Ladybug Adventures

Originally posted on Tuesday, April 6, 2004 1:25 PM CDT

Just a quick note to update everyone on how Emilie is doing these days. She is now nearly 22 months old and seems to be adjusting quite well. She is nearly 34 inches tall and weighs about 26 pounds. She talks all the time. She has picked up English so quickly, she surprises us nearly everyday with a new word and repeats nearly everything we say.

She is still having a few sleeping problems, but they have improved tremendously from when we first got home last September. Last September Emilie was having nightmare or night terrors every night and sometime 2 and 3 times a night. She now only has about one each week or so. However, she still doesn't sleep through the night yet. She still wakes up at least once and sometimes 2 to 4 times a night crying. But at least she is not hysterical from a night terror.

Other than that Emilie is doing very well. For the most part she seems to always be a very happy little girl. Always making us smile and laugh and always ready to give a hug and a kiss. :)

As many of you know, we are planning to go back to China to adopt another little girl, but we are not sure yet when that will happen. We hope to start the paperwork as soon as possible, but that will all depend on the financing and how soon we can afford to start the process again. If you are interested in taking a look at some of the things we are selling to try to help raise money for adoption fund, please go to http://www.geocities.com/pocahontas_in.

Thank you all for your prayers and support and we will continue to keep you updated on Emilie's progress.

Love,
Steve, Lisa and Emilie

Originally posted on Tuesday, September 16, 2003 10:44 PM CDT

We're Home!!

Yes, we finally made it home after a very long day last Friday. We left the White Swan Hotel at 6:00 am China time on Friday, Sept. 12 (which would have been 5:00 pm Indiana time on Thursday, Sept. 11). We had a one hour flight from Guangzhou, China to Hong Kong. (For anyone who ever travels through the Guangzhou airport, good luck. This was the most disorganized and confusing setup an airport could ever possibly have.) What was supposed to be a 3 hour layover in Hong Kong, ended up being around 40 minutes after finally making it through the tranfer line and all the security / SARS checkpoints. We took one last group photo with our travel group and then we all boarded the plane for a long 14 1/2 hour flight to Chicago. Emilie did absolutely wonderful on the entire flight. She slept nearly 12 hours of the flight and what time she was awake, she was playing nicely on Lisa's lap or on the floor right in front of Lisa.

Due to a typhoon near Japan, our flight was detoured which added about 40 minutes to our flight. This caused us to miss our connecting flight to Fort Wayne. We were then told that United could not get us on another flight to Fort Wayne yet that night and neither could American Airlines. Our best option was to take a flight from Chicago to Indianapolis. (One little bit of irony - the flight to Indianapolis left out of the same exact gate we left out of just 2 weeks earlier to fly to Beijing, China - How's that for closure?) We landed in Indianapolis around 7:15 pm where Lisa's parents picked us up. After waiting for luggage, struggling with the car seat and stopping for a bite to eat, we finally made it home around 12:30 am Saturday, Sept. 13. By this time we had been up an entire 33 1/2 hours with nearly no sleep. Needless to say, we were a little tired.

The last 3 to 4 days of our time in China, Emilie had really begun to open up to us and was doing much better. However, she was still very attached to Lisa and didn't like for Lisa to be out of her sight. If this happened, it was met by a lot of crying and screaming on Emilie's part. Now that we are home, we have had a little bit of a set back the first couple of days. Emilie has been back to doing a lot of crying and clinging to Lisa just like she did the first 2 or 3 days we had her. She also is not sleeping through the night. We think this is partially due to her still being slightly on China time and it appears that she may also be having some nightmares.

We are seeing improvements almost daily. When Lisa's parents met us at the airport on Friday night, Emilie really didn't want to have much to do with them. Then on Sunday evening she was having a blast at their house. She was being quite the little ham wanting Grandma to take more and more pictures of her. :)

Today has been one of the best days Emilie has had yet. Today we visited Steve's workplace where Emilie got to meet many of the people Steve works with. While we were there Emilie was laughing and giggling and really enjoying meeting everyone and showing off her squeaky shoes. She loved the bear that was given to her as well. Up until this point she always acted shy and rarely responded to new people. We spent some time today doing a little shopping and Emilie seemed to emjoy it all. She has been rather animated all day.

We ask that you all continue to pray for Emilie's adjustment to her new home. This will be the last offical journal entry of our China trip, however we will continue to periodically post entries to update you all on Emilie's progress. If anyone has any questions about our adoption, our China trip, etc. that we have not answered in one of these entries, please feel free to e-mail us at hoosier925@hotmail.com and we will be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you all for your continued prayers and support during this process. We know all the prayers is what has helped us get through a few rough spots along the way. And a special thank you to our wonderful travel group. We could not have asked for any nicer people to share this experience with and hope we can continue to keep in touch for our sake as well as the girls. We wish you all well and hope to see you all soon.

Love,
Steve, Lisa and Emilie

Orginally posted on Wednesday, September 10, 2003 10:09 PM CDT

Hello from Guangzhou!



We are very sorry for our absence the past few days. We were just very busy our last two days in Nanning. Then on Tuesday morning we flew from Nanning to Guangzhou where we are now staying in the White Swan Hotel. When we checked into the White Swan we found that using the internet was very expensive there ($5 US for 15 minutes). But we just found a wonderful store owner near the hotel who has his own store (Jordan's) and he also offers internet use for just $1 US for 30 minutes.

As soon as we got into Guangzhou on Tuesday afternoon we had to immediately take Emilie to get her Visa photo and then to the hospital near the hotel for her physical. We found out that she definitely does not like doctors. :)

Guangzhou seems like a very nice city. It is a much more modern city than Nanning and has some very beautiful buildings. All of the hotels we have been in during our time here in China have been very nice, but The White Swan Hotel is by far the best hotel so far. It has a beautiful waterfall in the center of the hotel.



We are seeing more and more improvements and changes in Emilie each day. We are getting many more smiles and giggles from her each day and she seems to just chatter away many times. Only wish mommy and daddy could understand the chinese words she is using. Our guide in Nanning told us that she has a rather large chinese vocabuly. She can speak words in both Cantonese and Mandarin. She was doing very well at conversing with our guide, Alice, in Nanning. We have also found that she loves riding in her stroller. Many times when we are in the room she will start pointing to her stroller and try to get mommy or daddy to put her in it so we will take her somewhere.

We have found that she also loves musice. She dances and moves around any time she hears music. The little see and say we brought has been a big hit.

This is our last day in Guangzhou. A friend of mine from college, who is a missionary in Macau (an island off mainland China about 2 hours from Guangzhou) will be visiting us this afternoon for a few hours. We are trying to also finish up some of our shopping this morning and later this evening.

We leave for the airport tomorrow morning about 6:00 am. We will be flying from Guangzhou to Hong Kong where we will have about a 3 1/2 hour lay over. The on from Hong Kong to Chicago. We will have about 2 hours in Chicago before we head on to Fort Wayne. Tomorrow is going to be a very long day, but hopefully Emilie will do well on the plane. Please keeps us in your prayers during our return flights home.

Best wishes to you all and we will write again once we get home to let you all know how the flights went and how Emilie is settling in at home.

Love,
Steve, Lisa and Emilie