My goodness, we've been busy.

Ellie is now 17 months, and blossoming into a toddler. She's got a bunch of words: up, ball, bird, more, Alex, Ellie's shoes, Ma (which means "come someone" not necessarily me), ahden (which refers to a drink, mostly water), night-night, and bath. She understands a lot, and will respond with a joyful laugh when she's successfully communicated. When I bathe her and ask for a foot to wash, she will give one to me, then the other. When she's whining and I ask if she is hungry, she will laugh and nod her head with a grateful smile.

She's also figured how how a lot of things work. When she wants more food, she takes her bowl in her two hands, Oliver Twist-style, and will hold it up, saying "more?". When she is done, she will hand the bowl, then the spoon, then the stray bits of food, then the placemat to someone. When we are getting dressed, she is very helpful putting arms and legs into the holes. She likes to put on underwear, but of course she doesn't yet own any. Mine serve as necklaces, the boys' are anklets. Phil's boxers make nice hats. I do yoga every morning, and today Ellie wanted me to unroll the yoga mat on the floor for her. When I showed her how it unrolled, I thought she'd want to repeat it, but instead, she stood on the mat and did a pretty good imitation of a temple pose. I had just figured out what she was doing when she did a back bend, then got down and did an upward dog, then downward dog. I couldn't believe it. She'd gotten about half of my routine down, in the right order.

She likes to be a part of things, and assigns herself jobs. She is the official light extinguisher of the family, and she helps put wet clothes in the dryer. She is the one who closes the dishwasher door. At school she always helps wipe the tables, and she takes the chairs off of the table in the morning when she arrives. Her teachers have told us also how much she likes to help.

She's also watching the kids at school very carefully. She periodically bursts into a screaming rage when she doesn't get what she wants, but it comes and goes so quickly, and is about so very little, it seems more practice than real. She even threw herself on the floor once or twice to kick and scream. She's got a couple in her class who have tempers, so she's learning that too!

All in all, she's keeping us very busy, but she is such a joy.

Pretty Wardrobe

Another few fashion shots

Grown-Up Ellie

Leslie: Ellie has decided that she is one of us. She watches what we are doing very carefully in order to participate. She sees us reading all the time, and so has decided to join us. She'll pick up a book (more often upside-down than rightside-up!) and flip through it. If it is a magazine, she flips through the pages with her thumb, very grown up. She'll sit for a surprising length of time looking upside-down at a book.

She also spends a lot of time at the computer, one hand on the mouse and the other banging on the keyboard.

She even joins us when we watch tv. She doesn't watch, of course, unless there is music or birds. If there is music, she'll bop up and down, dancing. If there are birds, she'll point and shout. Otherwise she just climbs up on the couch, cuddles next to one of us, and pops her thumb in her mouth to settle in. Again, she'll sit there for a surprising amount of time.

At night, she falls asleep on our bed, while one of us sits with her. After a while, she noticed that we sit propped up with pillows. Now she always sleeps propped up with pillows.

She likes to help. She's assigned herself a series of jobs. It started at the JCA, where she is the one who hands the ID card to be swiped. Then it moved to credit cards, so she pays all the bills at the grocery store. Next she began to unload the cart onto the belt at the register. Recently she's appointed herself the official light-master, and she is in charge of turning on and off all lights. She also opens and closes lids, unwraps food (especially chocolate bars) and opens and closes doors. Her first real words manifest the importance of these activities: she says "light" when she wants to turn on or off the lights. She says "uh-oh" when she drops something. She also says "ouch" when she pinches us, and then promptly pats us with "gentle pats."

Poor little thing, with not two but four big people, she's got a lot of catching up to do.

More fashion shots

From the Glickmans, the Gawels (sorry it is blurry, she wouldn't keep the hat on and this is the best of 6 shots!) and the Strentas.

