Wednesday, March 4, 2009

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 :).

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for keeping up via the blog. I love to check it and see the pictures. I do facebook and put all my pictures on that. I bet it was neat to meet Izzy. I can't wait to meet her and get all our babies together again! It'll be a party! Love you, CK

Ashley said...

The day at the zoo looks like a lot of fun. :) I need to get my children there.

I am glad everything went well in Birmingham and that you were able to visit with family at the same time. I am thinking I need to bring Grisha, also. That is good they do all of the blood tests to determine any illnesses. I completely understand about the bonding and needing more time with her being with just both of you. It is going to be hard for us to do that for awhile, but we have been advised we must. I hope others will understand if we have to exclude ourselves for awhile so Grisha can get used to being in our family.

Anonymous said...

I was happy to see an update on your little sugar dumpling, Shelly! It looks like she is settled in and so content. Isn't it fun being a Momma?! :)