Fall 2013 - A Review

Lots of fun activity this fall...so much that I haven't had time to blog!  Lia headed back to school in September. This is her first year of kindergarten (because her birthday is late in the year, she will actually attend two years before 1st grade). She is once again loving her teacher and friends at school:

 

Soon after school started, we were invited to a birthday party for a set of twins in her class. These girls hosted their party at a working farm which also includes a petting zoo and horses. Lia was super brave and took her very first REAL horse ride on a very tall horse!

 

 

Along came mid-October and we had a very special trip planned to Disneyland with grandma and grandpa! We met them in Anaheim and had a total blast for three days. Lia was in Princess heaven meeting all her favorite characters, especially her current favorite - Rapunzel:

 

 

 

Of course, right after our Disney trip came...Halloween! For the first time in a couple of years, Lia decided NOT to be a princess (guess she's gotten those jollies out at Disney)...and chose to be a Panda for Halloween. She and Daddy had a great time running around the neighborhood and even ran into a few of Lia's schoolmates along the way. What a difference four years makes, huh?:

 

 

And what comes after Halloween? Lia's birthday of course!!! Our big girl turned 5 and had a party with her class at school, as well as a family party over her birthday weekend. She picked the theme of her party as the "minions" (from the movie Despicable Me).

 

 

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SWEET GIRL!!!

Summertime Fun

We are starting to wrap up our busy summer. Three weeks and Lia will be going back to school for her first year in early entrance Kindergarten. Time flies! We've had a lot of fun this summer. Lia has attended local preschool daycamp in the mornings with weekly themes of Circus, Cowboy/Cowgirls, Rainforest, Royalty, and Beaches. Next week is the final (6th) week of day camp. We'll miss the teachers and helpers - they have been awesome!

We've also done a LOT of doctor & therapy visits this summer. Speech therapy weekly, and now twice weekly since she is also doing a summer speech program thru her school for August. Catching her up on all her vaccines (which have been behind since China!) has required two separate visits for shots (8 total - yikes - and she took 'em like a champ!) On Wednesday we visited her ENT to check on her ears. Unfortunately, the hole in her left eardrum continues to grow, which explains a lot of her irritation around loud noise levels. The doctor gave us some ear plugs for now, but warned us that another surgery might be down the road to patch the hole.

Lia and I took a "parent-tot" swim class during the month of July. She was officially too old for the class since she is 4, but they were willing to waive her in based on her history. She was pretty wary at first, but really enjoyed swimming on her own with the foam noodle.

She never did get to the point where she'd put her face or head under water, but as the ENT pointed out, that is probably a good thing with the hole in her ear. He does, however, want her to learn to swim as much as we do, so he recommended trying it with ear plugs next time.

Lia also saw her first movies in the theater this summer! Monsters University was her very first movie and she loved it ("only a couple scary parts mama!") so we took her back to see "Despicable Me 2" and "Turbo"a few weeks later. That girl can chow down a bag of popcorn let me tell you!

Other than that, it's been a summer of rest and relaxation. Spending time in our backyard and the firepit at grandma & grandpa's house making s'mores.

In two weeks we will be headed to Colorado to visit Grandma Wall and Lia is really excited to go on an airplane again and visit all of Steve's family, many whom she hasn't gotten to meet yet.

The Graduate - Preschool June 2013

Monday was Lia's "graduation" from the two years of preschool she has attend thus far. Grandma & Grandpa and Great Uncle Dave join us for the special occasion. Lia was VERY proud of her fancy purple dress and her graduation cap! 


Modeling her dress before the ceremony



 

Hanging in the audience with mama, grandma, & grandpa

A lovely box full of momentos, milestones, and photos.

Lia and her best buddy!

So proud of our girl!

 

 

Spring has Sprung

Once again, it's been awhile since I've done any blogging...life has just gotten too busy with an active four year old, and both of us balancing work with family time. Lia is doing amazing. Her speech is REALLY coming along. Now, people who haven't seen her in a few months even comment on how much more they can understand. She is also coming out of her shell now that we've been settled in our house for almost a year and she is enjoying her new school and afternoon schedule as well. As the previous post noted, Lia started ballet in January. During March, there was a brief hiatus from ballet lessons, where I enrolled her in a local gymnastics program for four weeks - just to try it out. The gym is loud and there are a TON of kids there on any given weeknight - so I wasn't sure how she'd do. She is also still working on catching up on some of her gross motor skills in terms of balance, strength, and agility. The first night she was more of an "observer", but since then, every week she has tried (and succeeded!) and new skills and her increased strength is showing!