Brave and Bold Baby

Leslie: Ellie started pre-school on August 25. She is in a "Busy Bee" class from 8:30-12. I stayed for a few hours the first couple of days to try to ease the transition, but then I had my first day of my new job, so I've been staying only about 10 minutes. After a few days, Ellie began to be anxious as soon as we got in to the room, and cried as soon as she saw her teacher, Ms. June. I said a quick good-bye and then left each time. Today, after only a few weeks, Ellie finally didn't cry when I left. As you can see from Ellie's choice of reading material, it is an accelerated program.

Momma and Baby

Note the gorgeous outfits Ellie wears. We have wonderful, generous friends with really good taste.

Mom is in a 25 year old tee-shirt.

Gardening Day

We planted almost 200 plants over three days this month. We thought the landscapers were going to bring us the plants in two trips, but they didn't. Ellie likes to eat dirt, so we couldn't let her help. She was not happy about being left on the deck, but she sure was cute.

Storm Damage

All that open space in the yard, and the tree drops its trunk right on the swing bar. The tree was hit by lightning two weeks ago (I saw the fireball), and then as I looked out the kitchen window, Fay smashed Phil's playset into toothpicks. We think it can be fixed. This was the only major damage we had, though, and we never lost electricity, so we count ourselves lucky.

Snuggly baby

Ellie has learned how to cuddle. She cuddles stuffed animals, baby dolls, and of course, brothers.

Alex's Return

Alex was in Denmark for the month of July. He had a wonderful time at CISV, but we missed him a lot. This is Ellie's reaction to his return. She let him hold her, so clearly he wasn't a stranger, but she is trying to figure out who, exactly, this handsome young man might be.

Techno-girl

Ellie likes to copy what we do. She bangs on the keyboard, wondering what the attraction is. She also tries to talk on the phone, and somehow figured out that the toy phone is a phone, too.

Mama's birthday picture

While we were on the road, I turned another year older. We stopped at the American Folklife Festival in Washington, DC as a special treat. The festival was pretty lame (NASA??!!!), but we had fun anyway. Bhutanese food was pretty good, we all agreed.

Ellie had her first carousel rides, one each with the boys.

Ellie and her Teddy

Ellie loves the teddy bear that the boys gave her.

Ellie at the beach

She wasn't at all sure about sand. She'd eat it just fine, but didn't want her feet in it. By the end, she'd tolerate it on her feet, and would play with it in her hands, but she never wanted to get off of the safety of the lap.

Feet Redux

We are back from our three weeks in Connecticut.

Ellie didn't like sand or grass on her feet, but she continues to think they might be a part of a balanced meal. Sometimes she even puts both feet up at dinner.

We didn't get any photos of the sand, but it looked alot like the grass experience, only with a beige background.

Proud Sister

Ellie helped Alex celebrate his 5th grade graduation. She dressed up in her baby finest and looked so beautiful next to her handsome graduate and her baseball brother!

Little Feet

Ellie loves to sit in her high chair and tease us by putting her feet up. We've tried to explain that it isn't polite to have your feet up on the table, even when you aren't yet walking on them, and even when they are really more like food than transportation. But she doesn't listen. She smiles mischievously and puts the back up on her high chair tray.

Alex's Ellie haiku

I am a baby,
I'm trying to go to sleep,
warm hand on shoulder
eyes now closing sleepily
FINALLY, asleep

Teeth

Leslie: Have you read the Series of Unfortunate Events? Little Sunny Baudelaire is a baby and her attribute is her teeth, which come in handy in crucial situations. Ellie is like Sunny. When we got her, she had two teeth on top and two on the bottom. I let her bite my finger once, thinking she needed something to soothe tender gums. She bit hard enough that I thought she'd drawn blood. She didn't want to soothe gums, she wanted to try out teeth!

