Okay. New pictures.

Julianna stayed in the nursery at church last night. It was a short service, about 30 minutes, and she did okay. They ended up walking her in a stroller. We will try again on Sunday.

Would you believe it is raining in France? Sleeping baby, rain delay. Deep sigh.

Julianna received her certificate of citizenship yesterday. Now we can apply for her SSN and an American passport.

Once again, we have not taken many new photographs. Need to move that camera downstairs.

Here it is, day two of the French Open and it is raining again. We watched one match before the rain came. Okay, technically, we ran around the TV room and interfered with mommy watching the match, but did sit down long enough for a photograph and did clap when the crowd clapped on TV.

Is there anything cuter than a baby in footed sleepers? Just makes me want to scoop her up and cover her with kisses.


This one has been in the camera for awhile. It is our very first tattoo, which we got at Grandma and Paw Paw's house. I can do anything there.

Today is opening day at the French Open. It is raining. I have big dreams of watching lots of tennis over the next two weeks and teaching Julianna all about the beautiful red clay of Roland Garros. After all, between her performances as a concert cellist, she will be playing professional tennis. Right now we are working on our toss.

Okay, back to reality. Julianna is doing much better at communicating her desires. She has figured out that she eats in her high chair and that if she asks to get in the chair, food will magically appear. She has learned that strawberries live in the refrigerator and that the back door leads to a yard. Her point and grunt style breaks down for anything more complicated, but it is progress over crying about everything.

We are thoroughly enjoying our little baby. She is the bright star in our life. We feel very blessed to have this fabulous sweetie.

It is hard to believe that I have not blogged in a week. A lot has happened. Julianna is sleeping in her crib. She has been doing so for about a week. It was one of those strange things. We were actually moving the crib out of her room, giving up on our efforts to get her to sleep in it and she wanted to get in it. So, we pushed her into the hall and down to our room and she did not scream. We let her play in it for awhile and then at bedtime, put her in and read to her. She woke up once and cried about 45 minutes, but we waited it out. The next night was about 30 minutes of crying and very little since then. She even naps in it. It was a huge amount of progress.

We ate biscuits. The key was apparently strawberry-fig jelly. Strawberry flavoring was also the key to drinking our milk again. Strawberries are yummy, especially all over our face.


We went back to Grandma and Paw Paw's house to have a "Welcome" party for Julianna and a "Welcome Home" party for Uncle Don.

It was a convergence of the relatives. Unfortunately, Julianna was not cooperative with the family photo.


We did manage to get a four-generation photograph. The generations are my great aunt, my mother, me and my daughter.


Julianna rode on Grandma's rocking horse. It is much smaller than the one we bought her. Her feet do not touch the ground on it. She really enjoyed this one.

She got a new purse. We keep her babies in it, Monkey Paul and Bear Don. She loves it and will sling it over her shoulder and parade off. It is a great gift. We can fit three babies in it. It makes it easier to carry them around with us.

This is cousin Jessica.


I went to work yesterday and today, for about a half day each. Yesterday, Julianna and Grandma went to the office with me and played some in the office and went to the mall across the street. She did so well that today she stayed home with Grandma and I went to work by myself. It went quite well, but a little strange to go somewhere without the baby. Daddy and I even went out to dinner alone. Then we went to the bookstore and bought her three books.

We've had a busy time here at the grandparents house. We got to drink our milk out of the Moo Cow Creamer. This is a family tradition. We have had the Moo Cow since we were children and "took turns" drinking out of it, if fighting over who was last counts as taking turns. Now the grandchildren drink from it when they visit grandma and paw paw. This grandchild's visits results in some first times for the Moo Cow--soy milk and a straw through his mouth.

We went to the park for the first time, but did not like the slides or the swing. We thought the car was a little bit fun. We took a walk around the lake and fed the ducks. Next we were off to the mall and rode the carousel. We enjoyed the stationary horse, but not the moving one so much. She did scream when we left, so I think overall it was a fun time.

Then we got up at 0330 (that would be morning) and went to meet Uncle Don at the airport. He was coming home from Iraq for his mid-tour break. Funny story about the shirts. We were meeting Don's family near the airport and had only set up a time with them. Grandma, Paw Paw and I decided to wear American Flag shirts so we went to Old Navy to get three. Don's family decided to do the same, so when we got to the meeting place, we were all dressed the same.

Uncle Don brought us a kinder egg. Yummy. The USO was giving the soldiers Beanie Bears as they came up. Julianna decided that Uncle Don should give her that bear. Now we have a bear named Don and a monkey named Paul.

