Today we celebrate that Nadia has been with us 1 more day than she was without us. We have been a family for 268 days now and we can’t imagine life without her. She has gone from the tiny baby in China to a hilarious toddler who just seems to absorb knowledge like a sponge.
I think I should add that we bought this little red OINK outfit a few weeks after we were Logged Into China. Not knowing of course how long the wait was going to extend. So it seemed appropriate for her to wear it for the first time on this special day. I also added 2 more photos from this afternoon. She wanted to play with the goodies I bought for the church picnic this weekend.
Here are a couple shots from China in July.
And from today.
Honestly, could this photo BE any cuter???
And here she is doing her Air Guitar! Jenn – she’s ready for Rock Band!
Tonight we attended the “Party on the Patio” to support the Child Study Center in Fort Worth. My uncle Roger is director of development for them and they do a wide variety of things to help children in Fort Worth. In addition to all the other services they provide to local children, they have an international adoption clinic. I am glad it’s there, but blessed that we haven’t needed their services because Nadia is doing so well. But I love that the option is there for adoptive families.
Tonight was their big fundraiser at Joe T. Garcia’s Mexican restaurant and Roger asked us to bring Nadia with us to be the “model” for the hand-made rocking horse. The horse was painted by the children at the C.S.C. school. We saw it last week at and thought it was the cutest thing. They had a bunch for really cool things for the silent auction and live auction. Nadia was the only child at the event and of course looked cute and got lots of attention. Which led to her giving people the “stare down” while she studied the situation. HA HA! I was glad to see how well they did at their fundraiser and it was a nice night out with the cuteness.
Joy and Janis bought Nadia the Fisher Price “Little People” Easter Eggs and put them in this cute Easter Basket. I am just now talking about it because of how funny Nadia is when she plays with it. She is very precise with it which is fun to watch. She likes to sit in one of our laps with the basket in front. Then she takes them out one by one and opens them up to look inside. When she opens the bunny she will say, “Hop, Hop, Hop” and make the bunny hop. When she opens the sheep she says, “Baaaaa.” Before moving to the next egg, she closes the current one and says, “All done.”
After she has opened all six, she puts them all back in the Elmo basket. Unlike her other toys that get thrown around and mixed up, she is very careful that all the little people go back in their eggs and then back in the basket. She just cracks me up!
As most of you know, we attended Global Chinese Education while in Beijing, so I won’t go into great detail again. They arranged everything for us from airport pick up and drop off to our apartment. They helped get our wireless Internet set up and took us on field trips and out to dinner. They arranged my tutor Kiki to come to the apartment each weekday and so on. I think that we were a new type of customer for them – a family with a small baby. And a baby adopted from China. Our time there was wonderful and so today’s TT is to share with you a wonderful program they started up a couple days before we left.
Lily from the school and her son joined us on our visit to New Day Foster Home. After going on the tour and speaking with one of the head guys, she went back and told everyone at the school about it. The school then decided to form a relationship with New Day, the first step was to order books for all the children and to arrange for the staff to go and visit New Day.
One day when I arrived at school to attend my Chinese painting class, Ethan, Lily and Nancy wanted to talk to me. They said that Mike and I had inspired them. They said that our adopting Nadia and our love for the Chinese children who still don’t have parents moved them to want to do something for orphans, and for other adoptive parents. So they launched their new program to offer free tuition to those adoptive parents and families who would like to come to Beijing and do the same kind of thing that we did.
I just think that this is so cool!!! Mike and I will definitely be going back to China sometime in the future – once Nadia is a little older, so that she can start on Chinese immersion classes of her own. And I think that a lot of families, who didn’t think they would be able to do what we did, might be able to now. That would be so awesome! To live in the culture where your child came from, even for a brief time is SO valuable. If you attend the school, you will not be in the middle of the touristy areas that you saw when on the adoption trip. You will be able to meet and interact with Chinese people going about their everyday life. And you can experience that life too.
For us it was an adventure, as neither Mike nor I had ever lived in any kind of urban setting. The apartments we lived in when we were first married where 2 levels, not 20 story buildings in the middle of the city. Using public transportation or walking everywhere was new for us too. I could go on and on, but you get the idea.
For me it was so valuable to experience China in the time that Nadia was abandoned. Once she gets older and starts to question how and why she became part of our family, I think China is going to be a very different country (not saying that’s good or bad, just different). Capitalist ideas and their opening up to the world for the Olympics is changing China and its people. I am glad that we went now and were able to meet with and talk to people from the country where she was born. She is an American now and will be raised as an American, but we want her to know the language and people of the country where she was born, and therefore I feel this trip and future trips are important.
And if you do go, tell them we sent you 🙂
Edited 2012-8-20: It looks like this school may no longer exist. I’ve removed the dead link to it. -Mike
