Our First Smile & Peanut Butter and Jelly- (2.5.15)

Reflections from Day 4 - February 5:

Today was a day of many first for little Brielle. We can’t even begin to tell you how thrilled we are about some of these milestones. Today Bri decided that she would actually walk around, as up until now, she was been acting like she couldn’t walk (which we knew she could) and would barely just stand up when we wanted her to. Today she walked to and from breakfast with us and was all over the room today moving around.

As we continued to spend a lot of one on one with her today, she began to show glimpses into her personality. A number of times today she would try to talk to us and her first big full smile came when she handed me a toy and I said thank you to her in Chinese (which I had never done before with her) and for some reason that made her smile really big! It was so cute. 

As the day continued on, she smiled time and again and even gave us a little giggle when she was being tickled. She continues to try talking to us more and loves the big mirror in the room and has fun trying to figure out her reflection. 

Be. Still. My. Heart.

Today, she tried small bites of my peanut butter and jelly sandwich for the first time and actually figured out how to self-feed with this. It was precious. I’m pretty sure she didn’t know what to think about it entirely. We found out today that the foods that were listed in her paperwork were most likely foods that were cooked and made into a paste like substance, which would explain why eating solids seems a bit foreign to “B” even though we were choosing some of the foods that her paperwork said she liked.  The texture of what we’ve been trying from the buffet in the hotel isn’t exactly what she’s used to.

She is starting to allow more of her personality to show today. It’s been an amazing day to observe her. It's as though we have rounded the big curve now and are getting small glimpses into the little person that she truly is.  Today we introduced her to her new ladybug toy that Nate picked out. At first she wasn’t quite sure what to think of it.  She also played with a balloon for the first time and was quite enamored with that.

She is fascinated with tissues and will play with them as long as you will let her. Today she pretended to take the tissue and wipe her hands and face (which I know she’s figured out by watching us since that’s what we’ve been doing this week to her with wet wipes when she eats or at other times)  

We’ve also observed that she apparently likes to keep her sleeves pulled up a good bit of the time and doesn’t like socks—maybe she’s going to be like mom and prefer the warm weather and flip flops!  She also doesn’t like "stuff" on her face or hands and will pick up things and even acted like she was cleaning things today with a tissue she was playing with. (again, she sounds like her mommy a little- lol!)

She made a multitude of funny faces today and made sounds with her tongue and did all sorts of funny things imitating us today.  We tried making fish faces and she tried so hard, but couldn’t quite figure that one out. Just by observation of a number of things today, we can tell she's a smart little thing and picks up on things very quickly.

We’ve learned when it’s naptime, it’s naptime. She fights sleep so hard and gets a bit fussy at those moments, so it’s easy to know when she’s ready to go to sleep. We’ve been trying to stay fairly consistent to what she’s used to doing on schedule from her orphanage with regards to meals and sleep. Thankfully that was something that was given to us right before we met her Monday so we had her most recent schedule.

She is already a daddy’s girl, no doubt. Nate has been amazing to watch with her and he absolutely adores her.  He is a great helper with getting her bathed and fed and playing with her.  We have laughed more at this little one in the last several days and some of the funny things that she does. She definitely has a little personality that’s peeking through now which is so exciting to finally see.  She may be tiny, but she’s a sassy little thing with what appears to be a big personality!

This evening we received the rest of the legal documents for our adoption and copies of our first official photo as a family of three taken on “Gotcha Day”. We also received the police report or "finding ad" for our daughter, which is the newspaper listing they are legally required to submit in China, which highlights where the child is abandoned and found. It is a small newspaper ad giving the details of where she was found and a little more info about her.  It was all pretty much the same thing we had in her original paperwork, but we learned in reading this today that her mom or parents left money with her when she was abandoned, which one might guess may mean they likely wanted to make sure someone could take care of her. That was a new detail we had not known before.  There will always be details in adoption that we will never know and could certainly guess about all day without knowing for sure. Since “B” was abandoned a month after her birth, we can only assume she was with her family that first month, but then couldn’t be cared for possibly due to her medical needs and the expenses in China that would be associated with it or it could be solely due to the one child policy in China.  We will never truly know.

We have one more day here tomorrow and will be traveling with some other families tomorrow to see more of this province and then will be flying out on Saturday to Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, which is the southernmost province in China. We can’t wait to get there and shed all of these layers, as the weather there will be in the 70’s!  That is where we will have our daughter’s immigration medical exam and U.S. Consulate appointment for her visa to be issued for her passport.

So thankful for these milestones today!