She's Walking! She's Walking!!

Adriana surprised both of us last night by letting go of the back of Dan's recliner and took a couple of steps all on her own.  I was on the couch and couldn't see her and Dan was watching to see what she as up to when I heard his voice raise on octave or two and shouted "she's walking!"  By the time I turned around, she had fallen.  We took her into our bedroom where it's carpeted and sat about 6 feet away from one another.  She was taking about 3-5 steps each time before we'd catch her.  This is the first time she has done this without our help or trying to provoke her to walk.  Big, big milestone!  We are so happy.

 Her next doctor appointment is November 8th and I'll be excited to tell the doctor she is walking.  Also, we have a 6 month post placement visit by our social worker scheduled for Saturday, October 29th.  We'll be thrilled to tell her she is walking.  For those who don't know, China requires a 6 and 12 month post placement visit by a licensed social worker.  Other countries have stricter policies and some require visits until the children are 18 years old.  When we started the process almost 6 years ago, we signed a contract to comply with the post placement visits.  Most agencies have you sign a contract because they don't want to lose their standing with China and apparently China takes these reports very seriously.

Also, we are re-adopting Adriana in the U.S.  The adoption was finalized in China on May 16th, however it is strongly recommended to re-adopt in the U.S. as to lessen future problems with registering her in school, getting her driver's license, etc.  We found out that a home study has to be done within 2 months of the court date so we can use our post placement report.  We got a court date of November 21st for Adriana's re-adoption.  The court fees were nominal and we'll end up with an adoption decree and a WI birth certificate.  We can't wait for the 6 and 12 month post placements visits to be over with......then we'll be DONE!!!!

We'll try and take some pictures of her walking this weekend.  In the meantime, here are some pictures we took a couple of weeks ago before a Packer game.

Too big for the room?

Do you think the chair is too big for our living room?

Days of smiles.

Everything is progessing fine.  Adriana is walking around furniture and crawling everywhere.  She is fast.  You might as well not sit down because she can make it to another room in the house in 2 seconds flat!.  She is eating well and still sleeping through the night.  Her naps are more sporadic.  She mostly has two naps a day but sometimes only one. 

Adriana loves Kozmo.  She follows him around giving kisses and hugs.  Everything is good until she starts pulling his hair.  Sometimes I think Kozmo just wants to get away so he can have an undisturbed nap.

She loves bananas!  This morning she will have her rice cereal with bananas.  She only gets a bottle twice a day and uses her sippy cup for drinking throughout the day.

Yesterday she was dressed in her game day packer outfit. 

We see her progressing every day.  She is a happy baby and her day is full of smiles.

Getting ready for our walk in my Giraffe Coat!

Thanks Aunt Marn!

Summer's Over? I've just started!

One week from playing the Bears.  We are ready!

Supporting our Wisconsin Badger Team

Adriana

Below you can see her first try at bannana cream pudding.  I think she liked it!

ADRIANA AND HER FURRY FRIEND

Another First

Just happened.......I'm on the couch and Adriana is crawling around on the floor beneath me. I start seeing her head peek up and the next thing I know is she pulled herself up and is standing in front of me.  In fact, she is still standing up, hanging onto the couch.  Dan missed it even though he is four feet away from us.  Yeah!!!!!!!!!!

Here Comes Adriana

Adriana LOVES dogs.  We take her and Kozmo for two walks a day and when she sees another dog on our walk, she gets all excited and shouts "Ehhhhhhhhhh, Ehhhhhhhh, Ehhhhhhhhh!"  Then her arms start waving at the dog.  She startled an older gentleman that was outside weeding and shouted at him.   He just started laughing.  One house has a fake deer in it's front yard and she shouts at the deer.   We took her to the Racine County Zoo and she shouted at the penguins and mountain goats.  She absolutely adores Kozmo and always smiles and waves at him when she wakes up from her nap.  She was pretty loud in grocery store the other day, shouting at about a dozen people.  Everyone that I saw took her shouting well and most said to her, "Oh yeah?'  Then they say how cute she is. 

She is now crawling around and even trying to stand up on her own from a sitting position.  She's a ways a way from walking on her own but still enjoys when we walk with her.  She's really fast with her army crawl across the floors and when she heads for an object we don't want her near, we say no, she turns and looks at us, and then crawls faster towards it.  It kind of funny to see her character shine through.

