Silly Girl

Here is our silly girl.

The Big Debut!

On Sunday, Jadyn made her big debut at church. It was quite the event. As you can tell, she loves to hang upside down. This is her Daddy's fault. Everytime he gets her, he hangs her upside down. Thus, the reason for the hanging upside down picture. So, what we have discovered is that it doesn't matter if you are in front of 1000 people, when you want to hang upside down, you go for it. It also doesn't matter if you have a dress on. :)

She is quite the entertainer and keeps us laughing, tired, but laughing. She is spending a little more time in her walker (Praise God!) and a little less time on my lap. We are still struggling with eating as she don't want to eat from a spoon. Thank you Lord for fish sticks and pasta pick-ups. She loves pancakes or a boiled egg (only the white part) for breakfast and will eat all the fish sticks (yuck!) in the freezer. She is such a hoot.

We had a relatively quiet weekend, still working on nap time, but she is sleeping great at night. She normally goes to bed around 8:30 - 9:00 pm and sleeps 10-12 hours. I can't ask for much more than that. She seems to have made the switch from China time to Tennessee time. Yay! Well, got to go, my walker time has just run out and someone is pulling on my left arm, so typing is becoming more diffucult. Enjoy the pics.

Amy and J

Happy Birthday to Me!

Today is my 42nd birthday and boy, am I feeling my age, plus about 20 years. Let me tell you about the sense of humor of the God I serve.

When I was born, my Mom was 42 years old. As long as I could remember, she always said "you were not an accident, you were a blessing". Get real Mom, who has a baby at 42 and means to. I always laughed at her for being so "old" when she had her last baby, especially since the rest of her children were 14, 16, and 18.

Well, I guess the laughs on me. I am 42, a new Mother of a 13 months old and my boys are 14 and 20. Now who's laughing. I am, because it's one of the most joyous times of my life. Yes, I am exhausted. I'm not as young as I use to be you know. Either that or I'm just too old to remember how hard it is to have a 1 year old. Maybe that's the senility setting in. :) What a joy my family is. The boys are great with Jadyn and she adores them. And likewise, they adore her.

Yes, today I feel 42. Maybe tomorrow I'll feel 32, but I doubt it. My back hurts, maybe because my heart is SO full. God has blessed this family with a precious little girl that was created just for us.

She Gets an A+

Jadyn's first night home - where she belongs...

Today, Jadyn had her first visit to the Dr. We went to see Pete this morning for her check up. She actually did very well, even though it cut into her nap time. She was well behaved, for the most part, and did all of her "tricks" for the nurses. Of course when Pete came in, she acted mute.

She is really quite the entertainer. She constantly surveys the room to make sure that everyone is watching her and what kind of reaction she is getting. She's a hoot!

She weighed 21.8 lbs which is down 2 lbs from what she weighed in China. I am not really surprised by that as her diet has changed dramatically (introduction of table foods) and she is in a whole new environment. We made the decision not to redo her immunizatins at this visit as we felt it best to let her have another few weeks to settle into her new life. She was so traumatized when we first got her, I don't want to risk any setbacks. She is laughing, playing, talking, and generally being the cut up that we knew she would be. So, next visit, we will begin with blood work and immunizations. That should be fun.

Pete said that I could switch her to whole milk as he was not concerned about where she is nutritionally. He felt that she would be fine on milk. He was also not concerned about her developmental delays and felt that she would continue to quickly catch up. Actually, the only thing on the developemental chart for a 1 year old that she could not do is pull herself to standing. She has some weakness in her muscle tone, especially in her upper body. If you have seen her legs, you'll understand why there is not much weakness there. We have learned to roll over from back to front and front to back, wave bye bye, say mama, say dada, show us her tongue, play pat-a-cake, and play pee pie. She is so funny. She learns very quickly. She is still not eating from a spoon except for ice cream and she ate a whole scoop of vanilla ice cream with me feeding her from a spoon. I could not get it to her fast enough. She was like a little bird.

She is a pure joy and we look at her and still can't believe that she is actually here and that she is ours. And yes, we still look at her and cry. Pray that she will soon get on Tennessee time and off of China time and that her itching and rash improves. She is more that we could ever have hoped for. She is a perfect fit for our family. Hmm, imagine that.

Woo Hoo, We Are Home!

We are home and we are GLAD of it. It is SO good to be home. We thought we would never get here. It was a super long trip home, but we finally made it. We were met at the airport on Saturday afternoon by a LARGE group of friends and family and it was sweet. Jadyn did great on the flights and with her welcoming committee. She sort of had that deer in head lights look, but she handled it all very well. She is just so precious.

