Wow, How Did We Do All That?

At the end of the day in the eyes of a child you can see all the things that make the journey worthwhile.
A Davidson.

I love this quote and it is so very true. Today we had a lot of different things to do and places to go. All of them were great fun but it was hectic and tonight when I put my little girl in her bed and she looked at me with her very tired eyes and said, "I love you mummy and today was such great fun." All the running about is worth it when I can look at her and see how much she has enjoyed herself.
Take a look at what made her day such a delight.

Blowing Bubbles at her new friend Lia's house.
Lia is from the same orphanage as Lily and lives 5 minutes away from us. Small world.


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More Fun


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Princess Lily at the Princess party.


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Lily renamed, Princess Lipstick.


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After the party we flew home got all clean and pretty and dashed up to Pembroke Pines to have dinner with our friends. The restaurant was terrific and is the only Chinese restaurant I have ever been to that has a chlidrens menu. H, has 3 little girls all from China so dinner was a very entertaining affair and I only managed to stop once to pull out my camera as we were having such a lovely time.

Meet Lily from the Von Trapp family! please excuse tht simply lovely piece of broccoli that is in her mouth.

Off to bed for me as tomorrow is Lily Chinese performance at a local school so I want to be bright eyed and bushy tailed for it. She is going to be on stage performing and something tells me she will love it.

To Our Sweet Baby

Sweet Little Girl.

This blog was started many months ago to document our journey to you. I try to document all the big milestones that happen along the way and count the months that pass as we creep closer and closer to you.

Lily, Daddy and I have been waiting to see you face now for 19 months and 1 day. We really thought that you would have been home with us many, many months ago. The wait is so very difficult. Each and everyday we think of you and talk about you. The wait is the hardest on your big sister because she cannot fully comprehend why you are taking so long.

She wants to hold you, give you your bottle and bathe you. She isn't very keen on the idea of taking a bath with you cos she thinks you will pee in it but that is because I recently told her that she used to do that. She wants to see your little face so much so that she can choose your name. She has lots of names picked out for you and one very special one that she has put so much thought into.

Lily used to save bits of her food for you and I would have to wrap them up and put them in the freezer. There are lots of half eaten cookies just for you. She saves her favourite things and puts them in your nursery and tells me not to give them to the poor kids because they are for her Mei Mei.

We just want you home with us, where you belong. We are ready and have been for a very long time now but we will wait until forever because you are part of us and we love you so much.

And so our darling little one, if you are in an orphanage or foster home be patient and know that we love you and we will be there soon, very soon ,to bring you home with us.

In my perfect little world I think we have approximately 7 more months to go before we see your face for the first time. I just can't imagine that we can be apart for much longer.

We love you with all our hearts and then some.

Mummy, Daddy and Lily.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxox

All Sorts Of Stuff

This will be one of my, everything and anything with a little of the other thrown in for luck, posts. Where to start?

Because today is the Chinese Mid Autumn Moon Festival Lily and I went out together to celebrate. She wanted to wear one of her Chinese outfits and her silver bell bracelet. She looked so sweet.

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Not sure what provoked this face

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Little Cutie

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We read a great book tonight. It wasn't about the Moon Festival but it was a China related book. It is about shapes and thoroughly lovely. We read all about the jade rabbit on the moon too and finally before she went to be we went outside and bowed to the moon. If you are female this is part of the tradition so get up and go outside and bow to the moon. Lily loves all things about China and on Sunday evening she is getting up on stage with her Chinese class and singing some songs at a moon festival celebration. (you know there will be photos of that one)

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Next subject!
I received a package in the post, Not Lily but ME. Lily tried to claim it but I wouldn't even let her get all the words out of her mouth. I explained it was for people with boobies. She said she has boobies but I told her until they are big enough to fit in a bra my duck was off limits. She relented and stared at down at her chest rather deflated, no pun intended.

i-con, thank you so much. I love my duck and the poem that accompanied her. She represents her cause so well and the words will be heeded.

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Next!
I can't remember where I was going with this one so....

