Geting bigger

Lainey is now in the 5th percentile.  Our last trip to the pediatrician about 2 weeks ago she had gained 5 pounds and grown 3/4 inch just since coming home.  It is amazing what whole milk will do for you!  She loves to be outside and loves the swing!  We found some sunglasses that Velcro on so that she does not keep taking them off and on.  She wears them- I think she figured out how much they help her to see when she is in the sun.  The other two pics are from a day we went to Jeni's ice cream.  She was so excited to out in her stroller.  And she loved the ice cream.  For those of you not familiar with Jeni's- the ice cream is yummy but unusual flavors.  I think that night Lainey tried chocolate covered corn flake and salty caramel.  Like I said she loved them both.  Speaking of food- the kid likes it all.  She eats asparagus, peas, green beans, pears, strawberries, blueberries anything.  She tried French toast and totally ate a large piece all by herself.  She also tried pepperoni pizza at loved it too.  You can tell when she loves something as she gets excited and waves her hands around and does them "yum yum" kind of vocalization.  It is hard to miss.

She is still going to weekly PT and getting stronger and stronger.  She is finally putting some weight on her legs.  She used to not put any weight on her legs and it was almost as if they did not exist to her.  She now puts her weight through her legs and when she is standing up gets this look on her face like "wow look what I can do".  She still needs someone to hold her up or to hold on to but she is getting stronger and stronger.  Over the weekend she started doing her own version of the inchworm/commando crawl.  It is not pretty but it is effective.  We now have to watch where we put her as she has found her way to the potted plants, the cat, daddy's pop, and she loves to make her way to the kitchen floor to slap her hand on the tile.  Once night this week she actually went from being on all fours to pushing back to sit up.  We cheered and she looked at us like "you crazy adults".

Mommy went back to work last week and Lainey started going to Miss Cari's house.  Lainey loves it.  Mommy hates it!.  Cari has a 4 year old and a 7 month old of her own.  Lainey loves Hannah the 4 year old and Hannah is great with her too.  Lainey has been watching Maddy the 7 month old commando crawl and we think that helped her learn how to do it.  Lainey has also taught Maddy how to clap.    Mommy is getting back into the swing of things at work.  Of course, everyone ask to see pics and to talk about Lainey.  I don't mind though.  Anything to talk about my girl.  :)

Lainey gets ear tubes

Lainey got ear tubes!  This is a picture of her in pre-op.  She was not sure about the new clothes they gave her.  The socks were extra huge on  her tiny feet!  We all enjoyed our pre op stay as our friends the Schroeter's were there too awaiting ear tube surgery for Catherine.  Some of you may remember Catherine's blog.  The Schroeter's went to Henan in late fall to get Catherine.  She is from the same province as Lainey and they used the same adoption agency that we did- small world!  The girls enjoyed the stay by playing with the new toys the hospital gave them and watching the nurses go by.  The parents enjoyed the time to talk about China and tell stories!    Lainey did great with the surgery and just needed to sleep off the anesthesia.  She was fine after an unplanned 3 hour nap!  She woke up ready to play and eat.  The tubes seemed to have helped with drooling and runny nose.  We go back next week to recheck her hearing and make sure the tubes are still in place and free of fluid.  The doctor did a culture on the fluid that was drained.  I laughed and told him the only thing he would find is China pollution.  :)

We are enjoying every moment with our little girl!  More to follow........
Christina, Scott and Lainey

Happy Belated Chinese New Year

Hello All

Sorry it has been so long since we filled you in on Lainey's life.  Life with a child is busy.

Happy Belated Chinese New Year.  CNY occured on 2/14/10.  We had a busy weekend.  On Saturday we started Chinese music class- Rock My Bao Bao.  This is a class that is affiliated with our support group- Families with Children from China.  Lainey sat back and watched which is her usual.  She rocked to the beat and smiled when the other kids danced around.  After that we went to a CNY celebration at a local high school.  Ohio has an annual event which changes locations every year.  This year it happened to be in Columbus.  Lainey loved watching the dancers and hearing the music.  She was sitting in the Baby Bjorn watching the performances and just rocking out to the beat.  An older Asian couple was sitting near us and they were smiling and laughing with us as she just rocked out.  On Sunday we went to the CNY party put on by COFCC (Central OH Families with Children from China.  Lainey loved it!  The dancing and kids singing really made her smile.  The pictures above are from this party.  AS you can see she was not afraid.  We had quite the introduction.  One of Scott's co workers Angela An was the emcee and introduced us to a gym full of families.  We were not expecting that at all!  It was very fun to see the other families that we had met along the way.  Lainey also got to meet some of the kids I know from working at the hospital.  They were all very excited to see her.

