Happy 4 months home!

The last 4 months have been surreal.... Charlotte fit into our family so easily.  The biggest adjustment we have had to make is just going from a family of 5 to a family of 6.  Having a toddler at home again has been an adjustment for me.....definitely no "me time" at all these days.  BUT, oh what JOY this little girl has brought into our lives!  We love her so much!

She definitely had had some insecurities in the last 4 months but, I would say after about 2 1/2 -3 months we saw some big progress.  That is why we haven't done professional pictures of her until just recently.  We tried earlier and we were able to get a decent picture for the adoption announcement but it was HARD!  She was just still so insecure when going somewhere new & wanted me to hold her & not put her down.  The picture in the top right corner was taken of her while I was holding her & I was cropped out thankfully. :)

She is now talking in English and putting 4-5 words together sometimes and it amazes me...she uses her manners and says "thank you mommy" every single time she needs to (without being reminded at all) and that is something I am still constantly working on with the boys even.  She is just so thankful and sweet most of the time. 

For any of you reading this and contemplating adoption....pray about it for your family but, I will tell you hands down it is one of the best things we have EVER DONE!  Our lives are forever changed, for the better, by our Charlotte. 

I am sitting here typing this with her asleep in my arms....yes I am spoiling her rotten! :)  and I just can't get over how great our God is... to see how this 1 little girl out of thousands of orphans in China could not only have a loving home here in our little family but, that she would impact our lives and so many others for adoption ...I feel so blessed to be her mother.

Like I read somewhere recently...she might have been labeled "special needs" in China but, we just think she is "special!"

Sending you all much love!
Kendra

You can click on any of these photos to see them larger.

We went in search of buttercups but, didn't find many; they bloomed so early this year. 

We have had fun introducing Charlotte to extended family members.  This is mom & Charlotte with Uncle Leon & Aunt Alivene in Jackson, TN.

                                                                                         Charlotte & Drew

Charlotte met Aunt Ronnie (my moms sister)& just loved her & immediately felt comfortable
with her.  I think the feeling was mutual. :)






The following are some of the first professional pictures we just had done of Charlotte.  She did so well for the photographer!  The photographer is Tammy Byars Holtman who lives in Florence, KY (Cincinnatti area) she grew up here (TN) and was coming back to visit family so it was a special treat for her to photograph Charlotte.

 

This sweet dress above was made by /http://www.redthreadstitches.com/ and she makes some AMAZING things please, go check out her website! :)

About Charlottes clothes:  I may have gone a tad crazy over her clothes but, I am LOVING it!  Alot of her clothes I get at consignment sales (my sister has a large local sale twice a year) and then Gymboree and Zulilly are favorites as well. Some of the brands I like (like Persnickety) are expensive but, I usually wait until the end of the season sale and purchase then. :)

My Favorite Brands for Girl Clothes:

For cute casual clothes:

Gymboree & Mis Tee V Us

For adorable outfits & dresses:

Swanky Baby Vintage

Red Thread Stitches Clothing

Persnikety

Flit & Flitter

Strasburg

Biscotti

What are YOUR favorite brands of clothing for girls?

Our journey to Charlotte

1 year ago today, we found out a little girl in Wuwei, China would become our daughter. This video shows our journey over the last year.   Please stop the music player at the bottom before watching the video.

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2 Months Home! :)

Well it's been a fabulous 2 months home with our baby girl!  She has come so far in the time we have had together.  She has fit so easily into our family it seems like she has been here much longer.  She is THE HAPPIEST little girl I have ever met.  She continues to amaze us and everyone that has met her.  It is almost like she knew what she didn't have and now that she does have these things, she is loving it and so appreciative and excited about everything!   We all agree that adopting has definitely been one of the best decision we have EVER made!  Seeing new things through her eyes has been so amazing and has made us appreciate each other and just life even more.  She has brought our whole family together in a way I never imagined. :)

Some new things about Charlotte:

1) She loves all of her clothes.  She is such a girly girl!  When she puts on her clothes each day, she looks & calls for "Baba" to clap and smile and tell her she looks pretty.  Then she is off to search for her brothers and wants them to clap too. It is so sweet!

