she has now called me "MamaBaby" and Joe "BabaBaby" (when she isn't calling him "Bobby"). It makes her sound like she's doing a lot of wheelin' n' dealin'.

The nickname that we use more frequently for her is "peanut." This has presented some issues as of late. Joe came out of the shower the other day and I heard Jia say "peanut!" Having witnessed various diaper changes of her younger cousin, she has heard the names for various body parts. We've explained that the body part in question is not pronounced that way, but she persists. Herein lies the problem: she doesn't know what an actual peanut is. She's never seen one or eaten one. She doesn't even eat peanut butter, she eats soynut butter. She must therefore think that we are calling her a male organ. Maybe we'll stick with JiaBaby for now.

Nutcracker

Each year, Dayton's (now Macy's) has a downtown holiday exhibit on its 8th floor. This year it's the Nutcracker.

I wanted to know if Jia was interested in going. Here was my attempt to explain the Nutcracker exhibit (at which Joe laughed heartily):

So Jia, there's this exhibit or, umm, display thingy, or umm, something you look at, and it's downtown, you know where the big buildings are? It's the Dayton's 8th floor exhibit, well, it's not Dayton's anymore, now it's Macy's, and it is on the 8th floor. Well, I suppose that part doesn't matter. We would stand in some long lines and eventually get in and see stuff moving around. It's a Christmas story this year. But it's not THE Christmas story, just a popular one that people like around Christmas time. I think we would see a rat. And some fake snow. And glitter. And a guy who smooshes nuts with his mouth - but, of course, we wouldn't ever do that. So, there will be lots of stuff moving around and we'll have to wait in long lines and be patient. Do you want to go?

Ever enthusiastic, Jia agreed. Here are a slew of pics. (A mom once told me that whenever you'll be waiting in lines or at the airport, you should dress your kid as cute as possible so people are more forgiving if she throws a fit.) This was the result.


Ever the ham!

Jia was mesmerized by the exhibits...but often questioned why she couldn't just get up there and play with all the toys too? It WAS a good question.


Sometimes a girl's gotta have glitter.

This is fun, Mom, but please stop squishing me!

I like this fake snow!


What could be better than a cookie the size of your head? (Note: Shared with others.)

More fall fun

We had a great weekend for cleaning up the yard. I love raking and always have. I have fond childhood memories of being at our cabin, cranking Def Leppard and raking to my heart's content. (Yes, perhaps not tranquil cabin-music but so be it.) I actually sometimes enjoy shoveling too - a good thing as we live in Minnesota.

Jia likes fall too, and likes to be helpful, so yardwork works well for all of us. Leaf-sitting works even better for some of us.

Everything is climbable

Is climbable a word? I'm not sure, but it is a good descriptor for our kiddo's favorite thing to do. We're discovering all sorts of things about our house thanks to her.

• Our built-in bookcase really does look like a ladder.
• If you pull out the few kitchen drawers which aren't babyproofed (because they're filled with tupperware and other kid-friendly stuff), and you adjust them just-so, they do make nice steps so you can climb up to stand on the kitchen counter.
• Those upper bathroom cabinets? Easy access if you climb up to stand on the toilet (then you can open them while saying, "I need medicine!").

Thankfully she did all of these things right in front of me (but with great speed). And now fear has struck in my heart.

Some things just take time

They say that with adoption there are certain time milestones that mark periods of adjustment in a kid's life. Named as a few are: six months home; one year home; and spending the same amount of time with you as the kid did elsewhere. We indeed did see changes in Jia at six months home. At that milestone, she stopped waking up multiple times each night.

More recently, at the year mark, we also saw a change. I waited a long time to post this because I wasn't sure whether it was going to stick. But it has. Jia no longer wakes up shrieking. For an entire year, whenever she stirred in the morning, she would start screaming before even opening her eyes. I think I have permanent bruises on my legs from the countless times I jumped up and ran into the end of the bed or a nearby chair as I was trying to get to her in a hurry. We now wake up to a kid reading to herself, playing, or softly calling, "Maa-maa." The difference in our level of stress, and hers I imagine, is immeasurable. And the bruises can just be a reminder of how far we've come.