Redirect: Adoption Video at Over the Rainbow

If you haven't already viewed it, grab some tissues and head over to Marina's blog at Over the Rainbow. On October 29th Marina posted Sarah's adoption journey video in three parts. Sarah lived at the same facility where Hannah Claire is, and Marina got to peek in on our little peanut a few times (here and here), which this waiting mama greatly appreciates. Okay, remember the tissues and be prepared to have red weepy eyes when you're done. Don't say I didn't warn ya.

National Digital Scrapbooking Day - master list of sales

Tomorrow is National Digital Scrapbooking Day. Here's a link to a master list of sales. If you dabble in digital scrapbooking, this is THE BEST time to get great deals, as loads of designers have their kits 50% off OR MORE.

Happy Halloween!

Here's some Sedona cuteness. She's such a good girl.

I am dressing up for Halloween ALL DAY at work today. Any guesses as to what I'll be? Hint: I need some adoption luck. I'll try to post a photo later tonight.

Updated 8:15pm:
A few of you guessed it. I was a ladybug! I need some ladybug luck! At work today we had Morticia Adams, a Hawaiian goddess, Pari$ Hilton (she left her little dog at home but she did have flashing lights on her heels), and... a woman in a robe with cold cream on her face, hair in a wrap... and a cigarette in her mouth. It was hillarious!

pink in the wash

I've waited a long time to do this. Just pulling the tags off the items was a leap of faith. Actually putting them in the washer is SO exciting. I know, I know. Many of you are just rolling your eyes at me, thinking of all of the puke, spit up, and poo you've put in the laundry before and it's no big deal. This is a big deal. This makes it all feel so real... doing my daughter's laundry. Oh wow. It's like... really happening!

Kevin poured in the detergent, as he wanted to help. That's pretty sweet!

It's the time of the month for updates. I find myself waking up in the middle of the night checking e-mail... as good news seems to come our way at 3am. Come home soon, baby girl.

nesting

The watercolor above is titled "Nest" was created by Tisra Fadley. I have this print hanging in my bathroom with framed photographs of Sedona the babydog and Hannah Claire.

Carmen left me a comment asking, "Where is Sarah????" Haha. Yeah, I'd like some news, too! Nothing exciting going on here. Just a lot of organizing, purging, vacuuming, polishing, dusting, mopping, and laundry sorting and folding. A lotta nesting and a little grouching, too. When I'm all done with the laundry backlog, I'm going to treat myself to my first load of baby clothes in the wash. Woohoo! If I run out of things to do, I'm just going to have to start making cupcakes (I like these cupcake nests with baby birds!) and get myself on a sugar high until we can go to Taiwan.

Mmmm. These are so cute!

installing the car seat

Who writes the text for these child car seat installation manuals? REALLY! I consider myself a fairly intelligent person, and I'm just not understanding how to do this at all. Luckily I married a handy guy that's good at following manuals to figure out how to do something new. We (that means Kevin) installed Hannah Claire's car seat today right along side Sedona's babydog car seat. I have a feeling there's going to be a lot of licking of fingers and toes going on in the back seat.

5 months since...

Today marks five months since we received the Halleujah!!!! e-mail that contained the referral of this sweet girl to our family. Still no news on court. I'm assuming we've been in court two and a half months now, so that's about the average amount of time from log in to first decree.

making our home safe for baby

Anyone have angled corners on their brick fireplace? How do you protect little noggins from crashing into these hard corners? All of the fireplace bumpers that I have seen in baby superstores and online are made for 90 degree angles. For those of you who have lived with a baby and have fireplace hearths that look kinda like mine, what did you do to make this area safer? The fireplace is gas and we rarely use it, so I'm not wanting to gate off the entire fireplace... just protect her from hitting her head on the brick edges and corners.

Below are photos of our other child safety projects from this weekend. Our home is now equipped with outlet covers, magnet activated baby locks under the kitchen and bathroom sinks, corner bumpers on the tables in the living room, and door locks making Daddy's computer room and the laundry room heading out into the garage inaccessible. I figure that it's a good idea to live like this for a little while before Hannah comes home so we can get used to it.

