It's a great day to play!

Lila and I dropped Grace off at school on Wednesday and hit the road! We drove 2 hours to St Joe Missouri to see our friends from China. Greg, AJ, and Mikayla were with us the entire trip. Mikayla is from Chongqing too but a different orphange than Lila. They are from St Louis but were in St Joe visiting family.

The girls took to eachother immediately and played with toys until we went to lunch. They held hands for the walk to the restaurant (each squeaking along in her squeaky shoes). They were so cute together. Of course their cuteness impressed everyone at Applebee's! Even the little boy at the next table, our girls were flirts. Mikayla was too distracted with everything going on to eat. Lila kept telling her she needs to eat and finally decided to feed Mikayla her applesauce. It was darling, watch the video. (I can't get the video to download, I"ll add it later)

We got back to their hotel and got the girls changed into their suits and headed to the "heated" pool. It was ok oncce you got used to it but could have been much warmer. The little girls were shivering after about 45 minutes so we got them dried off and warmed up. Went back to the room to change. Played a little more and left for home. Lila and I stopped to get gas then while I was getting on the freeway I realized I had left my phone in AJ's room. That was a quick detour back then we got home in time to have dinner with Daddy and Jiejie.

It was so great to see them. AJ and I talked and talked and talked and the girls played so well together. It was a wonderful day with the girls.

Lila's Orphanage

I just found a blog of a woman who adopted from Lila's orphange in 2007. They were there in April so Lila was not there yet. Here's her description of the orphange.

"C' is a small orphanage, it has 20 beds and at present there are 7 children. The nanny and her husband live with the children in l' orphanage to make like true a family. There is a course external where they leave the children regularly. We also visited the places where the children were found. We bought a book of the city in remembering."

They're Canadian so the blog is in French, I translated this on Babel Fish.

So now I know who that guy is in the pictures, why Lila had such good care, that there was someone there at night, why she was so attached to Nanny and missed her so much at first. These little insights into her past are so precious.

What's going on

Christmas Morning

Grace & Kyle in the snow

Someone asked me the other day how Lila is other than medical news. Ok, I guess we have been so into health issues I haven't shared much else.


We had a speech therapist evaluate Lila because I was concerned that she's not speaking very much. The testing showed that she understands at a 30-36 month old level but is only at 18-21 months verbally. We are starting speech therapy in January. The therapist really thinks she will do well once she starts working with her. She really amused the speech therapist and case worker by dropping trou, shaking her booty, and laughing hysterically (such a proud Mommy moment).


She is into everything, VERY much the terrible 2. The problem is that she has this smile when she gets caught that makes it almost impossible to not laugh. She crawled under the guest room bed all the way to the wall to drag out an old toy I had stuck under there to sell on Ebay. It made me laugh because it was something Grace wouldn't have even considered but Miss Lila is full speed ahead, if she can do it, she will! I think that incredibly, hmm, shall we say, WILLFUL, streak is what she needed to get through the orphanage years and now the medical procedures. My sister noted that God has a sick sense of humor. I believe I was being compared to my daughter and rightfully so. My poor mother.


Anyway, Christmas was wonderful. Santa brought both girls loads of gifts. We had lots of snow and ice so it was a cozy Christmas day at home. The Sunday after we went to Gerry's sister's and spent the day with Grandpa & Grandma, aunts, uncles, and cousins. My family postponed our celebration until January 2nd so my sisters didn't have to drive from Kansas City in the blizzard. I was happy that they chose to stay home where it was safe & warm then make the trip at a better time. When they did get here Grace spent the night with Kyle at the farm. We had so much fun with him here at Thanksgiving that the kids planned another sleepover for Christmas.

Brandon spent 2 days here during Christmas break. He is really enjoying playing with Lila while he & Grace will always be the best of buddies.

The zhu zhu pet seems to be the best gift of the season. Both girls are crazy about Pipsqueak and we have managed to find her every time they have lost her. Lila's new cell phone is missing, I have decided it is somewhere in this house and maybe I'll find it if I ever get all the Christmas decorations put away. That's what I should be working on right now.

After just 2 days back at school Grace had 3 snowdays last week. It was so cold we couldn't even play outside to enjoy all the snow. Brandon was back for 2 of the 3 days so they all 3 played really nicely together. I was incredibly stir-crazy so Saturday's trip to Coco Key with my girlfriends and their kids was a welcome escape. Grace and I needed some one-on-one quality time and have a fantastic and fun day together.

So that's what's up for now. What's new with all my blog friends?