Finally and Final

Yes, the time has finally come. The new blog has been created and this blog is now done. You can now follow the new blog, Growing With Mikayla. You can find it at... http://growingwithmikayla.blogspot.com This is an end to this following and a beginning to the new following of the new blog. Hope to see you all there. Blessings, AJ

Nap Time

OK I am on the middle to tail end of nap time and hope to get this done before Mikayla awakes. The homecoming of the boys went pretty well as I got all the bear hugs and sloppy kisses I have been waiting for. Mikayla watched closely in the comfort of Daddy's arms. Once home and both the boys and Mikayla watched each other and claimed there spots that's when the fun began. Stopping the stampede to Mikayla and the rescuing and picking up of Mikayla as the boys continually tried loving on her and running her over was exhausting. Mikayla even today has not really wanted to touch the boys at all but she is brave enough to get on the floor while they are around now until they come running to cover her with sloppy kisses that she still is not to fond of. I am sure it has nothing to do with the fact that the boys do not give up once they start. Hey who can blame them she is so cute plus both boys have just turned 1 year old so they still are in the smother you with slop every chance they get. I think Mikayla is taking a liking to Gus a bit more as he is the mellower one of the two and does not totally over due the kisses and does listen better when told to stop. They love when she eats even if nothing drops it is still heaven getting to get that quick lick of a finger or even sometimes a face every now and again which while in her seat, Mikayla does not mind to much. They are all definitely getting used to each other. Even in the beginning of nap time Mikayla fell asleep with her head on Louie and he did not mind or wake her. When the lawn guys came Louie slowly and carefully got up from the couch without waking her, just to go look outside. Yesterday, Mikayla had a blast when Kelly came over. They played together in the basement crashing cars into each other. Mikayla belly laughed none stop. It was definitely a break for me even though I was there every minute taking pics. I still was able to relieve myself of entertaining for a little while. She even gave Kelly a hug good bye when it was bed time. Mikayla is doing awesome meeting new faces every day. She is doing well in the bonding area, when we started she would go to just anyone and now she is doing better and not doing so as much. When she does go to others she does not stay with anyone very long, she turns and searches out mommy or daddy which is great. She is sleeping through the nights as well as her naps although the naps are sometimes not as long as they should be. She is slowly getting off the bottle and formula eating more baby and adult foods and getting bottles mostly at bedtime and sometimes at nap time wake ups. This is another milestone we are happy to see. We will continue to give her the bottle and formula at least until we run out of what we have but probably will not buy any more formula making that the final switch over time. We have gotten her on DEERS so medical is covered at the base and varies Peds with a co-pay. Next will be the SS# and doctor appointments. Today I have to take Louie to the doc as he looks like he has an infected sore on his foot. Hopefully it is nothing to be to concerned about, as it really don't seem to bother him to much. I think it bothers mommy more than him but I guess that is how it usually works with all kids. If anyone is waiting on us for an okay to visit you are all welcome to come by when you can. All we ask is that you call first to make sure we are here and that it is not nap time or bed time, etc. I hope to see you all soon and hope my next posting will be to the new blog. I will let you know as soon as I get there, maybe bedtime or nap time tonight or tomorrow.... keep watching. AJ

Ketchup - Not Of The Tomato Variety

Hello Everyone,

I am so sorry I have not been here to update but as the title states I have been playing Ketchup or should I say catch up. I have been getting my bills and home back in order as well as working on a new schedule for our new life. I am not going to update you today as it is late and I need my sleep. I just wanted to drop you a post just so you know I am still here and working for you. :) I do want to let you know that I have finally caught up with the pics on the posts for this blog. That is what I have been doing tonight. I started with a post back in July and almost every post if not all have new pics posted to them. The one posted here is Mikayla's first self portrait So please don't miss a single one, go back and check them all out. Tomorrow during nap time I hope if I do not need one myself I will get you caught up with the boys coming home and how all that went and get you rolling on the new blog. Chat with you more very soon. Happy Blogging!

