Eliana is two!

Happy 2nd Birthday, Eliana!

July 25, 2008

On Friday July 25th, our sweet girl turned two years old. Isn't she adorable? Last year, we celebrated her 1st birthday with a cake and her referral photo on the table (see below). We had JUST sent in our Letter of Intent to Heritage Adoption Services to adopt "Guo" after coming home from our annual 4th of July beach vacation. We had started the home study process, but not yet completed it. What a difference a year makes! It was so nice to have our daughter here with us to celebrate her 2nd birthday properly. Last Tuesday marked 3 months since we returned home from China with Eliana as a part of our family. Since she has really been a part of our lives for over a year now, in many ways it feels that she has been 'with us' much longer than she has. August 7th will mark our 4 'monthiversary' of Gotcha Day, as well as our 15th wedding anniversary. What a day to remember!

July 25, 2007 - The Cohns celebrate "Guo's" 1st birthday at home without her(I found out later that I used the wrong Chinese character for Zu on her card)!

We don't have any photos of Eliana ZuGuo on her first birthday last year. Since we had not yet received PreApproval to adopt her from China, it was too early to send a care package to her or to have a birthday cake delivered or request additional photos. I wonder if her first birthday was noted at all while she spent it at Qingyuan SWI (her orphanage)? These are the pictures I have received of Eliana from late June and mid-August of last year - as close as I could get to her 1st birthday. See how much she has grown and changed in the past year!

June 28, 2007(She always crosses her feet like this - so cute)!

August 16, 2007 (not quite walking yet)
LOVE the cheesy smile, but not a big fan of the buzz cut!
This one was from an American family adopting their daughter from Qingyuan SWI.

Here are some photos from Eliana's actual birthday. It was on a Friday and we waited until Saturday to have her party. Eliana talked to Grandma Bonnie on the phone first thing in the morning while she opened her package from her. She got a sparkly pink jewelry box with fun necklaces and bracelets inside and some nice board books. Thanks, Grandma B! She didn't have a clue what was going on that day, but she enjoyed her gifts, anyway.

On Saturday, as we prepared for her little party, it became more obvious to Eliana that something exciting was about to take place! Here are some photos to set the stage for our little get together. It was sort of a garden/bug theme.

And here are some photos from the party. We kept it small - we had three families over with their daughters for cupcakes, ice cream and snacks. The girls had a blast out on the deck with a bubble machine, blowing bubbles, and just playing and going down the little slide. We had a sprinkler set up, but we didn't end up using it. The grownups were having fun, too. In fact, we decided we should extend the party and enjoy dinner together. So (of course) we ordered in Chinese food. Yum! It was a great day and Eliana really enjoyed her party. Thanks to our friends who made the day extra special!

Have I told you that Eliana is a very active little girl? I mean, she is BUSY, BUSY, BUSY! She keeps me running pretty much all day, with the exception of when she first wakes up. Like her mama, Eliana is not a morning person (thank goodness for me). She tends to wake up grumpy, like me as well. She likes to enjoy some soy milk while cuddling her blanky and watching Sesame Street (she especially loves Elmo) while I get going with a cup of coffee and then come to join her on the couch for some snuggle time before breakfast. From there, it is GO, GO, GO! I have learned that she needs lots of physical activity to eat and sleep properly and to keep her from getting into too much mischief in the house throughout the day. As an acquaintance (who is also mother of four) remarked recently when she bumped into us at the bookstore and observed Eliana in action for a few minutes, "she needs to be run every day like a wild horse"! I foresee sessions of baby gymnastics and baby ballet in our near future.

Eliana will start preschool two mornings per week in September and Ben will be starting as a freshman in high school! As I mentioned in my previous post, July was such a busy month. There wasn't really a regular routine - with vacationing for a week and a half, Ben being gone for a week, Drew visiting for a week, Ben being in his camps, etc, etc. I am looking forward to a more restful month in August and getting back into something that loosely resembles a routine. Just in time for school to start in September. How quickly the summer flies by!

Signing off until August,

Laura Beth

Oh my - almost out of July (LONG & long overdue)!

Where has the time gone? I hate that I haven't been able to keep up my blog posts as often as I would like to. July was busy, busy, busy! Here is a long post and some slide shows & pictures of the past month (refresh to restart the slides). Also, I just noticed this is my 101st post - wow!

