Sick Baby

A couple weeks ago Jen and I were having a conversation about how healthy Grace has been. She has had a couple little colds here and there but nothing major so far. We knew we were jinxing ourselves just by having that conversation. So of course this past week Grace got sick with a 102.5 degree fever. The fever only lasted a couple days but she has had a cough and congestion most of the week. It has also affected her appetite which is WAY out of character for Grace. Normally Grace will eat everything and anything that we put in front of her so we knew she wasn't feeling well when she wasn't finishing her meals and turning down some of her favorite foods.

We did start to notice a couple weeks ago that Grace is getting a little fussier about certain foods. Most of the time the fussiness is just that she wants to feed herself which can get messy with certain meals. It is probably just her age or a phase she is going through but I guess we are due, she has made it pretty easy on us so far.

Even being sick this week Grace was still in a relatively good mood. She did get a little more whiny than normal at night but overall she did pretty well. We were even able to get outside for some fresh air and a little walk around the neighborhood today as the weather warmed up to almost 60 degrees.

A couple pics from the week below.

First PB&J

Apparently it's serious business

Love that smile

Not sure what is going on here but her expression is too cute.

Motion Shot

Teddy Rabbit Has Some Competition

Since we arrived home with Grace her favorite stuffed animal has been Teddy Rabbit. He keeps her company on car rides, goes to bed with her and sometimes joins her for breakfast.

Lately though she has developed an obsession with Melmo (Elmo). We aren't really sure how it started, she only has one musical toy with Elmo on it and it isn't really a toy she plays with all that much. Her interested started a few weeks ago when changing her diapers she has to hold a diaper because there is a small picture of "Melmo" on them. Then a few days ago we were out for dinner and there was another toddler on the other side of the restaurant and Grace help pointing at her and calling her "Melmo". We kept correcting her and telling her "No, that is a little girl, not Elmo". But she was adamant, it took us quite a few minutes to realize that the little girl's sippy cup had a picture of Elmo on it. Guess she told us.....

So this weekend we headed out on a special shopping trip to get Grace a stuffed "Melmo" of her own. We found just the right one and seems to be fitting in just fine. We were a little worried that he was going to bump Teddy Rabbit out of the top spot but he is still the top bear. But I think we definitely now have a 1a and 1b. It is so fun just to watch her walk around with the two of them clasped in her arms and see how happy and excited she gets. This is the type of stuff we were waiting for and makes parenting so much fun. Some pics of the three amigos below....

The frozen one

I think I may have mentioned somewhere on this blog that back before we started the process to adopt Jen and I (well mostly Jen) went through fertility treatments. There were around 6 IUIs and 3 IVFs the last of which left us with one frozen embryo.


When we started the adoption process we were glad to leave all of the stress of the fertility stuff behind. Although there were new stresses of the ever extending wait but for us that was much easier to deal with that the injections and crazy drugs* from fertility treatments. So we pretty much forgot about all that until sometime in 2007 about 6 months before our referral when we got a bill for the storage of the frozen embryo. We either had to pay $500 to store it for another year or use it. There were a couple other options such as discard it or donate it but none of those options appealed to us. We couldn't use it with our pending referral, so we paid the bill and not too long after we had our referral for Grace.


A few months back we got another bill for storage of the embryo. We didn't want to continue to pay $500 a year to store the embryo so now it was decision time. Based on our previous experiences we were pretty sure if we did use it, it wouldn't result in a pregnancy. We weren't even sure if the doctor would be willing to transfer only one as they usually transfer two to increase the odds of it working. Unless you are Octomom then they transfer 6.....well that is a blog post for another day. So last month we had the (FET) Frozen Embryo Transfer. We went into it this time around with no stress, if it worked that was great, if it didn't well that was OK too. We have our Gracie and our life is pretty perfect right now. We found out a couple weeks ago that it didn't work which was pretty much what we expected. There were no tears, it was almost a feeling of relief and closure on a rough period of our lives. Plus Jen really loves her coffee, cocktails with the girls and her skinny jeans.


