Santa, Santa, Santa, how you never let us down:)

Merry Christmas everyone!!!!!  As you can all imagine, we feel very blessed and had the best Christmas ever.  Since we arrived home on Dec 4th, Sha has been counting the days on her calendar for when Santa will arrive. She understood he came down the chimney and she had to be sleeping in order for him to deliver her gifts.

We did our annual Christmas Eve dinner at my mom's that included the 7 fish dishes (yum in the tum tum).  We were not sure how Sha was going to do with this meal and it was difficult to explain to her that we had multiple dishes so she could not fill up on the first one.  To our delight she liked everything and paced herself quite nicely. Of course while my parent's were cooking she pulled her stool right up to the stove and insisted on helping.  My parents have instantly turned into fun, relaxed grandparents which is really nice to see their relationship forming.  My dad, although very nervous when she is around the stove, let her help fry the fish with him and my mother after dinner let Sha put makeup on her and Aunt Joan.  Oooh yes, Sha met Aunt Joan and as AJ always does with all her nieces and nephews, she has her laughing in about 5 minutes after she met her.

On our way home that night, I sat in the back seat with Sha because Jack had to sit in the front (yes the pug is still king in our house:).  At one point I saw a plane in the air with just red lights.  I yelled out "Sha look up, it's Santa's sleigh".  Folks, I kid you not, the girl went into total magical imagination and freaked out, it was awesome.  I kept saying "Baba hurry up and get us home so we can get in bed before he gets to our house".  Well that plane was the best thing ever because when we got home, she ran into her room and put her pj's on and brushed her teeth immediately. She then started telling us that she was so happy, that Santa does not stop in China.  Then in typical Sha fashion, she gave Paul and I her allowance money (total of $25) and said she was going to buy Dong Jia (her BFF in China) a DSI since Santa does not go there. Paul and I told her we would help her save so she can buy DJ that and she had a look on her face of sheer happiness.  After that I stayed with her and watched some tv then about 10:00 I turned it off thinking I'd have a mini argument over it and again to my delight, she fell asleep.  We had everything set up for Santa and were back in bed by 10:30, how awesome is that.  Granted I owe most of that to my mother who wrapped all her gifts at her house or we would have been up to 3:00 in the morning:)


We woke up at 7:30 Xmas morning and Sha appeared excited and nervous a bit.  We went into where the tree was and what we thought was going to be an outburst of joy, she went into typical Sha mode and just stared at everything and took it all in.  She looked around the room first, saw Santa ate the cookies and left his hat in the chimney.  About 2 minutes later we heard her say "Oooh BIG" to one of her gifts.  Now here is our one little setback.  Before we opened anything, Sha went to pull my stocking down and she took the stocking holder (which is a reindeer) with it.  It ended up putting a little cut in the top of her head.  She didn't cry but did have a look of "Ouch, that hurt".  We quickly patched it up and then on she went with her gifts.  She first wanted to give Jack the one from Aunt Joanie.  My other Aunt Joan makes all natural dog cookies and sent some to Jack with a little stuffed pug for Sha and some ornaments.  Jack LOVED those, thanks AJ.  The doll house, which was the "Ooh Big gift was by far her favorite. Next was the Wii came "Just Dance" (thanks CBasil for the recommendation:) and then the McDonald's cash register Ayi Lisa gave her.    I won't go on further about the gifts because the pics below tell the rest perfectly. They are of Xmas eve and Xmas day.

I do have to conclude with this one last story (sorry guys for the long blog).   Earlier on I had asked Sha what traditions they do in China on Christmas day and she said they cook "Hot Pot".  We wanted to incorporate her traditions with ours so we let her pick out the Hot Pot ingredients. For weeks she kept saying she would cook this for all of us. Since it was just my folks and Aunt Joan we decided we would let her do this ( yes I did have a few back up meals just in case).  No lie folks, she did the entire hot pot, which was beyond spicy but it was fantastic. I do have a picture below, mainly for Ayi Alicia and ShuShu Billy.  They sent Sha a wok for Xmas which we ended up using for this meal.  Sha cut up pork, made noodles, cut tofu,scallions, cabbage and snow peas.  We never needed my backup's.

We ended the night with watching "Despicable Me" which was a gift from Grandma and Grandpa.  Grandpa fell asleep about 3 minutes into the movie which Sha thought was the funniest ever because he was snoring.  She then said with huge delight " Grandma and Grandpa sleep here" and pointed to the floor.  She loves them.
I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, as always thank you ALL for your love and support.

4 Weeks since Gotcha Day

As I sit here to write my long overdue blog I am blown away that Sha has been with us 4 weeks.  It feels like so much longer but that is in a good way.  Mainly because of how much she has changed in the 4 weeks.  Her English continues to improve daily although she puts up a fantastic battle when we work on it in the mornings.  She also puts up a fantastic battle when it comes to changing clothes in morning:).

Her and I are still struggling a bit with bonding since we have been home. I am confident it is because she is stuck with me all day and I am the one making her do the things she doesn't like (make her bed, work on English...get dressed:). We do have some good moments though.  One was at my friend Amanda's house. She had a gingerbread house party and invited us.  When we got there Sha quickly saw all 2 and 3 year old and became very quiet.  She wanted nothing to do with me at the party.  At one point we gathered around the table to make the houses, she kept pushing me away which tugged at my heart. I left her at the table for about 3 seconds to get my camera in the other room and when I got back she said " You....stay" and pointed at the ground.  Yes that was a "melt" if you can believe it.

