Three weeks home now - Happy New Years!!!

I know, I know, sorry for the delay, but it has been a very busy last few weeks! Billi is great! We spent Christmas for about 9 days in northern California. I was very worried about this trip as I didn't want to overwhelm Billi right after we got back, but it turns out I was SO wrong! I had my friend from Taiwan explain to her where / what we were doing and she completely understood that she was going on a trip to meet her grandma and all of her aunts and uncles and cousins. She was so happy to have a grandma! She followed my mom around the whole time and was just so loving and grateful to have her new family. It was also great for Chad and I as there was so much distraction for her and we were even able to sneak out and see some movies while my mom watched her!! Billi really trusts us, she gets that we are her family, she is learning so quickly and understands so much English now. She also knows a lot of words and phrases. My master plan was to wait 6 months before putting her in preschool, but now I see this girl is just too social to stay home with me - she needs the additional stimulation, so I am going to try to put her in a few mornings a week staring in February. This weekend we spent relaxing and enjoying some really nice beach weather - Billi got her first bathing suit and we put it to good use spending time playing in the ocean and sand! I am constantly reminding myself how lucky we are in that she is such a happy child!

Now for the challenges - I don't want to leave these out because I believe its important, especially for all you bloggers out there who are researching adoption to know some of the challenges that have come up. While we were in Taiwan Billi was kind of aggressive with us, especially Chad. She was doing things like biting, kicking, hitting, etc. She's tiny, so its not like it was that horrible, but we still knew that this would be an important challenge to work on when we got home. I am really happy to say that about 90% of this has already been resolved - she gets that these behaviors will not be tolerated and has really modified them, if she hits she gets a time out - but the main learning factor has been watching how other children act and she wants to be just like everyone else so she is realizing this is not ok behavior. I am amazed at how much progress there is every day. Another challenge was feeling secure enough to let me out of her sight. The first two weeks I could not leave the room without her freaking out a bit, but now, even though she calls out my name a lot, she knows I am not leaving her and she has really relaxed and is starting to mellow out the more secure she gets. Billi also had some teeth that were rotted and were causing her a lot of pain. They couldn't be saved, so we had them pulled. This really helped her sleeping at night, and I might be imagining this, but I think it has mellowed her out a little as well. We continue to have sibling rivalry, but this is normal considering my son has been a single child for so long and Billi just needs to feel like she belongs, so I am confident that this will get better over time - they tend to battle for my attention, but they really do love each other.

As far as medical updates, everything is A-ok. She had the full blown check-up. Besides some malnutrition, it really is just her teeth - we had three pulled and will have to have some more dental work done soon. As far as malnutrition concerns, it will all work itself out - she eats and drinks like a ten year old and I am going through milk by the gallons, so she will catch up.

What an exciting, adventurous and character building experience this has been! When I see Billi, she just fits in - she seems to look like us - her personality is the perfect fit for us by some act of God. She is active, busy, funny, strange and a little crazy all at the same time! Even though it has only been three weeks, it seems like she has been with us forever, she is my silly little winker been, my silly little monkey and we lover her dearly. More pictures to come - have to have my husband upload some camera stuff!

It's been Busy, Busy, Busy...

The last few days have been great but very busy, I think me and Chad forgot how busy it is having a toddler, and Billi is into EVERYTHING! This morning was my first morning alone with her, and it went well - after she looked through every drawer and crevice humanly possible she settled down and built with some blocks. It seems as though she doesn't have a lot of experience playing with toys, if you show her how to play something then she gets it, but otherwise just doesn't seem to know what to do with it - she must have spent a lot of time outdoors playing? We are in the middle of a rainstorm right now and it is expected to last all week, so we are figuring out things to do inside. She still is on Taiwan time, so she will go to bed when we do, but then wake up after about an hour and stay up until about 3-4am. This morning I made her get up early to try to break the cycle, so we'll see what happens tonight. She wants to sleep in her own bed, but with me in it, so I lay down with her until she falls asleep. Last night when she woke up, she didn't cry, just called out MaMa, so I think she is working through her grief - she still will try to tell me things in the middle of the night; it breaks my heart because I'm sure she is telling me she misses her foster family. As for language, she repeats everything, but I will be so relieved when she knows enough to communicate with us a little more, I feel like I say no a lot without being able to tell her why. Baby proofing is a must even though it was something I really didn't think about since she is almost 4 years old, but it is like having a very, very curious toddler around the age of 2 or 3. Overall she seems very happy and everything seems like a new adventure to her. She has her first doctors appointment next week, and I have to get her into a dentist soon as her four front teeth are in bad shape, but I will wait a couple of weeks for that! I'll post more pics later, gotta run and try to nap while she is!

We're Home!!!!!!

