Alyssa is Great!

I have been so terrible about keeping this updated. Alyssa takes up so much of my "spare time" that I don't have too many chances to surf the net, let alone post. I do enjoy reading updates from our friends though so to be fair here is one from me.

Alyssa is walking everywhere and runs too. She doesn't crawl at all now unless we are trying to block her from walking out of the living room and then she will crawl under our leg. She is a climber and will push toys up against the couch to get up on it. She is waving all the time. Some days she even wakes up waving. She keeps us laughing. My niece bowed to her the other day and now she bows to everyone. It is so cute. She is beginning to talk and says a few words. She loves to dance and just cracks me up with her moves. My dad thinks she is much older than we were told because she is too smart for only one year old.

Here are a few pictures that we have taken over the past couple of weeks. Hubby gave me a new camera for Christmas and I have taken lots of pictures. I try to keep the camera in the diaper bag so that I have it when I have Alyssa no matter where we are.

She has really changed the past few months!

Finally an Update!

I have been so bad about updating anything since we got home. I try to read email and some of the groups I am in but rarely do I post anything anymore. I go back to work tomorrow and am not looking forward to leaving Alyssa.

Alyssa went to the doctor a couple of weeks ago for her first appointment and was given a clean bill of health. He said she must have had an angel looking out for her because she is perfect and right on target for her age. She was almost 19 pounds then so I am sure she is at least that now. She is a very good baby and will be walking very soon. She has learned to say "bye, bye" with a very cute wave that sometimes takes both hands. She is very smart. We are getting started on "baby sign" language and I really think she will pick it up faster than I do.

Here are some pictures we took this past weekend.

Hong Kong

We are in Hong Kong and all I can say is WOW! We took the train and it was wonderful and only lasted about 1 1/2 hours so not much more time involved than if we flew and only paid about half. If we had purchased our own tickets after we got here we won't have paid nearly as much. I didn't know how to go about getting train tickets so we had our agency do it. We paid them over 3 times more than they paid and we still had to pay for them to take us to the station. This was one of the only things that I think they charged way to much for and I will speak to them about it after we get home.

We walked for about 2 hours last night and it is hot but beautiful! The walkway along the water is awesome. Alyssa went to sleep in the stroller but that is what she needed. We ran into a family that is living in HK right now but are from West Virginia. They are adoptive parents of two children, one from Kazakhstan and one from Ethiopia. The mom was in awe of Alyssa and her beauty. I could only agree. She is totally adorable and I could not be happier and feel so lucky to be her mom.

She is very active and really only is still while she sleeps or if we are moving in the stroller. She loves going for a walk and seeing all the people. I just hope she is not disappointed when we get home and go for a walk and don't see but one or two people. She is very interested in everything around her. We leave in 2 days for home and as much as we have enjoyed this trip we are looking forward to showing off our little treasure. She is everything I dreamed of!

Family Blog Address

I have been terrible about updating but hubby is doing pretty good. This is how you find his http://members.cox.net/ourjourneytoalyssa


Here are some pics from the last couple of days. Everything is going great but I have been pretty tired every night and go to sleep shortly after the baby.

She loves to eat and will try just about anything I feed her. I was so afraid she would only take a bottle. So many of the babies from her orphanage will not eat anything and as a matter of fact will not even put anything in their mouths. She is teething and everything goes in the mouth!

Daddy and Alyssa went swimming!

I love this picture, she is so beautiful!

We got her!

She is healthy other than a little runny nose. She seems to be right on track for her age. She can crawl, pulls up in her crib and sits from a lying down position. It appears she was well taken care of and it is hard to believe she is from an orphanage. All the babies from her orphanage look great and some are very big. Her referral info was right on! She is about 17.5 pounds and fits into her 6-9 month stuff.

I picked her out in the group before we got her! Isn't she adorable!

We get Alyssa in about 21 hours!

