Almost Gotcha Day #1!

So, life with two kids and a full time job certainly does not allow for much blog postings! I figured since I also have not gotten around to doing any sort of scrapbook for Hope, I better document this occasion, print this out in color and that task will be taken care of. (shame on me, I know). With Claire by this time we had about 1000 photos, I had two scrapbooks, her entire blog posted and printed. Well, we've been busy.

Hope has continued to be an amazing little girl who just melted right into our fold like butter on hot bread. She's strong, healthy, growing like a weed. She's about an inch taller than Claire was at this age (2.5) which does not fit well into my plans for her wardrobe. If she continues along this path, she will not fit into the 6 boxes of the cutest girl 3T clothes next summer that I have strewn all over my basement because that task of sorting is right up there with scrapbooking in my book -who has the time!? She had her surgery for her cleft palate and piggy toe(s) removal last December. Like everything, she took both of the surgeries in stride and the healing was perfect. I'm sure if she could speak, when that first bite stayed in her mouth and she realized she could eat twice as fast and as much it was like bells of joy going off in her little head. She stubborn though, has her moments of fit and not much patience. Hmm, wonder if that is hereditary or environmental, heaven knows who she could have picked up those traits from!

Claire has thrived through all of this also, she has developed into quite the little Manager and is strict about rules. She's teaching Hope so much. She is very kind and patient with her and she often tries to teach her little sister how to say words. I caught her today trying to get Hope to say "rhinoceros". Hell, I don't even think I spelled that right and Claire was phonetically sounding out each letter as Hope diligently repeated "rnnnnphhrs. It was good enough for Claire.

Hope will start speech therapy hopefully in the next month or two. She is trying so very hard to say so much to us - she uses her hands, inflection and when she really wants something she doesn't even bother with words, she marches right over to me or dad, takes our finger and pulls then points to what it is she wants.

It's really hard to believe looking at these pictures on this blog that this is the same little girl we met almost a year ago. She was so tiny and shy, it took about six months for her to realize that we were the real deal, and not some great caretakers. Up until about six months she was very contrite and would pretty much take whatever we gave her. Now, she has an opinion and she wants you to know it! Which is great, she's arrived.

And then one more month went by...

Well, what is the saying, if you want to see God laugh, make plans! Here we were, the happy little family, adjusting to two kids, a new job, school, nannies, trying to define "normal" when WHAM out of nowhere, I end up in the hospital. Seems my gall bladder decided it had quite enough living inside a stress ball and took an early exit. I was in the hospital for four days while the doctors tried to figure it out - no stones, hmm?? So, here was David, thinking he's going to enjoy his FMLA with his girls, bonding, playing, going to the zoo, instead, he's taking care of a baby, a toddler and a infirm. The rest of his time off he pretty much spent being ordered around by us girls and trying to keep a household together. If you haven't got the jist by now through this whole journey, David is -and always has been - the glue of this family, but now he is MORE of a Super David in our eyes! He handled it all in stride, and except for the few occasions of forgetting to feed me, he was always there for us, how he does it, I will never know!

Enough of our drama, I'm finally feeling much better, albeit still a little weak, but thinner (yeah!). I'm sure you all want to know how Hope has weathered through all of this and what's up with Claire Bear. I am ecstatic to relay that Hope continues to be our Dream Baby, still sleeps through the night - I just realized last night, but there has not been ONE night since we got her that she has woken up in the middle of the night. Not one sleepless night (well, that I can attribute to her). She's gaining weight, almost 3 pounds now, walking about 10 steps, and only five weeks after Gotcha day, she was understanding English. We know this because when I asked her where her belly button is, she went digging for it and proudly pointed right to the sucker!
Claire has also continued to be the optimal Big Sister- aka- Little Mom. The nanny tells me many times a day Claire has taken it on herself to correct Hope, tell her to stop sucking her hand, not to cry, etc. She's very nurturing though and has more patience than Mom, and except for the occasional groans of "I just can't take the crying Mom", she's never complained or displayed much jealousy about Hope. In fact, Claire has continued to be the little love bug she is and still reports loudly each day her "I LOVE YOU" to me and dad, but now she interjects with "I LOVE our family!"

