How's it going?

After getting permission from her Mommy, this is Susan and Ruby. Isn't she the cutest thing? She's a year older then Claire, so I was able to get a glimpse of what we have to look forward to..walking, talking, playing...so cute!
Take note of the hair bow....this was it's most favorable debut....and it's last. We have not idea what happened to it. But after people asked us several times if she was a girl or boy, we had to do the bow.
Don't let the smile fool you...
Do I look tired? I will say that I feel a bit inadequate. We are feeding her more then the orphanage did. We have introduced baby food and finger foods. But I swear it's not enough. She always seems hungry and she acts like we're not feeding her enough. Despite being a peds nurse I have no idea what I'm doing...But she's cute!!
Break out the picture frame...I L-O-V-E this picture!!

Playdate

Yesterday we had our very first play date with Susan and her beautiful daughter Ruby. They are expats living in Taiwan and little Miss Ruby was born in here. We met on the Internet and it was fun to be able to hang out with them at this neat club house. I didn't post pictures of her Ruby b/c I wasn't sure how Mommy would feel. So for now just Miss Claire Bear.I can't wait to get her home, so she has more to play with. I feel like she gets so bored and quite frankly it gets hard keeping an infant entertained with limited stuff. She does however really like empty drink bottles. Thank heavens for those.
She really really loved the swing. My camera doesn't take good "action" shots so the pics w/her swinging and smiling and laughing didn't come out that well.
She loved playing there. She continues to really fight sleeping. She wakes up laughing, but goes to bed screaming. Jon is much better at getting her to sleep then I am. I'm really trying to get her to nap and right now Jon is out with the laundry and I actually got her down. I turned off all the lights, turned everything off and am praying that she will sleep more then 15 minutes, which is her usual.
Our little angel isn't the most coordinated yet. She's bonked her head a few times. I swear you take your eye off her for 1 second....so now we put the pillow behind her. Yeah I know we're dorks.
Some people have asked or commented on how little she looks. When we were getting updates, we thought that she looked huge, in pictures, and on paper. She really isn't huge. She's more of a peanut then we thought she would be. The last time we charted her she was in the 50th percentile. So a nice size, but not BIG like we thought she would be. Perfect, though!!

Nap time

Apparently we forgot to tell Claire that she NEEDED to take a nap. She's been fighting it for hours.
If we put her on the floor she cries, so we put her in her crib, where she proceeds to just play. Then she has this thing about scrapping her two bottom teeth on the crib....that can't be good.
She just won't take her nap, but we're making her spend nap time in her crib even if she won't sleep, she has to have quiet time. Oh well, we'll get this routine thing down sooner or later.
The storm was no big deal here. We have worse thunderstorms at home. It was kinda funny to see scooters knocked over though this afternoon. We did notice that many businesses were closed today. We think AIT was also closed as we tried to call them and try and figure out what day we can leave. We have told our travel agent the 8th. So we'll see what he comes up with. If we don't have her Visa on the 7th, we'll have to change things again

Typhoon #2

We are getting ready for typhoon #2..Can't you tell. We flew in on the tail of one storm and anticipate typhoon #2 around midnight. The middle of Taiwan got it last week and they think they will get it again tonight.
Meanwhile we are practicing our crawling and having a bawl.
We are going a little stir crazy and really want to be home soon. We miss our puppies terribly and can't wait to be in our own home
We went and bought snacks for the storm...can you tell which are Jon's and which are mine.
I actually am trying some local snacks...at least those that seem safe. Seriously I'm not sure what kind of bean these are, but they are rather tasty. Keep us in your prayers that all goes well tonight. I'll update tomorrow.

We are Fam-i-ly!!

Jon has officially taught Claire how to spit. I don't think that was the intention, he was making noises with his mouth, but Claire interpreted it as spitting. It's cute as long as it's not during dinner, or in your face, or when other people are making cute faces in her face, or when she has food in her mouth. Okay, maybe not so cute. This by the way is one of my fav. pictures of she and Jon.
This is the first time she was put in grass. By the look on her face you can tell she wasn't so sure about the whole thing.

