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Several years ago, the founder of our adoption agency, Joshua Zhong, started a great organization called Chinese Children Charities. For years, he and his wife have traveled to China to lead medical missions, to teach child care training courses at orphanages, and have successfully lobbied the government as child care advocates. The have founded several well equipped child care facilities in China all the while applying state-side cash donations to the purchase of critical orphanage supplies such as formula, clothes, blankets, and heaters.

All of us with strong emotional ties to China, have been deeply saddened by the recent earthquake in China's Sichuan province. The epicenter was only several hundred miles from Eliza's orphanage. Recently Joshua did an interview discussing the situation in the earthquake area. Here is a link to the video.

Barney Leg

May 2nd was a rough day for Eliza. She fell...over and over and over! By the end of the day she wouldn't put her left leg down for standing or walking. We didn't know if the falls were a result of the leg pain, or if the leg pain was a result of the falls. I talked with a nurse at Children's hospital and the verdict was..."bring her in". We ended up in the Children's urgent care center from 8:45 pm to 12:45 am...YUCK! Xrays were negative, but little Eliza still wouldn't put her leg down. The nurse practitioner on duty decided to splint her leg and recommended we follow up with our pediatrician on Monday. So, you see above the splint. Eliza got a little upset about it until we called it her Barney leg...ahhh, Barney. Turns out "Ba Ba No Wak" (translated: Barney legs don't walk). We are fortunate in that our pediatrician has office hours on Saturday. I called and we decided to give her leg a test run before any more visits or diagnostic testing. The test run occurred Sunday at 4:00pm and she was fine. No more Barney leg, no more doctor's visits, no idea what happened. Just happy it's over!

Now back to work.

Spring!

It is amazing how fast the time is going. I am amazed every day at how big Eliza is getting and how much she is learning. She got two molars for our "Gotcha Day" anniversary. Two more and we're through with teething. I can't wait. I am sure I speak for Eliza as well.

She is fun, fun, fun! We go to the park, the zoo, music class, swimming...she loves it all. Our first really warm day occurred on April 15th. Eliza wore shorts and ended up getting her first skinned knee/ "boo-boo". We had to keep a band-aid on it for 10 days even though it had healed. She would burst out crying at the sight of her well healed knee and say "boo-boo" over and over. Very funny.

The video below was taken on the April 15th. It was quite windy, but over 80 degrees outside. The following day it snowed and was below 30 degrees all day. Crazy. I apologize for the sound...the wind is bad, but the girl is sure cute.

One Whole Year!

How is it possible to put the gratitude, joy, love, compassion...into words. It is absolutely incredible to be celebrating our one year anniversary with our sweet Eliza.

The memories of our trip to China are fresh and sweet. Seeing her for the first time, watching her while a nanny from the orphanage soothed her, watching as the same nanny approached us and presented Eliza to us!! Remembering the first few days with Eliza is still very emotional.
She was so weak, gentle, and scared.




Now our dear girl has such fantastic energy and joy. We are beyond blessed. She is changing so quickly. Thank goodness for pictures and video. My memory just can't retain all the information I want it to. My heart is a different story...it remembers everything and grows in love everyday.

Easter

Eliza is walking independently now. She took off on March 14th and is better every day. She's making some attempts at walking outside, but has less success on uneven surfaces.

She spent the week before Easter battling a cold and sleeping rather poorly. She perked up on Easter Sunday and seemed to enjoy Easter festivities. For Kyle and myself, Easter was very sweet. We brought Eliza home one year ago on Good Friday.

Today is the one year anniversary of our arrival in Hong Kong. We were crazy excited, anxious, and ready to love our girl. Not much has changed...although the source of the anxiety is different (will she sleep, hope she doesn't fall, did she eat enough, is she sick or is this teething...poor kid has neurotic parents).

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.

First Steps