Backyard smiles

We ventured out the backyard today. Liam's first swinging in our backyard. He really loved it. The higher the better with him. I think we might have another dare devil on our hands.

Scarlett's still doing fabulous on the potty. It's been a week of lots of success. All the numbers!

We're going to Red Robin to celebrate tonight and have a little potty party.

Liam's Baha and Scarlett's Success

Liam got his Baha hearing aid last Friday. He is doing so good! He was really hesitant and soaking everything in at first. Now he seems like he's enjoying it a bit more. He was rocking out to some music this AM. We're home b/c he's got a fever and hasn't been feeling super great. I think his fever is finally over now. My fingers are crossed!

Scarlett decided the other night at Joe's Crab Shack that diapers are for babies and has been successfully going in the potty since then. She's had a few accidents, but I think we're on the road to success. Yeah Scarlett!

2 month anniversary

A few pics of his sunny smile that melts my heart!

Today is our 2 month anniversary with Liam. I can't believe it. In some ways it seems like we have had him forever and in someways it seems like we just got him yesterday.

He is doing amazingly well fitting in with our family. We're working on his temper tantrums and sleep challenges, but everything else is so great with him. We're so lucky to have him in our family! I love how sweet and sunny and cuddly he is!

Liam's hearing test today

We had a hearing test for Liam today and he is hearing at 40 decibels, which is fantastic!! Normal conversation level.

We also got approval from our insurance company on his Baha! Wahoo. I hope we get that in the next week or so! Yeah!! I'm so excited.

Now let's just get Scarlett feeling better for my last week at home before I go back part time next week.

Merry Christmas

Ava putting on her fab new Ugg boots that Santa brought her
Scarlett with her binoculars and "Go Diego Go official animal rescuer pack" Thank you Santa!
Scarlett telling us about her rescue pack
Liam and Papa and Ava
Liam in his new chair from Aunt Megan

We had a wonderful Christmas. Now we just need a bigger house to store all the toys! Thank you everyone!

Almost the 'big day'

Scarlett posing with Joe's new rifle. I thought her smile was funny.
Outside with the blow ups.
Toothy grin
Big smile for Joe!

Well it's almost Christmas. Gosh the time has flown by since we got home. I think we're 'ready'. Got the shopping done. Baking is in progress. 2 batches of cinnamon rolls have been delivered for Christmas baking. Tomorrow Joanne and Ava are coming over in the AM to start baking with me. Ron and Judy and Megan will be over in the afternoon to celebrate Christmas Eve and Day with us. Scarlett is very excited and has been behaving pretty good. I think Santa will be visiting here tomorrow night.

Merry Christmas everyone...

China food for thought

There was a great post on RQ the other day about why it's important for us to know about Chinese history as adoptive parents. But her post had something more important in it, and that's what I want to talk about. She talked about how our perspective on China affects our kids. Sometimes we forget when we are talking about things in front of the kids that they are little sponges soaking up everything we say.

You can read the post here:

http://chinaadopttalk.com/2010/12/02/is-chinese-history-important-for-us-a-parents-to-learn/

For me the most important part of the post was this: "Why is it important she understand both perspectives? Because she is both American and Chinese. An American citizen of Chinese heritage. If she hates or is disgusted by anything Chinese, then that is going to filter into her self perception, her self worth, her self identity. If she learns that the Chinese (as a people) are gross or disgusting or cruel or whatever, then as a child that is going to be incorporated into the Chinese parts of how she sees herself. I have to help her feel good about all of the parts that make up who she is, so that when she’s older and she chooses how she wants to self identify, it will be from an educated standpoint and not an ignorant one. I’m not going to gloss over the tough stuff, but I am going to explain it with perspective. I cringe when people talk about chicken feet and pig intestines on the menu in China as if it is less than civilized, or when they talk about the squattie potties as if they are something only a primitive people would use. Many say these things with their children listening, and have no idea the ideas their children are getting about their birth country when they say these things with disgust or disdain. Yes, as a vegetarian I’m disgusted by many of the things on the menu, but I also appreciate that they are making use of all of the parts of the animal that gave it’s life. And for a society with mass starvation in it’s recent history, is it so surprising that they make such good use of the available edible parts? And I prefer squattie potties in public – most women “hover” anyway, it’s just that much easier to hover over the squattie’s."

When I was thinking about what RQ said here, I realized that I have been kind of negative about our recent trip to China. When folks have asked me about our trip I haven't emphasized the amazing things we saw, but rather just complained about how dirty everything, crowded, the pollution etc. We saw some amazing things, the Shoalin temple for example was great, it was beautiful and the home to Kung Fu, Wow! The 6 banyan tree temple and getting the children's blessing from the monks was beautiful and touching. I need to reframe how I talk about China and our trip. There are things that are challenging there, but there are also things challenging here on our own home turf. Our kids are at the age where the soak in everything and then it usually gets repeated back to us... I want both our kids to be proud that they arefrom China and not have us taint that our make them feel bad.