We just finished the paperwork for tomorrow and we got to see her passport photo. It was taken not too long ago. She is adorable!!!!! She really looks like my baby photos. More updates tomorrow. We are going out for hot pot tonight with the group.

We are in China now

The flight was very long but not too bad. The longest leg from LAX to Taipei was okay. The seats were pretty comfy and we had a leg rest too. It was quite like my recliner but I was able to get a little rest. They kept us feed. I was amazed though that even on the shortest flight of 1:40 they feed us lunch. In the US we felt lucky on one flight because we got a bag of chips!

I am getting ready to go for the day now. The beds are harder than you can imagine, unless you sleep on the floor. I am sure with a little sleeping pill each night they will be bearable and then I take an Aleve in the morning. For those that are still waiting be sure to get the sleeping pill and bring plenty of Aleve and Tylenol.

Will post more later!

We leave today!

I will try to post when I can in China but from what I have read it is not too easy. Hopefully I can at least post pics!

We are headed to China!!!!!!

We are leaving on Sept 11th and Gotcha Day is scheduled for Sept 17th. We are flying to Chongqing on the 16th so it is possible we could get her that day. I am so ready and at the same time so not prepared! I still need to pack everything.

I will post pics when I can.

Office Surprises!

I came in Friday morning still beaming from our referral call and found a sea of pink in my office! The "Aunties" are almost as excited as I am. I just love working with these women and believe me Alyssa will call them of them her aunts. I have the best co-workers in the world! Thanks guys!

This is from my sister. She came to the office and surprised me with this cute bear, balloons and a bracelet. My family has been so excited an supportive. I have read of other people getting grief from family or friends when they mention adoption especially IA but so far I have not experienced that from anyone I am close to. I am not sure how I would handle it, the stress from the adoption is enough that to add in people I love questioning our decision would drive me crazy.

Another Photo!

I thought I should post at least one other picture of Alyssa. We have signed and returned our acceptance letter to the agency. They gave two deadlines to return them, one was for today and one was next Monday. They think we will have a better chance to travel in September if they send the acceptances back today. Those that wait may have to wait until the end of October to travel. Of course this is just a guess and we may have to wait anyone. Please say a prayer that we get our TA pretty quick and our CA is before Sept 28th so we can get our baby and bring her home!

I have been asked by several to place this back on here. All I know about her is she is CUTE!!!! I do not assume anything. She just makes me smile and how could anyone stay in a bad mood watching this?

I have changed the setting to make you login to leave a post due what I feel was a rude comment. Sorry about this but if someone wants to be rude they need to at least leave their name so I can call them on it. Some people can be real jerks!

S

Introducing our Beautiful Daughter Alyssa Brooke!



I lived for referral day during the wait so I need to add mine to the list that is out there.




Yang Su Lan

November 23, 2006

Chongqing

We are really close now!

It is not matter a case of telling people we will get a referral in a few months, few weeks or just I don't have a clue. We can now tell people it looks like it may be by the end of this week or at the latest next. I really think it will be either Thursday or Friday. I am driving my coworkers crazy with this wait. They have been very understanding and supportive. The plan right now is as soon as we know for sure the referral will be coming that day I am going to leave work and meet hubby at his work to get the news together. I just can not imagine not being together. He is about an hour drive away so I hope to find out by 11 am so I can meet him for lunch then go back to his office to take the call. We have our ladybug letter ready fill out with all her information. We also have a special referral page ready to add a picture and information about the baby. We will call our parents and siblings first followed by our close friends. We hope to have a picture soon after the call so that we can send a link to all our loved ones and to upload the file to Walgreens or Walmart to print for our family.
We are all ready and just need a baby!

The Room is almost finished!


We don't have much left to do to feel ready, although I am sure we will never be finished decorating her room. As she gets older she will no doubt want to change things and we will be only too happy to try to please her. I just hope we can leave the murals up for a few years at least since they are really cute and took a lot of work to paint.

This is the finished first mural. Not much changed but we did paint over some of the glitter and fill in some sparse areas.