The Chinese New Year is the biggest celebration the Chinese have.  It is often several weeks long in celebration.  Often the families leave the big city and return to the family home in the country.  Each day the family has a special event planned.  This could be visiting a certain family member or preparing certain foods.  The government offices shut down for a week and many schools are closed for the month.  When we were in China they were getting all the decorations up.  They put up paper lanterns, chilli peppers, paper cut outs and many other decorations.  We were lucky to be in China during this time and were able to come home with many decorations for our home.  So we imagine Chinese New Year will become an extension of Christmas in our house!  Each Chinese New Year starts a new zodiac year.  2010 is the year of the Tiger.  2008- the year Lainey was born is the year of the Rat- of course all the moms in our travel group decided to call is the year of the Mouse!   We all that mouse was much cuter!  Much like the zodiac signs we are familiar with each animal represents certain personality traits.  The Chinese are very proud of their signs and often display them in many ways- Tshirts, cell phone charms etc.

Next year we will celebrate CNY 2011 with our 2 year old daughter Lainey!  :)

Hope you are doing well and hope this update finds you all well, safe and warm!

Christina, Scott and Lainey

Now I'll get to the Thank You's!

Got a little distracted yesterday, that parenting thing we are learning about!  Kind of changes your time schedules by the minute.  But we really wanted to say thank you to everyone who followed our journey.  We were able to read only a few of the comments in China because our access to read the blog was blocked!  Through my iphone I got to read some of the early posts, but then my phone was shut off by ATT for high roaming charges!  But we have read all of them now that we are home and we were able to relive some of the days of the trip again. It really means a lot to know that many people care for us and our new little girl. The advice is fantastic too, we are new at this afterall!  Thanks again to the Hunt Family for having a car pick us up at the airport too! He found us right away and we were home eating before we would have normally been to our car in the parking lot!  Thanks to the Biehl's for driving by and checking on our house while we were gone.  Anyone in need of a pet sitter in Columbus, I can put you in contact with Laura Ludlow and her service.  We've used it a couple times and the pets have been well cared for!  Our two cats are still getting used to Lainey! And she is very interested in them, doubt she's ever seen a cat!  All our families have been great, we'll get to see you in person somehow.  We're taking things slow right now to make sure Laine gets adjusted and attached to us.  Remember it's all a strange world to her now.  She doesn't see anything, smell anything, hear anything, or taste anything she is used too.  Her mind must be going around and around and soaking up so many new things.  We noticed even in China after a couple days with us and strange voices and langauge she would smile at store workers who spoke her native langauge.  So we have to be cautious right now to not overload her too much.  Plus I don't have much vacation time left, so it will have to be some quick trips!   In the near future we have an adoption clinic appointment for her on Friday.  Children's Hospital here in town has a special clinic to see the kids very soon after they arrive home to get checked out head to toe.  She'll get a lot a prodding  then that will not make her happy, but we need to find out all we can about any problems she may have.  We don't see any right away other than development of motor control skills like sitting and standing.  She is getting stronger each day with that.  She is almost rolling over to her belly. Just can't kick over that last leg.  She will sit without being propped up too for several minutes and catches herself when falling to a side. When we pick her up under the arms and stand her on her feet she pushes back now.  In the beginning she would fold her legs right away, no strength there at all.  Now she kicks strongly with her legs in the crib, having fun making the noise!  We'll probably keep the blog going to some extent to show how she grows.  I'm sure Christina will post some thank you's too, she is sleeping with Laine right now! The first order of business will be to get out some Christmas/Birth Announcement cards of some type.  We waited to do the cards since we knew this was the big topic people wanted to hear about so we'll try to get that accomplished before I head back to work next week!  I better run now, thanks again to all for being a part of our journey!

