Christmas 2012

Where has this year gone? I guess between job changes and moving and a new school, dental surgery, birthdays, and a 'bout with pneumonia - it has just escaped me. I will try to catch up in a New  Year's post, but for now, just wanted to wish all of our friends and family (near and far) a safe and merry Christmas!

P.S. - We LOVE the Santa on Vashon Island. No crowds, just a quaint little log cottage in the middle of a town park. No pressure. :)

Fall 2012

We have been so busy this fall - getting moved into our new house, Lia starting a new preschool, a long weekend on the Oregon coast, then her dental surgery, followed by Halloween, and then her 4th birthday - WHEW! I need to stop and take a breather before heading into the holiday season!

Picking up where we last left off - my family headed to the Oregon coast for a long weekend in mid-October. Par for the course this time of year, it was raining off and on the entire weekend, but we managed to have a fabulous time anyway.

This was Lia's first time at an ocean beach, and she built a giant sandcastle.

The following Thursday, Lia had her big dental surgery under anesthesia. She did well, but the surgery did end up taking a full three hours! They put on six silver caps, two fillings, nerve treatments, and extracted at total of four teeth. OY! What a day. And what a week followed... This may have been the hardest recovery we have seen for her in the three surgeries we've endured thus far. Interestingly, she bounced back really quickly from her two palate surgeries at age 2, but - maybe because she knows more now and remembers things longer - there was a lot more anxiety surrounding this surgery and recovery. Because her mouth was retracted open for 3 hours, her lips and corners of her mouth were very swollen, cracked and bleeding for several days following. We used a lot of advil, ice and vaseline during that time.

A week later it was Halloween. Lia planned for months (probably close to a year) on being "Sleeping Beauty" (Princess Aurora). Her costume was beautiful and she looked absolutely gorgeous in it.

 

Unfortunately, the *concept* of trick or treating was a lot more appealing than the *actual* thing. All it took was one young boy jumping out a screaming "Boo!" wearing a Hulk mask, and it was over for us. Maybe next year...  :)

That brings us to Lia's 4th birthday last weekend. Hard to believe the little 17 mos. old we first saw in our referral photos is now a big 4 year old. Time just flies by WAY too fast! Lia's theme of choice for her party was "Little Mermaid" and this year she blew out the four candles like a pro!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABY GIRL!

A Boo-tiful October!

October is upon us and we have been busy as ever the past month. Lia started her second year of preschool on September 5th. This year she gets to ride the bus to school. It is a special bus just for preschoolers and it picks up and drops off right at our driveway - you can't ask for better service than that!

So far she is loving her new school. It is 4 days/week (Mon.-Thurs) for 3.5 hours. During her days there, she gets OT & PT once/week (each) and speech therapy 2x/wk.

She also gets to take one of her toys with her each day to share for show and tell. She thinks this might be a great reason for mama and daddy to buy her some *new* toys, but we have convinced her that by the time her birthday (Nov.) and Christmas have passed, she will have plenty of new toys to share.

The Pacific NW has had an unprecendented warm and dry fall thus far. Just beautiful and sunny, with temps on many days reaching into the 70s. Our new house has a community playground just a block and half away, and Lia has loved being able to ride her trike over there with mama or daddy to play on the slides.

Today Steve and I celebrate six years since the day we met! What a wild ride it's been. We're looking forward to a family getaway weekend on the Oregon Coast in a couple of weeks. Then We have Lia's massive dental surgery to look forward (?) to on the 25th. However, the doctors say she should be in fine form for Halloween, and she is excited to be Princess Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) this year!

Summer 2012 - Where to begin...

I just realized that I hadn't posted since Father's Day - goodness! It has been an incredibly busy summer for our family. It started with Steve's job, commute and work schedule being such that he was gone 14 hours a day, and we saw him very little - which was sad for Lia and I.  We spent July 4th over at my parents' house on Quartermaster Harbor, and Daddy got off work just in time to join us in a front row seat for the Harbor fireworks show:

Lia wore her red, white and blue...

...and later on we snacked on s'mores at Grandma's firepit!

Unfortunately, a couple days later, Lia woke up with a swollen face and black eye. Knowing that she has some ongoing dental issues related to her cleft, we immediately took her up to children's hospital where she ended up having an emergency extraction of one of her molars. That was a rough day! But she was brave and very happy to receive a visit from the Tooth Fairy that night (an experience not many 3 yr old can boast about!)

Our sweet, brave girl!