Next!
It really was a day all about me. I used to have those days all the time. Hell, life was all about me but now I am much happier with life being all about Schnoogie.
I received another gift. This one was from the fabulous, minus the gimpy finger, LayDFrog


She thinks I am worthy of the Smile Award. If it should go to anyone it really should go to Lily cos her smile is always on and it lights up a room.
Here is what the person that created this award says about it: the thing that I love most about blogging is that I learn so much about a person just by reading their blog. I have met MANY wonderful people with wonderful stories to tell,and I am grateful every day for each person that I have the pleasure of crossing paths in life with.I wanted to create something special for the top ten people who have inspired me through their blogging; the stories they tell, and the lives that they lead with grace and dignity. I visit their blogs for inspiration and encouragement.
Please grab your badge and wear it proudly, and pass it on because you inspire and encourage me, thank you.

Oish, now I am supposed to pick 10 people and forward the award. That is like only having 4 ice creams and 5 children. It is wrong, just wrong. How can I pick 10 blogs?
I am not taking the easy way out, well maybe I am but if you are reading this and you know that I follow your blog then you are obviously an inspiration to me so consider yourself a recipient of the smile award.

Next!
Only kidding there is enough in this one post to last a week or more and I am going to bed. G'night

Getting Our Heads In The Game

Yesterday we, along with some friends, went to see High School Music*l on ice. Suffice to say that the kiddiewinkles had a great time. I have been singing, "gotta, gotta, gotta get your head in the game", like some crazed teenage sports jock ever since.

I really thought I had a few more years before Lily was got into this stuff but yet again it has been proved that I know nothing! She loves all the big kid stuff already. We don't even let her watch that much television but she just finds out about them anyway. Just 2 minutes ago Elmo ruled her world but now he is so passe.

At the end of the first act that we were all getting up and heading off to the bathrooms when Lily shrieked with delight and was shouting, "look, look", we turned around expecting to see one of the cast members back on the ice but instead we saw the Zamboni. Lily always gets really excited when she sees the Zamboni, I have no idea why. So we had to wait until he was done polishing the ice and then we were able to leave our seats.

Here are a few shots from the afternoon.
Lily's favourite bit!


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Lily was spellbound during most of the show and kept on nudging us if the skaters did any amazing moves and would say, "did you see that?"

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Lily and Co

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7 P's Meme

Approximately 500 yrs ago RMJ passed this meme on to me and I have just got around to doing it. The computer has been having a fit if I asked it to post any type of graphic but now it appears to be all better.

Here are a list of P's that mean something to me.

Princess Lily of Wuhan (with curly hair. This is one of her latest fads. It takes ages but she doesn't mind.)

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Pennies

Ever since I lost my best friend I always think of her when I see a penny on the ground. Pennies from Heaven....she must keep dropping them so that I know she is with me. I find them all the time and they always make me smile.

Photographs.

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I have photos all over the house. At the top of the stairs we have the family photo wall and I love this part of my house.

Panic.
Not a favourite P word necessarily but definitely one that aptly describes me. I can panic over everything and anything and do!

Peace.

Why is it so elusive in this world? I dream of the day when all the troops all over the world can return to their loved ones and all of us will continue on a peaceful journey.

Picnics.

I just love picnics. Is it an English thing? Nothing marks summer like a wonderful picnic in a green and open space. I even have picnics indoors with Lily.

Presents.

Giving, receiving, quite frankly, it's all good!

So now you have read all about my p's. That just sounds so wrong. If you would like to participate go for it.

What Me? Why, Thank You.