So now we are moving on trying to figure out what is next for our family. We want Gracie to have at least one sibling, a Chinese sibling would be ideal, a brother would be pretty cool too. Or maybe a Special Needs Chinese adoption will be in the cards for us. No decisions have been made yet, just talking, discussing and dreaming.


* This is my name for them as they sometimes made Jen really emotional

Sledding

We are in the midst of another sizable snowstorm in New England so I decided not to drive into the city today and stayed home for some fun in the snow.

A couple months ago we went to the local Target and unsuccessfully tried to buy a sled for Grace. Unfortunately, no stores actually sell sleds in the winter, I guess you need to buy them in the fall, who knew? So we improvised a bit today and took Grace sledding in the backyard in a laundry basket. She didn't seem to mind that it wasn't actually a sled, she didn't even mind Mommy dumping her. See the fun below.

Mmmm....Ribs

We took a trip into the city this weekend to have dinner with Cat and Joe. Back when we were waiting for Grace we all went out for ribs at Redbones and were anticipating a time when Grace would be enjoying barbecue with us. Well the day finally came and now that Grace has almost a full mouth of teeth she was up to the task.

A couple of weeks ago we were a bit surprised when Grace started refusing food, not like her at all. We soon figured out that she wasn't actually refusing food, she wanted to feed herself. We have been doing a lot of the feeding for bonding and attachment but Grace seems to have had enough of that. It can be pretty messy and meals now take a lot longer but she is doing pretty well.

Some pics of our Redbones trip below, Onsie complements of Joe and Cat.

Put down the camera and gimme some ribs!!!

Mommy, look at the flying pig!!!!

Mmmmm....

17 Months

Today Grace turns 17 months old, she is just growing so fast. This weekend I was organizing some of the pictures on my computer and I was just amazed by how much Grace has changed. So I figured it would be fun to do a then and now post.

This pic was taken in China, her hair was so short.

This pic was from a few months after we got home.

These pics were taken today of Grace enjoying a cupcake after dinner. Unfortunately the sugar in the cupcake had Grace pretty wired all night.

Big Bird In China

We recently received this DVD as a gift and we were pretty excited about it. Grace was pretty excited too as her new thing seems to be bringing DVDs over to us to to watch. The movie follows Big Bird and Barkley as they travel through China to find the legendary Chinese phoenix. Along their journey they are escorted by a cute little Chinese girl named Xiao Foo who translates for them. They are also helped on their journey by the Monkey King who kind of freaked Grace out. He was a little scary. It was nice to see some of the places we visited on our trip like the Forbidden City and the Great Wall. There are also a couple songs throughout the movie used to teach some simple mandarin phrases.

The DVD is about 75 minutes long which is about an hour longer that Grace's normal attention span for this type of thing but she did stay pretty interested for about a half hour. I think this is definitely a DVD that she will enjoy as she gets older and will be a good tool help us introduce China to her in her younger years.

The original movie was produced in 1983 (which shows in some areas) but won an Emmy for Outstanding Children's Program. The story was actually pretty interesting, I was pretty impressed that it kept my attention as sometimes these Sesame Street productions can be pretty mind numbing for adults. Overall we were pretty impressed with it. Thanks B!

Happy (Belated) Valentine's Day

Hope everyone had a good day with their special Valentine. I was extra lucky this year as I had two special girls as my Valentines this year. We played it pretty low key, no flowers or chocolates. Jen and I did go out for dinner and bottle of wine. But we missed Grace and spent the whole time recounting the funny things she did over the past week.

Day With Daddy

We had a pretty eventful week this week. Grace had her last Early Intervention appointment, really wasn't an appointment just a follow up from her final evaluation. Grace scored at or above her age in all areas. In retrospect, we don't really think Grace needed EI services but we figured they couldn't hurt and she seemed to enjoy them.