Our munchkin will require additional dental surgery under general anesthesia in October where they will fit many of her remaining molars with crowns (to stabilize them for the next couple of years) and do a couple more extractions. Poor girl, the Tooth Fairy will owe her BIGTIME after that one!

Then we ended up spending the second half of July preparing to move. Yes, again. And hopefully the last time for a long time. The family whose home we'd been renting on the island returned from Europe and we decided that we needed to live closer to Steve's workplace so that we could actually see him once in awhile (imagine that!)  So while we were very sad to leave the nearby grandparents, and Lia's wonderful school and teachers on Vashon, we felt like this was a move that needed to be made. We moved into our new home and neighborhood on August 2nd and have been busy getting Lia's room painted ("princess" pink of course!) She is very proud of it:

The poor child has absolutely NO toys.  ;)

We also went to Daddy's company picnic, where Lia tried her hand at some non-Olympic badminton:

 
Summer has finally come to the Pacific Northwest and we've been enjoying temps in the 80s the past couple of weeks. Lia will start her second year of preschool at her new school on Sept. 4. I can't believe that is just around the corner! Hope everyone has had a fun and relaxing summer.







Father's Day 2012

This week marked the end of Lia's first year of preschool. I was sad to say goodbye to her wonderful teachers, her speech therapist and her PT for the summer. Lia has truly blossomed under their care and their dedication to her success has been truly above and beyond what I expected. A real blessing. Here is a pic of the mini rose bushes we took to each of them on the last day of school:

As mentioned in the last post, Lia, my mom and I traveled to Nashville over Memorial Day Weekend to see the director of Lia's first home in China - the Starfish Foster Home. Amanda is currently undergoing cancer treatment in Nashville, so about 25 families made the trek to Tennessee to get together that weekend. It was great - and very emotional - to finally be able to give Amanda a hug in person and thank her for all she did for Lia as a tiny, fragile, cleft baby. As in China, Lia was an amazing little traveler and did well (better than her mama!) on all the bumpy airline flights to and from Nashville. She slept on most of our five flights, or watched her portable DVD player.

Lia and Grandma on the plane

Unfortunately, I think the reunion itself was a bit too much overstimulation for our girl. Not sure whether it actually brought back memories for her, or whether being around that many people just caused some general anxiety, but she had a tough time during our stay. Shockingly, the one highlight for her was the hotel swimming pool! I wasn't sure what to expect, because during our China trip, Lia had zero interest in going in the swimming pools. But this time she was very brave, and with the help of mama and arm floaties, she practiced "swimming" (kicking her feet and dog paddling her arms). It was very cute!

Swimming with Mama

Today is Father's Day and unfortunately, Steve had to work. We will be celebrating my dad at dinner this evening, and then will celebrate with Steve once he gets home a little later tonight. His current commute is less than ideal - about two hours each way - which makes for some long days for him...and us. Hoping to find some better solutions for this during the summer. Below is a photo I just love of Steve and Lia. It pretty much sums up what a great daddy he is for our little girl.

Daddy and Lia playing dress-up!

  

May Update & Starfish Reunion!

Where on earth does the time go? How did it get to be May 21st already? I see my last post was Easter for goodness sakes! Our girl continues to learn and grow by leaps and bounds. Our life has been busy the last couple of months with Steve starting a new job, me continuing to work 30 hrs/wk and balance home and child care. My mom has been taking Lia 2.5 days/week to help me pack my work hours in, which has been a godsend (thanks mom!)

We are currently searching and hoping to get into a more long-term housing situation in the next few months. We've been moving around a lot due to job changes, but we are ready for some stability for Lia (and ourselves) for the next few years and hope to put down some roots.

Lia loves school and has really blossomed over the past six months since she started. I'm sad to see the school year come to and end. She doesn't really get the concept of "summer break" yet, so I know she is going to miss school over the summer. Here's a short video that her teacher got of her playing at school:



We've been lucky to have some nice weather recently and have been spending some time at the park where Lia has overcome her fears of the slide and play equipment for the most part. She seems to particularly enjoy helping the younger toddlers and making sure they are safe. It's very sweet to watch her play the role of caregiver to the little ones.

Our most exciting news is that we're headed to Nashville this weekend for Lia's reunion with her friends from China. Starfish families from across the U.S. are traveling to meet-up and see our kids reconnect for the first time since they lived at Starfish. There are sure to be some very emotional moments - but we are very excited to be going and feel very blessed to have the opportunity to connect and stay connected with these people from Lia's early life, as we know this is a luxury that most adoptive families never have.