Home At Last

We finally made it home. After the 12 hour flight to LA Mikayla was awesome as I said she did not sleep much but did not fuss much either. She slept really well in the hotel and then when we took the 2 flights (each 2 hours long) to Denver and STL she fell asleep just before the 1st plane took off and did not wake up until after the end of the last flight. Even then she did not stay up long she crashed in the car ride home and pretty much did not wake until we were inside and unpacking. Of course she was awake until about 1am but so were we. While we were finally relaxing watching some English TV Mikayla so cutely crawled up on the couch with me and crashed. She slept until about 6am just as we did so no problem there. So Far so good. I love the stork in the front yard it is awesome and the star will be a keepsake forever. We can now begin a normal schedule with Mikayla and us being home. Today, Mikayla has the luxury of having the house to cruise and investigate on her own. Come tomorrow it will be a fun and interesting day when the boys come home and they meet Mikayla for the first time. It will be all sorts of fun I am sure when they take each others toys and torment each other. I dont think I will get to post any pics today as Mikayla wants attention and I do not blame her. As for the China trip and closing that saga of our lifes I want to just give everyone especially those planning on going there to adopt or otherwise when we started this journey we were told so many things to do, not do and bring and not bring and I want to clear some of that up. First off we were told DO NOT wear any white, I can understand this for finalizing day as it is a sign of mourning but I could not understand it for any other reason. I did find out the only other reason they tell you that is that their water is so dirty that if you wash any whites they are never white again they become dingy. The other thing is that if you sit anywhere you will wind up getting brown spots on your butt as most everywhere is pretty dirty even if it does not look like it. Next, was that you are NOT to wear shirts with writing on them as the Chinese will not know what it says and they are afraid it might be something offensive to them or bad about their country. Whether that is true or not I do not know but what I do know is that there were people everywhere wearing shirts with writing, even some chinese were wearing shirts with English writing on them so I think that is nothing to worry about either. Being on clothes another mis-information I was told was that you are not to wear any shorts, cause if you do they had to be down to the knee, I dont know about any of you but my shorts are not that long, don't get me wrong my shorts are not daisy dukes either but I was told shorts higher than the knee were a NO go. Well, once again most of the families we were with had shorts on and there were many others in China wearing shorts although there were some Chinese females in shorts there were not that many chinese in shorts only americans. If I were to go again or were to tell anyone going I would tell them if you want to wear shorts by all means go for it. Moving on, we were also told if you want to use blow dryers, shavers, computers or the like that you need converters and adapters, another mis-information, everywhere we went including in Starbucks and places you could use the computer all had outlets usable for any thing you wanted to plug in. These are just a few of the things I can think of right now. I am sure there are others that I am just not thinking of at the moment, if I think of them I will be sure to let you know. The things that I will tell you to do that we were told that I totally agree with is that you should have plenty of wipes and/or kleenex for bathroom trips and also have sanitizer if possible. Also DO make sure you put at least one set of clothing in your carry on backage. Right now I think we are going to get out of the house and get some fresh air and go for a stroll although there is no sun at the moment that is ok it is still fresh air and the friendly hometown neighborhood. When we return maybe I will have my ton of mail to go through which I am sure will be a blast. Before I go I do want to thank those of you that came to the airport to welcome us home we really welcomed seeing some friendly warm faces after such a long journey. Thanks again to our personal taxi also we really do appreciate it and if there is anything we can do to help you guys out you know we are here to help just the same. Until next time.... AJ

Back in the USA

We are back in the U.S. We are so glad. Mikayla did great on the long flight here to LA. She slept a little but not much. She complained a bit, but nothing loud enough or long enough to bother anyone else on the plane. I am so proud of her. She of course is wide awake now here in LA at 10pm but we expected it. Also we definitely had a weather change, we came from mid to upper 90's with 105 heat index and nasty humidity to 66 degrees here in LA. No more culture shock just temperature shock. I thought CA was supposed to be hot all the time what is up with the weather, what happened here while we were gone. We see it will even be cooler in STL then when we left we left with mid to upper 90's and are coming home to lower 90's. That's ok any weather will be fine with us right now as long as we are home. We said all our good byes to all the new friends we made and vowed to keep in touch. All that is left is recouping to life back home and getting back together with all our old friends and showing Mikayla the world as she has never seen it before. For those who are interested we will be arriving in STL Saturday, August 15th at 8:11 pm on United Flight 7388 from Denver. We look forward to seeing some if not all of you there. Don't forget to do a drive by the house so you can check out our stork that should be there before we are. :) I am so happy to hear my music when I signed on the blog now I know I can update it all once again. So keep following, pics will be posted soon. Check it out I have edited the music, yeah!!! I have also posted a pic or two so go check them out... I started with a post back in July.,... I will add more soon it is getting late so I am going to crash so I can get home soon. Oh and any pics you see that are foggy it is not fog but smog... just thought you might like to know it is like that all the time there. Any questions don't hesitate to ask. Love you guys.