The winter we have had this year seems to be worse than anyone can remember. Not only have we gotten a ton of snow but the temperatures have been extremely cold. Until this weekend that is when it warmed up to 50 degrees. Which means the snow on our roof is melting, really fast, and leaking into our windows. We ended up sleeping in the spare bedroom last night because the drip, drip, drip in our bedroom was driving us a bit batty. Seems to have stopped for now though.

The weather is getting to Jen a little bit as well, being cooped up in the house all week with a 16 month old can drive one a bit insane. Luckily she had a play date planned with Kris, Karina and Kathryn that broke up the week a bit for her. Jen also had a get together down in Connecticut with some friends from college. She had a great time catching up and I got to spend the day with Grace.

We started the day with a visit to my mom's and spent the afternoon just hanging out at home. I decided to be a little daring and attempt a dinner out in a restaurant with just Grace and I. I decided to go with a family friendly place so we went to Fuddruckers. It worked out pretty well except for the fact that there was no waitress service so every time I needed to get up for something I had to unstrap Grace from her chair and take her with me. I also had a minor panic attack when I realized that if either Grace or I needed to use the bathroom I may need to take her into the men's room with me. Not sure if Fuddruckers has a family restroom but luckily we didn't have to find out.

Some pics from the week below....

Crackers and Mommy's Feet

So I just had to post some recent video that Jen took. The first part of the video is Grace saying her new word "cracker". Although she doesn't get it quite right. Not sure how to spell the sound she makes for cracker but it is pretty cute.

The second part of the video requires a little explanation. When we are getting Grace ready for bed we go through this little routine where we take off her socks, smell her feet and yell peeewwww!!! She seems to really like it. I was pretty surprised a few weeks ago when I was sitting on the couch and she walked up to my foot, smelled it, waved her hand if front of her nose and yelled pewwww!!! Now it is one of her favorite things to do. Enjoy.

Lots of Fun

We attended our adoption agency's Chinese New Year Party yesterday and had lots of fun. We met up with many of the families from our travel group, all of the girls are getting so big. The party itself is pretty chaotic, there had to be hundreds of families at the party with kids of all ages running around. The highlight of the party was the lion and dragon dances that Grace seemed a little freaked out by. The party fell right about the time where Grace takes her nap so she was getting pretty tired by the end of the party but she was quite a trooper. We also got to meet a couple bloggers in real life so that was pretty cool.

We also hit a pretty significant milestone this past week. Grace has now been with us as a family longer than she was in China!!! Some pics of the past week below.

Happy Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year starts tomorrow so tonight is New Year's Eve. I was looking at the Wiki page on Chinese New Year and there is some really good information there. It says that it is traditional to eat fish on New Year's Eve, we didn't have fish tonight but we did have shrimp.

We are looking forward to attending CAWLI's Chinese New Year Party next weekend. We attended the party the first year we were waiting back in 2006 but have skipped the event since. It will be nice to see our travel group again and hopefully meet some fellow bloggers.

Some pics from the past week below.

Snowed In

I just love days like today. We woke up to about 4 inches of snow on the ground and forecast for much more so we got the wood stove cranked up and just stayed in all day. Nothing like a day snowed in with my girls. Snow during the week usually irritates me since it usually messes up my commute to work but on the weekend I just don't mind. The day was made even better by the left over Chinese food from our Chinese New Year Party last night. We have been celebrating Chinese New Year for the past couple years so it was nice to finally have Grace here to celebrate with us.

This has been a pretty rough winter, we have has more snow than I can remember in very long time and this past week we had a stretch of days with temperatures in the single digits and below zero. Usually this is the time of the year that Jen and I start planning a trip to somewhere tropical but I just don't see that happening this year. As much as we think Grace would love Jamaica I think we may have to wait a couple years.

Some pics of Grace clowning around over the past week.

