Grocery & Zwieback

We had our first trip to the grocery store yesterday. Magnolia was great. Lots and lots of firsts around here. Check back soon, we should have more photos from our weekend. Magnolia's growth is amazing us each day!

Magnolia's First Zwieback

Playing outside waiting for Dad to come home.

Dad's home!
I had to bathe her in the sink.

I thought I had better do it before she gets too big!

Photos

Here are some photos from the past few days.
The $3 walker from a garage sale was a good find, a great place to put her when we're outside. She still doesn't like the grass. We're working on it.
This one makes me laugh because Magnolia looks so cute in her little cream sweatshirt and she wouldn't let me take her picture. I caught her though because she loves to stand up and teeth on the cabinet knob. See the drool!? A 5th tooth has broken through!
It's hard to get her picture, she stops whatever she's doing and speed crawls towards me when she sees the camera.
The other day I made baby food. She liked everything for the most part but gagged on my applesauce. The chocolate cookies were for me!
More photos to come!

Back on Track

We're happy to report that we are back on track. Two naps a day and sleeping through the night, yeah! Magnolia is catching up so fast. Every day there is something new and fun that she's learned. She's starting to do two signs in sign language. The one for milk she does but hasn't connected it to asking for milk, still pretty impressed with her imitations. She has started to use furniture to walk along. George puts the remote control in various places and she'll walk anywhere to get to it. Today I held her hands while she was standing and she took a few steps! She's trying all kinds of foods and eats like a champ. Today she ate mashed avocado and loved it. She slept in her stroller for a three mile walk today, yeah! We swam in her baby pool our friends and neighbors, Tom and Christine, gave her. She splashed and crawled around in it, she's never done that before! We went to a neighbor's house today who said "hi" to her and she said "hi" right back. I about died! She started to blow kisses in the Walmart line yesterday too. She likes to look at me with a straight face and blink both eyes at me until I do it back to her and this goes on for a while. She's slowly learning to play with toys, right now they mostly just go in her mouth. We're trying teach her peek-a-boo but she doesn't really get it yet. We've tried hiding her favorite toys blatantly in front of her to see if she can find it. Only until tonight did she make the connection and tip over the box we put over the remote control. Anything for that remote. We even gave her an old one to play with but when we line the two up in every imaginable configuration, she still goes for the real one, the one we try to keep from her. When we throw the phone in the mix, that one trumps all others.
She's such a delight, we're enjoying every minute with her!

Here are some pictures over the past few days.

George and I take her for a nighttime stroll to slowly get her used to the stroller.
Magnolia's first nap outside, even with the neighbor mowing the lawn she slept right through it.

Mary, Tim, and Lilah came to visit on Sunday. Mary, thankfully, fixed a very bad haircut I got here in town. We all went to lunch at Noodles and we thought it was so cute how Lilah drank her milk, holding the tabs as to not squeeze all the milk out of the straw. Lilah was so good to Magnolia, maybe a little too good. I gave Lilah an Oreo and a few minutes later George asked what all the dark stuff was around Magnolia's mouth. Lilah had given her a bite of her cookie who obviously loved it. Like mother, like daughter. :)

1st Weekend at Home

We had a wonderful weekend at home. This is what we've waited so long for. We still can't believe we have Magnolia. We absolutely adore her.

She is 10 months old today! Here are some pictures we took outside.

Aunt Ann & Uncle Tim

We had such a nice visit today from George's Aunt Ann and Uncle Tim. They were on their way up to the Boundary Waters and made a stop along our way to see us and well, Magnolia!
Look at these shoes they brought for her, how cute!

Obviously still really jet lagged not to mention all the other hundred changes she's had to go through in the past few weeks, she's exhausted.

Lunches at Home

Short day for us, we slept in until noon! Wish we had set the alarm because that is not helping the jet lag! Magnolia and I did make a trip to Target and that was about it. Slowly I'm getting caught up with things around here but mostly just enjoying Magnolia so much!
She's mimicking us like crazy which makes us laugh. I took her to the neighbors swing tonight which she loved. Hopefully George will hang hers this weekend. Neighbors have been bringing us meals every night which has been WONDERFUL!

Here are the only pics I got today...

George comes home for lunch whenever he can.

Lagging

Wow, this jet lag is harder than I imagined it would be. I kept thinking, mind over matter, it won't be that bad. Wrong, it's bad. It's hard but it will be over soon. I keep hearing from those who adopt from China, it takes 2 weeks until you feel "normal" again. If that's the only thing that is hard right now, I'm feeling pretty darn grateful. Magnolia is such a gem! She really has such a sweet disposition, she really is very very easy. Although it doesn't look like she's been smiling much in the photos, she has. We've just been too tired to take many photos!

She had her first doctor's visit today. She ranked only in the 3rd percentile on the growth chart, the American Formula Fed Growth Chart that is. Still, she is low on the Chinese Growth Chart. The doctor said she's just petite and otherwise impressed at how healthy she looks! She was also blown away by the fact that she's right on developmentally and when she went to hold her, Magnolia turned towards me and cried, "ma." Very good! I'm loving it! :)

George gets quite the greetings from Magnolia in the mornings and when he comes home at night. She jumps up and down, very excited, smiles, and reaches for him. This just makes his day.


This is what 3am has been looking like the past few nights.