Here is our last new activity for the day--eating tea cake cookies. My grandmother would make tea cake cookies for me and now Julianna's grandma makes them for her.

Julianna has done very well on her trip to Grandma and Paw Paw's. She has let them hold her and play with her and Mommy went to the bathroom alone!!!!!!! This was an exciting moment in mommy's life. Julianna is showing her strong willed nature. I'm sure it is a survival technique from the orphanage, but nap time is becoming a test of wills. She does not like to be rocked and thinks singing to her is an invitation to point out Miss Kitty's nose. It is hard because I cannot do what the parenting books say to do--lay her down and walk away. That results in some unbelievable screaming, I think because she is still not convinced that if I walk away, I will come back. It is also hard because I am used to giving orders and having them followed. Two-year olds aren't much into following orders.

Julianna and mommy have headed to Grandma and Paw Paw's house for a few days. We discovered their squirrel gun, also know as a super soaker water gun, on the back porch and thought it might be fun to water the plants and the porch and the bird feeder, our socks, most of our dress...

We helped Grandma make biscuits for breakfast, but we would not eat any. Still like our oatmeal and banana's.

Here we are with Paw Paw in the back yard. Take a close look at the cat in the background. That is Captain Jack, who is planning an assault on the bird house.

Today we are off to shop and shop.

The baby got a new toy. Okay, technically, mommy got a new toy, but nonetheless, we have a trailer for the bike. We have gone out twice and she seems to enjoy it. She has a new way of checking out the birds and trees and mom gets to ride her bike, which makes mommy very happy.

I know everyone thinks there child is the smartest, but mine really is pretty smart. She is trying to inflate the tire wheels. Before I snapped the photo, she had the end of the pump in the spokes of the wheel and was pumping. I did not teach her any of this. She saw me inflate the tires when we put the trailer together.

We still have a good moments and bad moments. She does stuff that makes me laugh, even though I may not want her to do it. Makes it hard to discipline your child when you are laughing hysterically. Last night she was swinging her plate full of mac and cheese around. Not sure why I found it so funny. Fortunately, the mac and cheese stuck to the plate. One day this week I was holding a book that I have borrowed and I did not want her to have because she might tear the pages. She got her lady bug purse and offered to trade me her purse for the book. Made me laugh because we do this to her, trade her an acceptable toy for something we are concerned she will harm herself with. It was touching.

This is Julianna with Pastor Paul. He was our pastor in Wisconsin and is now in Nevada doing missions work. When we talk about The Pastor, we mean Pastor Paul. Everyone should have a Pastor Paul. He had a great influence on us and we have enjoyed our friendship with his family.

Everyday we learn a little bit more about parenting. Today's lesson was be careful how close you put the stroller to, well, basically everything. You would think after the tea set episode I would know this, but I guess I needed a refresher course. For the record, the little tear in her eye is because I left her to get the camera, not because I scolded her.

We are practicing the "walk away" method to deal with her tantrums. We have learned that you have to completely walk away and ignore her. I tried just sitting away from her and watching the drama, but that encourages rather than discourages. It is hard to keep one eye on her to make sure she doesn't hurt herself and at the same time appear to ignore her. It does seem to shorten the dramas. I'm still hoping they stop completely soon.

She understands that she is the "Ba Ba" and will point at herself proudly and say "baba". I think she might understand that I am the mama. She says mama all the time. She does not understand that Phillip is the dada, but she says that a lot too.

We have been playing classical music for her. When she likes the song, she will sway and close her eyes. It is very cute. She will even clap at the end of a song. For the most part, the music is background noise to her, but sometimes it catches her attention.

Today we went to the doctor. It went smoothly. She had a lot of blood drawn and needs to produce a stool sample. She is no longer anemic, which you may remember was one of the things that made her special needs. The doctor thought she was doing very well. She is 20 pounds but he was not worried. She got a TB test placed and we are going back on Thursday to get the TB test read and to discuss the rest of her blood work.

We had a really good day on Saturday. Julianna decided that perhaps her daddy was not all that bad and let him hold her and play with her. She even sat with him without crying while mommy showered. They played with the band aids, which I think may be her favorite toy in the whole house. She was stuffing them in her pants pockets on Saturday. This is her concentrating on the box.
Sunday, however, was an absolutely miserable day for everyone. We woke her up for church and probably rushed her a bit more than she is used to in the morning. This resulted in a very grumpy morning. Not even her band aids would soothe her.