Missed our baby

Jen and I attended my company holiday party this weekend at a the Water's Edge Resort in Connecticut. We stayed overnight on Saturday so this was the first night that we have both been away from Grace overnight. Grace stayed home with Grammy and did really well. She was a little confused when we left and were saying goodbye as she thought Grammy and Grandpa were leaving and not mom and dad. When she realized that we were leaving without her she got real quiet and had a sad look in her eyes, and a little pout, no tears though.

Grace did really well. Overall we were only gone for 24 hours and Grammy and Grandpa kept her really busy. She had no major meltdowns and pretty much slept though the night. We had a good time at the party as well. It was nice to get away for the night and sleep in a bit. To keep things interesting my company sometimes has a themed holiday party. This year's theme was The 80s. Jen pulled out an old dress that she wore at a high school semi-formal dance, which amazingly still fit. I was getting a little scared as she was getting ready putting on all of her "accessories". She seemed to be enjoying herself way too much.

As much as we enjoyed the party and our night away we really did miss Grace. Seeing her smiling face and getting hugs and kisses when we got home was pretty much the best part. A pic of our outfits from the party below.

Lunch with Teddy Rabbit

Apparently Teddy Rabbit was hungry and needed to eat lunch with Grace this afternoon.

Back to work

After almost two weeks off for the Holidays with my girls I am heading back to work on Monday. It was nice having the time off but what I really appreciated was getting some good bonding with Grace. The last few weeks before the holidays were kind of crazy and there were quite a few days that I got home from work so late that she was in bed before I got home. So being able to put her to bed and see her cute little face first thing in the morning was quite a treat. Grace and I do have a pretty strong bond but I think the last couple weeks really strengthened it.

We actually had an adoption related task to complete last week, our 6 month post placement meeting with our social worker. This is basically just a meeting to put together a document on Grace's progress that get sent to China and allows us to go through the re-adoption process which we will be doing within the next couple months. During our first couple home study meeting we were so careful what we said but now that we have Grace home I decided to have a little fun to Jen's chagrin....the conversation went something like:

Social Worker: I see you wrote that Grace likes to eat everything. Can you give me some examples for the report.

Jen: Bananas

Steve: Chocolate Chip Cookies

Jen: Diced Fruit

Steve: French Fries

Jen: Yogurt

Steve: Chocolate

Jen: (shooting me the look) You don't have to mention all of the unhealthy foods.

Steve: Ok

Jen: Pasta

Steve: Filet Mignon

Jen shot me another look at that point and we moved on to other questions. Of course Grace charmed our social worker so I am sure we will get a good report. Grace (as she usually is in new situations) was a bit shy at first but within 5 minutes was stealing her pen and car keys which were momentarily lost almost making for a longer than anticipated home study visit.

We've been slacking a bit in the picture taking department the last couple days so I will post a video we took of Grace enjoying a cookie on New Year's Eve. The past few years we have gone out for dinner and/or hosted parties to celebrate the new year. This year we were snowed in and just the three us but as you can see we had a blast just the same.

Closing the door on 2008

For us 2008 was a pretty good year. I guess that is a bit of an understatement, it is probably the best year we have had as a married couple. If I had to sum up the year in one word that word would be "Hope". We started out 2008 with a lot of hope. We knew we were getting close to a referral but just weren't sure how many months we would wait.

In February 2008 we took our last childless vacation to Jamaica. We had a great time in the sun and came back refreshed ready for what the next few months would bring. In March 2008 referrals came out with a cutoff of Jan 4th 2005, meaning we missed the cutoff by one day. We were pretty disappointed but it was not at all unexpected so we just looked forward to April when we would see our daughter's face for the first time.

April 4th, 2008 is a day that we will never forget, the day that we got that call that we have a daughter. I won't rehash it all but you can read about it here and here. The remainder of April and May 2008 were spent getting prepared for our trip.

On May 12th, 2008 a huge earthquake hit the Sichuan province of China. We were pretty confident that Grace was fine but the quake killed almost 70,000 people so our hearts were heavy thinking of all of the destruction in the homeland of our daughter who we had not yet met.

