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