She did much better "looking" at the grass.
Mommy and her little girl. By the way..I think I am the only woman in Taiwan who sweats. I swear I look to see if the other women are sweating, they don't look like they sweat at all, not me though....I am down right pouring sweat any time we are out. It is hot here, just like home, but we're out in it everyday and we walk to most anything...not like home. I am so tired of being sweaty. Anyways, In this picture, we took a break in the shade so that we could all cool down after walking around.
Can't get enough of her.
I know this is not a flattering picture of me, but I love it. Just shows the stupid things you do with your kid.
Just like this picture of Jon.,.
Please tell me why any baby food has color? Can't we get rid of the coloring?
Anyhow, we think Claire is missing the other children, b/c she is really drawn to pictures of babies. Good thing she has lots of cousins back home to play with.
Why is it we can't find Chinese food here? Seriously, some beef and broccoli, or moogoo gai pan? Nope the stuff we're seeing isn't what we're looking for. Jon is on a mission as I write this.
We continue to learn about eachother and it's an amazing process. Claire makes great eye contact and we couldn't have asked for a better transition. We're getting the sleeping routine figured out, now if we could just figure out that spitting thing....

Meetings

Yesterday was the birthfamily meeting. It was not what I expected. I thought it would be very emotional for me but it wasn't. I thought that I would feel this strong connection to this woman that gave me her child, but strangely I didn't. I felt like the meeting was for them, so that they would find some peace with the decision for Claire. They said they were surprised how comfortable Claire was with us after only a few days. That made me feel good, b/c she is very comfortable with us. She is already bonding to us and I was happy that they could see that. The birthgrandfather seemed the most concerned asking us many questions. I also thought that I would be the one that spoke a lot, but surprisingly it was Jon. I don't know if I was reserved b/c I know that she is ours and maybe in some recess of my mind I was protecting that. I don't know. But Jon wanted to make sure that they knew that we would love her and protect her. I think that after the meeting they knew that. We decided before we came that we would not post photos of her birthfamily to keep their privacy.
We also got to meet Jenn's little boy William. Cathwel set it up so he was there and we got to spend some time with him. Claire got her first kiss from a boy!! So sweet the two of them together. Anyhow, we're getting the routine down, learning about our daughter. She remains a very good baby. Nighttime is a little bit of challenge. She is one of those babies that fight to stay awake even when she's exhausted, so we're trying to figure that one out. Enjoy the pics

Going Strong

So as soon as Jon put her in her very first bath....she pee'd all in the water. She's watching herself pee in her bath right here. So cute. So we had to start all over.
She is such an easy baby. Loves her bath, loves everything...getting up, eating, empty bottles of tea, paper bags, sleeping, TV, everything. She even doesn't mind when I pour water over her head. Love this little girl
All clean after her first bath. Isn't that just adorable.
She doesn't mind being in the stroller. Although I don't think she really "likes" b/c she's so quite when she's in there, but she doesn't cry. Of course she likes being held and played with much more. She does NOT however like the carrier. We tried to put her in the front carrier, for bonding and such and she did cry then. So back to carrying her or putting her in the stroller for long treks.
Claire is a very easy baby. She smiles at everything. She likes to wake up, she is obsessed with the TV, she is amused so easily. She sleeps so long we actually wake her up in the morning so she won't stay up too late. But she doesn't mind that. She's right on task developmentally. She wasn't really crawling at first, but I'm not sure if that was just that she was stunned or not. She's crawling now and will go to us so she can pull up and practice walking. At first she would just let us pick her up, but now she's actually lifting her arms for us and looks for us when we walk out of the room. She's going to be a Daddy's girl, I can tell.
The birthmother meeting is tomorrow. Our AIT appointment is August 7th, which means we're here for the duration. We're going to see if they can move it up, but I doubt it. I finally got some sleep last night after some help with excedrin pm. It was the first time I'd really slept. Jon and Claire on the other hand have no problems sleeping. That's it for now.

Finally a FAMILY

We can't figure out the video camera, so this will have to do. The actual handing over was caught on video, but I'm sure you'll be okay with pictures. I didn't cry, Only shed a few tears. Jon was the same.
She is a very content baby. Very happy. Very smiley. Easily amused. Seems to be transitioning well. She really is an easy baby. Isn't bothered by loving and kissing. Actually loves it. We're very lucky. She came to me without any crying. It was like she was like "okay, lets start my new life".
Ate well. Only slept 40 min. So we're hoping she goes down easy after her last bottle. We're very happy. Very tired. That's all for now.

