Thursday, April 19, 2012

Update on Taite


a not very happy Taite



Over the weekend we were pretty fortunate enough to receive the last several updates on Taite from New Day Foster home. Well when I opened them up they were all in Chinese. Thank goodness for such wonderful people we have met on the advocate for waiting children in China yahoo group because I put a post up and low and behold we had several people offering to translate for us. Two people came through and translated our updates that we received on Taite that dated back to last June when she was only 6 months old.
We learned a lot about our baby girl. One thing is that she is still a bit quiet. I am sure she will get over this soon since she'll be in a loud family. Overall she does like to play and especially likes puzzles. She also was referred to as the most beautiful baby in the orphanage in her March 2012 update (of course we also think so). Taite loves to be read to. As the caregiver read to her she was trying to mimic and read along. I think this is amazing. I am an avid reader and have always read to the girls at night before they went to bed so this is great that someone is already doing this for her. We are also happy to see that when she started crawling she was using her right arm. See Taite has a right arm that is considered paralyzed so this was awesome to see that she is using her arm. We are just so much in love with our little girl and cannot wait to get her home.

Monday, April 16, 2012

Ohio











Hi have been so preoccupied with baby Taite that I am behind on a typical post from taking a trip. Two weeks ago for spring break I packed up the kids and took them to Ohio. Yes! I am a brave one to take five kids alone. Keith had work and with family vacations and the impending adoption we thought it would be best if I go solo to Ohio. There were two reasons for the trip' one being taking the big kids to see their grandma and for the little ones and myself to visit with our friends Jamie, Chloe, Wesleigh, Lilly, Abel, and Frank.
I have to say that amazingly all 5 kids were pretty well behaved in the car. That was monumental because you would expect that 5 kids would totally drive me crazy trapped in a car for several hours. We dropped off Heather, Logan, and Zach for a few day visit with their grandma and they were able to visit their foster mom and their aunt while visiting. The little ones and myself headed up to Cleveland.
We had an awesome time visiting with the Sereikas. They are such wonderful people and we love spending time with them. Too bad we live so far apart and we only get to get together every once in a while. We had a great visit to the natural history museum, science museum, and a totally awesome market while we visited our friends. We also went to a great Ethiopian restaurant whiel there. I was shocked because Delylah typically has not enjoyed Ethiopian food and she chowed down that night.
The kids also had a lot of fun and it was wonderful seeing them together with their friends. It is amazing that Lennah and Lilly were once in an orphanage in Vietnam together and Abel and Delylah were once together thousands of miles away at an orphanage in Ethiopia. Abel was so amazing he even remembered when I came to the orphanage to get Delylah and he was playing in the car I was brought to the orphanage in. I am so thankful for the friendship and bond that has forged between our two families and I love that our kids can grow up and maintain these special bonds.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

We officially have PA

First photos we have of Taite

Taite Annabelle
Our most recent photos of Taite


Taite
Lennah

After 2 and a half weeks of torture or so it seemed we officially have Pre-approval for our baby girl. We had a little hiccup with our agency last week but they got it in gear and got our approval. This means we have exactly 6 months to get our dossier to China. We have already started our homestudy and that will take several weeks to finish, them file for our I-800a, and then off to our agency our dossier will be. Yeahhhhh! On that note we are proud to introduce our daughter Taite Annabelle born on December 16, 2010 in Hohhot City, China. We are thrilled and I will have to do the comparison shots of her and Lennah but we find their younger pictures to have a lot of similarities. Here is our girl.