Love Scott, Christina and Laine

Thanks for all the well wishes

Whew! We made it! We've been home for almost 24 hours now and trying to get the bodies adjusted back to our time zone.  We went to bed about 7:30 last night and didn't have much of a problem falling asleep.  Laine woke up twice needing a diaper and she made some new noises, but she slept just as we did. We crawled out of bed about 9:30 this morning.  I didn't sleep at all on the flights and Chirstina and Laine maybe slept two hours.  It was the fussiest she had been for us.  Not sure if its the teeth coming in or not moving around much or what.  She cried a fair amount, making the older man sitting next to Christina not very happy.  He asked for a seat change right away but never got one.  That truly is a rough way to travel. We saw an episode of Brothers and  Sisters, Ghost Lab, Cake Boss, and some other tv shows and then a bunch of movies, The Invention of Lying, The Informant, Where the Wild Things Are, The One and Only, and I wouldn't really recommend any of them!  We paid a little more for the economy plus cabin on the flight home.  Supposedly you get five more inches of leg room than the economy area.  It was worth it.  Laine had a seat between us too.  But it just wasn't quite wide enough for her to lay stretched out.  She just couldn't get comfortable. Finally about 10 hours into the flight she fell asleep across my lap.  I was afraid to move and my arms were pretty dead after an hour and we moved her to the seat for a bit more rest.  Still didn't get a window seat so never got to see any of the landscape.  We flew from Hong Kong over Japan and the north to Alaska and then back down through Canada and the Dakotas to Chicago.  We didn't have any problems with immigration. We handed over the brown envelope, they opened it out of our sight so we never got to see all the paperwork in it! But it was about a 1/4 inch thick of something.  Laine will receive her official paperwork in the next 45 days.  Then we can apply for a local birth certificate.  She'll need that for school. 

There has been a lot of talk nationaly about airline security lately and we saw some interesting things in our flights.  China has pretty diligent security I thought.  They looked at our checked bags much more closely than here.  We also had two security checks in Hong Kong, the normal one going to the gate and then another right at the plane entrance where they patted you down from head to toe and checked your carry on bags again.  For some reason the US immigration x-rayed all luggage on the way into the country, thought that was odd.  Then we had to go through security again in Chicago since we left a secure area changing terminals.  That sucked.  TSA there was as slow as frozen molasses and were very rude.  We were admonished for not putting shoes on the conveyor, but in a bin, and for not unloading every camera I had separately.  He said I've been doing this for 8 years and, he didn't like my answer of I've been carrying multiplae cameras through airports for over 20 and never had to unpack each one!

But now we're home. Christina just came back from the store so I better help unload some goodies! More later.

Our Newest Citizen!

We are home all safe and sound! Lainey is trying her first batch of
pureed bananas in her new living room. We've been up for 26 hours
straight so bed time is arriving quickly!

Our Ride

Here is a shot of our ride home. Finally get to fly on a 747! We
leave Hong Kong in about an hour, and sit on that bird for 14 hours!
It's in the 70's here, I guess we're heading to the 20's. Oh well.

World's Largest Sitting Buddha

Today we ventured to Hong Kong, a short 35 minute flight from Guangzhou.  We flew with another family that is taking the same route as us home. We woke up a little early, 5am to get going and be at the airport in time.  We had some trouble with luggage here.  We checked in just fine were a few pounds overweight with one bag, but no penalty.  Then some dude at another counter helping the other family with us decides my carry on, a standard carry on bag that had already been tagged as approved by our agent said no it needed to be checked and made a big deal about it.  He even tried to take our back packs saying they were too big. But we slid away silently, only to have to run away from him again when he showed up at our gate!  But we got there.  Sort of a pain since technically it was an international flight and we had to go through immigration and customs and all that crapola.  Took longer to do that than the flight did!  The flight was so short they gave us water and a snack cake before we even left the ground in Guangzhou! 

 

So we get to our hotel which is attached to the airport.  Very fancy, and modern.  Its the Regal Airport.  Our room is large and we have a king size bed I'm looking at longingly as I write this!  I ran down to the grill for some take out lunch and right away noticed they had a hockey game on the big screen!  Cool! Never thought I'd see that here!  Then in less than 30 seconds they went to commercial and it featured NHL stars and the first one shown, Rick Nash of Columbus! The next commercial was for the big ten network and was advertising an upcoming game between Ohio State and Penn State.  I figured I am in the right place!  So we had lunch got Lainey a nap and then met the other family who is at a different hotel for an excursion!  We met at the train station at a very fancy mall called City Gate.  Very busy and very modern american type of mall.  All high end stores like Burberry, Coach, and Kate Spade.  We took a cable car ride to Lantau Peak, the second highest mountain in Hong Kong.  At the top sits the Tian Tan Buddah, which was the world's largest outdoor sitting Buddha until 2007.  We saw the cable cars from the airport when we landed and just kind of stumbled our way there and found out about the Buddha later!  The cable car ride was great, giving great views of the bay and mountains.  There were clouds slowly rolling over the top of a nearby peak, very beautiful.  A great way to bookend the trip.  We had great blue skies in Beijing at the beginning.  When we came over the last mountain the Buddha came into view, and we were stunned!  On a clear day you can see it for miles.  Its 110 feet tall and sits at the top of 268 steps.  It was very impressive.  We all just kind of looked at each other and said wow, this is something we didn't expect at all, and were glad we didn't just pack it in and sit in the hotels.  There were a number of large cattle with rather big horns just wandering around with the pedestrians!  If I remember right they are sacred to the Buddhist faith?  The village of Ngong Ping sits at the top of the cable car.  Its a complete tourist trap, with starbucks and 7-eleven and all kinds of little gift shops.  Quite picturesque I must say.  We then took the cable car back down and had dinner at the McDonald's at the mall.  Went to the grocery store there and then ventured back here to the hotel for a bath for Lainey.  Christina and I came to the same opinion in the mall, the people are the same here.  They walk right in front of you without a care in the world, cut you off, stop, oyu name it and don't think a second thought.  Never an excuse me, pardon me, nothing.  Just comes across as so rude.  I know they are used to it and that's just the crowded culture here, I just really bite my tongue and try to go with the flow.   It all ends tomorrow when we board the big jet for the 14 hour flight home!

