Spring is here

Papa, Nana and Anna

My Sweet Bunny

Too Cute!!

"Yeah, What do you want?"

We love when Grandparents come!

Nana "dressing" Anna up

Can you say 'bed head" in a major way

Pushing the laundry basket is one of her favorite things

Working hard

Well we have been staying busy. Anna is just so full of life and we love her so much. This weekend we had the opportunity to speak to local waiting families. We think there were about 20 people there including some grandparents. The families were so friendly. I hope for their sake the wait speeds up and they are able to hold their precious little ones very soon. Once you get to hold your child the wait truly is worth it. Some of the families told me they follow the blog so if you are reading and we got the pleasure of meeting you Saturday.....hi and thanks for continuing to read. Mother and daddy better known as Nana and Papa were able to come. They mainly watched Anna for us while we spoke to the families. Anna did great. She was a little trooper charming everyone and anyone who would look her way. She is such a flirt.

We heard from UAB that Anna's immunizations look good. So that'll save her some shots and us some money :). That is always nice. We will probably be going back to our pedatrician sometime this week to finish up the immunizations and make sure her ear is doing ok. We went last week and the infection had cleared but she still had a lot of wax. As long as the ear is clear, our pediatrician thinks we can hold off on the tubes till palate surgery. We finally were able to get the ball rolling for that. We contacted a local Shriner and he is letting his local temple know. I guess we wait to see if they'll sponsor us and then we go from there. I'm hoping to hear really soon so we can send our application and hopefully nail some things down as far as that goes.

Life is good. I cannot complain. Anna is doing so good with the sleep thing. Friday night she slept the entire night by herself!!!!! Yeah Anna. Nap time she also sleeps by herself. And most nights we sleep in her room till about 1 a.m. and then go to our room and she sleeps till about 8 a.m. in her room. So we are making great progress. I guess that is all for now.

I know I've got to do better

Silly girl--she loves the camera, can you tell?

Seeing the fishies at the Bass Pro Shop

Giving Baba some love

Again hamming it up for the camera

Anna, Baba and her Great Grandmothers

Anna and Granny Colleen

Anna's first pony tail:)

Anna sporting Papa's hat

Too Cute for words

Anna's first snow. She liked it.

It just amazes me how the time flies now that Anna is home. I don't think the days have 24 hours in them anymore....more like 6. There just seems to be soo much to do and soo little time to do it in that by the time I actually get on the computer, I'm so worn out that I just quickly check my email and the bethany boards and then I'm in the bed or moving on to the next thing on my ever growing to do list.

Anna is doing much better with the sleep thing. We are slowly trying to get out of her bed and back into our own. At nap time, I lay down with her until she is asleep then I get up and get things done. At night I do the same thing and one of us goes in there when we are ready to go to sleep. Last night, I got up at 4:30 a.m. and went to my bed and we all slept till 8 a.m. everyone in their own bed :).

We go back to the pediatrician on Wednesday to see if Anna's ear infection has cleared up. If so the doctor thinks we can wait till we have her cleft surgery to have tubes put in but if not then we will probably go ahead and have that done here. We are trying to get the ball rolling with Shriners. Please pray that works out and they take Anna on as a patient and agree to do the surgery. It is our desire for me to stay home next year with Anna and help her adjust and bond. We don't think that is possible if we have surgery cost to pay. If Shriners agrees to take us then it is NO cost to us except travel. We feel God is leading us to Shriners so now we wait to see. We are hoping that we can have her surgery around the beginning of June. That will depend on Shriners and if they take Anna as a patient. Ok. I guess that is all for now.

Routine.....Maybe??

So it seems like the days just fly by now. I have little time for much of anything other than taking care of my daughter, which I love. Let's see we have gone to the park numerous times. Anna seems to like it a lot. She is still learning about the playground equipment but she really loves the leaves :).

She is saying momma a whole lot and we think she has even said her name a couple of times. We got her a new bed because she absolutely hated her crib. She screamed her head off everytime we put her in it to the point she would make herself sick. So we got a double bed and are co-sleeping with her. I know you may not agree with that but we have talked to numerous professionals, other adoptive parents and prayed much about it and it is what our daughter needs at this point. She has gone through a whole lot of change and she needs some comfort and stability. Nighttime can be a scary time for toddlers especially ones who are taken from everything they know. We had no peace about letting her cry it out. We have done a lot of research and talked to professionals at the international adoption clinic and we will be able to transition her once she is able to understand, once she has the cognitive and language ability to understand that we are just in the next room. But for now this is what we are doing and she has been able to sleep through the night the last few nights and so have we. Plus it is GREAT for bonding and the more we can help her then the more I'm willing to do it.

So all that to say, she loves her new bed. She woke up the first morning so excited. I told her, "This is Anna's room" and she kept pointing to herself everytime I said "Anna". It was so cute. I was super proud that my genius daughter already knows her name and is trying to say it.

We went to our local pediatrician today. It went ok. Anna has an ear infection so we are giving her an anitbiotic. The doctor thinks that if we can keep her ears clean she can wait to have the tubes in when we have the surgery. We are hoping for late May or early June to have the surgery. So I guess that is all for now. Thank you for those who still follow this blog. I'll try to do better about updating. We are starting to get in a routine and that is so nice. I am able to get a little more done and soon I feel like I'll be able to really get organized and get everything done in a day that I want to get done......or at least 90%.

First visit to the zoo

Well we are finally starting to settle in here. Anna is doing great. She is a little trooper and a charmer. She can own the room very quickly. She can charm the socks off anyone. Everyone who meets her falls in love very quickly. She is always laughing and smiling. We love her to pieces.

We visited the zoo the first week we were home. Anna had a great time. We went after naptime and the zoo was almost empty. There were three other families with their little ones there. The animals were all up and active so that made for an enjoyable visit. Anna was able to pick the animals out right away. I think she liked the monkeys and the ducks the best.

We went to the UAB International Adoption Clinic on Monday. They did a number of test to try and establish a baseline on Anna's health and what she may or may not have. They took a lot of blood to test her for various illnesses and to see what vaccinations she has had and at what level. One thing we were told was she has a lot of wax build up on her ears (very common for cleft lip/cleft palate babies) so she'll need tubes put in pretty soon. We are thinking of having her palate surgery done at the beginning of the summer. We got to visit Nana, Papa, Aunt Lorrie and Family including our new niece Izzy this weekend while we were in Birmingham. I think Anna enjoyed it and we really enjoyed being with family. Now we are just trying to get really established in a routine and work on bonding. While we believe Anna has bonded a lot already and God certainly prepared her heart to know who we were, UAB still feels like she has a way to go. And we see areas where we need to help her understand exactly who we are and what our role is with her and for her.

Thank you for all of you who are continuing to keep up with our blog. I'm going to try and keep going with it but it won't be on an everyday basis like in China. I'm sure you all understand :).