HAPPY FOREVER FAMILY DAY!

First Meeting - Oct. 12, 2009

October, 2010

Sept., 2010

Best Friends

Yes it has been an entire year(and one day) since Haiyang became part of our family. It is hard to believe that this time last year we were just beginning to get to know each other. It is amazing what she has accomplished in 12 months. There was so much for her, and us, to learn. It is unbelievable what she has absorbed in such a short time. Her use and understanding of English is very near other 4 year olds. Her speech is coming along nicely with the help of Miss Melissa and speech therapy 2x's a week, and will only improve more once she has surgery in January. She has normal eating habits even if she does have an enormous, sweet tooth, food was such an issue this time last year -it drove me crazy. And I never thought I was going to get to say this, but her over all behavior is so much better. She is still pretty stubborn and is always testing but she wants to be a good girl most of the time, she will even say, "I might be good" especially on Sunday mornings, it makes me laugh because even she knows it is hard for her to be good. She really wants to please me but her sisters, now that is another story, she will annoy them to no end and takes great pleasure in doing so. Pretty normal sibling/4year old behavior, don't you think? The girls all adore one another in different ways and the last year has helped them all find their place in our family.

Socially Haiyang is doing great, she makes friend easily and gets along well with the kids in pre-school. She has a BFF, Marina our little neighbor, they will play for hours on end and never tire of each other. They are absolutely adorable together and so incredibly funny, listening to them talk is hysterical. They are not in the same pre-school but are doing Story Time at the Library together. HY is also making friends in school and has a couple girls she is particularly fond of. This time last year she was a bit aggressive and rough when playing but time taught her that wasn't necessary to get attention. She is still less than graceful and hugs harder than most but that is just her way, we all know to brace ourselves when she charges our way and when you do get that unsolicited hug - no words to describe it, she puts all her love into it.

Nothing I read or anything anyone told us, prepared us for adding a toddler to the family. It has been terrifying, exhausting, frustrating and a bit overwhelming but it has also been exciting, rewarding, heartwarming, fun and full filling. I don't think any of us could imagine our family without Haiyang and I am pretty certain she feels the same way. Often when she is falling asleep she will say, "I love my Mom, I love my Dad, I love my Sisters, I love my dogs and I love my house... I love my family" - that makes the hard part all worth it.

Happy Forever Family Day Haiyang!!!

Summer is in full swing!

Tessie napping on Grandma Gail.

Lucie decided to fly her kite just as it was beginning to storm.

Watching a 3-D movie with BF Willow.

The new addition to our back yard- not exactly classy but super fun!
Hoping for a real pool next summer.

JD & Lucie at Kennywood.

Glitter!!!

Lizzy went to school

Aviary

Science Fair

Dancing at Kennywood with OCA.

Summer Fun!

Summer vacation has finally started for us and we are in full force. The girls have already done a Church Camp, which they all loved, and Haiyang also did a 4 day camp at her pre-school. Oh yes, I haven't posted in so long maybe everyone didn't know HY started pre-school in March. She LOVED it!!! I was so worried that she wouldn't listen but she did fine for the most part, aside from a jelly bean stealing incident. She has a pretty, huge, sweet tooth so she really can't be blamed for being tempted by candy. She even made a few friends that happened to be at the same Church Camp so that worked out perfectly.

Haiyang's speech continues to improve all the time, she is currently going to speech therapy 2x's a week. She does seem to enjoy speech but some days give Miss Melissa a hard time, if she isn't in the mood... ughh.

Lucie and HY are both doing gymnastics this summer, HY was so excited her 1st day that she could hardly contain herself. And Lucie made the Youth Gym team this year, which was a pretty big deal, since it was her 1st time to have to "try-out" for anything. We were all very excited about it and she is looking forward to being part of the team and attending meets in the fall.

We are enjoy having the days off of school and Tessie and I are really enjoying not having homework!!!! We had a great time with Dave's sister Mary and family visiting a few weeks ago, it was so much fun since her little ones are around HY's age, they all played so nice together. Again, I was worried about HY's behavior but she couldn't have done better. And it was really nice to see L & T being the "big girls". They enjoyed helping Grandma and Aunt Mary and playing with the little ones. Our nephew JD is here now and spending a few nights with us so we are taking him to Kennywood. This is our second trip this season, the 1st was during Asian Heritage Day, Lucie's Dance group performed so of course we had to make a day of it.

We have already made a few trips to Lisa's pool, the girls LOVE to swim and HY has no fear of the water. We also purchased one of those huge, inflatable, water slides, it is proving to be much fun for the kids and their friends. Hopefully this time next year we will have our own pool.

Best wishes for a safe and fun summer to all!!!!!

Happy Chinese New Year!!!

Wow I just realized that I haven't taken any time to give an update on HaiYang. Here is a brief update along with some recent photos. We completed all of the necessary "coming home" medicals, all blood tests came back fine, and both tests done on her heart looked good, no restrictions on activities and no need to go back until she is 7! We will begin speech therapy soon, there is a possibility of a palate surgery if her speech doesn't improve in that time. When it comes to cl/cp there is no standard of what to expect for surgery, every case is different and things change as children grow. For now there is the possibility of the palate surgery in 6months, she will have another around the age of 9 to correct the gaps in her upper gum - this involves taking bone from the hip to fill in the missing bone - then maybe some cosmetic surgery when she is a little older, they do not like to do anything cosmetic until they are done growing. So nothing too scary in the near future, thank goodness because she was less than cooperative with the entire cl/cp team, it was a long visit and Haiyang does not like going to any doctor.

