Merry Christmas 2010

On Thursday we got up early and headed west to Seattle to visit my parents for the holiday weekend. I was excited because this was the first time my grandma, and my aunt, uncle and cousin Adam would get to meet Lia. However, we weren't sure how Lia would do, since she loves her routine at home, and this would be the first overnight trip we'd taken since bringing her home from China.

As it turned out, Lia had a great time checking out grandma and grandpa's house on the island. She ended up sleeping through both ferry rides, so I can't say she's "experienced" that yet, but she loved looking at the boats in the marina across the street from my folks' house, especially at night when some of the boats were lit up with Christmas lights.

She loved my mom's Christmas tree (since my mom was brave and had all her ornaments within reach of 2 year old hands!)

On Christmas Eve she wore her new Mickey Mouse PJ's that she got from her Grandma W. (and mama wore her matching Mickey pants!)

Christmas morning she got the hang of the "present" thing pretty quickly, and my what an amazing plethora of gifts she received!  Santa even brought her a place to "hide" from all the paparazzi (a.k.a. - relatives) - a Disney Princess Play Tent!  So she was a happy little girl.

Happy Holidays!

Pre-Christmas Week

Things have been busy around our house as Steve and I both wrap up work projects in anticipation of the upcoming holidays. Lia has had a few rough nights the past week, my best guess is that it is related to teething (2 year molars?) as she is spending a lot of time poking her fingers into her mouth. She has woken up a few nights crying and unconsolable, but teething tablets seem to help. Our county cleft coordinator also believes Lia is on the verge of another growth spurt, since she's kind of plateau'd in recent weeks...and I've heard that kids will often experience sleep problems when they are doing a lot of growing. Our girl continues to get bigger and stronger. She weighs nearly 25 lbs now, and is over 33 inches tall!  Because she is so tall, she is on the low end of the U.S. height/weight growth charts, coming in at the 10th percentile. But for height only, she is in the U.S. 55th percentile (which would probably be the 99th percentile in China!) We continue to have her on whole milk, and spike all her foods with butter, cream cheese, olive oil, and other goodies in an effort to fatten her up.

In the past month her vocabulary has exploded! Thanks to her ear tubes, she now mimics us all the time. She now knows 30-40 different words, and walks into a room waving and saying "Hi". She can look at her books and point out all the words she knows: Star, Heart, Princess, Santa, Frosty, Pooh, Car, House, Tree, Flower, Dog, Kitty, Horse, Frog, Bird, Snow, Sun, Lights, Water, Milk, Ice Cream, Pumpkin, Diaper, Potty, Mama, Daddy, Grandma, Grandpa, Great Grandma...and many, many more!  Of course, Steve and I know what she is talking about - other people still might have a hard time understanding her - but she will be starting speech therapy in January to help her catch up on her sounds. We've been attending the weekly Toddler Storytimes at our local library. There she is learning songs like "Wheels on the Bus" and "If You're Happy and You Know It" in-between the stories. She is not too excited about interacting with the other kids at storytime, she is happy to stay on my lap, or in her own little corner of the floor, but she runs right up to the presenter at the end of each session to get her hand stamped like the rest of the kids!

We are looking forward to seeing more of the extended family next week for Christmas. In the meantime, here are some photos from the past week:

"Hello this is Lia, your AT&T Operator, how can I help you?"

The life-sized Dora doll that Grandma W. sent to her - she loves it!

Ready to go Christmas shopping with Mama

Practicing her texting skills on mama's iPhone

Starfish Foster Home Alumni Video

Shortly after I received my referral for Lia last April, I was thrilled to find out that she was living at the Starfish Foster Home in Xi'an. I had heard stories about how well cared for and loved the babies from Starfish were. As I waited four months to travel while our paperwork processed, I heard from several Starfish volunteers, and parents of other Starfish babies, who told me about my girl and forwarded me pictures of her on a regular basis. It was truly a blessing I never expected in this process.

When we received Lia in August, we also received CDs filled with literally thousands of photos documenting every month she was at Starfish from Nov. '08 to Aug. '10. Thanks to volunteers and donors, we also recently received a beautiful lifebook filled with pictures and anecdotes about Lia's early life at Starfish. This is information that most adoptive families never have the opportunity to receive about their children. I am so, so thankful to Starfish and plan to do anything I can to help them continue their wonderful work on behalf of medically-fragile Chinese orphans.

One of the other Starfish moms created the video below to spotlight the great work Starfish is doing, and to show the difference they have made in the lives of each of these babies - one by one... The "before and after" photos are amazing - Lia (formerly named Sophia at the foster home) is featured around 3:12. If I could ask people to donate to just ONE charity this holiday season, it is this one! Be sure to turn off the music player at the bottom of the page before clicking on the video - ENJOY:

Oh Christmas Tree!

This weekend we got our tree and started putting up holiday decorations in the house. We had started seeing Christmas Trees at stores, and doctors offices, etc. and Lia was intrigued. I kept telling her we would get a tree and put it in our house. In her typical fashion, she pointed to the family room floor and said "HERE???" and I told her, yes, in this room! I'm not sure she believed me...

We decided to get a smaller tree this year (just a 4-footer) and put it up on the bar in the family room (which has a high cathedral ceiling), thus avoiding the issue of her pulling all the ornaments off the tree one by one... So we all went together to buy a tree on Saturday morning, and then Steve and I set up the tree and got lights put on it while she was taking her nap on Saturday afternoon. When she woke up from her nap - boy, was she surprised!

