Thursday, September 28, 2006
We Don’t Need That Money Anyway
Eliana will start dance class on Monday.
The new lady who now keeps Eliana in the afternoons has a daughter Eliana’s age in dance class. On Mondays, I have to go by the dance studio to pick Eliana up because her friend’s class starts between 5 and 5:30. We never really had a desire for Eliana to get involved in dance but it’s one of those deals where we said, “Well, since she’s there…and besides, we don’t need that money anyway.”
She’ll be taking ballet and tap. Tonight she wanted to try out her tap shoes which Carmi ordered online.
Monday, September 25, 2006
Referral Watch #2
Two proud families with our agency just received referrals from CCAA. Our agency sent out the following message this afternoon:
The China Center of Adoption Affairs announced on their website that this referral period covered families with log-in dates from 7/23/05 to 8/9/05. So if you can bear to do the math, it looks like the current wait time for a referral is 15-16 months. (I know how discouraging this must seem to those of you who have long waits ahead of you. Perhaps we can take some comfort in seeing that the CCAA covered a slightly longer period of time in this referral group than they have in many months.)
This referral period covered a span of 18 days which is, indeed, a tie for the longest referral period since January of this year.
{extended}Sunday, September 24, 2006
Referrals to August 9, 2005
The CCAA website has been updated and the new cut-off date for referrals is August 9, 2005. This batch covered a period of 18 days.
{extended}Thursday, September 21, 2006
Eliana’s First Cavity
Eliana has been to the dentist a couple of times with Carmi in the past for cleaning. This morning, I took Eliana to have a cavity filled.
We have a dentist in our church who is just a super guy and especially good with kids. He worked very well with the Empress and I have to brag on her. She lay very still the whole time and never once whined or offered to cry. What a trooper!
That’s the good news.
Bad news is that she chewed on her bottom lip while it was numb and her poor lip swelled up during the course of the day. She looks pitiful and I know it must hurt but we’ll have to ride it out. Hopefully the swelling will go down by the end of the weekend with consistent doses of Benadryl.
Eliana has two other lesser cavities that I scheduled for fillings next Tuesday (Sep 26th). At this point, we may think about rescheduling to a later date.
{extended}Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Panda, man exchange bites
From the CNN website…
A drunken Chinese tourist bit a panda at the Beijing Zoo after the animal attacked him when he jumped into the enclosure and tried to hug it.
I’m so glad that I don’t drink!
{extended}Tuesday, September 19, 2006
The Thermometer Verified It
This morning, Eliana groggily stumbled into our room and pulled herself up into the bed about the time I was ready to go and wake her up. I hugged her and she felt unusually hot. When I pulled back, her cheeks looked flushed and there was no doubt that she had a temperature after feeling her forehead. The thermometer verified it…101 degrees.
Carmi went to the office because she needed to take care of some work this morning so I stayed with Eliana through lunch. Mom came over, ate lunch with us and remained until Carmi came home around 2:00. When I left the house, Eliana was tucked in snug-as-a-bug on the couch and settling in for some quality time with Gran’mommy.
By the time I returned home, Eliana was waking up from a good nap and seemed to feel fine the rest of the evening.
That was a quickie.
{extended}December 2005 out of the review room
The CCAA has finished reviewing adoption application documents registered with their office before December 31, 2005.
{extended}Monday, September 18, 2006
It Looked Like a Large Earthworm
Carmi took the day off from work and went with Eliana’s preschool class on a field trip to Baa Moo Farm this morning.
Since Carmi was already home, I started mowing as soon as I got off work at 5:00. I was mowing along in the side yard and noticed ‘something’ flopping around in a section of freshly-cut grass. From a short distance, it looked like a large earthworm. On closer examination, I discovered a baby green snake.
I c-a-n-n-o-t s-t-a-n-d s-n-a-k-e-s! Yet here I was on all fours with my nose to the ground trying to see if this infernal creature is in one piece. My first thought was, “Awwww”. My second thought was, “Where there’s a baby snake, there’s a mommy and daddy snake”. A quick but thorough scan of the immediate area, however, did not reveal any more slithering reptiles.
I found a LONG stick and transported the baby snake to our driveway before going inside to call Carmi and Eliana out. Snakes don’t bother Carmi and she is evidently instilling that fearlessness into our daughter.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Free Time This Afternoon
Evening service was cancelled because our church celebrated Homecoming and a 92nd anniversary this morning. With the additional free time this afternoon, we went down to North Meck Park in Huntersville to do a little geocaching and to let Eliana expend some energy in the playground.
Walking around the park, Eliana noticed a ladybug on a rock in a dryed up creekbed. In Chinese culture, finding a ladybug is good luck so maybe referral waits will begin to shorten?!?
Crossing a field, we spotted a rabbit on the edge of the treeline.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
First Chinese Language Class
We took Eliana to her very first Chinese language class this morning. The class - hosted by a church in Huntersville - will be taught every Saturday morning and is only 45 minutes long which is probably a good thing. Chinese is not an easy language to learn so shorter chunks of instruction may help the preschoolers (and the adults) retain more. I must say that there’s nothing much funnier than listening to a bunch of Southerners trying to speak Chinese.
The two teachers asked if it was ok for them to refer to our children by their Chinese names and all the parents agreed. Eliana’s name is Fu Zhou. It will be interesting to see how the children adapt to being called a name other than the name they’re accustomed to.
Today the children learned the numbers 1 through 10 and the words ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’. The teachers will also teach pinyin which is standard Mandarin pronunciation or phonetics. They taught the letters ‘e’ and ‘o’ along with ‘m’, ‘b’ and ‘a’ which combine to form the words for mother (mama) and father (baba).
The most interesting thing we learned? The woman teaching in the foreground is named Mai Jing. Carmi and I found out that she lives in our development and is married to an American guy who once worked at my company. Small world, eh? She rode home with us after class and insisted that we come in to meet her cats, dogs, bird and fish.
Friday, September 15, 2006
Lost in Thought
Eliana was lost in thought watching Higglytown Heroes before leaving for preschool. Maybe she was thinking about her first Chinese language class tomorrow morning.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Don’t You Dare Look
If you ever come to our house, don’t you dare look under our bedroom dresser.
A small ball that is Eliana’s toy rolled under the dresser and she decided to try and get it out. She went to digging around under there and commenced to pulling out all kinds of items that we gave up on a long time ago.
Tommie was quite interested in what Eliana was doing and offered to help.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Rain All Day
The weatherman is calling for rain all day today. Eliana wanted to make sure that her umbrella would function properly.
Monday, September 11, 2006
A Pretty Cool Dragonfly
I had a meeting at church tonight so Carmi and Eliana went to Chik-Fil-A for supper.
Monday nights are “Family Night” and Chik-Fil-A typically has entertainment for the children. On this night, a lady was making balloon animals. Carmi said there were only 5 kids in line in front of them but it still took 30 minutes for Eliana to get her prize because this lady made such elaborate creations.
Eliana walked away with a pretty cool dragonfly. They just don’t make ‘em like they used to.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
We Made It Back
We made it back from the beach today. Normally it would be very difficult to pry ourselves away. However, we woke up this morning to thunder, lightning and rain so there would be no final walk in the sand.
When we arrived home, we decided to end our vacation with a little treasure hunt. There is a cache located in one of our town’s oldest cemetaries. Carmi had studied up over the weekend on using the GPS device so we found this stash with relative ease.
