Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Hello all . . . first, we can not thank you enough for your guestbook comments! It makes us feel so supported while so far from home. We miss our family and friends!

A few notes about today . . . We gave Anna Kate her first bath, which I have to say she did not enjoy. Our bathtub is very big, and too overwhelming for her. The next bath will be in the sink!

We are now two steps closer to coming home, as today Anna Kate had her Medical Exam, and we applied for her passport. So now the Chinese portion of the adoption process is done!

We learned today that Anna Kate is small for her age, even by Chinese standards. She is by far the smallest in the group, and is also delayed physically. We are feeding her well . . . in addition to bottles she eats scrambled eggs, congee, and smashed bananas mixed with formula and rice cereal. Later this afternoon we played on the floor for about 1 and 1/2 hours, working to ensure that she crawls around and is active. In just that short amount of time she showed improvement in her hand coordination and ability to play with her little toys.  Her nature is so sweet, and she is just fun to play with and care for! I'm confident that with lots of time and attention we'll get her caught up!

"Big Sis" fell asleep before she had a chance to blog! She continues to do well and show herself to be a great traveler. She is thoroughly enjoying the time spent with her travel mate Zoe.

Joe has created a special "Anna Kate Day" video for you all to enjoy. It's posted at the bottom of the page with audio now.

Apparently, You Tube showed a message stating that the audio was not authorized. Thanks for letting me know, Shawna! We are not able to browse to You Tube in China so I couldn't check the upload. The video (now posted at the bottom of this page) is set to the song "Little Wonders" by Rob Thomas. -Joe