Anyway... that's my food for thought today!

Liam update

We saw the audiologist today at OHSU and it went great. Good news is that Liam's inner ear and cochlear are working great. He did really good during the test and the audiologist said we made his day and walked us down to the other doctor to talk about the hearing aid that Liam needs. He'll be getting a BaHa (bone activated hearing aid) Here are some detail on what that is: http://products.cochlearamericas.com/baha

The doctors are trying to get him the aids asap, but we have to get things authorized through the insurance companies and right now Andrew's is being really stupid about even adding him.

Liam will use a soft band until he's 5, then they can do surgery to give him an anchor point for the Baha. We won't be doing any surgery on his ears until he's old enough to decide if he wants that. Drilling the ear canal is tricky business and a lot of doctors are not in favor of that procedure any more. So mostly he'll need to decide at some point if he wants to have his ears look 'normal' if he does then we'll go down that road, but it'll probably be in 8-10 years.

The kids

Cutie smile!
Little Bro and Big Sissy!
Dr. Stebbins doing an evaluation on her patient Haley. She looks so grown-up here. My goodness!
Dr. Stebbins or Dr. Scarlett depending on how she is feeling.

Scarlett is wearing the glasses that came with her medical/doctor kit. Today Suzie dropped by for lunch and Dr. Stebbins was taking care of her. Suzie got quite a few shots, good thing they didn't hurt.

Everyone is doing good. Scarlett has been very 3 lately, but I'm hoping once we get back to a more normal routine we can loose some of her attitude. Liam is great. He is so sunny and sweet. We're really lucky to have him in our family.

I took the kids in to A-dec for a quick visit the other day. Someone said something about Scarlett being small and I said, "she's our peanut" and then Scarlett chimed right in, "And Liam is our coconut!" It was really cute. She gave him a big hug yesterday and said, "I love you little buddy." Awhhh!

Last night everyone slept through 90% of the night. I'm hoping for that good again tonight. But I should go to bed now in case it doesn't happen. At least get a few hours of Zs before the drama starts.

DL and home at last...

We had a great day in Disneyland HK before we got on the plane for the long flight home. Grandma and Scarlett really loved riding Dumbo and the teacups "really fast!"

We also liked seeing the real Mickey Mouse in his Santa suit.

The flight home was LONG. Nuff said.

We are home now. Liam is doing great and I hope he'll be on US time and not China time soon. We're trying to keep him up but he's snoozing now, uggg! I hope I'm not up till 2:00am again tonight.

The Peak and Kowloon Markets

Kowloon flower market

Kowloon Market, this was the fruit and veggie section

Smily boy on the way up the peak

Scarlett at the park near out hotel (yesterday)

View from the peak

This is my favorite picture of the kids so far. Scarlett was playing stand up sit down with Liam and we caught this great picture of them together.

We walked and walked and walked some more today. We're all so tired and it's only 6:30pm.

Ron, Andy and the kids and I took the MTR in to town and then walked up some very steep hills to The Peak. The view was a little smoggy but amazing. What a pretty skyline Hong Kong has.

There was a Bubba Gump Shrimp Factory where we ate lunch, it was great. Scarlett had a hot dog and was very happy about it. Then the giantatic pink shrimp mascot came out and Scarlett was terrified and cried. We told her that he was just in his halloween costume, but she was still frightened. Grandma didn't join us b/c she wasn't feeling up to it, and she wanted to make sure she was ready for Disney tomorrow.

We then took the Star Ferry and met our guide Jackie who took us around the the Kowloon markets. It was very neat and crowded. The flower market was beautiful.

Then we took the MTR back. Everyone is VERY excited to see the 'real' Mickey Mouse tomorrow. We're going to take a bath now and go to bed early. Thank goodness. I don't know if I'll be able to post tomorrow. We have to pack tomorrow night, so it'll just depend on how that's going. We're really anxious to see everyone Wednesday.

Hong Kong at last

Kids in the tub together last night. It was the first time Liam has actually liked taking a bath.

Gondola ride up the the Giant Buddha

Yep we walked up all those stairs. Go Scarlett!

Papa, Me and Scarlett. It was so pretty up there!

Scarlett sitting on the glass bottom gondola. Grandma couldn't look...

More Giant Buddha!