Now she's got two more on top. She bites everything. Our chair has bite marks. Phil's belt is a favorite chew-toy. She bites on a cup so that it cups her lip and nose, with no hands. She bites on the spoon and bobs it up and down with her teeth (again no hands). She's bitten every rail on her crib and on our bed. She scorns soft baby toys, opting for anything hard instead. She sucks her thumb and sometimes so hard that her sharp teeth created a blister on her thumb. We tried to get her to use a pacifier so that her blister could heal. She wasn't so interested, so I thought perhaps if she saw the boys with one, she'd get the idea. Alex gamely volunteerd for binky-duty. Ellie got the idea -- but decided that she prefered the hard plastic end. So when Alex had it in his mouth, she'd grab the other side and pull! If she gets ahold of paper, she rips it to shreds with her teeth. Obliging baby, she's figured out that when she's got paper in her mouth and I am coming purposefully towards her, it is time to offer the wet mass up to me, so she positions it on the tip of her tongue and gives it to me that way.

Earthquake

Leslie: A lot of people have asked me about the earthquake in China. This link to a US government map shows the area that was affected. http://www.earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/pager/events/us/2008ryan/index.html It is sort of lozenge-shaped, and Chongqing, the capital of Ellie's province, is in the "moderate" area. I've not heard of any damage in Chongqing, though they felt the shaking. We were on the 30th floor of a hotel, and one wall of our room was glass, so had we been there, it would have been pretty frightening. But no damage. Ellie's orphanage is to the southeast, up in the mountains. Someone on the Xiushan yahoo group found out that they didn't even feel the shaking, and knew about it only because they lost phone service.

Had Chongqing been closer to the epicenter, I can't even imagine what the death toll would have been. It is an enormous sprawling city, but with the density of New York. Many buildings are 20 or 30 stories. They are lucky it hit where it did, and that the area was lozenge shaped. Enough families have lost their one child.

Naturally, there are orphanages in the areas that have been hit. We don't know any details, but our adoption agency is helping with relief efforts: www.chinesechildren.org .

Ellie at the Zoo

Yesterday Ellie had her first trip to the zoo. She seemed to like the animals, and even looked where Jeremiah was pointing!

Sleepy baby

Ellie likes to sleep with an arm or a leg hanging outside her crib. I keep worrying that she will hurt herself when she turns over in her sleep, but she seems to be used to how to do it. In this one, though, not only did her arm hang out, but her face was mushed up against the bar. You can see that her mouth is pressing on a bar. I feel sure that this is part of orphanage behavior, but I don't really understand it. I've read about "head-banging" and other behaviors that look painful. Babies in institutions do them as "self-stimulating" behaviors. Maybe that is what this is.

Ellie's orphanage

Leslie: We sent a disposable camera to the orphanage in a care package right after we were matched with Ellie. The caretakers took a bunch of pictures, though unfortunately most were taken on the same day. Still, we got a sense of what it was like.

Ellie's orphanage was adopted by a charity, Love without Boundaries, which provided formula and nutrition education. So Ellie's physical needs were satisfied, and she is a healthy weight and height. The nannies clearly cared about the kids and did the best with what they had, but it is pretty grim nonetheless. Her crib was held together with string, and was lashed together with other cribs into a little raft of cribs in a big room. I wonder whether there was central heat, as I look at the building and remember how bundled the babies were. It is also clear that the babies spent a fair amount of waking time in their cribs.

I've no idea why so many of the pictures were taken on the diagonal, but most were.

Ellie's new hat

Such a lady! This is the first hat she didn't immediately pull off.

Ellie's new tricks

Ellie is just a doll. Poor baby has had a second ear infection (but is starting to pull out of it) and has started getting bumps and bruises (including today's shiner!) as she has a chance to explore her world. She's not yet figured out balance, even when sitting and leaning over to grab something.

Her latest new trick is learning to smile. I wonder if smiling is more social than laughing. Most of the time thus far, Ellie has laughed, and the pictures we have are laughing pictures. But in all the photos we had from the orphanage I'd noticed that she never smiled. As we got to know her the last two weeks I've been struck by the fact that she never just smiles, not in response to my smiles, not as a greeting.

