Twas the Night Before Christmas...

...when all through the house,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.




Quick side note here: it is not a good idea to have your child write her Santa letter on Christmas Eve, especially when she decides to ask for a gift that you hadn't previously heard her mention....

Whose idea was it to encourage Edie to write her Santa wish list on the night before Christmas?? Why, none other than Father Christmas himself.



But not to worry, the girls were more than happy with their gifts....

LeapFrog from table from Grandma Katy and Grandad Den



Puppet theater from Mimi and Grandpa



Dress to match big sister Edie



Hello Kitty bandaids!! Are you kidding me?? "This is my favorite gift!" (By the way, only $2.99 at the drugstore, moms and dads)



Lincoln Logs from Mom and Dad



Chocolate from Santa



Cute hooded towels made by Aunt Carrie



Not to worry, Santa, you can drop that piano by the house next Christmas Eve.

We hope you all had a wonderful holiday and we wish you all the best in 2009!

Snow Day

It has been snowing since Friday night, and we have about 14 inches so far. Not exactly what the local retailers were hoping for the weekend before Christmas in 2008. It really was a winter wonderland - except for the hour or so when we had no power. We are so lucky to have a white Christmas this year!


Edie loved helping her dad clear snow in the driveway, and she had fun sliding down the snow piles from the retaining wall next to our driveway. Gemma was pretty brave about the snow - considering she had most likely never seen anything like it before. She is game for anything this girl. Edie and I also took a sledding trip around the neighborhood since the streets were covered. She is big enough to really, truly enjoy playing in the snow. She comes in soaking wet and red-faced and positively joyous.







And here are some of the girls after being outside.

Photos!!

We have been so busy here - in a good way! Gemma's Grandma Katy and Grandad Den were here for a week, and then my brother Will and his wife Barb came with their beautiful daughter, Isla, who is also from Guangdong Province (not far at all from where Gemma is from). These three little ones are too cute!





Here are some shots that didn't make our holiday card... looking through my photos I don't think I have posted a single photograph since we left China. Oops.






We managed to head out west to get our Christmas tree at the same nursery we go to every year, and I always get photos of the kids by the red barn.




Gemma is really adjusting well. She is communicating with us (in her own "words" of course) and enjoys having all of the visitors here. She is very social and happy to have lots of activities. She is cutting two big molars, so her easy sleeping pattern of the first two weeks has been broken, but we hope to return to those nice unbroken night sleeps soon! Edie is so good with Gemma. She helps me out a lot, and doesn't complain about Gem at all (except when Gem gets to go to sleep later than Edie!). Sam is quite taken with Gemma, and I think he vastly prefers the non-verbal stage of the baby sister to the non-stop chattering of the older sister.

If only we had a month left until Christmas all would be so calm here! I have realized that lots of preparations just aren't going to happen this year, and instead we will focus on having this wonderful new little person in our house!!

Things are good! No new photos uploaded...

I just realized that I left the blog hanging on such a desperate note. I have the best intentions of updating and posting photos each and every day, but that would require the following:

1) New batteries in the camera
2) Camera moved to location of upstairs computer where photo software resides
3) Free time
4) Ability to breathe normally when contemplating holiday preparations
5) Gemma's cooperation
6) Edie's cooperation
7) Bills paid, clothes washed, food in fridge
8) Motivation to leave sofa after children are asleep

I am working on all of the above. New posts with gorgeous photos of the girls will appear soon - I promise! Certainly sooner than I will find the time to produce a holiday card. And, yes, to all of you who have mentioned it - we WILL change our answering machine message to include Gemma. I may do that the minute I sign off the blog, provided no little child awakens again.

But to update on the desperation post below - we got through our jet lag more than a week ago. We sleep in the night when most other humans sleep. We eat at regular hours. Gemma is settling into her new life with enjoyment. She still loves her meals. Edie is a wonderful big sister, and helps me out a lot with G. Sam appears from the dark recesses of his room from time to time and enjoys holding Gemma and getting to know her. Chris is back at work. More to come!

Yes, it is as bad as I remembered...