Well our travel day (yesterday) was a bit rough, but we all woke up happy today. Hong Kong is as wonderful as we remember and our hotel is very lovely! We all had a great breakfast and were ready for something fun. Luckily our hotel is connnected to a big mall and then a quick walk to the Gondolas and Giant Buddha, so that was our goal.

The Giant Buddha was very wonderful. The kids had a fun time and the gondola ride up to the village/tourist trap was very neat. We could see lots of boats and beautiful mountains, waterfalls, hiking trails. Hong Kong is so beautiful!

We are looking forward to coming home though. We're tired and missing everyone. Tomorrow we are visiting The Peak and the Kowloon markets and then Tuesday... MICKEY MOUSE!! Yep the day Scarlett has been waiting for. We'll be seeing the "real Mickey Mouse" as she started saying.

Last day in Guangzhou!

We depart for Hong Kong tomorrow and everyone is excited! We get Liam's passport with USA visa at 4:30 today, we're having dinner at the White Swan (it's kind of fancy) and you can see the pearl river from there (that should be neat). Then we leave the Holiday Inn Shifu at 8:40 for the train station.
We've been in China for more than 2 weeks now and it has just flown by. We sure miss everyone though! It's hard living in a hotel room with 2 small ones. I can't believe how many diapers we go through a day. Yikes!
Everyone is napping, which is my blog time. Liam was really mad today and didn't want to lay down for a nap. It was hard to listen to him cry. We got him down eventually, but A said people in the hall probably thought we were beating him.
One sad part about leaving here is leaving all the families we've been with since Beijing. Most of them are going home tonight or tomorrow AM. What a neat-o group of people. And all the children have been so sweet and amazing!
We'll especially miss Becca and her family. We've had dinner with them several nights during the trip and they are such nice people (they are the family we traveled with during Scarlett's trip). We hope to visit them when we see our Ru Ru sisters in Colorado next year. Scarlett and Becca have become such good friends, it's really sweet!

Oh a quick note on our arrival time. I know some of you wanted to come to the airport. We'll be arriving on November 24th at 7:30 AM. Our flight is Delta 90 from Narita/Tokyo.

Miss and love you all... Scarlett sends out a special hello to Ava, Haley and Julia!

Guangzhou City Zoo

Only one more day in Guangzhou then we head to Hong Kong on Saturday. We're really excited about that. We have our departure meeting tomorrow AM to discuss the details.
We went to the city zoo this AM. It was really nice. Apprarently there is also a safari about 1 hours drive, where they have 10 pandas and you can pet the baby animals. That would have been cool. But the city zoo was close and had lots to see. We saw baby lion cubs, giraffes eating, HUGE tigers, and 2 pandas, and a variety of other animals. The weather was a little cooler today and it perfect for walking around the zoo. Also we saw some huge hippos kissing!! That's right kissing. They were in two seperate areas and the boy was trying to visit the girl. Our guide said they were going on a date. It was really neat-o!!
R&J are having a fun time. They looked a little tired today. Everyone in our room (except me) is napping right now. I bet they are napping too.
Liam continues to get more comfortable with us and is a really cute and happy guy. I have been feeding him yogurt at breakfast and today he let me feed him lunch. Yeah Lucy's and the fabulous noodles there!
I have also been putting him to bed at night and that goes pretty smoothly. Especially if we've been busy and he's tired anyway. He still wants Andy during the night and last night ended up sleeping between us for a while. That was okay, but he kept kicking Andy. I don't think A was very happy about it!
Liam was laughing at Scarlett and her antics today, and I'm hoping that he'll start wanting to interact with her more soon. She desperately wants to play with him but he's still pretty cautious/leary of her. She is patient and sweet with him though and quite possessive. She tells everyone we meet that Liam is HER baby brother.
Well I better run for now. Only so many peaceful moments I have during the day.
Julia--if your reading this, please email me a photo of the kids... Scarlett is missing them so much. I think she'd love to see what everyone is up to these days.
Miss you all!


Front entrance of the zoo. Pretty dolphins made of flowers.



Guangzhou is the city of Rams, and these are the mascots for the Pan Asian games. Cute huh?

Giraffes eating lunch. We were so close to them. Neat!!


My guys!

Scarlett's looking a little nervous next to the panda statue.


Panda... we were really close to it. They are so pretty!!

Hippos kissing. Ava, I think Gloria is on the right and MotoMoto is on the left :-)

Big guy hippo, looking for his 'friend' next door.

HUGE Siberian Tiger. I wouldn't want to meet him on a dark night in the forest.

Pretty decorations

Beautiful flowers. Guangzhou spent over 1 billion dollars on flowers getting ready for the games.
the whole city is very pretty.

Scarlett in our room