Home for 2 Months

We have been back from China for just about 2 months and Audrey is doing great!  The end of December was a whirlwind with Christmas, the kids home over break, out of town relatives visiting, and us trying to recover from the jet-lag and get into a new routine.  We had a wonderful and very memorable Christmas.  We were so glad to be home with her before Christmas!

It took Audrey a good 2 weeks to adjust to the time change, and then she started sleeping thru the night.  She loves being in her crib in a room with her big sister Olivia, and she sleeps a good 12 hours straight, thank goodness!  She also takes a 1-2 hour nap each day...

The first week in January we started treatment for her club foot.  We are very fortunate to have a wonderful orthopedic doctor that specializes in club foot right here at Children's Hospital in St. Louis.  People come from all over the world to see him! We have gone there once a week for 6 weeks now and each time she gets a brand new cast while they stretch her foot a little more.  Olivia enjoys picking out her cast color each week.  Here's the pink, purple, and orange ones...

 (she also loves to walk around pretending
the remote is a phone)

Audrey has not minded the cast one bit (once it's on, that is!).  It only took her a few hours of being down on it to figure out how to walk and even run!  No slowing this girl down!











She absolutely hates getting the cast each week, and especially getting them cut off.  She seems to do a little better each week though...

She will have surgery this Thursday (putting cuts in some of her tendons to allow them to stretch to the correct position) and then will be in a cast for 4 weeks and we are supposed to keep her as immobile as possible (minimal to no walking).  That should be interesting!

Here's her foot before treatment, I'll have to post more pictures after she's all done...

 Poor thing has been thru so many doctors appointments.  She's had a ton of routine labwork done which is standard for international adoptions, as well as getting her immunizations caught up and going thru a hearing screening.  Everything has come back great! She has gained a little weight since she's been home, and I think her hair has gotten a lot thicker too!

We celebrated Chinese New Year at a friend's house and she picked up chopsticks and started using them with no problem!  We were shocked!  We didn't realize she had ever used them in the orphanage.  So cute!

They also had the sugary little drinks that she used to have in China.  She was so excited to see them!  She ended up drinking 4 and then didn't want to let the bottles go! 

She loved having rice and some familiar foods!  She is a pretty good eater overall.  She absolutely LOVES fruits and vegetables and could eat those all day.  She also likes scrambled eggs a lot.  She's not crazy about meat.  We also still struggle with her drinking much, since she wasn't used to this in China, but she's getting better.  She loves yogurt, smoothies, and popsicles we make out of the smoothies, so we at least try to get some liquids/dairy in her that way...

Watching the first snowfall...

First haircut...

 

She definitely has some curl to her hair...

She is absolutely crazy about her brothers and sister, and they are crazy about her! She gets so excited when she sees them come home from school! She has picked up quite a few words, and every day it seems like she's understanding more of what we say. She says ma ma, da da, pa pa, night-night, bubba (which Luke taught her to call him!), and sissy (which Olivia worked with her on), no, wow, ooh, among many other words and sounds.  She sings "bye bye baby" (her version of "rock-a-bye-baby") and "clean-up, clean-up" to the tune of the clean-up song.  She also says quack quack at ducks and also at every other animal she sees -- still working on that one! She will imitate almost anything the kids have her do. She loves music and likes to clap and dance.  She is overall very easy-going and she is a very happy baby and smiling all the time! Can't believe this is the same girl we met in China! We are having so much fun with her and we couldn't possibly love her any more!

hanging out with Olivia...

 discovering ice cream with Luke, which is another one of her favorites...

 

Christmas morning on Grant's lap...

We are HOME!

We've been home about a week and a half and I haven't had a chance yet to post pictures from the rest of our trip.  We are still trying to adjust and the biggest issue has been SLEEP! Audrey is still trying to adjust to the 14 hour time difference, and we are daily trying to guess when we should wake her, when to put her down for a nap, how long to let her nap, and when to put her to bed at night so that she falls into a pattern.  It seems like no matter what we do, she likes to be wide awake and happy, talking in her bed and playing right in the middle of the night, then fall back to sleep towards morning.  I know it will just take a little more time to get adjusted.

So, to recap the rest of our trip, we left the hotel about 5:45 am Friday the 11th, and headed to the Guangzhou airport.  We had a great flight to Beijing, Audrey played for a while...

Then she fell fast asleep for the rest of that flight....

Then we changed planes in Beijing and we were off to San Francisco.  Even though it was early afternoon when we left, before too long we were in complete darkness outside, and they turned off all the lights on the plane.  Audrey didn't sleep very much, but she was quiet in her seat playing.  It helped that everything was quiet and lights were turned off.  Aaron & I took turns dozing while keeping an eye on her in the seat between us.  The flight really wasn't too bad at all.  We even gained an hour because of tailwind!  I think it was around a 10 hour flight.  We were thankful that those 2 flights had no delays, despite the heavy smog we had been hearing about in Beijing.

Almost there!  Beautiful view of the Golden Gate Bridge...

We landed in San Francisco, went thru the long customs line, turned in Audrey's brown sealed envelope to an immigration officer, and then were so excited to be met by my sister Janet, brother-in-law Jim, and niece Lindsey!!!

Audrey didn't really mind her first time ever in a car seat!

 

We stopped by California Maritime Academy to see my nephew Austin between classes and take a quick look at the ship he lives on.  Pretty cool!

Then Audrey got her first In-N-Out fries for lunch!

Mmmm, yum!

We arrived in Sacramento and were so happy to take a shower and spend the rest of the night relaxing with family!  We had a wonderful dinner at the house, celebrating my niece & nephew's birthdays.  Audrey was so happy playing with some new toys and meeting her new cousins...

Then the next morning we were off to the airport for our flight home.  My sister, niece Brooke and her 3 kids flew to St. Louis with us!  

 It was another long day of travel!  Got to the airport to find out our flight thru Chicago was cancelled last minute due to fog.  We were re-routed to a later flight thru Denver.  Then snow in Denver made our 2nd flight late because of de-icing the plane.  Glad we had family with us and more new cousins to keep us entertained!

Audrey did not do near as good on these flights as she did on the China flights.  She was very antsy, having a hard time getting comfortable and trying to wiggle out of our arms.  She did quite a bit of crying on both flights, I think her ears were bothering her.  We were so ready to land!  The flight ended up not getting to St. Louis till around 10:30 pm.  We had friends and family at the airport to meet us!

Meeting her brother Grant...

her brother Luke...

and her sister Olivia...

First family picture...

She was very quiet and still with all the new people around her, but once we got in the van, she was quick to warm up to the kids and give them some smiles!

We have really been enjoying our time getting to know her better.  The kids can't get enough of her and are all constantly wanting to do everything for her and be with her at all times.  It has been nice for them to be on Christmas break right away to spend more time together.  They have been teaching her lots of new things.  She waves, says hi, blows kisses, nods her head, claps, and smiles and laughs at them frequently.  We can't even hardly remember what it was like to have that shy, quiet, still girl we first met.  She is not only walking around the house but running!  It's been so fun each day seeing what she is going to learn!