2) She also loves shoes.  Sit her in the floor with a pile of shoes and she will be busy trying on all the different shoes. :) 

3) She is able to communicate very well.  LOL!  1 night she was fussy and Ben and I were trying to sing her to sleep.  She kept crying softly and we kept singing determined to get her to settle into sleep.  Then she had had enough....she put her finger to her lip and loudly said "SHHHHH!"  LOL!

4)  I have gotten her to start saying "mama girl" and we all clap!  She thinks it is fun so she says it often but, it comes out more like "mama, gul, gul"

5) She loves all food we have given her except grapes...it's like she doesn't like the texture and she spits them out after chewing them.  She also is picky about her bananas...she only likes them if they are really ripe.

6) We haven't even attempted to get her to go to the potty again like she did when we were in China.  We hope to try to re-introduce that in about a month.  But now, sometimes she will just bust out in tears when she poops.  It is like she thinks she might be in trouble for pooping in her diaper. I just tell her "it's ok, it's ok" and give her a hug.  Makes me wonder if she had gotten spanked or disciplined for not going in the potty. :(

7) When asked she will point out her hair, feet, ears, nose, hands, & belly.  We are working on her mouth & eyes. :)

8) She is facinated by any family pictures of us.  She will hold them and take them every where with her.  She especially likes the first family photo a friend of mine took on the night we arrived back in the U.S. 

9) She does continue to have night terrors occassionally.  Mainly when she is overly tired or if she is somewhere unfamiliar to her.  She had one of the worst nights ever (3 night terrors in 1 night) when we went to visit my sister in St Louis.   This was our first trip with her and the first time for her to sleep anywhere besides our house. 

10) She loves music and jewelry! :)  She happily dances any time she hears music and she loves her bracelet that Meemaw (my mom) got her, pointing it out to everyone! :) 

Right after Christmas, Jason's parents & sister were able to come for a visit.  Charlotte took up with them fairly quickly.  Letting Shelby & Riley paint her nails and helping Grammy feed Sadie (their dog).  I think it was unanimous that they too thought Charlotte was doing really well adjusting to her new family who loves her very much! :)

L-R Drew, Grammy, Charlotte, Riley, Granddaddy, Ben & in the back are Shelby & Will

Charlotte LOVES her brothers!  When we drop them off in the mornings at school they start pointing to the school and them and saying goodbye to her.  She has now started pointing to herself and then the school....she wants to go to Lakewood too! :)  She cries for just a few seconds every day when they get out but, then its mommy & Charlotte time.

She LOVES to play peekaboo!

We have had a couple of play dates with some of our new friends that are also adopted from China.  Adoption is such a special thing and sharing that with 2 new friends I have met has been awesome!  It is so nice to hear from someone that is a little further along & experienced in the adoption journey. Ms Macy (on the left) lives in McKenzie, about 20 mins away, with her parents & 2 brothers & Ms Molly Kate (on the right of Charlotte) lives in Benton, KY, about 45 minutes away, with her mom & dad & she has 3 grown brothers & a sister that is waiting China to come home probably in June of this year! :)  And the cute boy in the photo is Macy's little brother Brody. :)

She has this sweet, serious look on her face sometimes....love it!  Sometimes I just wonder what you are thinking baby girl!

Charlotte has a LOVE for my camera.  She wants to hold it which I don't want her to do!  Now she comes up when she sees me with my camera and starts grunting and pointing which means she wants it. :)  So cute but, not gonna happen Charlotte.  I need to get her a play camera.

This is her excited/laughing look.  She normally gets big eyes with a look like "oh my goodness" and then she covers her mouth as she starts her giggles. :) So cute!