I'd appreciate if you could comment about the fireplace safety situation. ESPECIALLY those of you with little ones like this determined little Willa. It amazes me that some babies are so determined to get into things! Thanks.

Updated 4:35pm:
And the baby safety internet shopping award goes to Andrea for her link to Baby Safety Foam. I think we've got solution here, folks. It's not cheap, but not hugely expensive. Thanks, Andrea! I just knew that someone else could find a link to a good solution. I was thinking of trying to cut angles in the straight foam, but wasn't really happy about it, as the corners would be the most important part for cushioning... and I didn't want the padding to be lax there.

Part II - That's how she rolls.

Today I got permission from another family to post these cropped photos of our little Miss rolling around on the floor. Thanks so much to this family for sharing them with us! The photo quality isn't that great, but we treasure them. I'm so thrilled to know that she can roll over and is on the move. These photos inspired me to do a REALLY good job cleaning our floors this weekend. The floors at St. Lucy's always look imaculate, so that's a lot to live up to.

That's how she rolls.

I got some more photos of Hannah Claire today! I can't share them online... but she's in the background of the photos, rolling around on those green foam mats. There's one where she's upside down. They're pretty funny. We treasure every image of our little bug, even the blurry upside down ones. So great to know that she can roll around! I would love to know if she's starting to crawl. From our September update photos, my mom's convinced that she's creeping and ready to crawl... and is right hand dominant.

Jackie, thanks for the suggestion about finding a stroller called "travel dates." I'll fire up the Google search engine looking for that one. (joke)

We started the babyproofing around the house last night. Oh wait... Kevin says that we can't use the word babyproofing. We're making some areas of the house "child resistant." I'll let you know how that goes when we're done. Heehee.

It was meant to be.

Tonight Kevin and I had our anniversary date at a Japanese Steakhouse in the Fort. I think we had the best steak we've ever had. Two thumbs up. We sat at a table with three little elementary school aged girls with their families, and couldn't help but smile at the happy families... and dream of taking our daughter out wherever she wanted to go for her birthday dinner.

After dinner we went to Babies R Us and hemmed and hawed at car seats. We decided to go ahead and get some more of our essential items so we knew that we could leave quickly for Taiwan if the call came. I've had my sights set on a Britax Marathon for some time, but Kevin has his eyes on another model (edit by Kevin: Britax Boulevard CS). We couldn't agree, so we decided to wait it out a little bit.

Our next stop was at the NEW Target. Oh boy, oh boy. We adventured in the baby section for awhile and picked out some essentials. When we rounded the corner into the car seat isle... it's like the clouds parted, rays of sunshine beamed down, the symphony started playing... all for this one car seat. (Drum roll please...)

Presenting... a pink and brown Britax Marathon... and the fabric is called "Hannah." Yes, I'm serious! It's really called Hannah. No discussion. Little blossoms and polka dots too. Kevin lifted the big box into the cart. It was meant to be.

Today is a special day...

Kevin, Happy 7th Anniversary to us! I'd do it all over again, pretty much the same way. Well, maybe I wouldn't have locked us out of the house in the middle of an ice storm when we had no electricity for 6 days... with a puppy inside on the couch that could have knocked over candles and burned the house down. Other than that, we've done pretty well as a team. I love you so much!

little red dress

On the way home from the Columbus Ethnic Expo, we stopped by the outlet mall as I had spied a Carter's Outlet. What a little soft and fuzzy baby clothes heaven it is! I dragged Kevin into the back where the dressy clothes were. He picked out a dress for our little Miss. This will be the dress we'll bring to have Ching-Ling wear the first time we'll meet her.

This is the kinda stuff we go through to bring home our children!

My bloggy girlfriend Sara/Sofa just posted one of the funniest adoption paperchase stories I've ever read. Here's the link to check it out.

I'm all cultured out...