On May 22nd, 2008 we boarded a plane bound for Beijing China for a trip that would change our lives forever. It was trip of a lifetime, we became parents and fell in love with the sweetest little girl you could ever meet.

We arrived home in early June and jumped headfirst into parenting. Grace was a pretty easy-going baby though so we didn't have it too rough. She slept well, ate well and was generally pretty content.

Not sure where the six months since then have gone. Grace has grown and changed so much. She has gone from an infant who could barely sit up to a toddler that lets nothing hold her back. She knows what she wants and knows how to get it. She is smart, sweet, loving and funny and we can't wait to see what 2009 has in store for her and us.

So from our family to yours we want to wish you a happy and healthy 2009.

A Christmas To Remember

Our first Christmas with Grace was a definite success, Grace had a blast and so did Jen and I. Christmas is a lot more meaningful and fun now that we have Grace in tow.

Grace is really at her best with a captive audience..... One of my favorite Christmas moments was at church on Christmas Eve and Grace was charming everyone within a 4 pew radius. At one point, the smitten woman behind us had the audacity to touch Grace on the hand. Grace quickly put a stop to that by shaking her finger at the woman and saying "no-no". Which caused everyone to burst into laughter.

Couple pics from our day below...

First Christmas

I like presents

Santa brought me a table for all my friends

More presents

Lucy feeling a little left out

Merry Christmas

For those who weren't on the list this year here's our Christmas card for this year. We've been waiting a long time to send out a card with our little angel. It's gonna be a fun holiday this year. We are going to church tonight then dinner with Jen's brother and his family and tomorrow we are having my mom over for dinner and then my sister and her family are coming over afterwards. I took some time off work this year as well so I can spend some time playing with Gracie and all her new toys.

Hope everyone gets everything they want this year and has a very Merry Christmas. We now have everything we could ever want, I can't think of anything that would make this holiday season better.

Fun in the Snow

Over the past couple days we have gotten about 18 inches of snow. It is lots of work to shovel but at least Santa will have plenty of places to land his sleigh to deliver all of Grace's presents this week. Grace isn't sure what to make of the white stuff as we are pretty sure this is her first sight of snow. So we had to bundle her up and take her out for a little romp this afternoon. Some pics below....

Getting bundled up

Mommy and her snow bunny

Winter Wonderland

Making snow angels

Milestones

It has been a few months since we did a milestones post so here is the latest on Grace.

• At almost 15 months Grace is 30.5 inches tall and weighs in at 24 pounds.


• She is now wearing 18 - 24 months clothing.


• Grace has lots of new words: Na-na (Banana, Night-night or no-no). Cheese/cheesy, chicken, Pa (for grandpa), Ho Ho Ho...not really a word but damn cute.


• Imitates many sounds, too numerous to list but her meow is the cutest, I need to try to catch it on video.


• Grace signs more and all done.


• Nods yes and understands what yes means.


• Grace blows kisses.


• She also now has 10 teeth

And some bathtime fun form tonight.....

Love the laugh

Just had to post this.....

Trimming the Tree with Gracie

Today was one of the days we have been dreaming about for a long time. It was our first time decorating for Christmas with Grace. There were a couple years while we were waiting that we skipped putting up a tree altogether. But those days are now a distant memory. So while Grace was napping this morning we put up the tree and the lights. When she woke up from her nap we brought her down to see the tree and the look on her face was priceless. There was plenty of pointing and oohs and ahhs. We spent the rest of the afternoon putting ornaments on the tree with the help of Grace. It really was day to remember for us. Some pics below.

Jailbreak

In our family room we have a large sectional that takes up just about the width of the room. It has worked out really well with Grace as we can slide the ottoman against a cabinet that blocks off the room and keeps her contained as not to have the run of the house. It was all well and good until last week when Grace learned how to climb onto the couch and can now climb over onto the other side. Seems now this is all she want to do. Hope the novelty wears off soon. Video below is of one of her first assaults on the couch.