Memories of our Travel Group...

Well, I said that I would have to relive all of our moments from China this month. So, I thought I would start with pictures of all of the babies on Gotcha Day and the day before we came home. Of course, I have to start with a picture of us with Lily. This is the 2nd day that we had Lily. It was early in the morning after a night of no sleep for any of us. Now, you will have to wait for a few days to see more of the Lily pictures... These are some of the wonderful families we met in China with their beautiful daughters:

(These pictures are out of order. These are the ones from the final day in Guangzhou right before we are preparing to return home. So, the girls had been with us for nine days.)

Jay, Heather, Kaitlyn, Josh, and Julia

John, Jonda, and Sarah

Amber and her parents
Jen, Danny, and Lilli

Kim, Kevin, and Hannah

These are the Gotcha moments on March 17th, 2008! The moment when we finally met our daughters for the first time... and held our babies for the first time!

Jen and Danny with Lilli (above). Their blog is the Princess Diary. Lilli was our Lily's first hug on the last day in China!

Heather and Julia

Jocelyn, above, was from the same orphanage as Lily. Her blog is to the right- Love of my Life.

These are our wonderful friends that took care of us while we were in China. Beth, David, Liana, and Marah. We went to spend time with them last summer. Marah was also from Lily's orphanage.

Jen, Danny, and Lilli with Kris, Michael, and Trudy

More Bathtime Fun!

Lily knows that "B" stands for Baba. So, in this video she kept knocking "Baba" back into the water.

Lily knows her colors now! Her first color was purple(burple), then pink(bink). Now, she knows yellow (lellow), green (geen), red (rrred), brown (bown), and orange (ornge). She learned them in one week. We were pretty impressed! She is working on blue and aqua.

This time last year...

On February 25th, 2008- we had just received our travel dates. We also found out that our travel dates had been moved up! We were leaving earlier than we had thought for China- in 16 days! I remember packing again and again over the next two weeks. We thought those 16 days were the longest days of our lives! In only 21 more days- we would be holding Lily in our arms for the first time!

Back to February 25, 2009......I hope you enjoyed the video! I just love hearing her giggling and laughter every night with Baba! He always gets her so tickled!

Lily's Life in China

Before we left for China, we sent Lily a care package. It contained this photo album, stuffed animals, clothes, and most importantly, 2 disposable cameras. Her Foster Nanny (pictured below) took pictures of the orphanage and Lily for us. The following pictures show where she spent the first 10 months of her life before she came home.She has lots of layers of clothing on. Yet, now, she doesn't even like covers.

She has the bear and kitty we sent to her.
This stroller is also used as her potty chair. They slide the pan in the bottom of the chair. This is one of the main reasons why Lily has always been able to make her stinkies on the potty, and potty training Lily has been a breeze.
We love this picture because it shows her contagious smile!

Lily was left here at the gate of the orphanage on the day she was born. She still had her umbilical cord attached, and she had a note from her birthmother telling her date of birth.

This is another picture of the front of the orphanage- Wanzai Social Welfare Institute.

Lily's orphanage had a home for elderly people. These people often took care of the babies and became Foster parents. Lily's Foster Nanny lived here.

A picture of their playground for the children at the SWI.

This shows where all of the babies slept at the orphanage.

A year ago...

Lily was really excited about her brand-new cat pajamas. She loved them! Below, she is telling us about all of the kitties on her pajamas. The next picture shows her making a Meow sound to go with her kitties.

Then, I asked her to say "Cheese" for the last picture. She made a big smiley face for me!

I hope you don't mind if I relive our experience of a year ago for the next month or so. I just cannot believe it has almost been a year since we went to China. A year ago today, we were at home thinking that Lily was turning 9 months old. We were supposed to be leaving for China in 38 days! We had packed and re-packed a zillion times. We had also mailed off a care package for Lily. We got lots of pictures of Lily with her Foster Nanny in China. We have never posted these before, not even on our other website that we used to have. I am going to post them tomorrow for everyone to see more about Lily's life before she came home.

21 months old & 11 months together!

Lily turned 21 months old today! I still can't believe time has gone so quickly!

