Family Christmas picture

Care package

We'll be sending this off to China tomorrow:

It contains:

- A letter written in Chinese to the orphanage director, explaining who the heck we are (since the orphanage may not have been notified yet that ZhiYi has been matched to us). Our agency gave us this, since we obviously cannot write a letter in Chinese...

- A picture drawn by B for his baby sister, with a note in Pinyin saying "I love you!"

- Two cameras -- we hope they will take lots of pictures of ZhiYi in the orphanage and give us the cameras when they bring her to us.

- A flannel blanket made by Grandma -- she's working on a second, identical blanket, just in case the orphanage keeps this one.

- An album of photos of us, the grandparents, our house, etc., with all photos labeled in Chinese. I've heard from other families that adopted from this orphanage that they don't get this back when they receive their child, and in fact they wonder if the album was ever even shown to the child, or if it just went into a file somewhere. I hope they show it to her, but I also like to think that if they keep it in her file, it's because they want to have pictures of where and to whom they sent her.

- A warm and fuzzy fleece outfit. We're hoping we'll see her wearing this when (if) we get updated photos through our agency.

- A giraffe lovey toy

- Stickers and wrist rattles, with a note reading in Chinese "For your friends."

- A bag of candies with a label in Chinese reading "For the nannies."

Cute-o-saurus

I took this picture of B Friday night, while he was playing with Kenai in his tunnel. Yep, a 90 pound dog squeezes his giant body into that little bitty tunnel. It's quite funny to see. There's a picture of Kenai in the tunnel below too, but unfortunately the only one I was able to get was of the wrong end. [Erin P, apparently I really SHOULD have taken notes when you showed me how to get rid of red-eye, b/c I couldn't make it work!]

It's gotten very difficult to capture a good B smile on camera. Not that he doesn't smile -- he does -- it's just that when you point a camera at him and say smile, he does this weird grimace where he shows his teeth & turns down the corners of his mouth. I lucked out on this one -- he was trying to hide from me, and I happened to snap this one just before he backed around the corner, out of view.

Speaking of turned-down mouths...B told me yesterday, "Mommy, when I'm sad, my mouth makes the shape of a rainbow."

Zhi Yi's home for now

Zhi Yi currently lives at the XiaJiang Social Welfare Institute (SWI). XiaJiang is 3-5 hours (depending on who you ask) south-southeast of Nanchang, which is the capital of Jiangxi Province. It is fairly remote, and a small town by Chinese standards.

You can click on the map to make it bigger. See the bright yellow-orange province on the bottom right, called Fujian? Jiangxi is just to the left of that, in a light turquoise color. Nanchang is the green square in the upper part of the province, and XiaJiang is south of that.

The XiaJiang SWI just began participating in international adoption about three years ago. Not many children are adopted from this orphanage, and only a handful of families have had the chance to visit. Therefore, we really don't know much about it. We know that in addition to housing orphans (maybe about two dozen or so at any given time--a very small orphanage for international adoption in China), it is also the permanent home of a group of mentally handicapped children, and serves as a retirement center and nursing home for the elderly. We hope to know a little more soon. I've made an online acquaintance whose daughter came from XiaJiang, and they are going back for a visit soon. They have promised to make inquiries about our daughter, and get pictures if they are allowed.

Here's what it looks like on the outside:

Despite its somewhat odd likeness of a pink Disney castle, I don't think it's very castle-like on the inside, based on the few pictures I've seen. It's pretty basic, but looks to be clean.

Can't wait to get her here to her real home.

Happy birthday to me

We're going to take a short break from the infinite baby girl cuteness today so that I can tell you about my birthday party. I turned 40 last week, and my men threw me a big bash last Saturday. There were about 30ish adults there, and what seemed like about two dozen kids but was probably more like eight or ten.

The party had an eclectic theme: pirates and superheroes. I imagine B may have had some say in the selection of the themes. All the party favors had a pirate theme -- treasures such as mardi gras necklaces and toy rings with giant plastic gems, as well as eye patches and gold hoop earrings (or nose rings, depending on your preference). The cake had a superhero theme, and read "Happy 40th Birthday Woman-Girl." If you want the backstory on Woman-Girl, you'll have to go read the last part of the Snow, sand and kryptonite post.

Lots of fun was had by all. Here are some of the party pix to prove it:

Me and my handsome B

Woman-Girl and Captain M

I had lots of help blowing out the candles

BFF

B's girlfriends

A few more tidbits

We don't have any new pictures, but I've been combing through all the paperwork that came from the agency, and have learned the following:

* She's itty-bitty, the size of an average 6 month-old in the U.S., except that she's almost 14 months old.
* She's crawling!
* She laughs aloud.
* She is fond of listening to music, and gets very happy when the nannies talk to her.
* She is active and restless (uh-oh), yet also a deep sleeper (yay!).
* She's eating solid foods, including noodles, meat, eggs and soup.
* By one month old, "she had grown very pretty." Well, duh!
* She is very well-behaved. (B will teach her naughtiness her first day home, I'm sure)
* She is "physically strong and sturdy."
* "She is an innocent, lively, healthy good, child."

Oh Baby!

Xiao ZhiYi

Born October 10, 2006

Jiangxi Province, China

Hey everyone, meet our daughter, ZhiYi! Yes, OUR DAUGHTER!!! I'm still pinching myself. She just turned one on October 10 and currently lives in Jiangxi Province in the People's Republic of China. We hope to get her home by February or March.

I was stunned when the agency called yesterday afternoon, when just last Friday they'd told us we'd have to wait until at least January. Tricky, tricky people, those agency folks. Needless to say, we are overjoyed, and absolutely giddy with excitement.

More information later...too much to do today! Until then, here are the other two pictures we received: