Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Sisterly Love

I must tell you that we actually bought the blankie a couple days ago and Audrey was very positive about her mei mei and obsessed with carrying around her pictures and sleeping with them until today. Apparently, I made the mistake of stressing the fact to Audrey that Mei Mei was REAL and that she was coming to live with us and sleep in the crib in Audrey's room. Well, I can only say that "indignant" would be a good word to describe her reaction to this news. Audrey has now informed me that she doesn't need a sister and Rachel doesn't need to sleep in the crib in her room. But, as it is with most nearly 3 year olds, she was only indignant for a short while and then seemed to just forget about it. Until we were at Target today and I just had to buy a few bottles. Audrey immediately insisted that she must have a bottle too. So, I did what other moms advised which was I bought her one and let her have it. She sucked on it with some milk in it tonight for approximately 10 minutes and then left it and never touched it again ;-) I figure it is best to let her get this kind of thing out of her system before Rachel arrives lol.













Rachel's First Blankie picked out by proud Jie Jie Audrey

Once we received Rachel's referral we just had to go out and pick something special out for her so Audrey and I (Mama) went to babiesrus and Audrey picked out this very cute pink blankie that has a little bunny and says "love me". I couldn't have picked out a better one myself ;-)

Saturday, May 27, 2006

SWI of Xiushan Tujia and Miao Autonomous report for Xiu Fu Hao

Today we received alot of useful information about our new daughter. Based on her medical report she appears to be in very good health with a healthy weight and height as well. We will have a pediatrician look at her medical just to be sure there are no concerns we need to address. What I loved most about reading this report though was that it told a little bit about our daughters personality and also had a brief message from her orphanage to us.

Here is what it says:

Personality
Xiu Fu Hao is extroverted, easygoing and even-tempered. She is somewhat afraid of strangers. She is always well behaved and does not make trouble for her caretakers. She always plays alone. She sometimes murmurs in her own language. She has a fair complexion and has a ready smile. When you approach her, she shows you a sweet smile, which is her way to welcome your love.

Remarks from the institute
Mother's sincere love as well as a warm and complete family will be a great fortune for children who have lost their mother and family. We sincerely wish Fu Hao may become your daughter. We believe her sweet smile will bring you endless happiness. We wish you may provide her with a real home full of love.

Needless to say, after reading and learning a little more about our beautiful new daughter, our hearts are aching and we are more than ready to bring her home !!!
Excellent Slide show of Chongqing, Beautiful Chinese Music too !

I came across this link on the Xiushan SWI yahoo group and this slide show from an adoptive family that adopted from Xiushan SWI was kind of enough to share the link to their site.
http://www.photodex.com/sharing/viewshow.html?fl=2499360&alb=0
It will prompt you to download an add-on for photo-dex in order to view the slideshow but it takes about 10 seconds to do this and it's very much worth it.













Fed-Ex Came this morning with Rachels Official referral!
"Wow", is all I can say right now. It is such a wonderful feeling to have Rachel's medical and social reports along with her original pictures. I will tell you a little about what we have learned about Rachel through the information we received today. I feel it would be best to make that a separate post though.

Friday, May 26, 2006


Introducing Xiu Fu Hao
Soon to be
Rachel Victoria CN Hanna
Born 9.21.05
Xiushan SWI, Chongqing