Her language is really coming along. She may not be able to make all of the necessary sounds but she has learned an amazing number of words in such a short time. She is putting sentences together and is mostly speaking English, we can understand maybe 80% of what she is saying. As before, when we don't understand her she will usually do some signs to get her point across. It is really cute some of the things she comes up with, we were going to my niece's basketball game over the weekend, when we were getting ready to go she said, AhhKalala (Olivia) and something I couldn't understand, then she motioned dribbling, so cute! I said, "Oh yes, we are going to watch Olivia play basketball", she is so relieved when I figure it out. Sadly she says very little in Chinese these days, I do wish there was a way we could have held onto her language for her but in those 1st few months it was more about learning how to live together and communicate than anything else.

HaiYang still has a very strong opinion about almost everything. Getting dressed to go out is torture!!! She has dozens of cute outfits to pick from but will only wear a small selection of about 4 tops and 3 skirts, she basically wears the same 4 outfits over and over, sometimes the same outfit for days at a time - it drives me crazy!!!!! And she changes her clothes all day long, usually she'll stop once she settles on a pair of orange shorts and a tank top. I can't figure out if it is a case of too much to choose from or maybe she just can't get comfortable??? Who knows, I only hope she outgrows it.

Haiyang is a very active little girl, she has far more energy than her sisters had at that age. She enjoyed the snow in small doses, there were lots of issues with glove falling off, snow in the boots all the usual snow playing hazards and of course we had so much snow that there were days she couldn't even walk in it, so that took some of the fun out of playing in the snow. Oh and she also has a taste for snow, yuck. I must have told her 100 times not to eat the snow but every time I looked at her she was licking snow off of something, we have 3 dogs so not such a good idea on our property. She is really a little pistol, a few days ago after eating a blow pop, she said, "where gum go".. hmmm where did it go? I assumed she swallowed it, well after a bit of back and forth she finally admitted it was in her nose... yep she jammed her nose full of gum!!! Gross!!!! That was a first, I am not sure how I avoided anyone doing such a thing until now. She really gets into everything and anything she can, keeping me on my toes.

Merry Christmas!!!

Happy 4th Birthday HaiYang

Bananna split for breakfast??? Why not?

Christmas Eve and Christmas morning were a blast!!! Everyone including Haiyang jumped in and immediately started ripping open their gifts, it really takes much longer to wrap than to unwrap. Haiyang finished and asked for more, haha. Lucky for her, her B. Day is the 26th so she had more to open the next morning. We celebrated her day Christmas evening with a Dora cake (of course) which she loved, every morning she asks for "happy birthday to you" meaning cake. Her speech is really coming along, it is amazing how much she has picked up the last few weeks, making our communication much better!!

Maybe a little late but I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and are enjoying the holidays. We are having much fun here. Haiyang enjoyed decorating cookies and playing in the 1st snow, she LOVED it!!!!

I was able to join Tessie for her Christmas party at school, it was fun to see her with her classmates and meet her new friends. Tessie has a fantastic teacher this year and a small class with a nice group of kids.

December Fun!!!!

This is my girls uniform. She has so many adorable outfits to pick from and this is what she wants to wear, don't you love the shoes?

Lucie's Christmas recital, she played "Frosty the Snowman" and did an excellent job.

We really packed alot of fun into last weekend. We also had an Ice Skating Party with TRFCC, we went to the PPG Rink - so much fun!!!! If you live in PGH and you have never done this you must do so this winter, so very festive. Lucie and I were holding our own on the ice and Tessie deserves a medal for her effort, she may have spent more time down than she did up but she had a blast and was a really good sport about it. Haiyang maybe didn't have the best time but she did enjoy looking at all the ginger bread houses on display.

So we headed out to "cut down" the Christmas Tree. This is our 5th live tree and I believe the 4th year of cutting our own tree, Lucie LOVES it!!!! I thought of going artificial, to make things a little easier this year, but L.Q. was having no part of that. We go to a tree farm that takes you out on a sort of hay-ride and you get to chop your own tree. So we set out to find the perfect tree, we have had some crazy trees, the 1st year I was super excited myself and we ended up with an insanely huge tree that of course fell over and broke the tree stand, my Dad built us a tree stand that could hold the White House tree, we will never have a tree fall again. One year the tree was 1/2 dead inside, it had been covered in snow when we chose it. Another year it had an odd trunk that branched out into two at the top. But this year we have the BEST TREE EVER!!!! Perfect!!! Well the decorating may not be but the tree is super!!

Yep that is my man chopping us a tree. We forget that Haiyang doesn't always get what we are doing so it surprised us that she wasn't having fun on the tree trip. Then it occurred to us that she probably thought we were crazy! She did enjoy the hot chocolate and cookie at the end and loved helping me with the lights and hanging ornamants.