Jet lag. From China. It's a killer. Let's see... yesterday we had a pretty "normal" day after being up a good part of Saturday night. Last night, the kids went to bed at 6:30pm. Gemma woke at 9pm. We fed her another dinner (or maybe her first dinner - it's hard to keep track). I went to bed around 10pm. I think Gemma went back to sleep at some point after 10pm but before Edie woke up at midnight. Chris wakes back up from his snooze on the couch to be with Edie. Gemma wakes up at 1:30am. I wake up at 2:30am so Chris can go back to sleep. Play downstairs in a darkened room with both kids until 4am, when I deem it possible to get both back to sleep if I lie in bed with them, softly singing and rubbing tummies. Wrong. Gemma whacks Edie with her bottle. Edie doesn't like the bedtime song I am singing. Edie pushes Gemma over. Gemma grabs Edie's hair. Gemma fusses, Chris wakes up to help by fixing Gemma a new bottle. There are now 4 bottles on the nightstand in various stages of consumption. At 4:45am, Gemma does finally fall asleep. I move her to her crib. Edie is now chattering to Chris in our bedroom, so I go in to try to get her to stop talking. Gemma wakes up at 5:15am and needs to be resettled. Edie continues to squirm and talk until 6am, when she falls asleep. At 6am Sam's alarm clock goes off, so it's time for me to head downstairs to make sure he gets off to school okay. So here I sit, sipping decaf (hopes of falling back asleep after Sam leaves) and eating Tootsie rolls for a snack. Tonight, for your amusement, I will perhaps capture all of this fun on camera. How much do you want to bet Gemma wakes up the minute Sam walks out the front door??

We're Home

After a couple of days of traveling, and presenting our passports, visas, plane tickets, entry cards, departure cards, and Gemma's immigration papers at countless checkpoints, and going through security check after security check.... we cleared our last hurdle by reclaiming our luggage in Logan's Terminal A. We arrived home at about 7:30pm Saturday - thanks to our dear friends, Rachel and Chris, who greeted us and drove us back to Newton. We were DEAD tired - Edie was actually pale with fatigue! Both girls did really well on all of the flights, although none of us slept very much. Sam was here when we arrived and it was so nice to see him and for Gemma to finally meet her big brother. We stumbled around the house for an hour and fell into bed around 8:45pm. The girls were a bit restless (I was in bed with both of them) and Gemma finally woke me up for good at 1:45am, and Edie got up at 2:15am. So here we are downstairs. I am waiting for pasta to cook - no congee (the Chinese rice porridge) to be found in this house right now.... I will wake Chris up at 4am to take over while I go back to sleep!

It is so cold here - quite a shock after the 70 and 80 degree days in China. But it feels like the holiday season has arrived, and we are very thankful to have come home with our new little daughter just in time for Thanksgiving.

xoxo

Our Last Full Day in Guangzhou

I sit here at our little hotel room desk, struggling to put into words the emotions of this day. The activities were absolutely routine for the thousands and thousands of families who have adopted from China, yet for each individual family, becoming a new family, these events are so memorable. First, in the morning, the families from our travel group met on the second floor of the White Swan hotel to photograph our little girls on the "Red Couch." Most U.S. families who adopt from China take part in this ritual, putting all of the babies together for one, maybe two, minutes; posing the squirming bodies as quickly as possible on a particular red sofa to capture a moment in time. The little babies who once lived together, in the same orphanage somewhere in China, are all united for the last time before they board an airplane with their families for home. These little lives, begun in one country, about to be lived out in another. Later in the afternoon, we went to the U.S. Embassy to take the oath that will allow our babies to become U.S. citizens when they land on U.S. soil. It is hardly a personal event, yet once you are there in that big room with so many other families, and the final part of the whole long adoption process is over - for us, more than three years of paperwork, document processing, and waiting, waiting, waiting... well, it brought tears to my eyes.

We leave Guangzhou tomorrow, fly to Hong Kong and spend the night, then board our flight back to the U.S. on Saturday. This will be our last post from China.

Here are our photos from today - of these beautiful babies who spent the first nine or more months of their lives together, and all of their new families - these are the photos that Gemma will look to in the future to understand her past and how her new life with us began.

Thanks for sharing our journey! Much love from Lindsay, Chris, Edie and Gemma

Gemma Helps Herself to Snacks

Feeling frustrated that we weren't heading off to lunch quickly enough, Gemma decided to take matters into her own hands....



Why are these things individually wrapped?


If you can't open the box, crush it.