In just a few days, Magnolia has learned to pick up her Gerber Puffs and put them in her mouth, she's not using her "pinchers" yet but she's close! She does NOT like me to help put them in her mouth, she's very determined! This is a great thing to do at 3am!
She claps her hands ONLY when she gets one in her mouth, makes me laugh every time.
It took a few days to get Miss Magnolia in her car seat. We would go in the back seat and play so she could get used to it and then I hung toys all around and fed her Gerber Puffs until I was able to get her in...just yesterday. This is her first ride in a carseat so I had to take a picture, she looks sad but she's just tired, she fell asleep seconds later. We have yet to take a ride when I'm not in the backseat with her, that will be another story I'm sure.
It still seems so crazy to finally be home with her. We're so happy, we're so in love. She is just such a joy in our lives! We feel so lucky.

We're Home!!!

Long trip but we're home at last. We touched down in Minnesota and Magnolia became a U.S. citizen! She was a gem on that flight. By some miracle someone was willing to switch seats with us to give us the bulkhead then the attendants put up a bassinet which was wonderful! She didn't sleep the whole 10 hours but she was quiet and played so nicely with us. Upon descent the pilot aborted the landing at the last minute. Turned out we were too close to the plane in front of us so we circled back around and landed safely. Good thing we had Magnolia, she was such a distraction through that scare! After we got through Immigration, exhausted and the middle of the night for us, we learned our final flight home was cancelled. Only a 45 minute flight from home but still so far away. We got on the next flight we could but to Green Bay, a 30 minute drive from home and that gave us a 4 hour layover! That also meant we wouldn't have our car at the airport with the carseat. Thank goodness my parents came early to come and meet us! We got on that flight which was at that point an hour delayed and sat on the plane for 30 minutes while they tried to do maintenance. At that point they decided they couldn't fly it but found another plane to fly...in another concourse. On the plane we met a woman who was also on our cancelled flight and also had flown from China with 2 small children who were now sound asleep on the seats. She had no way to move them from the plane, let alone other concourse. So I took Magnolia in the Bjorn and a backpack and George took the other backpack and one of this woman's daughters and we all tried to get to the other concourse. We were beyond exhausted but the flight went quickly and we were in Green Bay before we new it. We had a wonderful greeting by my Mom, Dad, Emily, Curtis, Willa, Ellie, Lily, Mary, Tim, and Lilah! They had a beautiful sign made and we were beyond happy to see their faces! Our nieces just loved Magnolia and she loved all the attention. We came home to our house all lit up and so cutely decorated, cake, and presents but with such a delay in our flight no one could make the party! Magnolia seemed right at home. She sat right in her highchair and Nana fed her a whole jar of sweet potatoes. She went right to bed after that. We were up again at 3am to 5am and then back to bed until noon. It may take a while to get our feet back on the ground.

Magnolia seems to be adjusting very well, we still can't believe she's home with us. We're enjoying every minute with her. She's such a delight and her personality is coming to life more and more each minute we're with her!

Now that we're home I will be concentrating on figuring out some kind of schedule but more importantly working on attachment so I probably won't be able to post very much.
Please check back periodically, I hope to continue our journey of Magnolia. It's only just begun!

Magnolia touching ground. She's now a U.S. citizen!

What a welcome by my family!



Finally at home! Opening presents from her aunts.

Magnolia really took to her Papa right away!

She loved her Johnny Jump Up. Papa made her giggle for the first time by swinging her in it.

Goodbye China

We are so sad to go. China is a beautiful country with beautiful people but most of all, China is Magnolia's birth country. It will always have place in our hearts and we know we will be back very soon. The past few days have flown by and before we knew it we were packing our bags. I'm so emotional about everything. This has been the most amazing experience. I'm even sad to leave this hotel room, where our family became three. We had to go to the U.S. Consulate today and take our oath that we will always love and care for Magnolia. Then we got Magnolia's Chinese passport with U.S. Visa. She will become a U.S. citizen the moment we touch down in Minneapolis. I cried when we got her passport, just another affirmation that this isn't a dream, she really is ours and we're bringing her home. She's such an amazing gift. We feel like the luckiest people in the world to have found each other. I can't wait for you all to meet her! Funny thing is that after 7 years of waiting to have a child, having her seems so natural, like it was always meant to be, like we really were waiting all these years to find each other. It feels like the most normal thing in the world to now be the three of us.

Tomorrow we are up at 4:30am to start our long journey home. I've been very anxious about how this is going to go with such an active little baby. I feel like if we can get through this, we can get through anything! We are looking forward to seeing all of you who are making the trip to the airport to greet us. Can't wait!
Signing off for the last time in China, see you in the States!
xoxoxoxoxo Lucy, George, & MAGNOLIA!
Here are some pictures from the past few days...


Shaquil O'Neal walked into the hotel lobby today. This was the best shot I could get. He looked over because a dad in our group, who's a little person, shouted out to him asking if he wanted to go one on one. Shaq broke into a smile at that.
Believe it or not, he's staying in the room right next to ours. I know because his base was so loud and I asked an employee what that sound was and he told me it was Shaq and his boys, they very happy!

We took the Guangzhou subway to the knock-off mall. Last night's farewell dinner. Hard to eat with chopsticks, harder with a baby on your lap.
Coriander mashed potatoes for lunch.
Love how she licks around her mouth to clean up.Back at the hotel from the U.S. Consulate with Magnolia's passport and immigration papers.