We have had two great visits so far, David's brother Mike and our niece Francesca came out for a weekend. Claire and Francesca are only a month apart and really get along so well. We took them up to Breckenridge and played in the stream and hung out. We really really enjoyed having them.

Our niece Janey also came out for Labor Day to help out and boy did she! I was still pretty sick that weekend, and she just jumped in and took care of the girls like the pro she is. She was also our first visit from a niece or nephew. When we moved out to CO from MI, we would say "some day" they will visit us on their own, and Some Day has arrived! Our door is always open, we hope to see more visitors soon!

The next exciting thing we are looking forward to is my little brother, Rob's wedding! In October we are going to Michigan for the big event and we can't wait to see everyone and introduce Hope to her family.

Fingers and toes are crossed that the black cloud is gone for good, but if it isn't, at least I know I'm in excellent hands!!

One month anniversary!

Today we've held Hope in our arms for one month. We continue to scratch our heads and wonder how it could only be 30 days, she just fits in so well. I am still kicking myself over all the worry and stress I brought into my life waiting for this change to happen. I mean, I gave myself kidney stones over this, and for what? Pure Bliss. If I don't learn my lesson from all of this, that worry never changes anything and to just let go and let God, well then, I may as well start this life over.

We just had a really great visit from David's brother, Mike, and his four year old daughter, Francesca. It's too bad his whole clan couldn't make it, but we appreciate the short time we had with them. Claire and Francesca are only one month apart and play together so well! They were holding hands and playing incessantly the entire time. We went to Golden, Breckenridge, and Boulder for a hike. It was Hope's first time on a mountain and she laughed pretty much the whole way. On Friday, 8/8/08, we all went to an Opening night party for the Olympics with our adoption agency. They had a live satellite with one of our local reporters from China answering questions from the kids, Chinese dinner, relay races where the kids won gold medals, and a craft table. The local news was there, and later that night, David, Hope, Claire and I were on the news! Just pictures of us in the background, but still it was us!

Hope is getting stronger and stronger each day, today she pulled herself up and scooted around the end table - progress for her. We have to take her to get her blood tests this week, and she continues to chow down as often as she can. At this time, mashed potatoes still rock her world and warrant us head "butts" whenever she's fed them. She's babbling more and more, but no words yet -however, we are so curious to know if she can even comprehend English yet, it's only been four weeks! She knows "no" though, and is not a fan of that word.

David is an awesome Mr. Mom, I could get used to this! He's loving the moment, but the days are long and the pay is terrible, so he's not willing to leave the temporary status of it all.
I'll post pictures once I dig the cameras out of the hiking bag, we got some great ones of the cousins and Mike and David, so stay tuned!

It's only been 3 weeks?

Yesterday we all went in our shiny new minivan (yes, I know, that's a whole new blog...) for our first mountain trip. We trekked up to the Great Stupa, not to be confused with The Great Pumpkin, near Red Feather lakes in northern Colorado. During the 2 hour trip, Hope cheerfully sat in her car seat and slept, giggled, demanded Cheezit's, and played. Big Sister Claire sang along to the tunes in the car and kept us entertained by asking how much longer about 150 times. David and I are just scratching our head at how smoothly this has gone. It's like we time warped and suddenly we have another kid and are living the suburban dream overnight. Crazy, but grateful!
Hope had her pediatrician appt. this week and so far, she appears healthy, just a bit underweight for her age and her legs are pretty much jello. She's been eating like a heavyweight champ though, and every day she's standing longer and sitting up for longer and longer periods. On Sept. 8th we have the appt with Children's to assess her cleft palate and get some surgery dates on the calendar. She's also showing bits of her "Hunan" (i.e temper), she does not like the word NO, and if she doesn't want to do something, she flat out won't do it. This is a good sign though, she's comfortable enough with us to boss us around. Claire's a great teacher! She's still sweet as can be, and one of our friends described her demeanour best: Grateful. Aren't we all.