Lia also got a new, 2-wheel bike a few weeks ago! She is still using training wheels, but she has gotten the hang of using the brakes to slow down, and is working hard pedaling up inclines and using those new leg muscles! We are so proud of her. Now, anytime the sun is shining, she wants to go outside on a ride around the neighborhood with us. When it rains, she just rides around and around the kitchen island! Yesterday was beautiful, so Steve took her out on her bike and she rode over to the neighborhood play area. She face-planted at one point (due to going down a driveway slope too fast and turning the wheel) but she was wearing her helmet and pads, so after a few tears (from being scared!) she got back on that bike and rode over to the park anyway. GO LIA!

Over Lia's spring break from preschool, we took a day to travel up north and visit the tulip fields. It was SO beautiful. Lia said she could look and them "all day and all night". Her favorites were the pink and purple varieties (of course!) but we were able to snap this pic of her standing amongst a field of red. Amazing!

Ballet & Valentines

Lia started ballet classes at the local rec center at the end of January. She absolutely loves it. She loves the pretty outfits she gets to wear, and the music, and the teacher. After the first class I asked her if she still wanted to go back the following week - and she said "Yes!...and the next week...and the next week...and the next week!"

Valentines Day lasted for what seemed like a week at preschool. Since she attends two different preschool classes at the same location, she got to have two parties...and each class made Valentines crafts all week. I especially loved this Valentine "owl" bag they made:

She was thrilled to wake up on Valentine's Day to some special treats from mama and daddy as well!

Of course, at this age, her favorite Valentine is her daddy...

Happy New Year 2013!

Well, I promised I would blog more after the new year, so here we are! We had a bumpy holiday this year with illness and work schedules, but we still managed to have a lot of fun along the way.

Lia started afternoon preschool in December. We had her moved to the afternoon class for a few reasons, but mainly because there is a 4 year old afternoon class that has girls in it! Amazingly, at least in this school district, there seems to be many more boys than girls registered for preschool. She is really enjoying the afternoon class, and coming out of her shell much more. The teachers are really pleased with her progress and acclimation into the new class.

Unfortunately, she came home the second week of December with a cold, which ended up turning into pneumonia by week's end. After a trip to urgent care, and a round of antibiotics, we got her healthy enough to play "the camel" in her preschool's Christmas play - which was a hoot! You gotta love a group of 4 year olds shouting out the lyrics to Christmas carols they don't really know. As with any group this age, the kids have short attention spans:

Lia, far left, watching the teacher as her friend yawns...

Preschool released for winter break right after the play, so we had a few days to catch up on our holiday decorating and traditions before Santa's big visit. On the 21st, we visited a local nursery, where Santa's reindeer come to "rest up" prior to the big night. Lia loved seeing them, but was somewhat disappointed that Rudolph was there with his red nose:

On Christmas Eve, Daddy had to work, so Lia and I decided to make some frosted sugar cookies for Santa. This year Lia helped cut out the cookies and spread the frosting and sprinkles. She did a great job! The cookies turned out awesome and Santa gobbled up the three that she chose to leave out for him that evening:

We had a lovely Christmas Eve dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant, followed by a candlelight church service, before heading home for the night. Daddy helped Lia hold her candle and her eyes were as big as saucers, but she was so proud to get to hold a candle herself this year! Christmas day my parents, uncle and sister came to our house for Christmas dinner. Lia had plenty of new toys and presents to show off to the family.

The following day, we took her out shopping, with the gift card she received from Steve's mom. It was super fun to watch her make tough decisions, pick out her gifts and hand her card to the cashier. This little girl is not hurting for toys!!! Later in the day, she posed with some of her new acquistions:

A cute sidenote: Santa brought her a baby penguin, which coos when you feed it a bottle. When we told Lia that she had a gift card she could use to buy anything else she needed/wanted that Santa might have forgotten, she says, "I want to get the baby penguin a mama and daddy. He needs a family...like you came to China to get me"... Oh, my heart! And I'll be darned if the first thing she picked out on Wednesday wasn't a penguin mama and daddy for her baby. Sweet girl.  :)



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