Our Last Day in China

We are very anxious to get home to our bed, drinking water from the tap, eating salads, and being able to understand everything going on around us!  We will miss having a ready made breakfast buffet every morning, short sleeve weather, and the families we've met.  Today was pretty casual, been packing on and off, finding last minute gifts, and playing with Laine.  The smog was horrible this morning, the worst we've seen all trip.  Our guide said to stay inside, so we mostly did. In the morning we fly to Hong Kong and spend the night there.  Its just a short 35 minute flight to Hong Kong.  Then on sunday we fly directly to Chicago and then to Columbus where we are scheduled to arrive about 4:30pm.  Its hard to believe we've been in Guangzhou since last friday.  It was funny tonight walking through the lobby of the hotel and seeing new families in with the panic look of where can I take my laundry and exchange money!  The same look we had last friday.

 

It was sad saying good bye to the other families over the last day. The kids who are a little bit older, 2 and 3, are kind of afraid to see people hugging and going away.  They have seen this before and are uncertain what is happening.  I had one family's son grab my hand and not let go tonight after dinner.  He hadn't really paid any attention to me all week!  He just wanted a big hug the other parents were getting!

 

We forgot we had a shirt for Lainey that says someone in Ohio loves me.  So we put that on her today and let her play with the USA beanie baby dolls too.  Some cute pictures. She's been pretty cranky all day, we think her gums are hurting with new teeth coming in. Glad we brought the orajel.  I guess that about wraps it up from here.  I'll try to send something tomorrow from Hong Kong. 

Trip to the Zoo

Today all the families had a nice excursion to the Guangzhou City Zoo.  The guides said it was a good zoo, but small.  Its was only 20 minutes away and well worth the trip!  It seemed pretty large to us, and the access to the animals was fantastic!  Everyone is pretty tired and ready to head home.  We get our children's visas in a few hours.  So the end is in sight.  That made the zoo a great stop, a fine exclamation point to it all.  We only spent about 2 1/2 hours there and stuck with the outside animals.  But being able to  look right down on top of some black bears, and seeing a tiger eat very close, and elephants that were merely 20 feet away was amazing!  Plus all kinds of monkeys and giraffes were very close too.  The exhibits might be smaller than the Columbus Zoo exhibits we're used to seeing, and older, but we were so close I can't stop thinking about it.  In the elephant area for example they have a waste high railing and a concrete pit about 10 feet across and then about 5 feet of sharp rocks sticking up out of the ground to keep the elephants back, but that's it! No electric fence or wires, we could look directly into the elephant's eyes!  We watched nervously as one asian elephant found a spot he could walk on the sharp rocks and get a decent balance and lean across the moat with his trunk to reach the fresh green bushes he wanted to eat!  I was so afraid  he would fall in the moat and get hurt! His balance looked precarious! But he grabbed some fresh boxwood branches and walked away.  I got a classic shot of a tiger eating a slab of meat and licking his chops!  The only disappointment was the panda. We all wanted to see the panda, but they were repairing some welds on his cage and he wasn't out!  We were hoping to take a picture in front of him and send that into the travel section for the Columbus Dispatch, our local newspaper, so we settled for the lion instead.  Maybe we'll be in an issue soon! 

 

So now Laine is napping.  Christina found some knock off Coach bags and just returned from shopping, and I'm downloading the pictures.  A nap really sounds good. I think I'll join my daughter. 

 

Lastly happy birthday to my Mom and John Sabol!