Then it was off to church, which completely threw off her morning play routine, as well as snack time. About half way through the worship service she was completely exhausted, but would not sleep in a strange place, even though I stayed with her in the nursery the whole time. We put her in the car to come home and she was asleep before I turned the car on. Once we get home, she has not eaten, and is completely exhausted, all of which results in the worst temper tantrum we have had in weeks. Plus mom is pretty tired of going to church just to sit in the nursery for hours on end. I could sit at home with a happy baby if I'm not going to get any worship in. I know someday she will go to the nursery herself, but for now, we are going to have to change our Sunday routine.

Today has been a mixture. She is into everything now, which results in mommy telling her "no" more often and setting off temper tantrums. I would not let her turn on the stove and was thanked by a thirty minute scream-a-thon. We are at a loss as to how to handle them. We have tried ignoring them, but they can go on forever. We usually end up picking her up and taking her to another part of the house and distracting her, but worry that it will ultimately make them worse. We want her to learn that pitching a fit is not an effective way of dealing with a situation, but feel like we are fighting what she learned in the orphanage, where the loudest baby is probably the one who got attention.


This is her in her new smaller shorts. A couple of minutes later they were completely off her backside. We got her even smaller shorts and today those were around her ankles. I may just dress her in bubbles until she grows a little.

I realized this afternoon that we take very few pictures of Julianna now that we are home. We will have to take more so we can share them with everyone.

We went shopping for more clothes. I'm sure those of you who have seen her closet find that surprising. But mommy got tired of her "pants around the pelvis, undies exposed" fashion statement and we got some smaller shorts.

Here is something else to contemplate (because we do): things to expose your child to. We are not big TV watchers ourselves, so there is not a lot of baby TV going on in our house, but we are big readers. Everything seems different now and is questioned. For instance, Anne of Green Gables is a wonderful children's story and has very funny and endearing parts. Plus she is an orphan who gets adopted. But the mother does not want her at the beginning of the story and initially intends to send her back. Now when I think of having my child read that story, I wonder if she will move past that part or if it will be something she dwells on, wondering if we would send her back. The same goes for The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. Absolutely beautiful book with wonderful illustrations, but it is a story of loss and, eventually recovery. How old should a child who has suffered horrendous loss in their life be before reading a story with loss? Most of this will probably work itself out as she grows, because by the time she is old enough to read independently, we will probably have a better understanding of her personality and temperament.

I think the fact that we have time to sit around and think about books and culture shows that things are going much more smoothly here. She is a very happy baby and her temper tantrums are becoming less frequent and of shorter duration. We have not had a complete meltdown in awhile. She is showing some attachment signs, like walking off and looking back to make sure I am watching. She also walked away from me this morning while I was working on the laundry. She let me empty the dishwasher and refill it and wash some dishes, although by then she wanted to be held. She is much better at going down for naps and at night and will even let me rock her in the rocking chair in her room. She still will not go to Phillip.

Thanks for your comments on the Bible reading. We have a children's story Bible and an adult one for her. We will probably do stories from the children's and maybe Psalms from the adult one.

Julianna is napping, which means time for blogging. This week has been the week of questions. As she is getting more comfortable, we are beginning to get more behavior that we do not approve of, things like trying to turn on the stove burners and dial the phone (which is a strange one, because she screams in terror every time the phone rings). This has resulted in "how do we handle this?". The obvious is not to let her do it, and we do not, but this results in temper tantrums (she is after all, almost two). The problem is that it always leaves us questioning our behavior. She is not appropriately bonded. She is better, but is not there yet. So we always end up wondering if we are damaging the bonding by disciplining her. We like to think not, that this is all about establishing boundaries and developing a proper parent-child relationship, but we still wonder.

The other question we struggle with is Bible reading. Not if we will read the Bible to her, but in what version, as in adult or children's story Bible. What seems most obvious is to read her an adult Bible, because that is the Word of God, but then what do you do with the hard parts? Do you skip the David and Bathsheba part and just read the David and Goliath part? And if you do that, wouldn't it be easier just to read a children's story Bible, since they are sanitized? Do you try to explain the bad behavior in general terms or do you explain it for what it is? We read to her right now so that she can hear the language, but one day (hopefully soon), she will understand what is said.

I mentioned in another post that we have been reading The Horse and His Boy to Julianna. I am trying to work it into our bedtime routine. It's not going so well, but I am still hopeful. Anyway, last night we got to my favorite part of the book, when Shasta (the boy) meets the lion Aslan. Aslan explains to him that all the lions in his life have been one lion, Aslan himself. That Aslan was the one who saved him from death as a child, who guided him, who comforted him and who punishes. I think it is such a beautiful illustration of God--that He is the one who saves us, guides us, comforts us and punishes us. It is why it is my favorite book and why I wanted it to be the first book Julianna heard.

