The Explorer!

Eliza's first steps were witnessed on February 15th. It was very exciting. Since those first steps she has blossomed into an all out explorer. She went from a kid that could care less about the outdoors to one that sits in front of the glass door pounding, crescendoing into a very loud "OOUUSS" (for outside)! She holds onto one of us and plods around the yard bending over to touch mud, sticks, rocks, grass, rotten crab apples....the list goes on. Periodically she cues us to sing one of her favorite Barney tunes or the itsy bitsy spider (evidence that she has a soundtrack in her head that supports whatever activity she is engaged in at the time). A very wonderful benefit of all this activity is a very sleepy Eliza at the end of the day.

A trip to Texas at Christmas, followed by a brief attempt at daycare sent Eliza into a tailspin. It was rough for about 7 weeks, but things have settled down into bliss. She has been so happy lately. She squeals in delight over little stickers on her hands, giggles endlessly when tickled and bursts into spontaneous laughter at forks.

She continues to amaze us with her language development. She is using at least 10 words that most people can understand and over 30 that mom and dad can understand. She still incorporates sign language regularly and has 18 signs that are different than the 30 or so words she uses.

We think we have a budding musician on our hands. She is constantly asking for music. She has her own CD library and is quite particular about the music she likes. She prefers upbeat music to ballads or slow tunes. At least once a day she pulls herself up at the piano and walks along the keyboard from low notes to high notes and cheers for herself and her clearly superior piano talent.

Eliza is such a happy, loving, sweet girl. She is free with the hugs, kisses, and smiles. She has overcome so much and continues to amaze us. We are speechless in the joy of our blessings.

Oh...I almost forgot. We have initiated the process to adopt our second daughter. We are in the paperwork phase and expect to have our information in China sometime in May. Once the paperwork gets to China the waiting begins. We anticipate the wait to be anywhere from 2 to 4 years this time. The good news is, Eliza will be old enough to travel with us when we go to complete this adoption. I can't believe she will be close to 5 years old when we meet her sister.