DeeDee could hardly wait for a nice day to take Charlotte on her 1st gator ride! :)  He thought it might gain him some popularity from her....well not so much.  She did like the gator ride alot though.  Poor DeeDee wants her to sit in his lap so badly but, she just won't have it yet.  She does really well bonding with anyone that can get down in the floor and play with her but, he just physically can't.  In time I know she will let him hold her.

Sweet baby girl we love you so much and can't imagine life without you!  This is her smirk! :)

r

Happy New Year! How can it ever compare to 2011!?!?

Sorry I haven't posted as much since we have been home.  I have been sick twice and Jason was sick once and with the holidays....let's just say it has been C-R-A-Z-Y! :)

Charlotte loved her first Christmas!  She quickly got the hang of opening gifts.  Every time she would open a gift, she would get a shocked look on her face and she would ohhh and ahhh! :  It was SO CUTE!  She got the hang of unwrapping so well that later I caught her opening her cousins gift upstairs! LOL!

The picture on the right is of her ohhhhing and awwing when she opened each gift. :)

Things have been going amazingly well.  I am in awe of how this little girl has adjusted.  We love her so much and it is so hard to believe she has only been home 1 month!  If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at mccfamily5@bellsouth.net  I would love to help others on their adoption journey. 

When we started looking into Lanzhou & Wuwei, we found there really isn't much information available and certainly not many pictures.  So I am working on getting our picutes downloaded to an online site to share with those that might be interested.  If you have any questions, about Lanzhou or Wuwei, please feel free to email me too.

Things about Charlotte lately:
-Her vocabulary is growing and now she is putting 2 words together. Examples: No Will, STOP Will, Love you, Go Baba etc...  along with mama, Drew, Ben, Will which comes out more like "ill" LOL! :)  She will also try to repeat everything I ask her to say if there is not a big crowd around.

-She has had a couple more night terrors but, I think it was due to new people being around (Jason's parents & sister came to meet her) and just being out of routine. I feel so helpless when this happens though.  There is no consoling her and she seems so scared. :(

-She LOVES to be outside & will cry and point to the door to go out.  Unfortunately, the weather has been unpredictable so we aren't always able to go out.  She loves her swingset!

-She is OVERLY affectionate now and we are LOVING that!  This started right after we got home.  She will pucker her lips & point to them, wanting to kiss whoever she is looking at.  We are a VERY affectionate family but, I don't think she had been used to this much affection at all...but you can tell she loves it! :)

-I am always telling her "I love you!" in kind of a sing songy way, and she has started telling me "love you".  So cute!  She hasn't said it on her own yet, just after I say it first but, it melts this mamas heart!

-She can do the splits which really shocked us. :)  So I think she would do well with gymnastics and, I am planning to start a mommy & me class with her soon.

-She loves her clothes.  Every morning, she gets a huge smile on her face as she holds up her clothes. 

-She loves her hairbows.  If I forget to put in a hairbow or it has fallen out, she will bring me 5 or 6 and motion to do pigtails. :)

-She is very easy going.  She has adjusted to her car seat now and when I tell her "wanna go somewhere with mama?"  She gets excited and definitely wants to go.

-She seems to love all of the boys equally now and they just ADORE her too!  I think the new might be wearing off a tad bit though, thankfully. :)   Drew cried one day this week because she likes their Legos and they forget to put them up so, she has destroyed a couple of their creations...oops!  He asked if he could spank her for getting into the Legos...ugh no I don't think so. :P  I told him he just has to learn to put them up out of her reach.  They haven't been used to a toddler so this is new to them. :)

-This girl LOVES to eat.  I think food must have not been readily available to her.  It seems sometimes that she can't get full.  At night, as we are getting into bed, she will sometimes motion she is hungry.  We haven't noticed any other food issues except that she doesn't seem to be have eatten much meat before at all.  So we have had to slowly introduce chicken and especially beef.

-She repeats motions of people that are around her.  Like, we were in the car with my niece and she had her leg propped up on her other leg and her arms crossed.  Charlotte did the same thing. :)  When she would change positions, she would try and mimick that position as well. funny girl!

-She went on her first John Deere Gator ride with DeeDee on December 30th and boy did she LOVE it!