Julianna is becoming more and more comfortable with her surroundings and with us. So much so, that she is exploring the house. Which means, all of the things we don't want her getting into are now her favorite places in the world. Just two days ago you could sit her somewhere and turn to do something—like blog—and she would stay put, playing with whatever you gave her. Never again. This morning she perused CS Lewis' Perelandra off mommy's bedside table, but decided CS Lewis in a Time of War was not worth her effort. Mommy agrees.

She is beginning to understand us, to an extent. She knows when we are telling her "no, don't do that". She will even start to do something she knows she should not and look at us for a response. I guess she is testing her boundaries.

Today she also decided that perhaps she could spend a few minutes out of mommy's direct sight. She has been cruising up and down the hallway on her own while mommy worked on laundry and picked up everything at baby height. I never realized what a habit we had of just leaving coins on tables. Coins that are the perfect size for swallowing. Fortunately, Julianna finds them all for me so I can put them up.

The picture is off her puckering up for a kiss.

We have had quite the weekend and a wonderful day. On Saturday, we got Julianna a birdhouse because she likes to watch the birds. We put it outside the kitchen window where there is a window seat, so we can see the birds from there. Now if only the birds would find it.

On Sunday we went to church to see our church friends. She did better than I expected. We spent a little time in the worship service before going to the nursery. She got a little vocal. She is enjoying life and likes to express her joy, which is great except in the middle of church. She did well in the nursery. I stayed with her the whole time, but she did get out of my lap and play and even let the other kids sit in my lap. Here she is in her Sunday finery.
Today we went visiting--to one of my offices and to Phillip's. She was a bit worn out after Phillip's, so we will have to finish our rounds tomorrow. We went to a fast food place for lunch, one that lets you get fruit cup and juice instead of fries and coke. Of course, being novice parents, that might happen at every fast food place. Anyway, the fruit cup had Mandarin oranges and she squealed with delight when she saw them. She would not eat anything else until she ate the oranges. Then she ate the apples and strawberries and finally two chicken nuggets, but I think only because the fruit was all gone. She even fed herself. At dinner she had another thing of oranges and nearly a whole banana. She is a fruit eater!! She even ate quiche at dinner on Sunday. She may turn us into healthy eaters.

Last night she decided to walk. Only a few steps and only a couple of times. But today, she let go, we walked all over the downstairs and in the front yard. We had a meltdown when mommy would not let her walk in the street (mean mommy!). She cruised in the hallway after dinner. She is struggling with the transitions between the bathrooms and the hall, I think because they change from tile to hardwood. She walked to Phillip when he got home from work, but then would not let him hold her. She is making lots of progress. Hopefully the language skills will come at the same pace.

One last photo from China. At the end of every adoption trip, it is traditional for the families in the travel group to do a "red couch photo". Basically, you line the kids up on one of the big red couches in the lobby of the White Swan and take a photo of them. This is as close as Julianna got to the red couch. That is it below my knee. The rest of the photos are of the other kids on the couch and me behind the couch with Julianna. She was not alone in her couch phobia. There are two other mommies doing the same thing.

Things continue to get slowly better. She only woke up once last night and only cried a short amount of time. She is also starting to sit in a room with me and play while I do things, like make the bed. She is still not willing to let me out of the room and is not going to Phillip. She started kissing her teddy bears today. It is very cute. She sucks her lips in instead of puckering out and kisses them on the nose. She also tried to mimic hair combing, except she had the comb upside down. She hates having her hair neat. As soon as I comb it, she runs her hands through it to make it messes again. She has also mastered pulling out pony tail holders.

Mommy finally has time to blog. It is so different being home. At the hotel, I could sit at the desk and blog when Julianna went to sleep and still know if she woke up, but at home, I have to climb the stairs to the computer and leave her downstairs and it never seems to work. Right now she is napping up here, so I have a free moment.

Julianna is still very clingy. She is warming up to Phillip and will play with him for a good while, as long as I am still in the room. This has let me catch a couple of naps while they play. She is still having trouble sleeping at night. I think part of it is she is afraid we will leave her while she sleeps, so she likes to have mommy as near as possible. Hopefully this will improve as she adjusts to us and her new surroundings.

Her personality is coming out more and more. She is definitely a strong-willed child. She can scream and kick with the best of them if she does not get her way. We are trying to not feed the tantrums and they do seem to be getting shorter, if not any less loud. She is also making more babbling noises and can do "Ba" quite well. We are trying to work on other consonants, like "da" and "ma". We are also trying to teach her "meow" for the cats. She is enjoying playing with her toys and we are trying to break her of the habit of throwing them. We assume that it was an attention getting method in the orphanage, so we are trying more positive interactions and not retrieving toys she tosses.

