A cure for the car screaming!

We've got snow and Eric has driven me to work for the last couple days, and the drive was peaceful.  How was it peaceful with a screaming baby you ask?  Well...the cure is a DVD of the Teletubbies!!  Yup, she loves them.  Just as Lili and Fei did.  Eric put it in and she cooed and babbled.  Wiggled her toes, tapped her hands and when they said 'goodbye' she waved at them!  Love it.  Now, we really need more than one DVD.  We have tons of VHS but they won't play in the car.  Too funny.  I'm sooooo grateful to Meiling for passing us her Tubby DVD.

Jingle Bells

Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle all the way!!

Me at 3

Yesterday's post reminded my Mom of a couple photos of me when I was 3, so she dug them out and sent them to me this morning.  Serious as ever.  Too funny.

Baby Shower

The surprise baby shower was on Saturday.  It snowed Friday night and the roads were pretty icy.  Lots of people didn't make it, we really appreciated the folks that made it and we had some fun together.  Jia LOVES a party.  We've been joking that she'll be a party girl because she likes things loud and busy so it was fun to see her in the groups of kids having such a great time.  She was pretty wiped by the time we took her home!  Thank you everyone who worked on the party and thank you to everyone for the food and gifts.  We're so thankfull for good friends and family, your support is wonderful.

Two of the families from Victoria decided to stay over at our house instead of risking the mountain drive in the dark.  Once Jia was in bed the adults sat and chatted while the bigger girls ran around.  Lili and Fei were delighted to be getting a spur of the moment surprise sleep over with their friends.

After everyone left I finally relented and let Lili go outside and play in the snow.  She had fevers for three days last week.  She seems fine now, but I was being extra careful.  To be honest, our girls have never really enjoyed the snow and they usually play for about 15mins and come in.  To our suprise we put Jia down for a nap and they played in the backyard for over an hour!  They also built their first ever on their own snowmen!  Lili did have a coat on, but E didn't get a picture of her by her snowman, so she ran out and posed in just a shirt.  Isabel wasn't too thrilled with the snow Sat. morning but she was enjoying it by the afternoon. 

Last night the girls were practicing their piano for the Christmas recital and Missy crawled over to help.  She loves playing (pounding) the piano.

Jia's name

Jia's name in China was Du Xiao Yu.  Du being the family name and Xiao given to all of the girls born in 2009, Yu being her precious name and it means Jade.

We announced that we would name her Jia Yu Xin.  Then in China when it came time to write her name down for the official paperwork.  I suddenly changed it to Jia Xiao Yu Nelson.  No idea why.  We didn't talk about it, it hadn't been on my mind and as a matter of fact I forgot to tell Eric that I had changed it.  He didn't even notice.  He's so trusting of me.  Anyways...more than a couple people have noticed since invites went out for the baby shower that there is a name discrepancy.  So, to straighten it out.  Her name really is Jia Xiao Yu Nelson.  Eric has forgiven me and the family all agrees that it suits her and they're all happy with her new name. 

What a Sweetie!

I took some time with Jia this morning to get some photos.  She didn't mind too much.  Mostly though, she was trying to get to me.  Her mouth is always open, either smiling or making noise.  You almost always know where she is.  Constant chatter. 

Lili is home sick today.  Fever.  Hopefully she's better by Sat.  She isn't thrilled about missing school.  I'm only worried about her missing the baby shower on Saturday. 

Notice the new living room flooring behind Jia and Lili.  Yup, only home three weeks and already the house projects carry on.  Actually I've waited for a whole year for Eric to refinish the wood floors in the living room that were several layers down but it's just not happening so we just bought more of the ash flooring that we put in the dinning room and foyer last year.  Thankfully we were able to match the same stock and it was on sale too!  It's slow going, Eric can only do a bit while Jia naps.

Just a regular week

The toy room, turned music room!  Jia's favorite thing to do.

Too hillarious and gross.

Look what Fei taught herself to do!

Mmmm...crackers...

We're on a normalish schedule.  Everyone is sleeping properly.  Everyone gets bathed and fed in the morning and the girls are getting to school on time.  I'm still late for work and taking easy mornings.  It's taking a lot longer for all of us to settle into the new morning routines than I thought it would.  Eric is doing better during the days with Jia's nap schedule.  We've got her accepting that her afternoon nap won't be until the girls get home from school.  She wakes up pretty much as I get home from work.  We're all anxious for her to move onto one nap a day but she really fights it at this point. 

Our agency called today to check in.  Nice to see that part happen, so many families are struggling at this point with the newly adopted kiddos.  We're still beyond delighted to report that Jia doesn't have any major issues.  She is such an easy baby most of the time.

Ok, well, Jia does HATE getting in the car.  A LOT.  She screams until she chokes and then vomits a bit and then moves right back to screaming.  We've tried movies, music, loud music, quiet music, soothing music, Chinese music, fresh air, toys, talking to her, sitting with her, food, bottles and even silly faces.  None of us can calm her down in the car.  It makes going anywhere fairly unpleasant and so we avoid going out if we don't have to.  Or I should say going out with her.  Lili did the same thing when she was a baby and it took at least 6 months before she would ride nicely in the car.  I sure hope it won't take that long for Jia.  Any ideas?  Any one else have a miracle cure for the car and car seat?  We'll try pretty much anything at this point.  I miss going out and I miss going to the city for dinners out.  We did take Jia out of town to a mall on Friday and she did ok there, we put on a Strawberry Shortcake video, gag, and it seemed to work but on the way home she went right into screaming and even Miss Strawberry couldn't fix it.