On June 27th we loaded up the SUV, complete with car top carrier (remember the Griswold family headed to Wally World in National Lampoon's Family Vacation???) to start off on our 1,000 mile journey to our annual family beach vacation in north Florida. Yes, you read that correctly - 1,000 miles - EACH way, with a 23 month old in a car seat, bugging the daylights out of her 14 year old brother most of the time. Am I crazy, you ask? The answer is self-evident. [YES! ] The first leg of the trip was almost as long as our flight home from Hong Kong. Family togetherness is great, but 13 hours in a car together???? Thank goodness for Baby Signing Time DVDs to entertain Eliana (thank you, Aunt Barbara!), a PSP, DS and an iPod with earbuds for Ben, a laptop with mobile Internet connectivity to entertain Dad, and XM satellite radio for me. Yes, we like our techno gadgets. They certainly were very useful on this trip!

We did break up the trip by stopping at my sister's house in Georgia and spending two nights there with her family, arriving at 2am on her birthday after taking 13 hours to make the 10 hour drive down I-95 from our house (Happy Birthday, Lisa)! I even brought our dirty laundry to wash at her house. Yes, I am the little sister. :o) We caravan'd down the remaining 6-7 hours to the beach from my sister's on Sunday the 29th.

Eliana loved the Gulf of Mexico and also playing in the sand. I wasn't sure that she would, since she is a bit particular about getting dirty. She constantly wipes her hands and face at the table and even wipes the drips off her own place mat and freaks out a bit if something is spilled on the floor. I was glad to see her have some fun getting dirty! Although it was a bit of a pain to have to put in her ear plugs for every trip to the water or pool, she didn't seem to mind too much. We saw plenty of dolphins swim by every day, including a baby who kept tail slapping and leaping completely out of the water, but I am not sure that Eliana ever really saw them.

First time in Gulf of Mexico:

First couple days:

Our annual week-long beach vacation FLEW by this year. It was great, but not quite as relaxing as in the last few years, what with chasing around a 2 year old. Ben was 3 years old the first time we took this extended-family vacation together, so this was our 12th year in a row. Drew was only 1 year old that year, so the boys do not remember a summer that we have not vacationed on Saint George Island. This year it was our family, my mother, and my sister's family, which this time not only included my nephew Drew, but also my brother-in-law's two grown children - my nephew, Nathan (27), and niece, Natalie (23) and her fiancee, Ryan, (who we decided actually IS good enough to marry our Natalie...we didn't think anyone would be, so this is a huge compliment). The 'whippersnappers', as I liked to call them, added an extra element of fun and activity, and Eliana adored all three of them. We were joined by several of my mother's and sister's friends from Tallahassee for a cook-out on the 4th and also by my cousin's daughter (2nd cousin?, cousin once removed?), Melissa, and her daughter, Taylor, who is almost exactly the same age as Eliana. It was so great to see them and to get the baby girls together at the beach. Eliana picked up a southern accent from Taylor (who recently moved to Alabama), and Eliana now says 'Bye' with a great southern drawl! Two syllables - "bye-aye" - so cute!

With family at the beach house:

Last day photos of kids:

After the beach vacation was over on July 6th (too soon), we drove back to my sister's house and spent 2 nights recuperating, doing laundry (again - thanks, Lisa) and cleaning our disgustingly filthy vehicle, then packed up for the return trip and left Ben at my sister's house to spend the week. My sister had many fun activities planned for the boys for the week, including golf lessons, movies, getting together with friends, painting pottery and more. Then Ben and Drew flew up to our house together and we kept Drew here for a week. We didn't have quite as many activities planned, but we did hit a water park, and the boys (including Adam) saw Batman Dark Knight and played miniature golf. Drew left on Sunday afternoon and Ben was already mopey and missing his cousin Monday morning, so it is a good thing he is spending a week in golf camp followed by a week in art camp. And, ELIANA'S 2ND BIRTHDAY IS THIS FRIDAY! WOW! Like I said, July is busy, busy, busy!

