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

Sweet Ladybug!

Eliza enjoyed Halloween. We did not go trick-or-treating, but we did visit Daddy at work. Her costume was a gift from mom's closest friend, Regina. Very sweet!


Fall is a wonderful time of year. Eliza is reluctantly getting used to wearing hats and hoods. The next step is mittens (yikes! It's kind of hard to suck on your fingers when they're stuffed into a ball of yarn).

Eliza is struggling with separation anxiety. She is clearly curious and wants to explore, but struggles with getting too far away from Mom or Dad. As she gets more proficient with crawling, we hope she gains more confidence in herself and us.

She has 14 teeth and will most likely have 16 by Thanksgiving. It looks like her two year molars are on the way. Maybe we'll just power through this teething business and be finished soon. Turns out, teething hurts.

Communication is getting much easier these days. Eliza is vocalizing and using a couple of baby signs. The best sign is all done accompanied with Eliza's sweet voice saying "Ahh duh".

Crawling!!

We are having a great time! Eliza is sleeping better, crawling, and close to pulling up to stand. Her little ankle braces are working well. She is fantastic.

We spend our days going to the park, taking walks, playing, and exploring. Eliza is crazy about being outside and loves to experience nature. She is quite the treasure hunter...picking up rocks, twigs, leaves, and crab apples.

Her language skills are improving rapidly. She babbles constantly and parrots all kinds of words. Her word list includes: apple, slide, rock, night, hi, mama, daddy, fish, outside, up, yum, and there are several more in the works.

She enjoys books, toys that make a lot of noise, and being tickled. Her favorite activity right now is standing. The braces make her feel secure and she is quite proud of her new found ability.

Life is Good!

Eliza has grown beautifully over the past months. She is developing a very fun personality. When Mom and Dad do a good job at managing teething and sleeping, Eliza seems to be in a natural state of happiness. Lots of smiles, giggles, and contentment. The amount of affection she craves and shares is growing as well. The jury is still out on whiskery dad kisses.

Eliza's physical development is racing forward as well. She was accepted into the early childhood intervention program here in Colorado. She now has a home health physical therapist twice a month in addition to her weekly physical and occupational therapy at Children's hospital. We signed her up at My Gym too (it's good fun and a chance to interact with other kids her age while working on strength and mobility).

To help with her weak and flexible legs, she was casted for ankle braces. We picked them up last week. Though they are covered with brightly colored butterflies, she's not that fond of them yet. They help her stand, but she prefers to sit and bang the heels on the hard wood floors (really cracks her up).

Eliza is standing with assistance and getting better at it every day. It's fun to see her progress.
She's still not crawling on all fours, but is regularly getting up on her hands and knees and trying.

With only a few breaks over the past months, she has been marathon teething and having a tough time sleeping. We were awake anywhere from 4 to 7 times a night when she started getting her molars in early July, and it just didn't get much better. Needless to say, it's been tough on all of us. She got used to Mama coming in all night long and decided she liked it. We are trying to help her learn to soothe herself better, but it's taking time. She's a smart girl, I'm sure she'll figure it out. In the mean time, Mama will learn to nap in the afternoon.

We took our first trip to Texas to see family and friends. She did great on the plane ride both directions. It was wonderful to spend time with people we don't get to see enough. Eliza met some cousins, aunts and uncles, her great grandmother, and lots of friends and extended family. It was hard to come home after getting so much love, attention, and support.

According to her pediatrician, Eliza is doing well. She still has very weak muscles, but we are confident she will catch up with mobility tasks. She is in the 50th percentile with her height and head circumference, and the 25th percentile with her weight. She certainly doesn't look underweight...she just doesn't have the lean body mass typical of children her age. She is fun, delightful, exhausting, and the absolute best. We adore her.