This is the second mural. Hubby did more work on this one than I did. he had it all planned out in his mind how it would look. The top of the mural is over my head so unless I wanted to paint standing on a ladder, and I don't, he had to paint the top part. He did and excellent job!

My sister came and cleaned out the closet and get A's clothes put away. They have been in the game room on the pool table for months. She often house sits and keeps the dogs for us and she has wanted to play pool so this was for her too. I don't go in the game room much. I hate to lose and I have not played much at all. Hubby loves to play and if I try to go in and just practice he will come running.

During the long wait we have participated in many sock swaps and we have also purchased many pairs on our own. My sister says we do not need to buy any more socks as she already has 75 pairs!

I did buy several pairs of tights that we on sale for $.99 this weekend. They were just too cheap to pass up.

My "new" Ride

My old car is ready to retire and take it easy. With over 222,222 miles it was time. We bought a new to us minivan. We planned to buy a minivan as soon as the baby came home and when we made that decision we didn't know the wait would be so long. The air conditioner quit a few weeks ago in the old car the engine is still strong though and we are going to hang on to it for a while for a spare. Anyway with the summer weather coming on I didn't think it would be a good idea for me to be an impatient waiting parent and a bitch due to the heat combined, so we got serious and found me a new car. LOL

We got a fairly good deal on a 2004 Honda Odyssey with low miles. It should work for us for many years to come!

Now we just need to get a car seat and of course a baby!

Pictures of Alyssa's room

I don't have a picture of before we started, just think clean sweep before! This is the room with a fresh coat of paint, new baseboards and freshly cleaned carpet. It is ready to load in.

These are the outlet covers I hand painted. Not too bad for someone that can't draw a straight line. LOL

The crib ready to go!

Now all we need is a mattress and of course the baby!

We are still working on it but this was a good start. We have a new ceiling fan and are painting murals on the walls. She also has a dresser and hutch in the garage to put in here. I will post more pictures are we go.

The Room is Painted!

We finally got the room cleared out and painted for the baby. I had not been in a hurry to do the nursery since the wait had increased. I just don't think I could handle seeing an empty nursery for over a year.

The walls are a nice shade of green, almost the color of sherbet. I wanted decorative outlet and switch plates but could not find any I liked for the price I wanted to pay. I bought a switch plate over a year ago that was really cute at Wal-Mart but I only bought one and needed two. I also didn't see any outlet plates. I think the one I bought was over $5 which is a little high when we needed 4 outlet plate and one more for the light switch. Also, we needed one for the phone jack and cable outlet and I have not ever seen one of those done cute, so I painted my own. It saved me some money and they turned out pretty cute. I am not a painter so they are not professional but for homemade they are pretty good. I did all the plates including the phone and cable. I will have to post pictures pretty soon.

I cleaned the carpet last night so we are moving furniture in tonight. It has been in the garage for over a year now and we need the space for our old washer and dryer since we bought a new set. We got the red LG front loader and we are going to stack them so I now have room for a freezer which we have coming with the laundry set. It should be delivered tomorrow afternoon.

When we started this process over 2 years ago I thought we would be home within a year and I would be busy trying to talk hubby into another baby by now. I guess the CCAA had other plans.

We sent our dossier to GWCA on 10/24/05 and I didn't send it overnight since the cost was about $20 more. I didn't think it would make much difference since we were going to be in the November group anyway. We got lucky and GW called to let me know they got the package in time to send if off on 10/28/05. Our LID is 11/17/05 the next LID for GW is 11/21/05. Four days doesn't seem like much and in November 2005 it was not a big deal. The CCAA would send referrals for an entire month at a time. But as soon as we got our paperwork sent in the wait started to increase and the CCAA said it was due to a decrease in abandonment of babies and an increase in domestic adoption. I am fine with this reason, I will wait years if needed. One of the reasons we went with IA was due to the uncertainity of the wait with domestic adoption.