This weekend we are having our first visit ever from David's brother, Mike and his daughter Francesca who is Claire's age. We are very excited and can't wait to show them all of Denver!

No place like home

Ahh, sweet relief. We are home. Claire is doing so well as a big sister. She has such patience and love for "Baby Hope", we are all doing great. We are still trying to adjust to the time change, and it's a challenge, but we'll give it some time. We were greeted by the best welcoming committee at the airport, and even more suprises at home. My sister, Marie, Mom and Claire had decorated the outside of the house with balloons and "It's a Girl" signs, made dinner, set up Hope's room, even had clean sheets on our bed! They, and the whole family took such great care of Claire, we could never try to begin to express our gratitude. There is nothing like the feeling knowing that your children are loved and safe. Thank you all, from the bottom of our hearts. Marie also commented our our awesome, wonderful friends here in Colorado and how kind they all were to offer to help with Claire, and even take them to the airport when we were too sleep exhausted to do so on Sunday (Dan you are the best, truly.)

Claire is still her sweet self, shouting I love you's 50 -100 times a day, asking for hugs every 5 minutes, and despite my crazy fears, she seems unscathed by the seperation and change. Hope is loving watching and mimicking her big sister, she's really a happy baby. I've been saying she's also the most polite baby I know. She's got an easy calm to herself, and quietly reaches out a hand when she wants to be held, loves to eat and makes silly faces. Our friend Wenguo came over and talked with her in Chinese and she seemed to understand completely. She asked her if she knew who her Daddy was and she looked at David, and then again at me when promted who her Mommy is. When she was asked if she's beautiful, she nodded! My girls have no problems with modesty, I see.
We are taking it easy this week, just settling in to our new family, and loving every minute of it.

4am, DENVER COLORADO TIME!!!!!!!!!!

It's 4 am, and I'm sitting on my couch, in my house, eating homemade chocolate chip cookies and milk with Hope and watching Baby Einstein. To say this is a little slice of heaven right now would not even come close to saying how we feel to be home. Safe, sound and together. We arrived in Denver at 4:20 PM and was greeted by a warm welcoming comittee of my Claire Bear, my Sister Marie, Mom, Mary Talmadge, Matt and Dan, balloons waving and tears flying I finally got the moment I had been dreaming of for the past two weeks. Claire hugged her mommy and daddy and then we introduced her to Hope. She went right up to her, rubbed her little arm and gave her kiss. It was another Gotcha moment forever preserved on our brains.



For those of you who have not heard through the grapevine, my health deteriorated even more when we left for Guanghzhou! (Ha! as if!) We had gone to the Counsulate and swore Hope in as an American, and we rushed to the train station to catch the train to Hong Kong. It was about 150 degrees in the station, but I had chicken skin, I had chills. I asked our friends, aka my drug dealers at this point, if they had any more Tylenol or Advil, but sadly, no, I think I had tapped them out. It's the things like this that were just driving us crazy in China!! You are out of Tylenol, or baby food, or God forbid toliet paper, and you just can't go buy it! Any way, to cut to the exciting part of the story, all along the train ride it seemed as we rode each track my temp spiked. I thought I was going to pass out, but I just tried not to move. When we arrived at the station and survived the massive shoving off the train - for this is the way any person in China knows how to depart any public transportation - by shoving -I walked up the plank, and my deepest darkest fears came screaming out of my head. There in the background was a little white curtained partion - the ones you saw in MASH all the time - and a doctor, holding a thermometer. You guessed it. It was like in the movies all time and sounds stopped as he pointed his finger right at me and with his black beady eyes and short, curt words, he summoned ME. He shoves the thermometer in my ear, yells something in Chinese and demands my passport. I try to look all healthy and bewieldered as to why on earth he pulled this sadly disheveled, pasty white American girl aside for a temp check! Why, I felt fine!! He took down my passport number, name, everything and said I have high fever 102.5! STAY HERE. I was certain he meant the exact spot I was standing in, so I froze like a statue. A pregnant woman dressed in black with a white jacket came over and asked me if I had been ill, vomiting, etc... No! I've been great! I lied through my teeth. At that point one of the women from our group, Rebecca, who is a gynocologist in Miami, was standing next to me and she "vouched" for me. The doctor seemed to like that she said that, and then warned me about the dangers of the Bird Flu, and it's very contagious and wouldn't it be just awful if I had it and gave it to these billions of people? A little alarm went off in my head. OMIGOD> I'm going to die in China from the damn Bird Flu!!!!!!!!! She let us go, thank the sweet lord, and we hurried into our customs line. I held it together enough to get us through customs and then collapsed in tears in the cab and went to the hotel. With a lot of prayers to every saint and dead person I know, and some Chinese Advil which David had to go out into the Hong Kong night to scrounge up, and a lot of blankets, the fever broke around 3 am and I was fine for the trip home. Even my back was better. Huh.

