Latest on the girls and Paul's adoption

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile, but life is moving at warp speed lately ! Rachel is now potty trained and she has moved into Audreys room in her own big girl bed. The transition has been a little rough but overall much easier than we anticipated. Rachel is still not making it through the night dry but we are determined to have her potty trained at night as well so guess I'll just be doing a little extra laundry for awhile ;-) Rachel's crib is still sitting in Paul's room but I'm hoping to sell it soon and begin preparing his room for him. Since Paul seems to really like horses his room will have them as it's central theme. I recently received a few pictures of Paul receiving his care package. I am so amazed at how big our son is getting ! He looks a little sad in the pics but I'm hoping hes just irritated because he had to get dressed up and get a new haircut for the pics ;-)

This past weekend Wendy and Dan Bowyer came to visit and stayed with us. Both their daughters are from Audrey and Rachel's orphanages and we traveled together for both adoptions.

We are still waiting for our LOA or LSC (letter seeking confirmation) for Paul which is the main piece of paper we need before we can get ready to travel. The way things are moving now, we probably won't receive it until late May. I'll post as soon as we hear something.

Questions orphanage answered about Lei recently !

What is his personality like?

He is active, smart, industrious, and sensible.

When does the orphanage usually tell children they are being adopted and when is it ok to send a care package?

After we submit his file, we told him: “we’ll find a warm family for you. You’ll have Daddy and Mommy in the family.” After we received your pictures, we showed him the pictures right away, and told him it’s his parents. Please feel free to send care packages to him, we’ll definitely give them to him and tell him: Your Mommy and Daddy really care about you and love you very much.

Is there anything we can send for the children and caretakers of the orphanage ?

We have everything here, nothing needed in particular. Thank you for your kindness.

How does Lei feel about being adopted?

LeiLei hopes he has a real family. There are daddy and mommy love him. So when he heard there is a family is going to adopt him, he was very excited!

Is Lei close to any of his caretakers and if so, what are the names?

He lives in our big family. We all love him and he gets along well with everybody. And he is very close to us.

What are Lei's likes and dislikes? Does he have any favorite toys? Favorite Foods?
He is not picky. He loves remote airplane and cars. He loves KFC!

When Lei is upset, how do you comfort him?

Give him a hug and kiss him, usually he’ll be happy again.

Does Lei like animals? If so does he have a favorite?

He likes rabbit and kitty. He dreams he can ride horse and walk on grassland.

Celebrating Sisterhood

Thought it would be fun to create a slideshow with pics of Audrey and Rachel together since Rachel came home. A good friend is making a scrapbook for the girls and she is the one who gave me the idea to make a slideshow just celebrating their relationship. The song is definitely a little more country that I would prefer but I had to use it because the words were perfect ;-)

We will be Officially DTC Friday !!!!!

We just received an email from Terri at CHI and our dossier will be hand carried by Stefani Ellison on her trip to China this Friday. We are so excited and relieved that the paperchase is over and we are anticipating a February Login date. Now the wait begins. I think on average it is taking 90-100 days or so to get the LOA once you are DTC and have PA. If this comes true for us, we will probably travel early July, but of course this is only a guess. It will be a long Spring this year .........

Thanksgiving to Valentines Pics and Videos

Sisters and Friends

Just thought I'd post some recent pics of the girls playing. They truly are best friends although they spend alot of time abusing each other ;-)

I 171H finally received last week !!!

After nearly 9 weeks of waiting, we finally received our I-171H for Liu Lei, soon to be Paul Lei Price Hanna. What is really sad is that after 9 weeks of waiting, they didn't fill out the I-171H correctly. They forgot to mark that he is a special needs child. Fortunately our agency told us to go ahead and use the original I-171H for authentications and just take the updated I-171H to China with us with the original. So, we are finally about to be DTC. We should receive all of Paul's documents back from the courier in DC by the middle of next week and hopefully be logged in with a February LID. If we are logged in February, we are guessing we will travel late June or early July. This paperchase by far has been the worst of all 3 of our adoptions. I'm sure some of this is due to the fact that we know our son is waiting .
The girls are doing great and they are looking forward to having a big brother. The girls will be staying with Nai Nai and Papa while we travel so this will be our first trip to China with just Alex and I. We are looking forward to the trip even knowing it may be really rough with Paul's initial adjustment. We also know that we will miss the girls terribly. Niether of them has ever spent a night away from us since they were adopted....

Audrey's video Journal 2004 trip to China

I thought it would be fun to just make a video of clips from our trips to China that are not edited and have the actual audio so I made a video journal of Audrey's adoption and I plan to do one for Rachel this month as well. I think they will be nice keepsakes for the girls.