Lili and Fei continue to do great with Jia.  When I change her butt, they still come to help!  As soon as she is done I hand her over and it gives me time to deal with the diaper genie and wash my hands.  Jia doesn't care for being put down on the floor.  She'll have to get used to that though.  She's too heavy to carry non-stop.  Eric is getting pretty good at cooking with one hand though.  The girls are happy to take her to the toy room after dinner so we can clean the kitchen.  They love to help feeding her and they make all of her bottles.  They keep trying to feed her the bottles, but she prefers Mama to do that.  She humors them for a minute and then fusses.  The girls have managed to figure out ways to work in tandem to get the sides of the crib down and they'll even go get her and amuse her until I get there when she is waking up.  I'm so grateful for all of their help.  It really makes things easier.  I keep thinking that it will end soon but they remain committed to their baby sister. 

Jia's crawl is getting really fast and we really have to watch her carefully now.  She is into everything.  We even have to close the door in the playroom now or else she just bee lines for the door.  She'd rather be exploring.  When I carry her around now she flings her arm out in the way we're going and points and talks like crazy.   She also yells out to all of us when we're not in the same room.  She says 'Ha' to everyone and waves goodbye.  She has learned 'Uh' for up and 'duh' for down.

We had unexpected house guests for a few days over the weekend so we didn't get out much again.  On Sunday Eric rode, our guests were gone and the girls and I had a girls day.  Fei learned how to do a french braid and she practiced a lot on my hair.  She is adamant that I can NOT get my hair cut.  It was good to have our down time Sunday.  Lili actually left for the day with Willow but it was still girl day at home with two kids :)  Used to be that when one left it was a major treat to just have one kid at home that was a weird 'oh ya' there's three of them now' moment.

I need to get some sibling shots of the girls.  I've taken so many pictures lately that we all just took a break over the last week so there aren't many good ones lately.  The baby shower is this weekend, so I will get some shots of them together then. 

Can you believe we've only been home three weeks?!

We have times where I still feel it's totally surreal that after so many years, Jia is real and she's home.  I wonder when the wonderment of that will end.

Jia's foster sisters

I found the family adopting one of Jia's foster sisters!  How cool is that?!  I love the world wide web.  They live in Shanghai.  Hopefully we'll be able to stay in contact and maybe have the girls meet one day.  We'd love a trip to Shanghai :)  What a nice way to start the day.

We took Jia to the health clinic today.  They weighed her and apparently she's only gained 2oz. since her medical in Beijing.  Impossible.  She's got a new giant budha belly and a new double chin.  One of the scales was clearly wrong.  Anyways, she's 19.8lbs. now.

We've had Jia for one month today!  Time is flying by.  There are moments of total normallacy and then I realize 'my gosh, we went to China and brought back a baby! and life just carries on'.  Wow.

Hey, apparently there is a surprise baby shower being held for us on Nov. 20th.  If anyone wants to come, let my Mom know :)  And on that note, if I told you about the big open house at our place on Dec. 28th, cancel that. 

Oh, and the get together with Fei's SWI sister Olivia went great.  They hadn't seen each other in a while and they got along famously.  It was a whirlwind visit, they came for dinner, spent the night and left by 11 the next day.  We have plans to get together for a few days in the summer and we'll see them this winter at their house.  Abigail didn't make it, so it was just two of them.  Maybe next time we'll finally get those three together again.  I didn't ask Susan if she minded me posting a picture of the girls.  Will do that later if she doesn't mind.

Pictures from the camera we sent to the Duchang SWI

We got these pictures developed shortly after we got home.  We were so pleased to see some pictures of Jia's foster Mom and to see that they did take time to show her our pictures.  She was clearly well cared for. 

Catching up

Yard work with Dad.

Our sweet Bear Cub.

Check out Fei's face, how hillarious, she hated the graveyard tour.

The rest of us loved that the church poked fun and did such a great job.

Jia's first music class.

Jia loved the shaker eggs and kept putting them in her mouth.  She doesn't normally put toys in her mouth but she wanted those red eggs!  Wonder if she thought they were real?

It's been a long week for my Rumor Queen friend madisonchayse66 but she finally got her referral today!  So excited for her.  Chayse is adorable.  Lili and Fei were so excited when they heard.

Mom and I took Lili and Fei Trick-or-Treating and the men folk stayed home to hand out candy, we only had 8 kids come to our house.  We might as well all go out walking next year.  Then we did make it to the graveyard tour, which was really well done.  There was dinner in the hall, contests and parades, then the tour, a bonfire, fireworks and then back to the hall for more treats and goodie bags.  We didn't realize how complete the event was and were pleasantly surprised and had a great time.  I'm hoping we can head there again next year.  Fei was less than impressed with the graveyard tour part and was very unhappy to have to walk back through it to get out after the fireworks, but she did it!  Jia had no reaction to any of it, not even fireworks. 

Jia started her music class today.  Eric and I both took her.  It was a lot of fun and she clearly enjoyed it.  She is considerably bigger than the other five babies in the class.  Everyone we meet questions her age, after today we're really questioning her age as well. 

Lili and Fei have playdates tomorrow after school and they made dinner tonight for their friends.  How fun is that?!  Stuffed manicotti.

Saturday we're having friends from Fei's adoption group over for the weekend.  The three Yongfeng girls haven't been all together since China, so that's pretty exciting.   Can't wait to get pictures, hopefully one worthy of sending to the Director of the SWI.

There isn't much time in the day for blogging.  There was only time tonight because Jia went to bed at 7.  She only had one nap today and she was done at 7!!   For our schedule it sure would be great if she only napped once a day but she really wants those two naps still.  Her second nap runs into picking up the girls from school.  We're still trying to find our way schedule wise.  It gets better every day.