The Call" , Yes, The Stork Finally Landed !!!
At approximately 12:20 today we received the call and I knew it was coming because I had just checked our AHH June DTC yahoo group a few minutes before and there was a referral posted from someone receiving referrals with us. By the time I actually received "The Call" I had already had a good cry, the shakes, heart palpitations and you know, all those referral day jitters. I actually worried that our coordinator would think I was insensitive since I had run out of emotions by the time he finally called ! It was nice to be halfway calm and collected during the call though so I could think to ask alot of questions. I had a very nice well organized referral question list in front of me with blanks under each question and ended up writing everything down on post-its and hardly looked at the list, go figure lol .... I actually videotaped the moment I realized we were about to receive the call and knew where Rachel was from and the actual call, but I will have to do some serious editing before I can share any of those moments ;-) The most amazing fact that we learned from the referral call is that our 2nd daughters orphanage is probably not more than 50 miles south of our first daughters and they are both in the Chongqing Municipality ! God has been so good to us, much better than we deserve. When we were in Chongqing in 2004 adopting Audrey I traveled to Qianjiang which is where Audrey's orphanage is so I have been very close to where our Rachel is now and it's a comfort to know what it is like so close to her. It's such beautiful country there with very large mountains, huge Gorges, and rivers that seem to go on forever. Every since we adopted our Audrey, I have yearned to return to Chongqing and especially to where Audrey is from (210 miles east of Chongqing city in rural china). It may be impossible but myself and one of my travelmates are going to try to coerce our agency into letting us visit the orphanage. This may not happen though because Rachels orphanage is probably 10-12 hours from Chongqing City where we will be staying. I will post more on this subject as we find out if we will be able to go. Lastly, and definitely least, I just want to say that Rachel's referral day will unfortunately be remembered as "the day after the air conditioning died". Actually the airconditioning died yesterday but the repairman showed up approximately 30 minutes after I received " The Call". It was pretty humorous though because here I am trying to make calls and getting calls about our referral, I'm sweating like crazy, trying to communicate with our very sweet repairman who sports a rather heavy hispanic accent and learning about the ins and outs of our heating and air system. Anyway, it turns out that we need a whole new unit which will be 2500.00 thank you very much ! Yikes. The fact that all this occurred on referral day definitely took a little of the sting out of it though.
We should receive Rachel's referral package via Fed-ex sometime tomorrow morning so I'll be sharing more then.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006


The Stork is on its Way !!!

This morning we pleasantly awoke to find that the CCAA (chinese center for adoption affairs) had updated their website to reflect that matches have been completed for LIDs through 6/15/05. If the same timeframe applies as last month between this update and our agency receiving its referrals, we should have Rachel's pictures and information on Thursday !!!, I will be posting pictures and referral info at http://audreyandrachel.com . Please check back Thursday, we are soooo soooo excited and so grateful to God that we will soon lay eyes on our 2nd princess from China......

Friday, May 19, 2006

Possibly Good News on Our referral !

Today a couple Spain agencies began reporting that the next referrals which are expected at the end of May/early June will at least go through June 15th LID which means we should receive Rachel's referral ! I will post more information as I hear it but we are very optimistic now because the first Spanish agency that reported this news is usually right when they report what they believe the cut-off will be. They apparently have contacts close to CCAA.

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Framed Picture from Chongqing
I just received back a Sign I was having framed that I had made in Chongqing with Audrey's name painted on it with chinese pictures. On my video of our time in China with Audrey you can actually see the gentleman painting it while we watched. It was amazing because it only took him about 7 minutes and it's beautiful. This is one of my favorite keepsakes we brought back from China when we adopted Audrey.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Confusing Referral Rumors

We are LID 6/14/05 and the past couple months have been extremely painstaking. Currently, one person says they are LID 6/15/05 and have been told by their In-China travel agency they won't get their referral until next month. Another person LID 6/13/05 was told by BLAS they would get their referral this month. So my question is what about 6/14/05 ! ! ! ;-) Basically we have no idea if we will receive Rachel's referral the end of May or end of June. I have been really optimistic that it would be end of May but lately with many different rumors floating around, I am completely confused..... Oh, I left out one rumor that the referral cutoff should be around June 20th. I really hope the last rumor is true.
The First Bee Sting

On Saturday Audrey was playing on the deck while I was working in the garden and Alex was in the house. Suddenly, I heard one of those blood curdling screams that just makes your heart stop. I ran up on the deck immediately and Audrey was screaming and crying. It didn't take Alex and I long to figure out what was going on since she promptly lifted her foot to show us a bumble bee beneath it. At first it was difficult to figure out exactly where she was stung but after we calmed down and she did as well, we saw the stinger and removed it. After I pulled it out, I read on the internet that you're supposed to scrape it off with something like a credit card instead of pulling it out because you can squeeze the venom sac and increase the reaction by pulling it out. Fortunately Audrey didn't have much of a reaction to the sting and she was acting like nothing happened within 30 minutes of being stung. (gotta love kids hehe). We did put a mixture of baking soda and water paste on it for about 15 minutes and an ice pack off and on which seemed to help the pain. What is weird is that we have lots of bees around due to our garden but in the 6.5 years we've lived here, neither Alex nor I have ever been stung by any type of bee. What we finally figured out is that Audrey had picked up a vase of Peonis that I had sitting out on the deck and apparently there was a bumblebee on one of the flowers which fell on the deck and then Audrey stepped on it and it of course stung her. I hate to say it but it is actually a blessing that she had this minor bee sting because now we know she isn't allergic to bee stings and can breath a little easier if it ever happens again.