Dannye, A.K.A. LayDFrog nominated me, or rather my blog, for this award. I am truly flattered. Thank you Dannye. I understand why you got this one but not me. I feel very special, not in the special shoes and thick glasses kind of way but in the warm and fuzzy way and here is why:
"This award is for bloggers who are nice people, good blog friends, and those who inspire good feelings and inspiration. Also, for those who are a positive influence on our blogging world"
See, not so sure I fit that bill.
Anyhoo, I am now supposed to pass it along to 7 people. I am probably going to nominate bloggers that already received it but quite frankly, I don't give a damn cos I havent given it to them and in my eyes they are incredible people. (See it is my crappy sarcastic mouth that makes me thinks this is not the right award LOL)
So, I pass this along to:

http://2kayaks.blogspot.com/
http://3dsadoptionjourney.blogspot.com/
http://awaitingava.blogspot.com/
http://jadynjourney.blogspot.com/
http://seventhdiamond.blogspot.com/
http://www.ptopig.blogspot.com/
http:///lifewithlilylin.blogspot.com/
If you are linked through my blog then I obviously think you deserve it but the makers of the rules says only 7....cheap bast@rd.

You Didn't ?

On Monday evening Jacob took Lily to gymnastics whilst I was at work. I thought nothing of it since he is really quite capable of doing anything with Lily except her hair and matching her clothes. This morning I was sorting the washing and noticed her scarlet leotard and then underneath that in the hamper was a pair of bright pink gym style shorts. My first reaction was to dive into the hamper and see what else she had worn that might possibly have matched her leotard but the hamper was already empty. That dear, sweet, colour blind as all hell, hubby of mine dressed MY child in red and pink!! It clashed, the big ugly clash. It didnd't enter my head to set out her gym clothes for her she usually gets them herself and does well.

I need to back track for a second. When we first met Jacob was doing alot of print and T.V. work and he always dressed really well. I am not sure who dressed him or shopped for him but he looked good always. It wasn't until after a few months had passed that I realised he must be colour blind so I asked him to take the Ishihar@ test. He took it and passed with flying colours. I was flummoxed to say the least. How could someone throw so many patterns and colours together if they could actually see them? One day before a business trip I told him not to wear anything that he wanted to take with him as everything was back from the cleaners and ready to go. When I caught up with him later in the day I was blinded by his colourfulness and sickened by his dancing patterns.

He is probably ready to delete this post at this point! To this day I shop for him and match him. He knows what he can wear together and he avoids trying anything different if I am not around. So that brings us to now. Lily has her own mind with regard to her wardrobe and is not bad at hitting the mark so I have no idea how Monday's colour scheme got by her.

We had to go to gymnastics tonight and I wondered if they would let us back through the door and thankfully they did.

Here is a glimpse of Schnoog on the beam.



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Smorgasboard Of Useless Updates.

Since my family has been emailing and ringing to see how Lily's pee-pee habit is doing I thought I should update: it would appear that Lily's problem was all in her head. She was given oral and topical antibiotics for another problem that occurred at the same time and we told her that the oral ones were to stop her having to pee every 2 seconds and it worked. She is no longer getting up in the night 4 different times and she is no longer interrupting everything she does to go pee. Have no idea how it all started but it did and now it is gone. She has the typical start of the school year cough thing that always gets passed around and if anyone has any tips on something to stop her coughing I would truly appreciate it. Tonight at dinner she told me that her head hurts from coughing so much. I think I have tried every cough syrup on both sides of the Atlantic plus humidifiers etc and nothing ever works so for all of you seasoned mummy's I need a suggestion. Muchas gracias.


Today was the funeral of a police officer who was shot last week. It was so very sad. This man made a routine traffic stop and was taken out by a scum bag with an AK-47 assault rifle. He left behind a wife and 2 little tiny children. As I was heading to work this morning out of nowhere came 30 something squad cars with lights and sirens. It was rush hour and they were trying to get the to funeral. It gave me goosebumps and the noise of the sirens chilled me to the bone. It really bothers me to think of the scum that live amongst us and the fact that this family is now incomplete due to one of them. Really Miami is not the city that it was in the 80's but it is big and with big you get some bad. This guy is no longer around to harm anyone else.


The projects are moving along and I am catching up. I finished one piece of furniture this morning and started the next so now if I can get the 248 photographs that just got developed into a scrapbook, without Lily's help, I will be all caught up with my project list. I have a meme left but I will get to it.

