Happy 1st Birthday, Le An!

Dear Le An,

Happy 1st birthday, sweet boy!  We can hardly wait to meet you and bring you home as part of our family!  Today we celebrated your birthday from our side of the world with cupcakes.  Your jie jie (big sister) picked out "your" cupcake and blew out the candle for you.  Next year YOU can blow out your own candles!

Love,
Mama, Baba & Jie Jie

First Day of School and Good News and Other Fun

Well, Meighan had her first day of school already and I'm just now getting to post about it.  She LOVES school and she was very excited to ride the bus and go to school.

I had to go to the doctor last week and while I was waiting for my prescription to be filled, I decided to have lunch at the Chinese Buffet in the grocery store.  This was my fortune:

So at that time we were still waiting to hear anything at all from our medical questions about Le An.  Last Thursday we received the 2 more pictures, updated developement information and measurements (all good) and on Friday we received the MRI results.  Nothing wrong.  There is nothing wrong with this child!  We definitely have received good news from far away!  They are still working on a video and we may receive that soon, too.  Can't wait!

Here are some recent pictures of our very smart and fun daughter!

My aunt and uncle came for a visit in early July.  My aunt had never met Meighan so we made sure to get down to visit them.

And my cousin had also never met Meighan.

The balloon puppy that we waited a LOOONG time for at a VERY hot Holt picnic.

Making chocolate chip cookies to take along with us on the plane to Seattle.  I love how she's standing on her tippy toes!  (She probably doesn't need to.)

Circle of Friends

She loves arranging things, especially all of her stuffed animals.

She eats corn on the cob like a pro!

Our very small crop of very small baby carrots.  They weren't worth eating but it made a good picture!

Our acrobat

She and I went to the zoo for a couple of hours last Saturday and this is a major part of the petting zoo.

Updated Information

Today we received 2 new pictures of Le An (taken on August 17th, 11 days before his 1st birthday) and updated measurements and development information.

Right now he is as tall as Meighan was when we met her (26") and he is 19 pounds (Meighan was 16 pounds when we met her).  He's a chubby little guy!  And he's been healthy.  I'm thinking that those measurements are good for a one-year-old!

We also asked for an MRI if they can do that, and a video showing his motor skills, walking, etc.  We haven't received those, yet, if we actually will.  There's no guarantee.

We still are not going to post his pictures until we get our LOA.  Keep watching the blog, though!  Anything could happen at any time!

Telling Our Families About Our Referral

Here are the combined videos of us announcing Le An's referral:

FAQ

I suppose I've been preoccupied a bit with getting the information organized and have inadvertently left out one important detail.

Xu Le An was born August 28, 2010, which means he will turn 1 the end of this month.

Announcing Xu Le An!

Today we finally got to tell Tony's family about our referral for our son.  They were very surprised, of course!  We put Xu Le An's picture in a birthday card for Tony's mom.  She saw it and realized what it was and asked "Where is he?"  I said "He's in Henan Province in China" which was everyone else's first clue as to what she was looking at.

So, we are today, officially announcing that we have a SON!  See the July 26th post.  We don't know yet when we will travel to bring him home.

We will not be posting his pictures online or in emails until we are further along in the process but if you are local, you can find us, our parents or our siblings and we all have pictures.

If you want to see what we've been through to get to this point, click on the following links to get caught up.

May 25, 2010
July 7, 2010
August 13, 2010
August 14, 2010
August 26, 2010
August 27, 2010
September 1, 2010
September 29, 2010
October 11, 2010
November 13, 2010
November 16, 2010
February 23, 2011
February 24, 2011
March 7, 2011
March 8, 2011
April 25, 2011
April 30, 2011
May 10, 2011
May 13, 2011
May 14, 2011
May 27, 2011
May 29, 2011
June 9, 2011
June 30, 2011
July 26, 2011 (2nd part)
July 27, 2011 (extra sentence)
July 28, 2011 (2nd part)

Getting Better

I’m getting more sleep but still in the chair.  Tony got his massage Tuesday and last night I finished ironing so the laundry is finally done!  Just in time to start again!

No Sleep

I only got 3.5 hours of sleep last night.  Yuck!  I was worthless today at work and I couldn’t breathe!  I had my massage tonight but still can’t breathe.  Guess I’m sleeping in the chair until this goes away!