-She met Jason's parents & his sister & nieces on December 27th.  It took her a while for her to warm up to them but, she really had some fun with them while they were here.

Christmas morning...look at that hair!  Bedheads! :)

She liked her Little Tikes roller coaster!

Opening her Baby Be Blessed Doll.  We picked out the scripture for her doll. :) 

She did NOT like Santa at all!

More of her opening gifts!  She was so cute! :) 

-

Wishing you a very blessed New Year for 2012 from our family to yours!

Medical Update

We have had several doctor appointments since we arrived home with Charlotte.  The International Adoption Clinic at Vanderbilt is awesome & who we saw first.  They took bloodwork (9 viles to be exact!) to see the levels of her immunizations, so we don't have to repeat any that she has already had etc..  & they will check to see if she is anemic & a long list of other things.  They did a stool sample (yuck), a TB test and she even had an observation session with an occupational therapist.

The occupational therapist said she is doing GREAT and that she is right on target for her age. YIPPEE!  She said she thought we would see a big improvement in her English in just a couple months.  They also noted that Charlotte is really flat footed so, they said we need to let he go barefooted as much as possible at home.

We are seeing Dr. Kelly @ Vanderbilt as her cleft surgeon.  He was SO NICE and even Charlotte liked him.  He said her palate repair looked great and so did her lip repair.  He asked who had done it when we told him it was done in China, at their local hospital, he was really impressed.  He did say he noticed a slight sagging on 1 side of her lip.  I had not noticed it, until he mentioned it.  But, he said it takes a year and a half for the lip to fully recover from surgery & look its best.  So, we will wait until June & look at it again & if needed, he will do a lip revision then. 

I showed him the spot on the back of her head.  I thought it was a scar of some kind but, he knew immediately that it was a cutis aplaysia.  He said it a rare skin problem where you are born without skin there.  So it healed & it is virtually a scar with no hair growing out of it.  He said he wants to remove it, and that there is a very small 1% chance for her during her lifetime to develop skin cancer if we left it.  So she will have that removed along with the lip revision, if he thinks she needs it, in June. 

He said the next surgery would then be at age 4 for her nose repair. Then, a surgery at around age 8 or so, for the bone graft surgery to do the final repair to her cleft gum line.  We are really thrilled to have him as her doctor.  He referred us to a pediatric dentist, Dr. King, and we went to see him that same day while we were in Nashville. 

I had already noticed that one of her front teeth was brown & that it would need attention soon.  It was hard to see because it was in the indention where her gumline doesn't line up.  Dr. King wanted us to come back the next day to have that tooth extracted.  He said it was infected & if not taken out soon, it could spread infection in her bones.  When he realized she hadn't eatten since breakfast, he decided he could do it that afternoon instead if we wanted.

They gave her something that was suppose to calm her down and we had to wait for 45 minutes for it take affect.  I expected it to have a bigger impact on her but, they assured me she would do ok.  They took her back and she didn't cry so, maybe the medicine did work.  About 20 minutes later the nurse came back with her & her tooth for the tooth fairy & Charlotte was just sniffling.  I consoled her for a little while and she just laid her little head on my shoulder.  She slept the whole 2 hour ride home & when we got home, she acted like nothing had ever happened.  She is such a trooper!

And just because I couldn't leave this post without pictures....here are a few from the last week.

Her first Sunday to go to church..she LOVED it and kept pointing to the choir and then touching our faces and grunting to make sure we saw them too.  It was so cute! 

This is at Santa's Village....she LOVED the merry go round and had a little temper tantrum

when we had to get off. :)   

She just amazes us every day.  She started waving and blowing kisses right after we got home  Now, just a couple weeks later, she has added saying "bye, bye" and "hi" and in Wal-mart tonight she waved at anyone that would look her way! :) LOL!  So cute!  She is so outgoing!

We are so thankful to have her home and Christmas is going to be extra special this year! 

We wish you all a very Merry Christmas! 

Love,