I am actually going to start working a little bit more now since Lily is in school. Nothing serious of course but I think 90 minutes a day is really pushing my luck and once Chopstick comes home work will receive a, cease and desist, order once again. I love what I do and I have plenty of free time.

And if by chance you haven't checked out Little Maddy you must go here and click on the travel journal tab and send Marty and Robin some congratulations. Maddy is so cute.

Off to see what the rest of you have been upto.

On Your BIke

Even though the weather is still teetering around in the 90's we decided to go out bicycle riding today. We loaded the bikes on the bike rack and headed to a park that offers lots of shade trees and we had so much fun. We took bread with us to feed the ducks, that in itself was a tad nerve wrecking cos every Ibis in Florida showed up.
We made a rash decision before we left to put the training wheels back on Lily's bike for the day. She rides it very well without them but she cannot steer for beans. So it was going to be far more productive to have her riding on the bike path as opposed to scraping her off of a tree.

With regard to my getting demoted in the last post it was very much tongue in cheek. How on earth can I help with the pronunciation of a language I don't even speak.

Pikkies of the day.

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A couple of crazies

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Demoted Before I Even Got Started

Last Friday evening marked the start of Chinese lessons for the year. The class has grown so much that "T" sent out an email during the week asking for some parents to help out and if you were not going to be a helper she requested that you drop your child off. I have no problems at all with leaving Lily there as she is a good friend and it is due to that friendship that I offered to help out. I was so surprised and quite frankly tickled pink when the return email said that I could help her teach the pronunciation. Me, who doesn't speak a lick of Chinese well at least not a sensible lick was going to be helping with pronunciation. I strutted around all week like the cats pajamas.

Alas, my strutting was short lived cos when I got to class tonight she said that she had a better job for me. I was in charge of setting up the kids folders with assignments and correcting the homework. I have been demoted but really I think "T" came to here senses and realised having me help with pronunciation was about as helpful as having an Icee stand outside an igloo. I truly have a a wonderful time while we are there and make sure I eavesdrop on every syllable in hopes of being able to speak to our daughter, at least half as well as her sister can.

For some reason Miss Lil' was an absolute angel today and blew me away with her manners, sweetness, kindness, you name it she did it. I wonder what tomorrow will bring?

I Hope "They" Aren't Reading This !

Every now and again on some board somewhere you always hear about how the CCAA reads blogs and yahoo groups to see what we are all up to. Well, I don't know if it is true or not but I just hope that they are not reading this.

Since yesterdays post was a little serious and from the heart I will resume my usual B.S. in hopes of making you realise I have no standards at all.

Every now and again, sometimes more frequently than that, as a parent you have a moment that makes you wonder what right you have to raise a child because you screw things up. For us it is never anything serious, just things that we say by mistake or things that we do by accident.

Take last night for example: Lily asked if she could go to sleep in our bed, I said, "ask Daddy" and he said, "if mummy says yes". So I told her she could go to sleep in our bed but I was gong to move her into her own bed before we went to sleep. So at 10.00ish I went upstairs to move her and I picked her up in my arms and as I went to stand up I realised that she had twisted the sheets around her legs so I had to tug and wiggle her a bit. She came free rather unexpectedly and I ended up swinging her head into the lamp on my nightstand and knocking it flying!! She didn't even wake up so I staggered into her room virtually gasping for air cos I was laughing so hard. Great mothering skills, I have!

It isn't as if this is the first time I have thought , geesh, someone gave me this child to love and protect and I have just done X.Y, or Z to her. Whilst we were still in China she was very cranky one afternoon and when a travel mate came into the room carrying candy and Lily nearly removed his arm to get some of it and that was when I/we realised we had completely forgotten to feed her any lunch! I know that is pretty bad.