We went over to visit Aunt Manda (one of Jamie's sisters) and her son, Elijah. It was Elijah's birthday on Valentine's Day. So, Lily had to take him a present. She was excited to see both of them.

Elijah was excited to see Lily, too. He held her hand in this picture as he was leading her to his room. It was a sweet moment between cousins!

Sunday School & Aunt Trina's Presents

We donated some of Lily's toys to our Sunday School class at church. She has way too many, so we knew she needed to share. So, now, she is playing with her toys at church which she hardly ever played with at home.
By the way- did you notice how her shirt matches the blog background? I think I finally found one that I really love, so hopefully, it won't be changing anymore.

Here is the normal Lily look that strangers receive when she first meets them. Her social delays had really gotten worse since we had another change in her daycare. But, not to worry. Things have been wonderful this week. NO MORE night terrors, and Lily loves Alice. I mean LOVES! She has bonded with her quickly, and she is so happy. She has gone straight to her this week, and she even talks about her at home. Hopefully, all of these changes will finally bring about some stability for our baby. She definitely needs it. Only 14 more weeks and 2 more days of school (but whose counting, right?). So, not too much longer until she spends every day with her Mama and her Aunt Suzette!

Aunt Trina gave Lily some Valentine's presents. She gave her this kitty and 2 books. The 3 presents went everywhere with us yesterday- even to the potty. That was really funny...

Here she is reading another one of Aunt Trina's books. She is still obssessed with kitties. So, Aunt Trina knew the purrfect present for Lily!

Smoochy Faces

Lily started making this smoochy face when we got her in China. It started out as a pouty face, but turned into being a funny, smoochy face. She hasn't made this face in weeks, and we thought we would never see it again. But, we were so thankful when it returned today. She definitely made up for its absence.

As of now, bathtime is the only place where Lily will ever have ponytails. I don't know why she is so against them, but she gets extremely upset when we try to put her hair up. So, we will stick with the bows and clips...for now.

She was having fun trying to shampoo her own hair. She had soap on her hands!

We were telling her to pose for this picture, and that is exactly what she did. She placed her hand under her face and waited for me take this photo!

Finally....

It has been exactly one year since we first saw Lily's face. Yesterday was the day we received "the call". I will never forget being at school all day just waiting to hear from our agency. It was at the end of the day, almost everyone had left when I got the call in Aunt Trina's classroom. I was waiting to hear from Jamie, and I got a call from Anna with AWAA. She had Jamie and I on 3-way. I don't remember much about the call other than these words, "You have a beautiful baby girl." From that point on, I was near tears and writing down things as fast as possible. But, the words, "You have a beautiful baby girl" resounded in my mind over and over again. Every time I let myself hear them, my excitement grew. I couldn't wait until this day a year ago to receive Lily's picture.

So, my sister stayed home from school with me while we waited on the FedEx package to come. We waited...and waited...and waited on a package that was supposed to arrive by 9:30 a.m. Of course, it had been rerouted and had problems that day- so the package did not arrive until late that afternoon. We actually got an email from our agency before the package arrived with Lily's picture. So, we waited on Jamie to drive home from work so that we could see her face together for the first time.

The picture above is the one from the email. We thought she was the most beautiful baby we had ever seen, of course.

I think back about these two days in our lives, and I am amazed that time has flown by so quickly. We had longed for a child for 10 years, and God certainly blessed us abundantly with Lily. She makes us happier than we could have ever imagined!

Lily's First Real Snow

This snow came as a huge surprise today! The weather forecast had said it was coming, then they changed their predictions. It was such a blessing for Lily.

She and Baba got to have some time in the snow together.

I loved taking these pictures!

He was showing her how to make snowballs... and throw them at Mama!

When she stood in the snow for the first time today, she was squealing with glee. It was the sweetest thing ever to witness. She said the word snow in a sing-songy way half of the way home from school, until she fell asleep.

Thank you so much for the prayers for Lily and her anxiety issues. She cried, kicked, and screamed this morning as I put her in Alice's car. The night terrors continued this weekend. Some very close friends have expressed concern over her new fears and actions they have seen. It is just good to know that others notice what is going on with her. At home, she is fine when she is awake. She is her normal, happy, giggly self. Please keep praying that this adjustment takes place quickly for Lily.