The Girls, Paul's adoption and Remodel

The past couple months have been crazy to say the least, but I'll try to do a little catching up. First, Audrey and Rachel are doing great and growing up way too fast. Rachel is finally starting to talk albeit a little slower than we would like. Just in the past month she has finally been able to say her name. She can say "I want that " of course lol. She says' "I eat", "that my momma", whenever she feels Audrey is getting too much attention. "Breakfast Bar" and many others. We've decided that Rachel is learning to talk on a "need to" basis. She never says anything without a purpose for saying it ............... and then there is the big sister who talks continuously 24/7 regardless of whether there is a need to communicate anything at all lol. It is no wonder Rachels speech has been a little slow in developing ;-)

There are so many funny things the girls do these days if only I could remember them all. Of course the one today is still fresh in my mind so I"ll share it. We were in the kitchen earlier this afternoon and I hear Audrey yell "No Rachel, Mom Look, she thinks it's Chapstick !" I turned around and Rachel was coating her lips real good with a glue stick sigh lol. I can only laugh now because it was made for kids and non-toxic of course. I was able to wash it off promptly too. It did teach me to be a little more careful about where I leave such items !

The other day Audrey was playing with one of her toy horses and she said it was a girl horse. I asked her how she knew it was a girl and she said emphatically "Because she has eyebrows". I was like "who knew" ;-) lol....

We tried potty training with Rachel in mid December and it was definitely a bust. Rachel had been holding it quite a bit in her pullup but for some reason when we put her in panties, she became a mad peeing machine. That girl went through 6 pairs of panties in 90 minutes and I'm not exaggerating. Needless to say that ended potty training 101 for a while. We are now in the phase of I want to use the potty whenever I feel like it but I will still pee in my pullup and I won't poop on the potty to save my life ! What is up with the fear of pooping on the potty I ask???? I've talked to so many moms and this seems to be a big issue. Ok, enough about potty training. It's bad enough to have to do it, much less write about it haha.

On to the paperchase ....... The paperchase for Liu Lei, soon to be known as Paul Lei Price Hanna has been exhausting to say the least. We are still waiting on the I-171H and have been for over 8 weeks. I called our congressman a week and a half ago and they called Memphis USCIS last week and were told it will still be 2 weeks before we have it. This makes the time from our homestudy and prints being received till we receive the I-171H 10 weeks which is insane. Long story short, we will probably end up DTC mid February and travel late June or early July.

As far as the remodel goes, its almost over and thank goodness ! Don't ever stay in your house while your kitchen is being remodeled with two sick kids and a husband out of town on business the whole week. It wasn't pretty and that's all I"ll say about that lol !

Lastly, make sure to watch the video clip I posted. My favorite part is where Rachel mimicks Audrey and says "Nai Nai and Papa" with the most serious southern draw you ever heard ;-)

My apologies that I rarely post, but I am going to try to do better, especially now that the holidays are over and this crazy remodel is too !

Audrey and Rachel Christmas 2007

I guess this is better late than never lol, but thought I'd share a few clips of the girls from December. Rachel can't even talk well yet and already has the serious southern draw going on ;-)

Home Improvements or Nesting ???

I have to laugh because everytime we start a new adoption and finish up the paperwork or come close to it we also begin furiously updating our home. With Rachel we ended up putting down hard wood floors in our entire upstairs and making our loft into a 4th bedroom. With Lei we are now adding a floor to ceiling bookshelf in our formal living room, Adding crown molding to 2 upstairs bedrooms and our upstairs bathroom, then the biggie is we are remodeling our Kitchen. We are replacing the tile, updating the hardware on the cabinets, replacing the countertops and replacing the appliances with stainless. We are also adding ceiling fans and some new lighting as well as updating some trim work downstairs. Ok, I'm now dizzy just thinking about all of it lol. When it is all said and done, we will then immediately proceed to the poorhouse ;-) The book shelf is almost done so once it is finished I will post a pic. It is awesome and I'm so glad we had it built. I know it will be a nice selling point one day when we sell. I definitely think there is a connection between our preadoption home improvements and Nesting .....

USCIS Memphis and Lei

I fed-ex'd our homestudy a second time on December 6th and Confirmed it was received on the 7th. Memphis USCIS did say that they will honor the original receipt date of November 16th so we shall see. If they take the maximum time they say it may take we may not have the I-171H until January 16th which seems like forever to me. We have all of Lei's docs back from being authenticated by the Sec of State's offices except my birth cert. which goes to California which is scary in and of itself lol. California charges 20.00 to authenticate one document. Thank goodness we live in TN where it cost 2.00 per doc !!! :-) Gotta love the Southeast.