Recently we were in the car coming home from the beach and it was a rare occasion that I was driving and Jacob was yipping to Lily about all the things that live in the ocean. He was just getting around to talking about single celled organisms but in true Jacob style he muddled his words and told her about single celled orgas*ms. (don't want that little ditty showing up on a google search). I just cracked up laughing and he wasn't sure why so I had to try to tell him but I was laughing so hard that I blurted out the other word really loud so then he is roaring and Lily is in the back asking in her most serious voice what is an "O" and why is it so funny. I ended up pulling the car off of the road cos I just couldn't see where I was going.

So we get the parent of the year award over and over again. Those are only 3 that come to mind right now but I know that there are hundreds more just like that. Tell me we aren't the only ones....please.

Have a great day and hug your little ones, it will help to make up for all the ooops that you have had.

The Natives Are Getting Restless.

For a while now I have been thinking about ditching my blog. It isn't that I don't want to do it anymore but because I thought by now we would be home with Chopstick planted firmly in this nutty household. I also spend huge amounts of time on the computer when I should be doing other things. I have projects to do that I don't like doing when Lily is about cos they just are not fun for her and in some instances they are alot of fun for her but I really don't want her help.
As I have perused other blogs today I have realised that yet again, there is a common thread weaving us all together and it is that we are all getting very restless.
The wait is beyond tedious. The not knowing "when" is wearing us down. The uncertainty of this whole programme is getting to be to much to shoulder. Perhaps this is why I don't want to blog. This was after all supposed to be an adoption blog not a "hey look at this fake happy smile as we wait eternally" blog.
We are in this for the long haul. Jacob made a comment a few weeks back that scared me silly but it was just out of frustration and not that he truly does want to throw in the towel. Each mundane task is marred with a thought that I ponder, will we have to redo the paperwork again, will Lily clear her 6th birthday before she gets her new title of Big Sister, will we make yet another trip to the UK as a family of 3 instead of 4 and so on. And if one more person asks me, "why it is taking so long?" I will probably be held on assault and battery charges. I hope when they take my mug shot photo they get my good side cos after all that will probably be sent to the CCAA.
Sometimes I almost forget that we are waiting. It seems now to be something that will always be there, like my left handedness or my blue eyes. It is part of me. It's wrong. We should be skipping along all happy and starry eyed knowing that very soon our little dream will be a reality. The baby's room has gone back to being the junk drawer. All the pretty stuff is hidden by a big pile of stuff that needs to get tossed. I think I will wait to do it as there doesn't appear to be any rush.Well I will wait until my OCD gets the better of me and then I will single handedly toss the stuff.

But the blog must go on cos we have a daughter in China and Dammit, we need to bring her home.

This has nothing to do with anything but I have just looked over at my washing machine and was startled to see that my lovely white clothes are swimming in a sea of pink foam??? Sh*t.
Hunnie, if you are reading this, I for one think you will look stunning in pink wife beaters instead of your standard white ones. Oh and another thing, if you are reading this it means you are home safe and sound. The anniversary of 9-11 and you being at work today at the airport just didn't sit very well with me.

Scared Of Nothing. Happy B-day Andie

This child of ours is always up for fun. It doesn't matter what it is she will love it. A few weeks ago she asked if we could go to the Go-Karts again because she had so much fun. Since it is our job to cater to her every whim we went yesterday.

Those are her racing goggles.

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My Turn. I think because I don't weigh as much Jacob that the Go kart went faster with me and Lily loved it cos we kept passing people. A person raced by us and she poked her tongue out at them so I had to interrupt the racing fun for a little heart to heart. I have never seen her do this before and it was very hard not to laugh.Her little tongue is just so flipping cute.

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The crazed boat operator had us spinning all over the place.

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Today is my cousins birthday. Happy Birthday Andie or as Lily insists on calling you, Cousin Andie. We cannot wait until you come out again....November better hurry up and get here.

Lots of you have been having problems viewing the videos of late. I send my thanks to the wonderful folks at Dropshots for their new and improved video sharing (NOT).
Stacey said that if you hit play and then hit pause immediately to let it load then it works. I hope so cos until Dropshots unimproves it's service this is all I got. Seriously Dropshots people, it wasn't broken why did you fix it?