Happy 1st Birthday Leila

It's Leila's 1st birthday! Her 1st cake is actually her 1st Barbie doll too. How cool is that?! (And it was really, really good too.) A lady at church made it for her. Her certificate of citizenship came in the mail today. What great timing.

Home Almost a Month

Leila had an ear infection last week, but other than that, she's adjusted really well.

Once she got past that initial reaction to the spoon (where she screamed), she's now decided she likes food. So far, she likes everything we've given her. But the majority of her 'food' is still the bottle with cereal in it. She'll eat what we feed her either with the spoon or our fingers, but she will NOT pick it up and put it in her mouth by herself.

She has a little push toy. Darrell takes it and has her walk back and forth across the living room with it. If he has his way, she'll be walking on her own soon. (Then she'll get into his stuff and he'll be sorry.) And she still isn't quite 16 lbs, so she looks like she's too little to be walking anyway.

Here she is with our 2 dogs. They've adjusted to her quite well. They check the car seat every time we carry it in. I'm just not sure if it's to see if she's okay or if it's to see if we brought that thing back again.

Adjusting

We've had Leila just a little over a month now. The strides she's made have just been amazing.
I started her on baby food after we got back to the states. For a while there, I was ready to give up. I thought about just continuing with only the bottle until after her surgery and then trying again. It seemed like with what came out her nose, there couldn't be anything going down at all. About the time, I was ready to give quit - she started getting better. It's not good, but it's much better than it was. She's getting better at eating, and I've learned that thicker food works better. She still spits up, but not as much as before.
Developmentally, she's growing by leaps and bounds. When we first got her - she couldn't really sit up. Now, not only does she sit up - she's pulling herself up and standing by herself.
She still sleeps great. (That's such a blessing.) She usually sleeps 11-12 hrs at night, and then takes at least one, sometimes 2 naps a day. I know that's from being in the crib so much at the orphanage. (Hey, there's a silver lining to everything.)
I have her 1st doctor's appt scheduled for Nov 6 - not too long after her 1st birthday, which is the 29th. She'll check her out and then send her on to the specialist, who will then determine when and where she'll have her 1st surgery.
These are the 'welcome home' pictures we had taken.

10/1

When we got home on Sat, I found that our friends (Lisa and Renee) had cleaned my house. AND, Lisa made and left me homemade chicken & noodles and brownies (my favorites). That helped so much. I've had so much to do this week, with getting settled - that was something I didn't have to worry about right away.

Every day gets a little easier. Night and day is finally switched back to US time. Jet lag is almost gone.

Up to this point, Leila has only had a bottle with cereal in it - no 'regular' food at all. I didn't want to try to change anything while still in China though. I thought I'd wait until we got home and then start food. I thought I'd start with cereal, since she has it in every bottle anyway. I figured it would be the same thing - just a different method of delivery. She does not agree with this new approach. We started on Mon. She screamed. Every time she'd open her mouth for a breath, I'd stick some in. But she still absolutely refused to swallow it.
On Tues, same thing, but she merely cried instead of screaming. I thought we were making progess. Today - she actually swallowed a bite! WooHoo! At this rate, she'll be eating table food by the time she's 5.

I took her into Darrell's school today so everyone could meet her. (His 6th grade class has been following the blog.) When we got there, they had a basket full of baby gifts for her! How neat was that?! All the teachers passed her around (and a few students too). Thankfully she didn't spit up on any of them.

I tried to appy for her US birth certificate today, but I got nowhere. There was one particular woman at the courthouse that was just really hateful too. If she didn't know what to do, she could have just said so, w/o being such a witch about it.
Even though her adoption is legal and binding in China, it's suggested that we re-adopt her in the US. Another lady at the courthouse said that she thought we needed to do that first. I don't think so - I think they just didn't know what to do, so it's easier to pass it off on someone else and not bother. I guess I need to consult an attorney and go from there.

So now, I've got to get the insurance straightened out, get her re-adopted, get a US birth certificate, and possibly a US passport. I don't know if that's all or not. I keep thinking - I made it thru all the other paperwork, surely I can get thru this too.
Oh, and someday - I'm going to print out the pictures we took while we were there.

Something else that I kept meaning to mention but always forgot - you don't have to tip in China. Tipping waiters and people like that, is considered insulting. The only people we had to tip was the bellboy. $1 USD for 2 medium size bags is about 'right'. And yet, we got absolutely excellent service at all the restaurants - WAY better than you normally get in the US.