She ate her first fortune cookie last night. Her fortune was "You are pretty".

Ok, now for the rest of the planes, trains, and automobiles story.

When we got to LAX it was mid-afternoon and we were deplaned and loaded on buses to go to the terminal. By the way, LAX is not a great airport. First came the line for Immigration, which was of course cogged with adopting families. We found the two others in our travel group and waited with them, keeping some semblance of relationship or cameraderie while we still could, helping out with looking for luggage and strollers, that kind of thing. It hit me then that once we left the international terminal the link between us all would dissolve back into an online relationship, and I found that kind of sad. Especially with the one couple with whom we shared an orphanage trip.

Once Julianna was officially an American (Yay!) we got in yet another line, this one reported to be leading to the China Southern desk for making arrangements to connecting flights. We didn't know for sure because the line snaked around the corner. Eventually a representative came around with a piece of paper with Sherry's name on it. They had (seemingly) booked us a flight to Chicago on an American plane that would be wheels-up in thirty minutes. we took that info and raced to the American desk (a five minute race, to another terminal) only to find that they had booked only Sherry. The American agent luckily found out we were an adopting family and said that her sister was paper chasing. She quickly made arrangements for the earliest possible route home, LAX to Dallas leaving at Midnight, and on to Mobile, and instructed us to get China Southern to book us a hotel so we could shower.

China Southern did so, and we spent several relaxing hours in the Hilton.

The flight out of L.A. was not pleasant. We were in the very back row, and after about thirty minutes Julianna started to cry, and it lasted the duration. There was nothing we could do to calm her or get her to sleep, so she just cried and cried. She finally stopped when we got her some apple juice from the nicest, most understanding flight attendant I've ever met. Just doing her job, I'm sure, but we were lucky to have her back there with us.

A short layover in a chilly Dallas terminal and we were on our way to Mobile. Julianna slept right through it. The airport party was wonderful, and Julianna was alert and responsive for it, thank goodness.

Now comes the hard part. We have to raise her into a responsible caring adult.

Well our long international nightmare is over.

Julianna, Sherry and I are all home, somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty hours late. Most of that was spent on airplanes. After the China Southern 777 out of Guangzhou had engine trouble (loud plane-shuddering engine trouble) we turned around and limped to Osaka, Japan—which took as much time as it would have to complete the flight to LAX with two engines.

Then the 150 or so of us (many of them adoptive families) were in quarantine for ten hours waiting for China Southern to supply us a solution. The Japanese airport folks made us go from the gate through the main terminal (a tram ride away) to herd us past a desk so we could each say we had no communicable diseases, and then we all took the tram back to the gate we had come from to sit and wait. We had no Japanese visas, so no leaving the terminal to at least see Osaka. Well, I mean we could see Osaka because the airport is on one of those man-made islands. But you get my meaning. This is when I got off the previous post, luckily they had WiFi and the laptop battery had some juice.

After a while somebody had disclosed a number we could dial on a pay phone to get an AT&T operator without actually having any Yen. Salvation! And there were two little shops that took U.S. Dollars and gave pocket change in Yen. So, buy a Coke, get some coins with holes in them as souvenirs.

When the new China Southern 777 arrived on the tarmac, the line began forming to board, made mostly of native Chinese (as we Americans were all too skeptical at this point). Sure enough there were a series of delay announcements because the Japan airport people decided it was neccessary to re-screen all our checked luggage for customs purposes. When they could have just transferred it all to the other plane and gotten rid of us. They took a plane full of luggage INSIDE to xray it and make sure it didn't pose a threat. This makes no sense to me, but there you go.

Once we finally got underway again we could take a nap and worry about the malaise at LAX. After all, we were a day late at this point. But the post is getting long and I need to sleep. sleeeep.....

OK, GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS. WE GOT JULIANNA'S VISA, AND BOARDED THE PLANE TO LOS ANGELES.

BUT IT HAD ENGINE TROUBLE OVER THE PACIFIC, AND WE WERE DIVERTED TO OSAKA, JAPAN. WE HAVE NO IDEA WHEN THEY'LL GET US GOING TO L.A. SO YOU MIGHT AS WELL CALL THE AIRPORT PARTY OFF.

Sorry folks. We are about fed up here in Japan. There's a whole planeload (it seems) of adoptive families stranded in the international terminal here. We can't use any phones because they don't take credit cards and we can't get to a money exchange.

Please pray for us and we'll call when we can. we have a little cadre of families to support each other here so....

*sigh*