We are working hard on getting her on Tennessee time instead of China time and if anyone has any secrets, I'm open for suggestions. She doesn't cry at night, just awake. She is so sweet and we are just nuts about her. All of us. She is particular fond of her brothers and likewise. They can't get enough of her. Her Daddy comes home at lunch to see her, so she is not lacking in the attention department. We are working on catching her up developmentally and she is a quick learner. She is laughing, playing, entertaining and being the center of attention. (which she is very good at) What a doll God has given us. We are truly blessed. She is fitting into the Hood family perfectly, no surprise at all however. She was ordained to be our daughter before the very foundations of the world was laid. It is so obvious, she was/is destined to be ours.

Tomorrow, we go to the Dr for her first check up. Stay tuned for an update on that. Until then...

Another Day Down!

We have another day behind us and we are exhausted. We are having so much fun and still can't believe that we are finally here. Beijing is such a modern city and we have been a bit surprised at how Western it really it really is. It's really not alot different than the big cities at home, just more bicycles! :)

Today we went to the pearl market which was pretty neat. Bargaining is the name of the game there and I think we actually walked away with some really good deals. I'm happy with our purchases. Seth bought some beautiful freshwater pearls to put up for his future wife (awww) and Zachary bought Jadyn a beautiful pink pearl bracelet (awww again) and both brought tears to my eyes a little. We left there and came back to the hotel and walked across the street to a coffee shop for lunch. The food has been probably the most interesting part yet. We have had one INCREDIBLE chinese meal (no forks, just chopsticks which was worth the price of admission itself) that was so good. The breakfast bar is very western, so every male in my family left there VERY happy and full of eggs and bacon. I left there full of watermelon and a hard boild egg! :)

After lunch, we went to the Chinese Acrobatics show which was pretty amazing. I got some pretty incredible pictures of the show and will get them posted as soon as I can. We have to head out early in the morning at 8:00am to go to the Great Wall and to the Cloisonne factory (Pat say's yippee on that too!) so the day will be full. We also have the Harley Davidson shop address written in Chinese to give to the cab driver, so an adventure awaits us I am just sure of it. I'll try to capture that on film also! So, it's 2:30 in the morning here, everyone is fast asleep except me of course. I better get back to bed to try and get a little sleep before I have to get up in just a few hours. We love you all!

Amy

Greetings from Beijing!

WE'RE HERE! And we still can't believe it. Pat posted some pictures on his blog so be sure and check them out.

Man, what a trip. We are having a great time so far, but everything just pales in comparison to the real reason that we are here. My mind is on one thing and I'm having a little trouble feeling the excitement of everything else around us.

We had a great visit with a M family last night and this morning. They are doing an incredible work running a foster home. I so enjoyed seeing the children and visiting with them. All of the 12 children in their home are special needs. They are just so precious. We arrived at the hotel this afternoon and have been out walking the street looking for dinner. The guys ate at McDonald's and I opened the lid of a grilled chicken (?) sandwich that just didn't look to suit me - to much unidentifiable things attached to it. Oh well, the picture on the box looked good. Anyway, I don't think I will starve. I had part of a mashed blueberry muffin that I saved from the plane. :)

Remember to check Pat's blog for more pics. Remember to pray for our little girl. We're so ready to get to her. We love you all and we'll post more tomorrow!

Oh, What a Night!

Well, here I sit in the Detroit airport, waiting on a connecting flight to Tokyo. We left left the house at 8:12am this morning and headed for the Nashville airport. We got up at 5:00 when the clock went off and I had only been in bed for about 40 minutes. I went to bed at 4:10am, whew, what a night. I guess it was a combination of nerves, emotions, and an endless list of things to do. I hope we make it to China with everything. I had a fabulous packing list and stuck to it pretty close. What a task, packing for 2 weeks in China for 5 people.

The whole thing seems very surreal. People have asked me repeatedly if I am excited and I am, but yet it just doesn't seem like it's really happening. We have waited so long for this day and it's finally here and I can't believe it. Go figure!

Most of the blog updates will be done on Pat's blog. I will probably update from time to time, if I put the baby down long enough :) otherwise, just look to Pat's blog for the updates and hopefully a little video. Pray for us, especially for safety and good health. Pray for little Jadyn, that she will transition smoothly and with no trauma. Pray that she will know our voices when she hears them and supernaturally feel a comfort that only God can place in her heart. Thanks for following our journey. We love you all and can't wait for you to meet our new daughter!

Photography 101

Pat and I bought a new camera to take with us to China and I am so excited about it. It is a Canon XTi, digital SLR and it takes incredible pictures. Yesterday, I spent the morning with my friend Alison doing a crash course in photography. Alison is a wonderfully talented photographer and I guess I can just hope that maybe a little of her knowledged rubbed off on me. Anyway, here's a little sampling of some of the pics that I took yesterday. I'm pretty proud of them. Thanks Alison for your wonderful help and a huge thank you to Katy, who was a very cooperative model for our photo shoot. Good girl, Katy, good girl.