Easter 2012

Today is April 10, 2012. It's hard to believe that five years ago today, my adoption paperwork was logged in with the Chinese Government, and I officially began my "wait" for Lia. Amazing. Those first three years seemed to crawl by so slowly, and yet the last two have seemingly flown by!

This weekend we celebrated our second Easter with Lia. On Saturday we attended the local "Spring Fling" egg hunt and Lia got to meet the Easter Bunny herself. A sunny, 70-degree Easter is almost unheard of in Seattle.

On Sunday we had Easter dinner at my parents' house with my uncle and sister. Needless to say, Lia got LOTS of Easter goodies! She was a happy girl.

Working and Playing and Picture Taking

Once again, the weeks have passed without a blog entry! Where does the time go? We've been busy, busy, busy - lots of working and playing over the past six weeks. Lia is loving preschool and her speech is really continuing to blossom. As the weather continues to warm up here in the Pacific NW and we start to see streams of sunlight poking through the clouds on a more regular basis - here are a few of the highlights:

First visit with "Auntie Linda" (my BFF from high school). Good times!

Great Grandma Harriet's 90th Birthday Party

Practicing her computer skills on Valentine's Day

March - Low-tide beach exploration on Vashon Island

A quick trip to the lighthouse/beach after school

Enjoying a rare sunny day in February on her backyard swing

"Hugs for Amanda" Campaign

This is Amanda de Lange. She is the founder and director of the Starfish Foster Home in Xi'an, China. As most of you know, our daughter Lia was adopted from Starfish.
This is Amanda's story:

In September 2005, Amanda de Lange founded Starfish Children's Services to save children who have special health needs that are the most at-risk in its partner orphanages. After nursing them back to health through solid nutrition and a loving environment, Starfish organizes and pays for the children’s surgeries before providing post-operative care. After the surgeries, the goal shifts to getting these children in the adoption pipeline so that they can join a stable, loving family.


At Starfish, Amanda has taken care of 150 children to date, arranged more than 175 surgeries and had 66 international adoptions, so our little starfishes live all over the globe: the US, Netherlands, Norway, France, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Canada, Australia and in China. Starfish currently has 49 babies under the age of 3 and a half at the foster home. Amanda is an amazing woman with an amazing vision. She has always maintained that the purpose of Starfish is, “For this child, I will make a difference…..”

Now, Amanda needs our help:

To our great sorrow, Amanda was admitted to a hospital in Xi’an recently for tests, and the doctors have determined that she has advanced stages of uterine cancer (stage 4/type B). She has begun chemotherapy and Amanda is receiving top medical care and will continue to receive the best treatment and care possible.

However, without medical insurance, her medical costs will be extremely expensive. Friends and loved ones worldwide are being invited to help cover the costs of her medical needs. For one who has given her life so unselfishly for the lives of babies, for the life of each “one” – including our Lia - this is our time to rally around her and make a difference in her life.

We invite you to consider making a donation in Amanda's name to help with her expenses. You can go to the Starfish website at http://www.thestarfishfosterhome.org/. Click on the orange Donate Now button in the upper right hand corner. Dedicate your donation “In Honor of” and type in "HUGS FOR AMANDA" in the box.
Help us make the "Hugs for Amanda" campaign a huge success and let Amanda know that we are here for her by sharing this information on your blogs, on Facebook, on the Yahoo groups you belong to and with your family and friends. Starfish will continue to post updates on their website about Amanda’s situation. Thank you for your help in this hour of her greatest need.

CARDS AND WELL WISHES TO AMANDA:

Jeannie Butler, a very close friend to Amanda and major supporter of Starfish, is going to China to be with Amanda - she will leave on March 1st. If you would like to send Amanda well-wishes in the form of a card or letter, please send them to Jeannie Butler to be received Jeannie no later than February 27, 2012 to the following address:


Jeannie Butler

Caring for China's Orphans

PO Box 210003

Nashville, TN 37221

2012 Begins!

Two weeks into the New Year and Lia has already come down with, and overcome another cold. All it took was two days back at preschool and she was down for a week, but thankfully she has now bounced back and we can (hopefully) get back into our pre-holiday routine - just in time for Chinese New Year next week!

Lia's Christmas extended way beyond December 25th. She continued to receive gifts and cards well into the new year. Needless to say, this little girl is well-loved and doted on by many friends and family near and far! Thank you so much to everyone who helped make our holiday special...



Another package from Grandma Wall...Tinkerbelle jammies - YAY!

 

Loving her oversized Unicorn pillow pet...

Those eyes - is this kid gorgeous or what??? 
This was after a long day at preschool...and with a cold coming on...

First snow in Seattle this year!