Lucy's First Birthday

Lucy has had her first birthday. Well, to be clear, not her first birthday, but her first time having a birthday celebration! Lucy is officially three years old today, and we had a great (sort of) time. As you can see, she wasn't into the cake or singing to start with - but she eventually warmed up once she realized that the cake was for her to eat...

One Year - Happy Anniversary Lucy!

It's hard to believe that it has been a year - and then it's easy to believe that another year has gone by. Today, July 2, is the one year anniversary of Lucy's adoption in China. It was a hot, amazingly sticky day in Fuzhou, not too far off what it feels like in Seattle today - and we had been preparing most of the day after travelling to Fuzhou from Beijing with the two other couples who were meeting their children - Scott & Chris, and Travis & Michelle. After days swealtering in Beijing and wondering if we'd ever see blue sky again, we set off for Fuzhou.

The actual getting ready to meet the kids was a funky affair. Far too much running back and forth as we learned they had forgotten to have us copy this document, or bring two copies of another document, to prepare this cash or that voucher, this form to have ready - and then getting it all pulled together. After a few false starts to actually walking into the conference room where we would meet the kids, in we went. We were joined by Lynn, who was meeting her older son who is from Lucy's orphanage.

As we sat and waited we tried to get ready - food out, toys out, cameras ready or not ready... And then SLOWLY the kids started to arrive. Malone literally RAN into the room to meet his mom Lynn and his new sisters. By the time we figured that he was there, I was able to see Lucy coming into the room with the Director of her orphanage. She was so small - smaller than a 27 month old should have been, quite frankly. They handed her to me, and she was so light - and to my suprise, in no diaper at all. We got to know each other with cheerios and toys. She would not take off the little backpack that she had arrived with, and in holding her I knew I would have to shop for new clothes - the ones I brought would be way too big. (Note: she is just starting to fit into those clothes this week!)

After about 15 minutes, Shen arrived for Travis & Michelle. Not to be outdone by good behavior in Lucy, Shen came into the family with a BANG! Yelling, screaming, and crying - poor guy! He was not sure about this new mama and baba and wanted all of us to know. Lucy, for her part, just wondered what the fuss was about. Shen wanted nothing to do with baba, and sat on mama's lap screaming. None of the balls, stickers, cars would suffice to distract him. Thankfully - there were bubbles - which proved to be a GREAT distractor.

By the time he settled down, Jade arrived for Chris and Scott. Not sure if she should scream, she settled for something in between - tears and unhappiness for sure, but not the raw emotion shared by Shen. She settled in with either her mama or baba, and I think immediately realized that here were folks who could worship her!

A year later, Lucy is finally the size of the child I was anticipating getting last year. She is only a few months older than what I thought she would have been. After returning to the states, bone scans confirmed my belief - that she was considerably younger than her paperwork stated - anywhere from 6-10 months younger. During this past year I have legally changed Lucy's birthdate by 4 months - taking the 8 month average for how much younger she was, and splitting the difference, just in case there is a mistake. However, each day in watching her developmentally I believe that she is probably about 8-10 months younger than the 27 months she was supposed to be, which would have put her at 17-19 months old when I got her. Hopefully she will like the new birthday, and not fret too much that I changed one important piece of who she was and her story from China.

Lucy has come a long way in the past year, and still has quite a journey. She is one of the most spirited and smart, independant and daring little girls I know. She loves her big sisters, and copies them far too often. She is very healthy thanks to surgeons in China who repaired her heart, and loves to laugh. Happy Adoption Day, Lucy!

Tulip-time

Each spring we make our way up to the tulip fields for a celebration of Gwenn's birthday, and as a welcome to spring. This year was fantastic, with lots of pretty blooms, moderately nice weather (meaning it only rained a bit) and lots of fun. We had a great time, and everyone was nice and tired by the end of the day.

Finalized

Lucille XiaoMai is both officially a Peterson,with accompanying birth certificate in English, and the proud owner of a new birthdate compliments of developmental evaluations and bone scans. Congrats Lucy!

We had a great judge who was amazingly patient as Gwenn tried out pretty much everything in the courtroom, and I want to thank Mary - my amazing lawyer who saw me through this! She was there before with us, but it's great to have her around. We could not have done it without her!

Lucy: The Tattooed Toddler

Lucy loves dress up, and she and Maren (our international student from Germany) had a great time the other day - and not only dressed up, but tattooed. Here are some of the pics - Lucy loves the camera, and we had a great time with the pics..

Hippie Chicks

Thanks to Schmarr, who is on my team and got a bit crazy with her tie-dye last weekend. Thanks so much for these great shirts! They LOVED wearing them this weekend!

Lilypie

Thanks to a new mom who joined WCC today, I have learned about Lilypie - a great online company that is creating customized tickers for bio and adoptive parents!

http://lilypie.com/

Ella pics

Like me, Ella prefers to be BEHIND the camera - which is why I have such a tough time getting ahold of great pictures of Ella. In addition, somewhere she has learned about the "Asian camera gene" and now tells me she likes to take pictures because she is Chinese. Not, of course, because it's cool to take pictures...

Lucy photo update

Well, I finally have pics off my camera, so I'll be adding new pictures of everyone! Tonight, it will be Lucy...

Urgent Care and ER

If everything else wasn't enough, Lucy had me running all over this weekend. I wound up with a sick little girl who is thankfully doing better now. But, we spent a nice day yesterday in the local ER having CT Scans, etc. Thankfully she slept through much of it, and is back to her normal crazy self today. I, however, have still to recover.

Implications of a new age

So, the full effect of Lucy not being 30 months old is finally sinking in. When I think about it, there are two things that come to mind on how this may have occured. Either it was not thought out - someone with many files dropped them, and put them back together in the best way possible - but aligning Lucy with the file of an older child. This seems improbable, as I would have still received the child of the paperwork, and scratched my head over how much she may have changed from her photo.

The second option is that there was something done on purpose. My best guess would still be watching out for Lucy - another, older, cardiac patient (about 6-10 months older than Lucy) didn't survive their surgery, and to expedite Lucy and her adoption her file was associated with the child who didn't survive, and she was attached to the other file.

The biggest impact came to me over the weekend - if the files are fiction, then she needs a full cardiac work-up, since I don't know the status of her heart, since the paperwork is not accurate. So, off to Children's again to try and figure out what is going on. It makes a lot of sense, since they think they found an ASD when her heart was being checked after we returned, and it wasn't listed in her file.

Pumpkin Patching it

We had a great trip to the pumpkin patch. thankfully, there were no repeats of last years ER visit when Ella suffered an allergic reaction to Remlinger Farms. Equipped with our EpiPen Jr. we headed out, and had a great time. Lucy was confused by what on earth we were doing out there, but finally got into things...