Our baby is 17 months old!

My, where has the time gone? The wait to bring Jenni home seemed sooo long and sometimes impossible. Now, that we have her home the time is just zooming by. Jenni turned 17 months old on Feb. 24th. Our little peanut is becoming a real little person with ideas of her own. She is so compassionate and sweet yet at times so naughty. We do have to admit that about 90% of the time she really is a good little girl. She is very, very busy and VERY independent. She wants to do things herself. She won't allow us to feed her which sometimes is a messy event when she wants to feed herself yogurt or pudding. She has never been a big eater even in China. Food just doesn't seem to be very important to her even when she seems to be hungry. She is very slow eater and eats very lightly. I think she is just always going to be a petite little girl. We try and not FORCE food on her as we don't want eating issues later but the dr's worry about her low weight so try to encourage her to eat more whenever possible without "forcing" it on her. She is almost potty trained all of the way. She goes poo, poo on the toilet every time now unless she is sick but still has a hard time telling us when she has to go pee but we are working on it. We actually bought her some pull-ups this weekend. As it is easier to pull them off and on then a diaper. She jibbers alot but still only has about 10 distinguishable words and signs about 5 words. She still sleeps pretty well and really likes her 2 naps a day which is nice for mommy and daddy. I haven't taken any pictures lately as we have all been so sick for about the last 6 weeks but hopefully we can get some in the next week that I can download.

Jenni is healthy again!

We are all on the mend. Jenni is back to her old self and the meds they have her on for her reflux seems to being working. Mama is still sick but doing better. Jenni is just growing up so fast. She is communicating more and more with us. She was having some issues of wanting to sleep with us at night which Rich and I have to admit were enjoying but we know that she should be sleeping in her own crib. We had her sleeping with us when she was so sick (the dr recommended it). She did sleep in her own crib last night so hopefully we are going to be doing that more often. I think we all sleep better when she is in her own crib. She will be 17 months old on Tuesday. She is just so smart and her daycare says she is just the best child while she is there. Very sensitive and sweet to all the other children. We worried about how she interacts with the other kids as she is a bit spoiled in our household but they say she shares toys and shows compassion when another child is upset. She follows commands and they very seldom have to scold her. She is just a good girl. I guess we have to feel really lucky as some kids are a bit more of a rebel but we normally only have to tell her no once and she compiles. Hopefully she will be like that when she is teenager! Well, just wanted to update everyone on Jenni as I know some of you were pretty worried about her but she seems to back to her old self!

Our poor sick baby

Boy, has it been a rough couple of weeks with illnesses. Poor Jenni she has just been plagued with all sorts of minor illnesses since we brought her home from China. This last Sunday was the scariest. She had a bad cold about 2 weeks ago but seemed to get better. But then Mama got the cold which I have been fighting off now for 3 weeks. Dada also has it. It is just miserable. Well, Jenni than was exposed to RSV at daycare. So last weekend she had a high fever and was wheezing so we took her to the ER and sure enough she not only had RSV but Pneumonia and an ear infection. So after 7 hours in the ER and poor Jenni being tortured in every way possible with tests, x-rays and breathing treatments they decided to admit her to the hospital. Boy, was that a long night! Jenni would have nothing to do with the crib in her room( which I think resembled the one she probably had in China). So, I had to sit up in a chair holding her all night. She refused to sleep and just cried either at the top of her lungs or this low sad cry. There was nothing I could do to calm her which broke my heart. It was heart wrenching to have her be so upset. She just didn't understand why all of these people were being mean (even though they were just trying to help her) to her. They were all "suited" up with masks, gloves, gowns etc. as she was so sick and contagious. So it really scared her. I hope to never have to do that again. I hated putting her though all of that. The nurses and the doctors were just so great and understanding of Jenni unwillingness to cooperate. It is kind of sad as Jenni use to be so good at the doctors offices and did really well when she had ear tubes in. And now I am afraid that she not be as cooperative as before and I can't blame her. I.V.'s, a catheter (can you say owww?), having her ears and nose cleaned out and breathing treatments. It made Mama and Dada tired and anxious but we both handled it really well and never showed our fear or sadness to Jenni. We tried remain calm which can be hard for first time parents.