Our little ladybug:

Medically, everything is going great with Eliana. She had her first regular appointment with the pediatrician in late June, including 4 shots and a follow-up lab appointment with blood draw and samples of every kind collected in advance (yuck)! She wasn't happy about the needles, but she did fine. We really like her new pediatrician. She is hanging in there at about the 10th percentile for height (around 31 inches), but is still off the bottom of the US chart for weight at a mere 21 pounds. She is wearing 18 month sizes and some 2Ts, but all pants/shorts are huge in the waist. Good thing she has lots of dresses! She definitely is on the same growth curve that she has been on since her birth, and looks healthy and her legs even have a little chub now - despite what the charts indicate. She eats well, but she is just petite, even by the much smaller standards for girls born in southern China.

Eliana had her post-op follow up with both her plastic surgeon, Dr. Murthy, and her ENT as well as an audiologist. Her palate looks fantastic and she wowed Dr. Murthy by making a very clear "Ba" sound at her appointment. Yea! She has another pediatrician appointment next week for her 2 year old check-up, including more catch-up immunizations - poor baby! Her hearing has definitely improved since the tubes went in her ears during her palate surgery, but she still has some fluid draining and was not 100% cooperative during the audiologist's evaluation, so we are not sure if here hearing is 100% up into the normal range yet. In mid-August we will visit Dr. Murthy again to make sure all the stitches in her palate have completely dissolved and that everything still looks good. Then right after Labor Day it is back to the ENT and audiologist to follow up on the ear and hearing situation. After that, she gets a bit of a break until late November/early December, when we will do the marathon Craniofacial Clinic appointment again, seeing 7 professionals all in one day for her 6 month post-op evaluation. She will probably start speech therapy at that point, if not sooner. She is saying more words, but still dropping most consonants. She has made a few "B" and "P" sounds, but so far has not really included them in any words, with the exception of "banana", which she can say perfectly (when she feels so inclined). She is getting better about trying to repeat words back to us and is great and mimicking the tone, if not really the sounds. She comprehends almost everything we say and is great with using sign language to communicate. She can identify many animals and many colors now. I have never been able to get her to produce the sounds for C/K, D, F, G, J, R, S, T, V, W, Z (she can do M, L and sometimes B and P). As you can see, we have a long way to go in the speech department. She is definitely "2" and is becoming quite familiar with the 'naughty step'/time-out seat, usually for hitting or threatening to hit. Her brief visits there are almost always followed by an apology ('sorry' in sign language), and a hug, kiss and a big smile. Sometimes, she even seats herself in time out! :o)

Here are some more pictures from July. Eliana and I, along with my friend Laurie and her daughter, Sari, had the pleasure of greeting a family coming back in the country from China with their newest addition. They are also with Heritage Adoption Services and I 'met' Nikki through an online chat group.

Eliana, LB, Nikki & Emy:


Welcome home, Pikes, family of SEVEN!



Eliana received a few birthday gifts a little early:

I finally got Eliana to sit still to have her hair trimmed up a bit. I am letting it grow out, but she needed to have it evened up a bit and have a few little bangs cut to keep the hair out of her eyes. I think it looks quite cute!

Post-trim lollipop:

Reward for sitting still - playing in the mall play area!

August will hopefully be a little bit slower paced than July! We will be starting our mandated adoption post-placement visits with our social worker, as well as the 're-adoption' of Eliana with the Commonwealth of Virginia. Yep, more paperwork. This will allow us to have a Virginia birth certificate issued for Eliana with our names listed as her parents. This is an important step, since it is impossible to request new copies of her Chinese birth certificate, and we all know how important it is to be able to produce that birth certificate for everything from driver's licenses to school enrollment to a marriage license. Plus, I think it is important to have a birth certificate with your parents' names listed. I don't think I will ever show her Chinese birth certificate to her, which simply states that her natural parents and her birthplace are not known. Another big milestone coming up soon is our 15th wedding anniversary on August 7th. Wow - has it really been 15 years already? It is hard to believe, since I still think of myself as being around 27 years old. :0)

I am WAY behind on personal correspondence, housework, and pretty much everything else as well. I still owe many of you emails, phone calls, and thank you cards for the wonderful gifts you have showered Eliana with (I am working on them VERY slowly but surely). I also owe all my neighbors a big apology for our weed filled jungle which we call a front yard. I think we will cry "Uncle" be calling in professionals to tackle that job soon. So, thanks to everyone reading this post for your understanding and patience with us and for staying tuned to keep in touch with our busy family of four!

Hugs, Laura Beth