T minus 2 hours

Two hours until we hold Claire. I've been awake since 3:30am. I can't sleep. We just had breakfast and I feel like I'm going to throw up. I'm very nervous. I wonder what it's going to feel like. I just want to take a moment to say Thank you to everyone. To our families thank you for supporting us through it all, through indecision about how we were going to start a family, through years of struggling to make ends meet so we could save the money, through this whole adoption process..thank you . We love you dearly. To our friends near and far, new and old, thank you for hoping and praying with us. Thank you carrying our dreams, for holding onto faith when we didn't have any, for shouldering our tears through it all. It has meant the world to us.
It has been 6 years since we first started this journey. 6 years of hoping and praying that we would have a child. 6 years of putting our lives on hold....for this one moment, two hours away.
Thank you for being there with us every step of the way. It's going to be amazing!!!

Marathon tour

We did a marathon tour of Taiwan today with Nick Lee(the driver). It was pretty cool, but I am massively tired right now. Didn't sleep well last night and I want to be rested for Claire tomorrow. So just a couple of the 45 we took today.

That is NOT a philly cheese steak!!

This is then entrance to snake alley. My camera started acting up, so we didn't get a lot of shots. But there were snakes gutted and hanging for purchase and small little restaurants I guess where you could have a meal of snake.
I tried to get a shot of some of the creatures you could eat. I thought I would venture to eat some local foods, but it just didn't seem sanitary here.
The night market seemed like a flea market really. Nothing too special to us. Beware of old cabs. Our cab driver back to the hotel drove insanely. He didn't believe in driving lanes, or rules, or driving in a straight line. Jon doesn't get unnerved easily. This guy made us nervous...so nervous....we ventured to the local pub to relax
Where we had some local beer and what appeared at first site to be philly cheese steaks and burgers. The meat here has a distinct taste, that is NOT American.
We really miss our puppies!!

Saturday day trip

About Last night

Okay. Right now it's 6 am Saturday. I was going to write about Friday night, but the internet was kicking my behind. Here is Jon who had to have a Taiwanese beer, well we both did right before we crashed for the night.
The city is huge with buildings everywhere and as many buildings as they could pack into a small space. I've never been to New York city, but my guess is that this is what it would be like. There are stores here that I'm sure I don't make enough money to shop in. High class, which of course I am NOT.
We look like tourists. We didn't bring our cameras with us last night b/c we didn't want to look like a tourist. That didn't help. People stare at us. Really stare at us. It makes me feel weird.
LOST- You walk down this road to this road, down this alley and the next thing you know....you can't find your hotel and you didn't get a hotel card with the address on it. We're very smart like that. So we hailed a taxi. And three minutes later..back at the hotel. We weren't that far off. But felt stupid.
THE CITY: you forget that we're in a foreign country. It's very modern. scooters everywhere. You need skills to cross the street. At first it was a bit scary, but we're getting used to it. Jon only almost got hit once. He stepped out into the intersection, next thing you know he had a scooter on one side and another one almost hit him. He just froze like a deer in headlights. It was cute. It's very clean. Everyone is pretty polite.(except for the staring thing) It's quiet for how many people are here. I feel like I just want to call out "Auntie" or "Uncle" and see how many people turn around.
LANGUAGE BARRIER: Know how you smirk b/c foreigners just smile and shake their head yes like they understand. Well I find myself just smiling and shaking my head yes like I really understood what they just said to me.
SHORTS: our agency said women don't typically wear shorts. I saw plenty with shorts and flips on. I didn't bring any. The weather is just like back home, hot, humid, rainy in the afternoon(oh and a typhoon just came through). The difference is Jon and I typically don't wander around in the heat all day. If we are out in the heat there's an ocean or a pool close by.I feel like I need to shower every hour. I wish I had shorts.
YAHOO-it's in Chinese., I haven't figured it out yet. If you want to email us, use our home(not yahoo) email
CRIB: We have an empty crib in our room........