When she had her shots last week, the nurse said she could develop a fever in 7-10 days from one of the shots.  Well, she's been crying since 2:30 am and has a fever so she is very fussy today.  She is crying on and off but still eating pretty good.  She only slept for 35 minutes this morning and woke up crying.  I brought her over to Kozmo, she stopped crying and just wanted to pet him.  She's an animal lover just like her momma.

12 Month Doctor Visit

Adriana went to the doctor yesterday and did great.  She got two shots and cried for about a minute and then stopped but had big tears rolling down her face.  I felt so bad for her because she did so good at the appointment and then those dreaded shots at the end to ruin her good experience.  Anyways, the doctor is happy with her progress.  Adriana should be saying about five words by now and trying to crawl up onto furniture.  We have some things to work on and we are continuously walking with her several times a day.  She actually is happiest when we walk together.  She gets all excited and her feet bounce up and down when it's time to walk.  She is 19 pounds, only up .9 pounds since her last appointment.  This puts in her in the 15% for weight (American charts).  This means 85% of kids her age weigh more.  Her length is 29".  She is in the 43% so 57% of kids are taller than her.  So height is close to average but she is low in weight.  Her head size is average.  Everything is good and the doctor is great, a really down to earth lady.  I can't tell you how important it is to have a nice, easy going doctor, who takes their time and listens.  Next appointment is in three months.

 As you can see above, "I love chocolate chip cookies!"

Happy 1st Birthday!

I need to run out to the store.  Can't believe all of the AA batteries we need for toys.  At least there was no major assembly required on anything.

Another tooth!

Adriana was a little cranky yesterday so we did a tooth check and sure enough she has another tooth coming in on top.  That will make it 4 on the top and 2 on the bottom.

Adriana still loves to roll around on the floor.  She aims her rolls to get where she wants to go.  We have tried putting her in the crawling position but she wants nothing to do with it and simply rolls over.

Adriana is still eating good.  We can't wait till her next doctor appointment and we get the ok to stop giving her formula.  We haven't introduced allot of different foods but I think her favorite is asparagus.  I think she might also be getting tired of cheerios.  She doesn't eat them with as much enthusiasm as she once did.

Happy 4th!

Peanut Butter! mmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Well a new study from Europe came out recommending that you give your baby's food like peanuts, milk...  It used to be that you don't give your child some of these things until they are 2 years old due to allergies.  Now they say that if you wait until two they might develope more allergies.  Of course after you give them something like this you need to moniter them for any signs of a reaction.

Yes the first thing we had Adriana try was peanut butter.  And what better thing to put peanut butter on you ask?  Yes a cheerio.  You could see the initial look on her face trying to figure out what it was and if she liked it.  After she ate it she just said mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm and looked wide eyed for another.   No allergic reaction. 

It's Officially Official

Adriana just received her Certificate of Citizenship from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.  It was official when we landed in Chicago on 5/27/11 but now we have the certificate and can apply for a social security card and can start re-adoption proceedings in the State of Wisconsin which is highly recommended.  If we don't re-adopt, it could cause problems later on down the line as far as school registration and such.  It's a very nice certificate with a gold seal.  Her photo is somewhat like a mug shot, still cute though.

Seems like a long time ago

Funny how it seems like being in China was such a long time ago.  Here is a picture while in line for the medical examination.

If you double click on this picture you can see it better.  This is an entrance to a restaurant where you pick your dinner out of a tank and then they cook it.  They had eels and all kinds of squirmy things.  We just walked past this one and went to a French restaurant.

2nd Doctor Appointment

Adriana went to her second Dr appointment yesterday.  She now weighs 18.11 pounds.  She gained 2 pounds in 4 weeks!  She certainly likes to eat.  Adriana is not your typical small Chinese baby.  She got 2 shots yesterday and she cried for about 45 seconds.  She was a good girl.  Last night and this morning she is being a little fussy.  We're going to leave soon for our morning walk before it gets too hot and hopefully the air will calm her down a bit.  We found out that Adriana has eczema, which from what we read from our agency guide, can be quite common.  The guide says that children living in orphanages are not getting enough calories or proper proportions of various nutrients.  Also can be caused by wrapping children up in layers of warm clothing all day and under the layers may be skin drenched in sweat, urine, or stools and it robs the skin of it's natural oils.  Right now she has a red patch behind her leg and we are using a hydrocortisone cream.  The Dr said 2/3 of kids outgrow the condition by the age of 8.