I also had a little stuffed Santa that I had kept for her in my Christmas box. She promptly put him in her doll stroller and started showing him around the house:

We let her help/watch as we pulled out a select few of our many boxes of ornaments to hang on this smaller tree. Every year that I waited for my match from China, I set aside ornaments for Lia: two different Hello Kitty ornaments, one of a Chinese takeout box, and one with a little girl and her Chinese home. She also really liked the Asian "angel" ornament which was handed down from my mother to me. Here she is checking out Hello Kitty:

However, my favorite ornament was the one we added just this year:

Wordless Wednesday - Fall Photos 2010

Thanksgiving 2010

...otherwise known as the best Thanksgiving EVER! 

Seriously though, Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. What's not to like about eating lots of yummy food, and watching the Macy's parade and lots of cheesy holiday movies on Lifetime and the Hallmark channel - it's the best!  But in recent years, it's been tough for me. This was Steve's and my fifth Thanksgiving together, and although they've all been great - every year, I've wondered when we would finally add another chair to our Thanksgiving table - and this - of course, was the year! I could not remember a Thanksgiving when I was happier or more thankful than this year.  :)

Lia loved Thanksgiving. First of all, my parents, uncle and sister came to town, which means LOTS of extra attention and shenanigans for Miss Lia!  She was in heaven. Second of all - FOOD - one of Lia's favorite pastimes! We loaded her high chair tray down with a little bit of everything to try, but when it came down to it - it was having her own bowl of turkey gravy (sucked up with a spoon) and fistfuls of cranberry jelly that really made her day. We even had a cute Thanksgiving bib for her that said "Everyone is Thankful for ME!":

Finally - the "all done" sign!

We also had lots of snow this holiday!  In total, about a foot and a half on the ground by Saturday evening. Grandma and Grandpa couldn't help themselves but buy Lia a toboggan sled when they were out shopping on Friday. So on Saturday afternoon, the whole family hit our steeply-sloped front lawn and driveway for some fun in the snow. Lia was not a fan of the sledding, but she enjoyed watching everyone else - especially grandpa - flying down the hill in the sled.

With Grandma and Aunt Tracy - ready to go outside!

Fun in the snow with mama and Aunt Tracy

Disney on Ice

Two weeks ago, I won free tickets to "Disney on Ice: Celebrations" from a local radio station. When I stopped by the station to pick up the tickets (which happened to be on Lia's birthday), they also gave me a "swag bag" to go with them - including a stuffed Mickey doll and a program for the show.

Waiting with Mickey for the show to start...

She's been seeing the promos for the show on TV for a few weeks, and got really excited, as she now recognizes Mickey, and "Princesses"...when she sees them. Well, tonight was the show. So we dressed Lia up cute, and took her Mickey doll with us. To say she was mesmorized would be an understatement! She may have taken Mickey as her "date", but she fell in LOVE with Minnie during this show!

Mesmorized by a mouse

Being the suckers we are for this child, we ended up buying her a Minnie doll during the intermission (thank you Great Grandma D for Lia's birthday money!) She was in heaven the rest of the show - clutching her Minnie doll. When the show was over, she wasn't ready for it to end. She did NOT want to put on her coat or leave the arena. It was so cute. She was convinced if we stayed they would all come out again and do another show.

THE END. Hey - where did everybody go?

Snow Bunny

We awoke to our first snow of the season this morning. Not sure if Lia had ever seen snow in China, (I've heard it does snow in Xi'an occasionally) but if she had, she probably doesn't remember it because she was too young. It was so fun to see her reaction when we opened the curtains this morning:

We told her is was "snow" - and she immediately pointed to her nose. Okay, so "snow" and "nose" are similar sounding I guess...LOL.  After breakfast, we got her dressed up in warm clothes and went out on the back patio to explore the snow. She wasn't sure what to make of it. It didn't help that the new snow boots mama bought her for her birthday are still a little big... But she loves her flowered jacket (thanks Heidi!).

We had a hard time finding a hat and mittens that work for her. It seems these items are either in "infant" size (0-24 mos.) in which case Lia's head is WAY too big for the hats - or they are in "toddler" size (2-4 yrs) in which case the mittens are WAY too big. So we went with the too big mittens...and as you can see, they don't stay on (next time I will put her coat on over them).

She was too scared to actually touch the snow with her hand, but she liked it when I threw a snowball in the air and she watched it smash on the ground. So fun!

Birthday Weekend

Lia's birthday fell on a Wednesday this year, so while we had our own little private celebration that day, we waited for my parents to arrive on Thursday from Seattle to start the serious hoopla. Thursday night we opened her gifts. She received so many nice presents - here are a few of the highlights:

On Friday afternoon we celebrated with a cake, adorned with characters from one of her favorite TV shows, Yo Gabba Gabba. She LOVED the cake and the birthday tiara we got for her:

On Friday night, the biggest surprise came. Steve had entered an online contest to win Yo Gabba Gabba Live tickets since they happened to be in town for her birthday - and we WON four tickets!!!  So amazingly, we ended up front row center at Yo Gabba Gabba Live on Friday night...myself, Lia, Steve, and my dad!  We weren't sure how Lia would react to seeing her favorite costumed characters from TV in life-size. The confetti cannons startled her, but after a few tears at the very beginning - she loved it! She even got to "High Five" her favorite character, DJ Lance...so it was pretty cool. She is still playing with the balloons she caught at the show (they fell from the ceiling) - and saying "Yo!" with a big smile.

All in all it was great weekend. She may not remember the details of her amazing 2nd birthday, but Steve and I will certainly never forget what fun we had...in case you can't tell, we are madly in love with this child!  :)