Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Merry Christmas!!

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a New Year filled with love and happiness!


Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Pictures...

Jenna's 1 year pictures























Jenna displaying her "not so happy" face" with Santa





















All dressed up for her Christmas photos. What a cutie!!!

Monday, December 04, 2006

Is it really December already???!!!

Wow, it’s been almost a month since I posted last and quite honestly, it feels like just yesterday. My days slip passed me so quickly I’m afraid to blink in fear of opening my eyes and seeing Jenna coming home from school!!!! How do you stop it from going so fast!!!!

Anyway, we just got back from Thanksgiving trip to see my sister and her family in California. It was apparently a good time to be away as the temperatures here in Edmonton dipped into the -30 range….eeek! There were days at my sisters where we were playing with the kids in the front yard in the sun, how is that fair? Our trip was fantastic and, as always, went by too quick. Jenna had so much fun with her cousins but not so much with their little dog CoCo. Her and that dog just didn’t click, but it was so cute to see how she interacted with her. My sister taught her to waive her finger back and forth and say “No, no, no” and now she does it all the time, even when you tell her no….too cute.

As always, she’s growing like a weed. I think a haircut is in order sometime soon. My mom bought her a Halloween outfit in a size 2T for next year and we couldn’t even get it buttoned without her belly popping out! I think it might have been sized wrong because she's still wearing size 12-18 months. My little girl is growing way too fast. She still doesn’t have a lot of words that we can understand, although she seems to have her own language and we’ve become accustomed to actually understanding it. A lot of it is pointing and grunting which, sometimes, hammers on my nerves but I have to remember that it’s the only way she knows how to communicate so I have to learn to be more patient and take more time to try to teach her more words.

Her sleeping is good for the most part but there are still those days where she wakes up in the middle of night and we end up having her in our bed. And to be quite honest, I quite like cuddling with her in our bed so it really doesn’t bother me all that much.

We did the Santa picture thing when we were in Sacramento and at first, we had Jenna sit on her cousins’ lap when the 3 of them took the picture. Then she took one with Santa by herself, which would have been fine had she not turned around to see who was behind her. That was when things turned ugly…really, really ugly. My poor Jenna cried so hard there was hardly a sound coming out of her mouth. Who can blame her though, she’s never seen anything like this Santa Claus man and then her mommy leaves her on his lap and walks away. I guess I’d be pretty upset too. Needless to say, the $30 I spent on the package of pictures has her with a big crocodile tear running down her face. Oh well, it’s her first Christmas with us and it had to be done! I’ll have a good story to tell when she looks back at those pictures one day.

This week, I’ll be working on doing a legal name change for her so that we can get the ball rolling on her Citizenship, passport and social insurance number. We’ve been home with her now for almost 5 months and our 6 month post placement report will be due shortly. This is where we meet with our social worker again so that she can write up a report to send to China basically stating how Jenna is adjusting to her new life. And I can personally say that Jenna’s life is filled with more love than she can handle but more so, our home has been filled with more love, more laughter and more happiness than I could have ever dreamed of. I still catch myself sometimes staring at her in complete and utter amazement that she is in our lives. This little girl has changed my life in so many wonderful ways and I just love her to bits. She is definitely my dream come true! Today she got her Christmas photos done and she did such a good job. I was especially proud of her because this silly mama booked the photos right when she usually naps in the afternoon but she definitely exceeded my expectations.

I’ll leave you all with a few new photos….

(Okay, maybe I won't as Blogger is once again not liking me very much tonight and I'm wayyyy too tired to keep trying. I'll try again tomorrow!!!)