Sunday, July 19, 2009

Updates


Makenna can do lots of things now. She still has no real words yet in English(except mama) but she communicates with us pretty effectively. She uses a few simple signs like more and eat and all done. When I say things to her sometimes she just watches my mouth and moves her mouth but doesn't make any sound. It is like she is practicing the movement of her mouth or something. She understands what we say a lot of the time. She can point to several body parts when we ask. She will give kisses and hugs to me and both the other kids but not all the time. When we ask for a kiss or hug she sometimes will just shake her head no. She LOVES books and will bring me books to read her all the time. When she gets hurt just a little (not really hurt) she makes a little whiny sound and walks over for me to kiss it and make it better. If she falls or bumps into something pretty hard she will usually cry really hard and resist me trying to comfort or cuddle her. She is still very clingy with me a lot of the time. She wants me to walk around the room with her or walk with her to go look out the door. It is so frustrating at times. I know she is trying to learn to explore on her own but doesn't feel confident enough yet. When I get irritated with her I feel pretty guilty because she is doing really well overall. I am just tired of being everything to everybody I guess, and I really want a break. Guess I will just have to wait for that.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Article on our family

The Air Force paper wrote a nice article on our situation with Drew being deployed and not meeting Makenna yet. I will save a copy for her to see when she is older and can understand how much her Daddy missed her before they met!

http://www.445aw.afrc.af.mil/news/story.asp?storyID=123157005

Friday, July 10, 2009

Adoption everywhere!

Apparently, if you didn't already know the Target on Westport Rd. is a hotbed of International Adoption. Today during our hour or so in there we met a mama home four weeks with her adorable Olivia (also from Jiangxi province), a woman with her sweet 8 or 9 year old daughter, and another woman who is starting paperwork for an adoption from Ethiopia! So nice to meet other families like ours. Hard to know how to approach them but easier than before Makenna was home. We can kind of exchange looks and usually start a conversation. I exchanged numbers with Olivia's mom Sara, so hopefully we can get together sometime. I would love for Makenna to have friends adopted from China. We will get involved with the local FCC but it is kinda nice just meeting people by chance (or by blog like Kerry Lu's mama)!




And here are a couple of pictures of course.

Monday, July 6, 2009

Running up and down hills




One of Makenna's favorite things is to find a hill or ramp and go up and down it...oh about 250 times! This hill is at the park on the waterfront and it is made of the recycled rubber stuff so I felt a little better about her running down it. She just laughs her head off while she is doing it. It is hard to get a good shot because she moves so FAST! But my favorite is the one where you just see the outline of her and her sprout of a ponytail! Cracks me up:)