Yesterday, she spontaneously started practicing just smiling. She bares her teeth and squints up her eyes. I know it is practice and not "real" because she still doesn't smile in response to anything, or as a greeting. She does it randomly, and often two or three times in a row. She's seen us do it, and is trying it out. She also has tried other facial expressions, but none are as obvious. I had to take about 10 pictures with my slow-shutter digital camera to capture it, but I finally got one! She is utterly hilarious!

Head-Shaking Game

Ellie's new favorite game is to shake her head at someone, and then wait for them to shake back at her. Here is an example! She started by shaking "no" (though of course it is still meaningless; she is just copying gestures she sees us using) and now (about 3 days later) is also doing up-and-down. She seems to be very social, with all this copying of gestures.

Jet Lag

We've been home now for almost 2 days, and one or the other of us has been asleep nearly all of that time. Both boys had unintended naps. Jeremiah mumbled, "sleep is overcoming me" just before he passed out. Ellie is the best sleeper among us. The first night, she'd slept on the last two plane rides, so arrived home and woke right up. The lights were all out and all male beings were asleep, which Ellie did not like at all. She insisted that I carry her at all times. She didn't even want her feet touching the ground in this strange place. I showed her the sleeping men, but she doesn't like seeing people asleep, so that didn't help. I played games with her on our bed, nodding off every few seconds and jerking awake. Finally I fell asleep and woke a couple of hour later to find her asleep next to me on the bed (we've got bedrails, so it isn't as dangerous as it sounds) with my hand still holding onto her. After that, she fell asleep, waking only for bottles. Last night she did the same, getting about the same amount of sleep as she did in China. The boys, however, woke last night between two and three and stayed up until about 4pm...

Home Sweet Home

Jeremiah: Last night we arrived at home. I was sort of glad to be back. The only problem was that it was 12:30 AM (which is the middle of the night). It was a problem because we barely got to play at all. We had to go straight to bed, even though we weren't tired. This is because it was lunchtime in China and we were used to that time. When we got home, we found out that our friends had visited our house and left us some stuff. They also put up a sign that said her name and something in Chinese.

The Return Trip

Leslie: It is about 10pm, and we are packing. Our luggage has to be outside our door at 5am, and we leave the hotel at 5:50am. We fly to Hong Kong with most of our group (a very short hop) and then about 5 families go on the same flight to LA, including little Amelia, who was on the plane out with us, but not with our agency. We lost sight of her in Beijing and we've seen again these last couple of days. The flight is 12 hours, with a three hour layover in LA. We arrive at 10 and leave again at 1:30, for Charlotte. Somehow we don't arrive in Jacksonville until almost midnight, with all the time changes. I think it will turn out to be something like 36 hours, door to door. Yikes! This will be the ordeal. Wish us luck! We might check in at Charlotte, which has free internet, but LA does not.

These pictures were taken on our walk back from the pearl market. The first is a "recycler" at work, taking all the useable bits from an old fridge. The second is the guy carrying a gas cannister on his bike. China!

Red Couch Photos

Leslie: These are the famous "red couch" photos at the White Swan hotel. Our family (the boys and Ellie are in their Chinese traditional clothes), the kids (our kids and their closest friends), and all the babies (crying of course!). Ellie is crying too, not because she was uncomfortable or scared, but because everyone else was, so she thought she'd better cry too. She is reaching for Jeremiah.

Guangzhou Market

Our last day of sightseeing. We walked out of our fantasy-world of Shamian Island and into real Guangzhou. We were warned not to bring much cash and to keep all valuables in our fronts, because there are lots of pick-pockets. We had no trouble with that (it is probably no worse than London or New York)! We walked through a street of spices, beans, mushrooms and other dried food items, (the hanging pile to the left here are dried starfish!), then through a street of live animals (food or pets?) including kittens, puppies, fish, bunnies, and chicks. Finally we were in a big shopping street that looked like nothing so much as.... Chinatown in America. Who knew that the arches and tiny little shops crammed with strange things is exactly like what a shopping street in China looks like?