The closer we get to the end of the paperchase the more I feel like this was meant to be and that Lei really is our son. I think we have all completely bonded to the few pictures we have of him. Now we are just preparing ourselves for the upcoming travel and all the trials and tribulations that will most likely follow. I'm currently reading a very good book called "Our Own", parenting the older adopted child". So far it seems like a very good reference and gives many scenarios as to what to expect when adopting an older child. I know this will be a comfort to have once Lei is home too.

A Blue Christmas Without You

It's amazing how fast time flies when you are paperchasing and trying to keep up with a 2 and 4 year old ! That may be why I'm finally posting at almost 3am lol. I just wanted to catch up briefly and share the events of the past couple days. First of all, we are in the final stages of our paperchase now and it's getting hairy to say the least. Yesterday I was sitting in the County Clerks office in downtown Chattanooga waiting to have all our dossier docs certified and all of the sudden I hear the song "It'll be a Blue Christmas without You". Wow, I was like, hmmmmm, this song couldn't have come at a worse time ;-). I thought I was going to burst into tears right there ! Now that we are almost DTC, suddenly I have this overwhelming need to have our son home. It has been so very different having a little face in our minds to think about constantly. Up until the past week though, I personally have just tried not to think too much about him and hyperfocus on the paperchase. But now that we are almost done, all I can seem to think about is him and what it will be like when he is with us. Well, while I was thinking about Lei yesterday, I decided that since our homestudy had gone to USCIS on November 16th and our social worker had not put a cover letter on our homestudy stating that we were adopting a "Waiting Child", that I would just email them (Memphis USCIS) to make sure they knew that Lei was waiting on them so that he could come home. So I emailed Memphis yesterday morning and when I returned from getting our docs authenticated in Chattanooga, I come home to an email that says they can't find our homestudy !!!! I was like NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Of course then I was just so thankful that I had emailed them only two weeks after they received it instead of waiting weeks only to find out they never had it. Long story short is that we are fed-exing another homestudy to them tomorrow and I am hoping that since they LOST our first one, that they will expedite the processing of our I-171H.

Ok, I must sleep now !!! There is so much more to post and catch up on which I promise to very soon.

Gotcha Day Rachel in China and Home

I recently remade Rachel's Gotcha Day video and added some pics since she's been home. Hope you enjoy.

Audrey's Horseback riding Adventure

Ok, am I crazy putting Audrey on a horse at 4.5 yrs old? This was actually just one of those fateful things that happens. I really had thought she was too young, but I had talked to several different people recently who had experience with horses and all informed me that it's not uncommon at all for kids to start riding after age 3.5-4. We just happen to have a riding/boarding stable literally within walking distance of our house so I have been inundated with requests from Audrey to ride over the past year.

Long story short, she is a natural and she had the time of her life. I myself love horses as well so seeing her learn to ride was wonderful. She takes another lesson this Wednesday and we are really looking forward to it.

We have our PA for LEI !!!!!

Although the PA (preapproval from China) is only one small step in our adoption process, it offically makes Lei ours as long as our dossier supports the information in our Letter of Intent (LOI), which it will. We finished up our homestudy last week and our SW is working on writing it up now. We just received our fingerprinting appointment Saturday and it is for October 26 so just a couple weeks away. If all goes as planned, we should be DTC early December. I still cringe when I think about Memphis USCIS though. They can take anywhere from 5-8 weeks to process our I-600A once they have the homestudy and prints. It only took 5 weeks with Rachel so I will be happy if it is the same for Lei.

Happy Birthday Rachel !!!

Rachel's Birthday was actually the last week of September but I'm finally getting around to posting. We celebrated with a small birthday party at home and it was perfect. I didn't realize how in touch Rachel would be that it was her birthday but she totally got it and she wanted us to sing Happy Birthday to her all day long. The only word she can say from the song is "Happy" so she just went around singing "Happy" all day lol. We picked her up a special little birthday cake and a Princess Balloon that sings "happy birthday" and she was thrilled. Throw in last years "carebear" birthday decorations and you have a great party ;-) The most memorable thing about Rachel's birthday party was the fact that she blew out her candle without any help whatsoever. This should not have suprised me though since she is very often full of hot air !