So the Pediatricians at the hospital have confirmed that Jenni does have severe GERD (Reflux) and needs to see a specialist and have more tests done. The doctors think this why she has so many respiratory issues. They wanted to do the tests in hospital but that would have required another night in the hospital and Dada and I decided to not put Jenni through more "torture" until she was over the Pneumonia and not so worked up. She is doing much better today although still has a cough. Dada rearranged his work schedule to stay home with her Tuesday and Wednesday and my sister watched her today. I just want to really thank everyone at my work especially my boss for being so understanding this last week. Not only have they been so understanding of my need to have time off to be with Jenni but I also have been so sick with bronchitis and worrying about my baby that I am sure I am not performing my duties at 110% (which I try and do!). Well here is to a better next week. And please pray for Jenni to be well once again and for the doctors to be able to help her GERD so she won't be so sick. Oh, yeah and an extra prayer for mama and dada to get well also so we can take good care of our baby girl!

Terri

I love when daddy comes home from work!

My daddy is so funny!

7 Months of Bliss

Can't believe we have been home with Jenni for almost 7 months. My where has the time gone. Our previous life just doesn't seem like it even existed before. How boring we were. I now so admire a few minutes just to blog. I now go to bed much earlier than before. I still would rather be a night owl but in order to keep up with Miss Jenni I must try and sleep at night when she does just in case she wakes in the night. She once again is sick but this time it is the full and icky flu. All symptoms have been exhibited for the last 6 days and the worst in the last two days. But nothing to worry about just another "daycare sickness". Oh, well at least she is getting it out of the way while she young. Hopefully, building up her immune system. She actually has been doing really good for about month..ever since she got tubes in her ears things have been better as far as colds, etc. The ENT says Jenni's tubes look good and her hearing has returned to normal..actually "above normal". So we are very pleased. She did so good through all of the hearing tests and cooperated so well. I was very proud. Jenni still only has 8 teeth so I am sure we will have some cranky days in the future when she is teething. We did have our 6 month social worker visit on Sunday. It went really well and even though Jenni didn't feel very good she behaved so good and showed off all of her "talents" to Nora. Glad to have that visit done. We have to have one more follow up visit in June and then that should be it for what China requires. We are also starting the re-adoption process for Washington State in April. We would do it sooner but our attorney just had a baby girl! We are so happy for her and her husband. They now have 2 beautiful girls. Even though our Federal Government legally sees Jenni as ours we don't have a U.S. Birth Certificate which comes in handy for when she goes to school and needs a passport so we need to "re-adopt" her in order to get the birth certificate. Well, better go our princess needs my attention!

Hugs

Jenni is loved!

2009 Here we come!

The year of 2008 has come and gone. It had many happy moments for our household and many challenging and difficult times for our country but we have a new President and a hope for these bad times to get much better and a hope that our country learned from our mistakes. I do have to admit that Obama brings our family great hope for a "change" in our country's attitude. Our country is so behind many other countries when it comes to racial diversity. Now that we have an Asian daughter we are made even more aware of the immense prejudices that still exists in our country. We love the city we live in but it is very conservative and very little racial diversity but we do know that it is changing everyday and any prejudice that may still be present here will hopefully soon disappear with time. People just need to remember that none of our ancestors (except the Indians) actually came from the U.S. so we are all in one way or another an descendent of an immigrant. People still feel it is their right to question us on why we would adopt from China and not from the U.S. but that is whole another blog but I can tell you we know with all of our heart that Jenni was meant to be our daughter and she was living in China and that is where we had to go to bring her home.

Jenni had a wonderful Christmas as did we. We have had immense amount of snow (more 60 inches)in this last month so we have spent most of our last 2 weeks "digging out". Mama fell down our basement stairs and injured her hip and back. No broken bones but very sore. Each day she is feeling better and better. Jenni enjoyed having mama home with her over the holiday and seems to have "grown up" so much while having mama home. She understands more and more of what you ask of her and is very sweet and nurturing. She is just so smart! She fights to stay awake as long as she can as she just doesn't want to miss anything important. She actually stayed awake until midnight last night! She minds fairly well but seems to have selective hearing when she wants to. We have to say June 16th, 2008 our life changed forever and we are just so happy and in love with our little girl. Have a Happy, healthy and wealthy 2009. HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!