Chinese Wedding Fireworks

This video was taken from our hotel window when we first arrived in Nanchang.  There was a Chinese wedding taking place.  They set off long ropes of firecrackers.  It was very loud and they set them off several times this day.  I had to finally close the window as the plume of smoke made it to the ninth floor.

Small Glimpse of the Great Wall of China

Chairman Mao/Beijing

This photo was taken in Tiananmen Square at the entrance to the Forbidden City.

Beijing At Night

My Sweet Girl

Like the shirt?

Just being happy

Hour after gotcha video

One day at a time

Everything is still going very well.  We are still trying to tweak Adriana's sleeping schedule but there is always a wrench thrown into the mix.  Today Adriana slept in, I finally woke her at 6:45am.  She is still being very good.  Yesterday we saw that she cut another tooth on top.  She now has 5 teeth.

We are still planning on going through all of the pictures this week.  Then we will have to start going through all the videos.

Just resting our eyes

Can you find Adriana in this picture?

Can you find Adriana in this picture?  It was taken in the play room of our hotel in Nanchang.  Lilly (on the left) was a great friend helping out.

Still going through photo's

We haven't really begun going through the hundreds of photo's and videos.  One that we ran across was very good.  Believe it or not, this photo is taken at Mitchel Field airport in Milwaukee after 14 and 1/2 hours in the airplane from Hong Kong.  We made it!  And now Adriana is an American Citizen.  As with all the blog photo's you can double click on them to make them larger.

Attacked at Wal-Mart in Nanchang

Here are some pictures I quickly snapped as Cindy was getting surrounded by people at Wal-Mart in Nanchang.  I saw people headed towards her and ran laughing the whole time.  Cindy ended up with about a dozen people around her.  They were reading the card around Cindy's neck written in Chinese.  We think the card read that we were adopting this baby from China but really have no idea as it was written in Chinese.  I still laugh thinking of this.  In China people would just walk up and grab the card around your neck and start reading it without really acknowledging you.

Back in the room with Mom

Here is a video showing Adriana with mom shortly after getting the bundle of joy.

Back in room with Dad

Here is Adriana back in the room within an hour after her being part of the family.

Dad's Gotcha Video

Here is Dan's Gotcha Day video.  You can see Adriana has the tag in her hand with her referral photo on it.  I will post some more video today of about 1/2 hour after we first got Adriana and are back in the hotel room.

Gotcha Day Video

This is the very short Gotcha Day Video.  We were originally told that Adriana was to be brought to our room around 3:30pm.  I was on the hotel phone around 3:00 talking to another family about ordering take-out food for dinner that night.  I hung up the phone and it rang immediately at 3:07 pm.  It was our guide, he said our baby was ready for us and to come and get her on the 7th floor.  I started video taping when the elevator door opened.  Talk about chaos!  It all happened so fast.  I think all the families were in shock.  A few minutes later we were back in the hotel room with Adriana.

Click here for video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww5i9sm0O0E

We were in shock.  As you can see she had changed so much since the referral photo's we had gotten.  I just think with all of the clothes she was packed in her referral photos made it hard to see how she really looked.  In the video you can see Adriana is holding some type of card.  We didn't look at it for over 20 minutes.  When we did we saw her name and referral photo on the card.  We did allot of comparing her to the photos.  We just had to be positive it was her.  Now we see Adriana making the same face she did in her referral photo's.  She makes that face when she has a little "attitude."

Been busy

We've been busy lately trying to get organized and on schedule.  It's been a busy time but Adriana has been doing great.  The last few days we've had company over, went to a graduation and been working around the house.  Had a little problem with the video but have worked it out and will try to post some soon.

Average day of traffic in Jiangxi

I will attach a video of the traffic viewed from our room in Jiangxi.  They believe in the horn honking in China.  The horns were honking 24/7 and we still don't know what there is to honk about at 3am but they found reasons to honk.  Just click on the photo above to start the video.

Bath in the kitchen sink

The kitchen sink was more size appropriate for her baths.  She seems to enjoy a nice bath.