Saturday, May 06, 2006

Swept Away

Tonight after Audrey and I returned from a birthday party, Audrey was sitting at the table singing and I suddenly realized she was singing one of the lyrics from Geoff Moore's "Swept Away" song. She kept singing "You'll never be alone". What is funny is that she was singing another part of the song the night before and I thought maybe I was imagining it and didn't even give it a second thought.


I have Geoff Moore's CD in our van and apparently I'm playing it a bit too frequently lol. Nothing like hearing your not even 3 year old singing "Swept Away" while your waiting for your referral. Needless to say, I had a lump in my throat when I realized what she was singing ....

Friday, May 05, 2006

Audrey's First Swim Lesson

This past Monday Audrey had her first swim lesson which was one of those first time mom experiences I won't soon forget lol. Audrey won't be 3 until Mid June, but being the overly zealous mama that I am, I deducted that Audrey was just too far advanced in her swimming to be in the 6month to 3 yr old class where mommy held her and we just worked on getting her acclamated to the water. So, I enrolled her in the pre-school 3-5 year old swim lessons. Her first lesson I was really nervous because I had no idea what to expect or what to tell Audrey to expect and I am one of those, "need to know what to expect" kind of people....

As I was preparing Audrey for her first lesson, I told her that she would be in the water with her swim instructor but I would be by the pool watching so everything would be ok. Well, as luck would have it, when we arrived at the pool and the instructors came to take the children, they promptly instructed us moms/dads to exit the pool area and sit behind this glass wall that was on the other side of the pool. So off they marched Audrey and I felt this sort of panic come over me wondering if Audrey was going to be at all upset by this, but she was so overly excited about swimming that she was like "cya Mom, Come back and visit me when you can " ;-)

So there I sat behind this glass wall at our local YMCA watching Audrey's first lesson. As I watched Audrey, it suddenly became very clear to me that Audrey really did not grasp the fact that this was a swim lesson because she wasn't paying attention at all to the teachers and pretty much was doing her own thing. I don't think I have ever squirmed that much in my seat ! I spent the next 35-40 minutes watching Audrey basically exhaust the two swim instructors in her group as they tried to keep Audrey's attention. At the end of her lesson when I went into the pool area to pick up Audrey I know I had this really "deer in the headlights" look on my face. The first question that the instructor asked was "how old is she?". I told her that she was getting ready to turn 3. I asked the instructor if she thought I needed to put Audrey in a class for younger children and she said no she would be fine. Needless to say, I had a long talk with Audrey before her next lesson about listening and paying attention to her instructors and doing EXACTLY what they told her. I actually was able to be in the pool area for her 2nd lesson although I was on the other side of the pool and Audrey did 100% better. The lessons for 3-5 year olds at the YMCA are fantastic so far. They cost of 53.00 for the whole month of May and she goes twice a week to them. We are not members there either. They are really trying to teach these children to swim and not just playing with them so I am extremely happy with our lessons thus far. Hopefully I'll be posting Audrey can swim in a few weeks !
Referral Update

The last batch of referrals was released the 3rd week of April and included log-in dates through and including June 6, 2005. We are LID June 14, 2005 so while we are very hopeful that we will be included in the next batch of referrals, there is certainly still the possibility that we may not receive our referral until the end of June. China's CCAA is just finishing up their May Labor day holiday week off so hopefully next week will bring with it some new rumors .........

I will be updating as soon as I hear any news that sounds credible.

Thursday, May 04, 2006

I am completely new to Blogger so please bare with me as I struggle through the learning curve. This post is just me testing out "Blog this".