Day 15 - Day of Relaxing

The day was a very laid back day. We slept in a bit, until about 9am when we all woke up and the doorbell was ringing. Our new friends, another adopting family from Iowa was heading out and wanted to say good bye. We talked about getting together some time in the future and talked how another family said they would be organizing a family reunion for us all. That would be great but I guess we will see how that goes and where they plan it to be as the ones who said they would do the organizing live in Nebraska. We all do plan or have already joined the FCC so we will have that but being from different states and different chapters we probably won't see each other in the FCC. After the families left, it is now down to just 3 of us families who will be on the same plane, we have yet to even see them since everyone else left and one of them is right next door. As for our day it has been pretty calm. We did venture to the super-market by taxi ("S" wrote where we wanted to go in chinese and we just handed the paper to the taxi driver) we got the formula we needed and a few other things like water and such. We still did not make it to the pool though but have not given up. One more day to try. We will be leaving here tomorrow evening and heading to LA taking our long flight of 12 hours or so. We will spend the night there in LA before heading to Denver and home. We will arrive in LA about 6:30pm PST on Friday the 14th while leaving here 9pm China time Friday the 14th. You got to love when the day never ends. We leave LA on the 15th arriving home the same day later in the evening. Now I know some of you have been asking and wondering what I will do when we return or rather what you will do when you don't have this blog to follow, well I have taken care of that for you. I have already thought about that and have no fear I will be creating a new blog called "Growing with Mikayla" I would never let you all down. :) I will post here and let you know when it is first created. Now I don't think I will post every day but maybe once a week or something, that I have not decided as of yet but will let you know. I will try to keep it on a schedule like every Tuesday or 15th of the month or something so you know how often to check back. No matter what you will not be left in the dark. Face it as much fun as it is for you to follow my blog it is also that much fun for me to post for you. I just wish while I am here I would have been able to post pics for you. Which brings me to pics... what I plan to do is when I get home I plan to back track a bit and post pics to the blog on the days they occurred so you can just go back and scan the posts and see what I edited, keeping you busy while I create the new blog for you to follow. ;) Well, that pretty much sums up things for now. I am going to guess my next post won't be until I am in LA so catch you back in the states soon. Love you all, AJ

Day 13 - ACS Appointment and Day 14 Citizenship

I am behind once again but hey, I think I will be on it more now that all the work is done. We had our ACS appointment and all went well with us no questions asked. There were I think 2 families out of 19, I am sorry to say did have some issues, but I think they did get them resolved, thank goodness. After being able to leave our room after finding our paper work was all okay we did venture to the shop here near the hotel and I got me some deals this time. I also have two new friends at the shop there. I told them I wanted to buy more stuff but they did not have the sizes I wanted. They promised me they would have it tomorrow. We never have made it swimming with all that is going on and how I have been feeling but that is okay, I got to go shopping. :) Wednesday and day 14 came around and we are doing good with keeping Mikayla on a schedule with me not feeling well and staying close to the room. We got our pictures taken as a group today with Mikayla's traditional clothes and squeaky shoes. She is a character. The best part of the day took more time to get there (30 minutes) and back (another 30 minutes) than for the actual venture. Today we took our oath in the ACS and got Mikayla's visa to get home. Mikayla is now an official U.S. Citizen. It was a teary time for many but I held my own. Today was not only a great day for us and Mikayla but it was also the best day for me since arriving here in Guangzhou. I felt so good I went back to the shop to do more shopping... hey, they told me to come back remember so I had to go. Needless to say, I did buy more and no worry's we did get another suitcase to get it all home. With all the work done there is not much left to do but relax and enjoy and I even feel more up to doing just that, of course it would be now that everything is done that I feel better but I guess it is always better late then never. A few of the families left earlier this evening and then the majority leave tomorrow morning. That leaves us and two other families leaving on Friday on the same flight. One of the families that were not in our smaller group (our province group)adopted an older (8 year old) and they are staying in the room next to ours and the little girl likes ringing our bell and running. She took a liking to me and is always seeking me out to play, she is not speaking english but we have fun laughing and playing in the hall, on the bus or where ever we see each other. So I know we will have fun on the long flight home. Maybe with most of the families gone and I think (yes I am not sure) all my shopping is done other than a trip to get some formula, maybe we will get to the pool or not. I guess we will have to wait and see. We will be home soon and I can not wait to bring my baby home so we can all sleep in our own beds. I will let you all know the flight we arrive on in STL when we get to LA so if anyone wants to meet us up there and get a sneak peek of Mikayla at that time before we get home and hiberate for a while, you are all welcome to do so. And if anything changes you will know from either us letting you know from Denver or if you check the flight information online. Hope to speak to you and see you all soon. All Shopped Out...NOT!!!! AJ