Wow - we had a great time in Taiwan, but it is good to be home!! We ended up getting Billi's passport a day early so we left on a Thursday night flight home instead of Friday - it feels so good to have this extra day of rest in our own home before Chad and Ashton have to go back to work / school on Monday. For our last day in Taiwan we picked up Billi's passport at AIT and then shopped and had lunch and walked around with the kids until we headed to the airport around 7pm for our 12am flight. The flight went fine, Billi was SO excited to fly on an airplane, but about two minute after the plane boarded, she fell right to sleep and slept most of the flight. We got home about 7pm Thursday and stayed up with the kids until about 1:30 in the morning, but it was such a great night. Our friends came over and Billi was able to play with their daughter Sofia and open a lot of presents people had given her, it was such a great first night. It sounds strange, but I I really feel like being in our home and getting here gives Billi a sense of finality about starting her new life. Her behavior has been great, in Taiwan we had some issues with pulling hair and biting, but mainly with Chad - I think she thinks he is a big play toy, but we're working on being gentle and since we have been home she has really been doing awesome. I realize we have only been home a short time, but I can already see that these are minor behavior things that can be fixed with time. This morning the kids slept until 11am and right now Chad is trying to feed Billi the eighty million things he made for breakfast, fish, two kinds of porridge, eggs, bamboo shoots......she is really happy this morning......life is good! I'll post pictures later when we have a moment...

Day 6 - AIT Went Well.....

It has been crazy - this kid has been keeping us busy!!! Today we woke up and had breakfast in the hotel. Billi has a really good appetite and ate rice porridge, eggs, bacon, ham and fruit - she does not, however, have much experience in restuarants and so it was a very interesting meal of her running around and us chasing her. She does not want to let any of us out of her sight, so it gets a bit challenging when one of us needs to do something. We then headed out for AIT appointment. It went smoothly, but took a while, so we were getting many stares while both the kids ran around the office. Billi has a bit of a raspy voice and she is not afraid to use it loudly, so its pretty funny in public places. After AIT, we decided to ditch our plans for the zoo because we were exhausted and we hung out at the park with the kids and let them play a for a long time, it was just what we all needed. Billi took a much needed nap on the way back and we've been in our room ever since just hanging out. Chad has been great taking both the kids out individually, so they both get BaBa and MaMa time. Chad also got Billi some Mandarin dvd's to watch on the laptop, but most of the time she would rather run around with her brother. Ashton is such a trooper - he loves his new little sister. Billi sometimes will pull and grab things away from him - I think this is due to not really having many things to call her own, not sure of this, but it has been challenging for him to understand this. Right now they are running around the room making all kinds of noise and we just don't even care about the neighbors any more! Tomorrow we pick up her passport at AIT and then will go to the zoo after that. Bye for now!

Gotcha Day!!!!!!!!!!!!

What a day - truly amazing. The resilience of children is truly amazing. Once we got through the paperwork at Chung Yi and talked with Billi's social workers regarding her care, they walked Billi in the room - she is so, so adorable. She was a little shy at first, but thank goodness for Ashton - after about five minutes they were chasing each other around the room and under the tables. After that they took Ashton and Billi out of the room and brought in the birthmother. Wow, what an emotional meeting. Billi's birthmother was very young, and very pretty and seemed shy and quiet. We shared gifts with each other and both ended up crying trying to explain what we brought. She was such a typical teenager on one hand, but she also new the enormity of the situation on the other, she really put up a brave front - much braver than mine, I cried from the moment she walked in until she left. We visited with her and the aunt that she lives with and Billi for a while until it was time to go. The birthmother quietly slipped away after some goodbyes and then we left the orphanage after some pictures. I do fee very happy that I have a photo album of Billi's birthmother that she gave me and we also took pictures with her, so Billi will have many pictures to look back on. Once we got back to the hotel - oh my goodness - this kid is a firecracker, I am talking every toy, book, crayon and Play-Do was left turned upside and down and sideways all over our room. She was running around, laughing, running, playing hide-and-seek, pretty much just having the time of her life. She is also a very smart girl, she repeats words right after we say them and is completely fascinated with the computer - we have a little techie on our hands. She also ran out of our room as there is no way to lock the door from the inside - she did about five times, one of them right after her bath without her clothes on! Needless to say, we will have to move the coffee table in front of the door so she doesn't try to slip out during the night! We have no idea what she is saying 99.9 percent of the time, but it is amazing how you can communicate when necessary. The night went really well, and we all had so much fun. The end of the night was difficult once she got tired - she had a pretty bad mourning period and cried for her ma-ma. This was very sad for us, but she fell asleep after about 10 minutes of this and is sleeping very hard now. Tomorrow is AIT bright and early in the morning, so off to bed before another big day tomorrow!

Shopping before we pick up Billi!!

We are heading out this morning to the Handicraft Market to do some shopping. We will be gone for a few hours, then come back and get ready to head to the orphanage at 2pm!!!! Chad and I are both very excited and very nervous. Ashton was so excited this morning that it was Gotcha Day - he's been in this time warp thing not knowing what day it is and even asking us sometimes if it is morning or night! I think this is because he is so darn tired. We did however, sleep in a little this morning and slept until almost 5am - that was a record for us, so we feel very well rested for our big day. Okay, gotta run and get packed up.