About Our Boy !!!!! Our hearts already ache for him

Since I last posted about Lei, I have learned so much new information about his orphanage and caregivers thanks to several families who have visited the orphanage contacting me after I posted on the Zhejiang orphanages yahoo group. We now know that Lei is at Jiaojiang SWI which is on the China Sea where it meets the Shujiang river. There are only 14 children at his orphanage and one was just adopted in the past week by a Dutch family who actually have contacted me while in China. They visited the orphanage just a few days ago so they are sure they met Lei. I sent them his referral pictures and they are going to look through all their pictures to see how many he is in and send them to me. As you can imagine we are so excited that we might see recent pictures !!! One family did send me a picture of her daughter with him in the background in July 2006. He just looks like an angel from heaven, and I'm not kidding :-) We also now know the director of the orphange's name and we have a direct contact in China thanks to a gentleman who's son is adopted from Jiaojiang SWI. The recurring theme from all the families I've been in contact with is that this is a very good orphanage with loving nannies and a director who really cares about the children. The families who have told me this have all been to the orphanage and have met the director and caregivers.

Our LOI should be on it's way to CCAA by now because it was being translated last week. I also filed our I-600A today and our homestudy is moving at warp speed. All this said, I still know realistically that we probably won't travel until next May. Knowing who our son is and having to wait so long is just going to be heartwrenching ............ It already is. I will post any new pictures and information I receive. Hopefully I will have new pictures soon !

Soccer Girl !!! WAY TO GO #14

Ok, well today was only Audreys 2nd Soccer practice and game but we all sure had a good time and we can already see her improving. ( She now knows to kick the ball when possible and which goal to kick it towards ;)) Of course there is this phenomena that is quite humorous to watch in which the opposing team member will stop with the ball and then Audrey and her teammates aren't sure what to do. They stand there and wait for their opponent to move. I guess you can't play soccer if your opponent doesn't move lol. Anyway, our first soccer game with Audrey we weren't sure what to think but today it was great. Sunshine, fresh air, exercise for the girls, and oh, the junk food at the concession stand wasn't bad either ;-) Rachel really enjoys soccer now too and she is going to be a natural when she's old enough to play. She can already kick the ball great !

It's All About Audrey and Rachel

Actually Audrey has a fleece blankie from her "Rae" (grandma) that says "It's all about me, Deal with it". Audrey asked me what it said last night and I told her and she seemed quite pleased and kept repeating this phrase sigh lol. Thanks Rae !!! Haha

What is new with us? Well everything is always new, sometimes fun, sometimes exhausting and most of the time both !. Rachel is still as headstrong as ever and tests us daily. She doesn't have great speech skills yet, but she has no problem getting her point across. She is our little "spitfire" putting it politely ;-) Her main words these days are "one mo" and she puts up one finger. She learned this quickly because no matter how much you give her she isn't satisfied so it's always "ONE MO PEAS". She can also say "GUM" quite plainly. (a whole other story there). She also says "BAD" perfectly lol. Guess maybe her mama has said that one more than once. Whenever any of us do anything that displeases Rachel, she is the first to raise her finger and scold us with "BAD". Rachel feels inclined to do exactly what Audrey is doing at all times which is a great challenge. I let Rachel play with Play Dough the other day and you would have thought she had gold. She sat there mesmerized for at least 45 minutes using the little plastic scissor that came with it. I think she felt like she had arrived because I let her use what appeared to be real scissors ;-) Rachel has been doing some crafts at her new preschool and the teacher says she is really really into it. I told them that I believe it is because she is "craft deprived" at home. I am about the least crafty person you will ever meet lol. Rachel is finally starting to pay attention to security items, ie, baby dolls, stuffed animals, etc, although she still doesn't act like she has to have them. Rachel twists the hair on the back of her head at night to self soothe which is great except that when she wakes up the back of her head resembles a brillo pad ;-) needless to say I am still trying to push stuffed animals off on her. We are making progress slowly but surely.

I could write a book on what Audrey says on a weekly basis. Actually what she says begins from the moment her feet hit the floor (unfortunately this is usually quite early) until after her feet are back in the bed at approximately 9pm. Audrey is in the "Sassy", I have conquered the world and know it all" phase now. I'll start first with the talking. Audrey currently reminds me so much of that VolVo commercial where the man picks up the daughter and puts her in the back of the SUV and she never stops talking the entire time and he just has this numb smile on his face ;-). This scene would be our daily life now lol. Audrey doesn't have to have anything to say to talk now and if nobody will listen to her then she will sit and talk to herself, it is too funny ! Audrey can write her name now and a few other choice words like "MOMMY" *grin* ;-) She can count to 40 and I think if I would take a little time and sit down with her she could count to 100 in no time. Audrey is a stuffed animal junkie and we are seriously considering intervention soon !

Audrey is still taking gymnastics and she starts playing soccer next saturday so I will be sure to post pictures of that. I will be starting Rachel in gymnastics next fall when she turns 3. They have mommy & me programs for under 3 but I am just too old and tired for that one lol ;-)