My New Hair!!

The Park

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First 10 days home (pics)

For the next slide show, Amelia is loving the little house theme. She wears her bonnet often.
Look at those glasses!

Oh Yeah grapes and dumplings too! Another friend made the girls vegetarian dumplings. When I got these out of the refrigerator Amelia squealed, "Jiaozi" in delight! YUMMY!

First 10 Day Pictures

Can you say jet lagged? Kayli fell asleep all over the floor. We tried to keep her up until night. She kept finding places to lay down to sleep.

Our neighbor, Bruce, playing with the girls.

The girls playing bicycle or airplane on the floor.

Our first Sunday at church. Kayli does not want her picture made with the other girls most of the time so I take her picture separate.

Almost every meal in our house is eaten with chopsticks. Kayli has learned how to do it REALLY fast. She kept watching Amelia until she got it. She keeps saying she's younger than me. How does she already know how to do these things. ha The day I took these pictures they were eating Puerto Rican rice than one of our neighbors had made. It was AWESOME! All of us LOVED it! The other picture is watermelon. We also use chopsticks to eat soup, cereal...it is quite interesting. :) Amelia LOVES her chopsticks. Our FCC group had extra disposable chopsticks at one event. I'm glad I picked those up before they were tossed. :)

Park/melt my heart!!

Yesterday we took all 3 girls to a small local park.  Amelia had a blast!  She ran from slide to slide and was pouring sweat in just a few minutes.  She had the best time. All 3 girls were running after each other.   Ariel climbed a rock climbing wall.  Kayli went down the slide by herself.  (She fell down a slide when she was little and has not gone down one alone.)  Yesterday she took her first long slide ride by herself and was so thrilled with herself. 

 

Today the whole family went to one of our local outlet malls.  It was fun!  We ate at the food court.  Amelia wanted….you guessed it CHINESE!  Ha!  Today she ate the biggest salad with me for lunch. She loves all of my homemade dressings and has tried several different salads.  I start out just giving her a little out of my bowl and then she continuously asks for more so I now give her a large bowl.  One of her favorite toppings is red onion.  Who would have thought?  (this is not in traditional Chinese food)

 

After the mall we came home and we had promised Ariel a water gun fight like we did before we got Amelia.  Amelia didn’t know what to think and cried when we sprayed her but she sure enjoyed spraying others. Kayli and Amelia ended up watering the plants since they couldn’t take it and Ariel and I blasted each other.  I’m so thankful that I can run and have fun with the girls!  I made up this little dance about my dancing shoes and danced in the garage and Amelia was repeating it and trying to sing it.  We twirled around and danced for a good while.  (all of the girls)

 

Today was a full day!  Amelia and I enjoyed a snack of cereal with fruit before bed and we had a great time.  The other girls were getting showered and ready for bed.  We played in the bathtub.

I went to tuck her in and she told me tonight for the very first time Wo ai ni!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I LOVE YOU!!!!

She has told the girls this and Brian almost since day 1.  I have told her it probably a dozen or more times a day.  She told me that tonight.  I was so excited I thought I would cry.  What a sweetie!  Of course I have 2 other sweet children also.  There is something special about the first time they say it to you. 

My heart is so full.  It is so worth it.  I know it must be hard for her. She has been through 2 foster moms and orphanage nanny.  I’m not sure she knows that we are not just another short term home.  This makes me sad.  My prayer is that she will not be fearful of this and will totally know that we are her family forever! 

 

 

BACK AT HOME JUST IN TIME!

God’s timing is perfect!  We made it back home and this week and there is more political action happening in Xinjiang.  It is so sad for us to hear this news.  I’m thankful that we made it home when we did and that we were able to go in between.  Please keep this area in your prayers.  We were hoping to have contact with the orphanage director soon.  If they keep this up then we will not be able to send the pictures that she has asked for or receive the pictures that we wanted.  

We've been home a little over 1 week!

We all have switched our bodies over to CST once again.  This was so HARD!  The 13 hour difference was so difficult for the first 3 days.  The kids would wake-up wanting to eat all night.  It was hard getting broken sleep.  We made it through!  

 

Amelia is having difficulty with her sleeping.  She was used to sleeping with her foster parents.  We don’t allow our other children to sleep with us so we couldn’t start allowing it now.  Every night she begs to sleep with us.  She cries and points to our bed. We gently hug her and tuck her in like we do Ariel and Kayli.  Sometime we lay beside her toddler bed for a good while until she falls asleep holding her hand.  A few hours later she walks into our room crying and pointing to the bed again.  One of us walks her back and repeats the steps above.  She finally goes back to sleep and we sneak back into our bed. 

She is doing better.  Last night Brian tucked her in and before he walked out of the room she was asleep. I woke up this morning at 6am thinking WOW –I got 8 hours sleep!  It felt soo good!  (note to self—daddy needs to tuck her in every night. Ha)

 

Some new English words that Amelia is saying are:  Let’s go, hello, goodbye, pink and prissy, (*wait a minute—Ariel taught her this…she shakes her bootie and it is hilarious)  please, thank you, and she will repeat any word that we tell her in English. She will tell us the Mandarin word and we will tell her the English.  It has been fun. She is helping us and we are helping her.  Our Chinglish is improving. Ha!  One morning Ariel and Amelia were having their own conversation.  Ariel would say in Mandarin I like ___.  Amelia would then say what she liked.  They did this for all of the animals and foods that they knew. It was priceless. 

 

Her singing is adorable.  I have about 12 Chinese songs for kids on cd and some from our Chinese teacher. Several she knows and her eyes get big and she sings away.  How sweet! 

 

There is a special sweetness about Amelia.  Amelia is giving kisses like crazy now. 

 

As far as the food goes she’s loving ALL fruits and most veggies. She asks for bananas and watermelon almost every morning.  Tomatoes are left on the table all of the time and she asks for one almost every meal.  She doesn’t quite know what to think about oatmeal, grits, bread for any sandwich, English muffin, macaroni, and any processed chip type product (which is good).  She loves smoothies, guacamole, eggs, meat (when Brian has it), corn, cucumber, bananas, almond butter, peanut butter, and any type of rice.  We went to Blue Coast Burrito on Friday night and I got her a veggie burrito.  She picked all of the veggies and it came with rice and beans.  She ate about half (adult sized) and really liked it.  She enjoyed trying all of the different types of salsas that were offered. 

 

Overall she is adjusting GREAT!  Kayli is still having some jealousy but overall she is doing better also.  Ariel is just plain awesome.  She is really enjoying Amelia and does great with both younger girls.  Sometimes she wishes she had time alone with Amelia without Kayli.    

We took Amelia swimming the other day and put her in a lifejacket.  She couldn’t quite figure out how to stay on one side with the life jacket.  We were teaching her how to kick her feet.  She wants to do what her sisters do so badly.  She tries to do her arms, face and the whole bit.  She also wanted some goggles like the big girls.  I bought some for 25 cents at Wal-mart. She LOVES them.  We will upgrade when she learns a little better how to swim.  J  Next year Amelia will take swim lessons.  Kayli is still a wonderful swimmer.

 

*For those of you who know Ariel know that she is not into pink or prissy so that is funny coming from her.