We had a great time at the Columbus Ethnic Expo today. I can't believe we can have such nice weather in October! It was in the 80s and with beautiful blue skies with not a cloud in sight. Seems like most of the draw to the ethnic expo was for the food. There were tents set up with food from around the world (French Canadian, Vietnam, East Indies, Afro American, Mexico, Germany, China, Taiwan, Vietnam, India, Japan, Hawaii, and on and on). Unfortunately, we didn't arrive hungry enough... so we only ate at Vietnam and Taiwan. We had fried bananas and a coconut soft drink at Vietnam. Their fare at Taiwan was the same as at the China tent, and wasn't too wild. We chose a combo plate of General Tso's Chicken, Fried Noodles, and an egg roll. Alas, the elusive stinky tofu was not on the menu. No Taiwanese Beef and Noodles either. Maybe Hoosiers aren't ready for stinky tofu... or perhaps the smell of stinky tofu would scare away the crowd? There was a little cultural shopping, but I wasn't too impressed. I'd rather be at that outlet mall we passed along the way in the Carter's outlet store!!! We enjoyed tapping our feet along with a Celtic Rock band called Mother Grove that we enjoyed at an Irish Festival in Indianapolis a couple of summers ago. By clicking on their link you can listen to several tracks of their music. I play a little Irish penny whistle, and these musicians amaze me. We then headed down to the City Hall where the Peking Acrobats would be performing. We set up our chairs early so we could get pretty good seats. The show was amazing, and I would have paid good money to see them. We have all kinds of video and photos, but I'll leave you with a nice photo that Kevin took of me today. G'night. I'm all cultured out and it's time for bed.

stinkin' cute in black and white, too!

Did I mention how much I love this little girl? She's stinkin' cute in black and white, too!

My friend KB learned today that their adoption case has their final ruling, and they'll be traveling to Taiwan in 5 weeks. I'm so thrilled for them! It's a little bittersweet, as we both really hoped we'd continue to get good news at the same time. Can't help but boohoo a little... but chin up, Sarah. There's always tomorrow. Or the next day....

Tonight I'm making a list of all the things I want to get done before we travel. I want to get busy, checking things off... and hopefully we'll be surprised with some good news as well.

September Update!

Words can't express how pleased I am to get this update, especially when I thought we'd been skipped, and that we wouldn't get anything until the end of October. I'm a little worried. At 8 months old, 5 months adjusted, I calculate that Ching-Ling is 3rd percentile for weight. The nannies note they are feeding her a little baby food now because she is so tiny. First time mama here is worried about her baby being so little.

P.S. In the middle of the night I messed up Ching-Ling's height and posted that she's 10 inches shorter than she is. (blush blush) Thanks to Julie for catching that. ACK! Graphic is updated with correct height now. Waiting for this girl is doing something funny to my mama brain today.

P.S. If anyone was thinking about buying Hannah Claire clothing... this girl's all set from 6 months to 24 months. While waiting, I've done plenty of retail therapy to last us a long long time. So much that I'm too embarrassed to post a photo of her closet! I've gotten some nice e-mails asking where we've registered. We're registered at Babies R Us and Target. Thank you.

P.S. Another family graciously shared their update photos with me as Ching-Ling is in the background! Every photo is a treasured gift. Thank you so much.

Ethnic Expo 2008 in Columbus, IN

I just found out about this Ethnic Expo event in Columbus, Indiana. If anyone wants to meet us there, let me know. I'm really excited about seeing the "Stars of Peking Acrobats" from 6:45-7:30pm this Saturday, October 11th, at the Columbus City Hall Plaza. Here's a few peeks at past performances.





Sorry, no baby news. I wish we had some, too.

Got Poop?

We went on a midnight grocery store run tonight as the cupboards and fridge were getting pretty bare. I bought the meds a couple of weeks ago, but this is first container of baby food I've ever purchased for my baby. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy, kinda like when I got teary eyed when I bought my first package of diapers and wipes. When she's two and a half and I'm frustrated with potty training and trying to keep princess panties dry, I'm sure that there won't be anything warm and fuzzy about buying diapers anymore.

Had to share this, as it might be one of my funniest blog comments ever. This comment is from Rebecca after reading about Kevin and I using baby signs wtih each other at Barnes & Noble: I was laughing picturing you & Kev signing to each other in Barnes & Noble. :) I wonder if any babies saw you and went, "HEY, those peeps know my language!!! They have COOKIES?? And HOW DO THEY KNOW I need a diaper change!!!"

Baby Mum-Mum rice crackers have been spotted at the local Wal-Mart. Sweet!