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September 29  |  November 6

Thursday, November 6, 2008 I will try to get you caught up on all we have done in the past month or so since we have been home! Our trip home is something I wish I could forget, not that was terrible really, just so incredibly long! Since we have been home a lot has happened. When we first got home Emmi Su shared our bed with us for about a week or so. Dan and I were not getting any sleep, so we decided to get her a little toddler bed and put it by our bed. She stayed there for a few weeks in her own little bed. She handled the moving to a little bed wonderfully! From the time we had her to the time we moved her to her little bed she had been in bed with us for about a month, counting the time in China. Since that was going so well, we decided to put up our bunk beds and have our oldest 3 share a room and moved Emmi into her own room. At the time she was still grinding her teeth quite a bit and was a noisy sleeper, which is why I wanted to move her, because although Dan can sleep through these type of things, it was keeping me up and I knew sharing a room with a sibling at this point would also keep one of them up! We did keep her “space” for her little bed by ours in case it didn’t work out and we needed to move her back. That never happened and she has been in her own room with no issues since! Only when we were first home would she try to get up in the middle of the night, and I would tell her to lay back down, and she would, but I think a lot of that was adjusting to the time difference. She did try to get up a few times, like hey I am done sleeping. She could go on a few hours of sleep if I let her, not an option, if you ask me, but she has had no issues with fear or nightmares at all, PRAISE THE LORD. That is one thing we specifically prayed for her, so it is an answered prayer for sure! Now I am happy to report, she no longer grinds her teeth at all, and stays in bed asleep all night every night. I do believe this is a sign of less stress for her, which is a good thing. In the last week or so we have had issues with waking up to a bloody nose, but a vaporizer and a few natural remedies have cured this too! I think things were just too dry and these few things we have done have stopped those, yea!!! Cause it was gross and awful to start your morning with, for everyone! Dan spent the first week we were home at home with us. I am so glad he was able to do that. He was so much help and we needed the time to adjust back to the time here. Well, I needed the time more than anyone, Dan and Emmi Su adjusted quicker than I. I think Dan was back on our time in 24 hours. I guess when you stay up for about 48 hours before you sleep it makes it easier. It took me a lot longer! Honestly I have just now quit waking up at 3 and 4 am! Dan has been back to work for a while and only in the last week or so has Emmi Su started asking about him and where he is. She now looks forward to him coming home. Their relationship has been challenging at times, to say the least. She has come so far with him since at first and now she almost prefers him over me. I think it’s cause I am home all day and have to play ‘bad guy’ and he gets to come home and be the ‘fun play with me’ daddy. She will now tell him she loves him, usually when he tells her first, and goes to him freely. She still doesn’t tell me she loves me unless Dan tells her to tell me, but that’s ok I know with time these types of things will come. We have had some attachment issues, a lot of which I won’t go into here, but I have done so on our blog. (I will talk about the blog later) She was very determined to not NEED us, and we still have moments where she is still quite determined to do things her way and not need us, but things are so much better than they were just weeks ago. A lot of it is control, and her wanting to do things on her terms, like make eye contact and show affection, if she is the one in control all is well, if we try to do it on our terms she gets quite irritated!

All four of our E's in matching shirts Emmi Su and Eden Ellessa and Evan Emmi "preaching" at her dedication with her YeYe (pappy) Our family and Pappy and Nana at Emmi Su's dedication service Very Pretty Girl