Although a good point was brought up by my sister, Marie, that she was thinking about it, and maybe, just maybe I had passed a kidney stone! In China, without morphine. Top that labor story. I dare you.


OK, Hope just faded into her cookie oblivion, and I'm going to try and catch some sleep (it's 5:22 am). Tomorrow I will update you on the BEST homecoming we could have ever, ever, imagined or hoped for. Thank God for sisters and Moms. Also we'll add some new pics from the trip.


Oh, and by the way, Hope was 100% an angel on all of the flights, and it dawned on me as we all crawled into bed earlier this evening, and it hit me it was all finally over, and we were all fine. Hope's been telling me this all along. The only words she speaks at all in Chinese are: "Ha Ma", translated it's a soothing phrase meaning "It's OK, everything's fine. Yes, Hope it is, it's all OK, everthing will be fine.

in the Home Stretch!!

Hi All,
Sorry we've been delinquent in our posts, but Mommy is not able to sit for very long and Daddy's had both is hands full with us. I won't bore you with the details, lets just say, I truly believe that child labor could not be any worse than this back. Enough said.

We've been really enjoying our time here in Guangzhou, the island is really beautiful, and although the weather is still very hot, it's not that bad, or we are getting used to it. My hair and nails have never been healthier!!

Most of our past days have been spent shopping in the tons of cute baby shops, going to dinner with our group, and even sharing some rice wine with the locals! (The owner was trying to loosen David up to get him to buy a jade bracelet I had my eye on. Didn't work, but no worries, it's David who truly deserves presents, he's had two toddlers to lug around!) He's been such a saint. The worst part is I can't carry Hope at all. I can barely walk. We also visited a Buddhist Temple, went to the House of Cheng - which is where Jackie Chan's family originated. It was amazing. So beautiful and unbelievable architecture.

Hope is who you really want to hear about and we have to say, she's a GEM. Such a happy quiet baby, easy with the smiles, cuddly, more than we ever dreamt of. God is so good to us. Although she refuses to walk, and half the time won't sit up, she plays happily on the bed and even signed her first word today "More!" She loves to eat too, and she does have a temper when she isn't fed. She's got quite a wardrobe going here, even though I swore we wouldn't over do it, but her Daddy is king of bargaining. We've really go the whole "good cop/bad cop" thing down.


We just got back from a river cruise along the Pearl river and it was very nice. From the river, it looks just like any metropolitan city, you'd never believe what's happening on the streets!

We still have one more night here, then one more night in Hong Kong, and then the long long flight back. How I'll survive it, I have no idea, but we do have a doctor in the group and as luck would have it, she lives in Denver and will be going all the way home with us! You better believe I'm sticking close to her!!

Thanks again for all the sweet notes and wishes of health, it really, really means alot! We are so very homesick and now just the mention of my Claire Bear's name makes me ball!! We're coming!!!!!!!!!!!