She is very excited about Santa and knows how many days till he comes. She also knows he comes down the chimney and will "only" come if she is sleeping:) 

So much has happened since my last blog I don't even know where to begin.  So in my usual fashion, I'll list our highlights:

• The biggest excitement has been that Sha met Shushu Colin, Ayi Cheryl and NaiNai Viv. She absolutely fell in love with Colin who is terrific with her. They instantly bonded. We celebrated an early xmas with lots of fun toys from all three of them, they were very generous. Barbie and the EasyBake oven were the big hits:)
• My very talented sister in law Cheryl put together this amazing scrapbook of our blogs in China.  I think I have read it about 25 times now.  I can't begin to describe what a beautiful gift it was, she is the best!
• The other big excitement is that Sha has two new friends who she gets along great with and the best part about it, they are our dear friends children.  Quinn and Caroline are my friends Aaron and Christine's children.  We have known them now for 12 years, they are good friends and neighbors so we are just thrilled our children got along so great.  We are keeping our fingers crossed that Sha is in Quinn's 3rd grade class which is looking like she may be.
• We got our Xmas tree up and Sha found ours and Jack's Santa hat and she can't get enough of Jack in it....poor Jack:)

1 Week 2 days home

Hi Everyone,
We've been home just over a week and it's amazing all that has happened. We have definitely had a few melt downs all normal and all expected however it doesn't make it any less heart breaking.  Our biggest challenge this week is sleeping.  Sha is still not comfortable with sleeping alone in her room.  We stayed with her one night until she fell asleep.  Then at 7:00 the next morning we woke up to her in our room crying hysterically because we left her alone.  We knew this could be a challenge and quite frankly to us where she slept was not the worst thing that could go on.  We know her sleeping in our room is a safety thing for her which is why it's a minor thing on our list right now.  We have read that this fear could be due to how she was abandoned possibly.  They say a lot of children are abandoned while sleeping so when they wake up they are alone. To any new adoptive parent, that is just heart wrenching to  hear.  That is not to say that is what happened to Sha, I don't think it was however we'll never know so instead we are just going to ask Santa for a king size bed:)
 
Ok, so the highlights for the week.

• We went to her school to play on the playground and she LOVED that.  It was a good intro to her school.  She has no fear what's so ever.  She took her first tumble off the swing and what we thought was going to be a melt down was not, she got up laughing and got right back on the swing.
• Sha drew "mccccd" on a piece of paper letting us know she wanted to go to McDonald's for lunch so we had our first family trip their.  Ironically Hello Kitty was the prize in the Happy Meal.
• Sha cooked a few more meals for us. One pizza and one which was chives, green pepper, cucumber and tomato kabobs. Good for any weight loss;)
• Sha wrote her xmas list to Santa, this was the quickest concept she grabbed....be good and Santa brings gifts-LOL
• She discovered Paul's automatic truck which is finally getting some use
• We took our first ride in Mom' Beetle, I think she likes Paul's CRV better-ha.
• JACK, ah Jack. She LOVES him to pieces, a bit too much possibly however we are grateful for this.  She wants to constantly hug him but it's more aggressive than Jack is used to.  We did have a good moment though. In one of her melt downs we were in our car going home and Jack was in the back with her. He ended up sitting right next to her the entire ride and when I went in the back to assist, he pushed his way next to her again...could he be having a change of heart:)
• She cooked Spaghetti and meatballs with Grandpa.  Oh yeah, she LOVES Grandma and Grandpa and it's clear they feel the same way. 
• We decorated the house for Xmas and Sha preferred to decorate herself:)
• She hand wrote Xmas cards for her friends back at ICC, it was very bittersweet.
• She made her first official Ginger Bread house and did a great job. She mixed the frosting and everything. She was very focused on it and then at the end she started a frosting food fight which to our delight, brought out the kid in all of us, including my folks:)
• She discovered and LOVES the movie "ELF" which is my favorite favorite Xmas movie. Ya got to love Will Farrel.
• We got our XMAS tree.  We went to PinchBack's so she can experience the tractor ride.  She of course wanted the biggest tree ever and to our surprise for the first time we got the smallest one-ha.  We are going to decorate it today so more pics will follow.

Tomorrow Paul goes back to work which is a bit nerve wrecking.  Those two have a really good relationship, they love to play together.  We are learning that she does not love routine nor having to get dressed everyday.  She will flat out tell you if she is upset and start rambling on in a mad tone in Chinese.  I have learned to reach out to friends (Kate) and our resources (Cara) to help ease my mind that we are parenting properly.  I can not say it enough, the support in the adoption world is fantastic and very needed. 

Last night she met our dear friends Maggie and Tenyo.  They were very kind and brought her a bunch of Hello Kitty toys which she loved.  We played a game of Uno with them which Sha loved.

Overall, all is good at home.  Will try to blog more often however I have quickly learned my time is no longer "my time"-ha.