Things are improving and slowly she has allowed some of this, but it at times has been a slow, long road! We always thought we would adopt again and we were first home, I thought, NO WAY. I am now to the place that if God asked us, I know I could do it again, so that tells you how far we have come, and really in a short period of time. I am not in any way ready to start now, but I know I could and would if we are supposed to. (I am sure Dan would say, not if, but when honey) Eating at first was very challenging, not that she is picky per say, but she would eat things, and then they would come right back up. Her system was just not used to those types of food. We are still careful as to what we give her because of this, but she is so much better than she used to be. She hasn’t been car sick since we have been home, thankfully, but we haven’t traveled over 20 minutes either. It was horrid in China and she was sick on that long ride home from DC, but we haven’t had it here at home since! Hoping she is over that!! She came to us on a bottle with formula. Only in the past week or so I have switched her to a sippy cup. We have her on an American Organic toddler formula now, and she still gets that today only in her sippy cup. She is to turn 5 in February, but I don’t like talking about that, at least not right now. I feel like I have a 2.5 or 3 year old, not an almost 5 year old. I know there are good reasons for this, but it is hard for me to talk about. If I don’t think about her age I do just fine, but it’s hard to do when we have another little girl here the same age. (there is 2 months difference between Eden and Emmi Su) I had a travel mate tell me maybe this is a good thing for everyone involved, and I think she may have a really good point. Not just for Emmi Su’s sake but Eden’s too. There is so much to catch up on and learn, but I really think we just need some time for that and later it won’t be an issue to me. It is easier for me to think she is younger, she is a whole head or more shorter than Eden and she weighs almost half as much too! Even when we were in China, everyone there thought she was 2 as well, so it isn’t just me, she is just very very tiny!! Ellessa, our oldest daughter has taken to calling her “squirt” because she is soooo small and she says the name just “fits her”! She has gained about 2 pounds since we have been home and I think she has gotten about an inch taller too! Not bad improvement for a months time!!! She came to us pretty much potty trained. The only time we have an issue now as at nap time and night time. I just put a pull up on her for times she is sleeping, she will occasionally have an accident if she is playing and just doesn’t get there quite in time! She really does very well and we have no complaints. I think she sleeps so deeply she just doesn’t realize she has to go a lot of the time. I have heard other adoptive parents say the same thing! We still have days where we have fits and melt downs, but they aren’t as often nor are they as bad or as long as they were. They are often times when she can’t have control of a situation and she gets ticked off because of the lack of control she has. Again, they aren’t as often and so things are slowly improving. She is doing well with language. She literally understands everything we say to her. She now can use 2-3 word sentences in English. She says things like ‘baba bye bye work’ or ‘where nana’. I know she can use about 4-5 words at a time in Chinese, but that is just what I know or can understand. She doesn’t as of now speak real clearly, but we understand and we have also taught her some sign language for the basics. She is still very funny at times, we will say something to her and she will almost always respond in Chinese. For example when we say to say please she almost always says ‘ching’ which is please in Chinese. When we tell her we love her, she always says wo ai ni, which is ‘I love you’ in Chinese, she understands perfectly and could say it in English but chooses to respond in Chinese! Very cute! In October some time we attended a concert and saw Michael W Smith with Steven Curtis Chapman. All of us girls went and the boys went out on their own. We have had a couple of these nights. For the concert it was a girls night out and recently we had a girls night in when the boys went to a football event and had their boys night out. The concert was great and it was fun to see SCC after seeing him before we had Emmi Su home. His heart for adoption and all he has done is amazing. Even after the year they have had he was such a witness to all about holding on to FAITH despite what you may face! I really enjoyed it. Our girls night in consisted of painting our nails and just ‘hangin’ out, Emmi Su loved having her nails painted and the boys had a terrific time too! We have received Emmi Su’s citizenship papers and have applied for a social security card. Once we have her SS card we can start the process to re adopt her here in our state and get her a state issued birth certificate. While this isn’t absolutely necessary because the US recognizes foreign adoptions it will make her life so much easier to have a US birth certificate and so we feel it is a must! We have been to the doctor since we have been home and all went well. She is gaining weight and adjusting well. Adjusting as a family is going well. We have all had our moments. It was really hard for Evan when we were first home because Emmi Su had no issues with the girls but pushed him away constantly. If you know Evan, you know how hard this was on him. He is the most loving caring boy. He is our peace maker and wanted so badly for her to like him. She now seems to like him a lot and though there are still times she pushes him away it isn’t all the time like at first. She seemed to really take to our oldest Ellessa. She in fact started calling her ‘mommy’, so we had to tell sis to back off a little. This was hard on her. This can still be an issue, but sis totally understands now and is doing much better with it. Emmi Su never calls her ‘mommy’ anymore and almost always calls her ‘jie jie’. Her and Eden can go at it and at times they exhaust me!! But they have their moments where they play so nicely too, you know just the typical sibling stuff! She calls Eden, Eden, and says it well. She often calls Evan ‘ge ge’ but calls him Evan too (though it sounds more like eben)! When we were first home she was terrified of the dogs, but once she saw the other kids with them, she got over it really fast! I don’t think it was ever an issue after the first day! I will tell you a funny story related to one of our dogs. One night, like I do every night with Emmi Su, I was praying for her before bed , and I said something about angels that watch over us and she sat up and started kissing her lips together and yelling “ANGEL”. I lost it, I was laughing so hard. She was calling one of our dogs, her name is angel! She looked at me like I was nuts after all didn’t I just mention her! It was so cute and proves just how smart she really is! At the beginning of this month we had Emmali Su’s dedication service at our church. My dad is our Pastor and so not only was this a special service for us, it made it even more special that her ‘yeye’ was doing the service. It was a wonderful time and after the service we held a ‘meet Emmali Su Ainuo’ open house at our church. Most of Dan’s family came to meet her for the first time. We really enjoyed this day and I recorded so much more on our blog. If you would like to keep up with us and Emmi Su you can contact me and I would happily share our blog info with you! My email is under the guest book tab of this website! This incredible journey to our daughter isn’t ending here with coming home, truthfully it has just began and we thrilled with the opportunity to be her parents, her forever family. Without God none of this would have been possible. He used so many people to help us along this part of this journey and for that I will forever be grateful. I am still in awe of this wonderful community the ones who have gone before, those still waiting, and those who are only just home with their children. Everyone is so helpful and so supportive, I am so glad to be a part of this beautiful group, a family. I still stand in amazement sometimes that we went to China and brought home this amazing little girl and she stands there and calls us Mama and Baba. Adoption has to be one of the most defining moments in my life and I am forever changed because of it. I am so thankful we answered this “call” from our heavenly Father to go. So many times while in China we would hear from others that she was a ‘lucky baby’, but I don’t think she was the one who is ‘lucky’, and really I don’t even like the word lucky, we are the ones who are truly blessed! Incredibly BLESSED! Thank you to all of you who left wonderful messages, gave of yourself and your time to make this journey a possibility. We love you all! Dan, Nicole, Ellessa, Evan, Eden, and Emmali Su

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