Ciana's Gotcha Day

Gotcha Day September 17, 2012

Today is Ciana’s Gotcha Day!  One year ago today we met her and held her in our arms for the first time.  It’s hard to believe it’s been a whole year already.  Ciana was so excited about today that she woke up at 1:00 am this morning ready to party.  Unfortunately, mom and dad were not quite ready to celebrate at that time.  Even so, she tried her hardest to convince us for the next 2 1/2 hours!  Of course there are times such as these, when all we want to do is get some sleep, but still we can't help but look at her sweet little face and smile knowing that God has truly blessed our family by allowing us to be her parents. 

15 Months Old

Ciana is 15 months old!  Actually, she is one week shy of 16 months, but we just took her in for her 15 month well baby check on Friday.  She is 19 lbs 12 oz., which is 26rd percentile for weight and 31", which is 55th percentile for height.  She's still a great eater.  We haven't found anything that she won't eat.  She just shovels it in as fast as you put it in front of her.  She recently got a new tooth on the bottom, so now she has 4 on top and 3 on the bottom.  She is running all over the place and getting into everything!  It seems like we can't take our eyes off of her for a second or she's getting into something that she shouldn't!  Her favorite things to empty and throw all over the floor are cat food, litter and the cabinet of dvd movies, oh and Kleenex and toilet paper!  She's not talking much yet.  I believe her first word was Yay!  She also says Dada and uh oh.  Her favorite thing to do lately is point at every picture she sees and say "This?" like she's asking "Who's this?" and this week I'm pretty sure she was trying to count to three.  

Last Day of 1st Grade

Last Day of 1st Grade

Today was Maya's last day of 1st Grade!  She took a little while off at the start of the day to come to Ciana's readoption.  After that we went to Scratch Cupcakery to celebrate both the readoption finalization and the last day of school.  We didn't tell Maya we were going there and when she walked up to the door she jumped up and down she was so excited.  Looking back at the pictures of her from her first day of 1st Grade, I can't believe how much she's changed this year.  She is really growing up fast.  I think especially now that we have Ciana we look at Maya and it's hard to believe she was that small just a few years ago.  She had a great year in school.  She is reading well beyond her age level.  She is one of the most advanced spelling groups and she excels in math as well.  She is also a great writer.  They have writing time every day at school and she brought home her writing book yesterday.  It was fun to read through what she would choose to write about throughout the year that was happening in her life.  That will be fun for her to look back on when she grows up.  I can't believe she will be in 2nd grade in just a couple of months!



First Day of 1st Grade

Readoption

Today we went to court to Readopt Ciana.  This is not a requirement in Iowa, but our agency requires it.  It is basically a readoption in the United States of the adoption that was legally final in Taiwan.  It will provide Ciana with a US Birth Certificate.  We took Maya out of her last day of school for a little while so she could be there with the family.  We met our lawyer at his office and walked across the street to the court house.  After the judge walked in, he swore me in and the lawyer asked me a bunch of questions about Ciana like when and how she came to be in our care and if we promised to care for her for the rest of our lives.  Of course I said yes!  After that the judge issued the decree that it was in Ciana's best interest to be adopted into our family.  Even though the adoption was really final in Taiwan, this was still a pretty special occasion for our family.

One Year Old!

Ciana turned one year old last Wednesday, April 10th!  We had two celebrations for her.  The first one was at grandma and grandpa Greene's house the Saturday before her birthday.  They had a family Easter get together so we decided to celebrate her birthday at the same time.  Aunt Stefanie made cupcakes that spelled out "Happy 1st B-day Ciana"!  We put Ciana in the high chair.  Everyone gathered around and sang "Happy Birthday".  She didn't know what to think of the singing or the cake.  She was very timid with the cake at first, but about the time I thought she was done and tried to take her out of the high chair she got upset so I put her back in and she decided to eat the whole thing!  The next day we had a party at our house with the other sides of the family.  Since we were gone on Saturday at the other celebration I decided to make cupcakes on Friday for the Sunday party.  I had seen a really cute recipe for Strawberry Lemonade cupcakes online so I made those and they turned out really cute and yummy!  I should have just left it at that, but I thought we needed another kind as well, so I made some from scratch.  They looked and tasted awful!  So when Ciana woke me up in the middle of the night Friday night I couldn't get back to sleep just thinking how bad those cupcakes were.  The next morning I threw them in the garbage, went to Wal-mart and ordered a cake!  I had them match the party supplies I had and it turned out really cute!  They even included a free smash cake.  The morning of the party, however, Ciana decided she didn't want to take a nap.  So when everyone arrived she was fine for a while, but just when we got the cake out she got extremely tired.  She barely touched her cake before I had to take her out of her chair and she fell asleep in my arms about a minute later. 
Yesterday we took her for her 1 year appointment with the doctor.  She is very strong physically and we are finding out now, very strong willed as well.  She would not let the nurse or doctor touch her.  Every time they tried to listen to her heart she pushed them away with both hands!  She is 18 lbs and 28 3/4 inches, which is the 23rd percentile for weight and 34th percentile for height.  She is a tiny little peanut.  She is still wearing 9 month clothes and she even fits into a couple of 3-6 month outfits that I bought last summer before we brought her home that she didn't get a chance to wear before it turned cold last fall!  Everywhere we go people say they can't believe she is walking because she looks so tiny.  She started walking nearly a month ago and now she is practically running everywhere.  She is into everything!  She also does this cute little thing where she takes some really small steps backwards while grinning and giggling.  It's super cute and just cracks us up!  She loves to play peek-a-boo.  Her latest thing is everything she picks up goes up to her ear and she pretends it's a phone.  She is a great eater and will eat pretty much anything.  She usually eats more than her sister!  She is a very happy little girl and brings a lot of joy to our lives.        

One Year Ago

Newborn!

One year ago yesterday we got the call we’d been anxiously awaiting for over 16 months.  I remember I was at work when I got the call from Kate at All God’s Children.  She said that a baby girl had been born one week earlier and that the birthmother had selected us to adopt her.  I can’t imagine the courage it took for her to choose to put her child up for adoption.  She is a very brave woman and we will be forever grateful to her for allowing us the privilege of raising Ciana.  Even though we had been waiting for the call for so long we were getting pretty discouraged, so when we heard the news we were surprised that it had finally happened and that it was a girl!  I can’t believe how much our lives have changed since that day.  Though our lives are now extremely busy, we’re losing sleep and we’re on our toes 24/7 chasing after her we wouldn’t change a thing.  Ciana is such a beautiful and happy little girl and brings so much joy to our lives, and to her sister’s too.  We received some photos of her on that referral day, but we weren’t allowed to share them publicly until the adoption was final, so I thought I would share them now, 1 year later.  I’m also sharing for the first time some of the update photos we received while she was still at Hannah’s Hope in Taiwan and we were waiting to bring her home.  While it was extremely hard to wait, we are grateful that we did or we wouldn’t have ended up with the blessing of Ciana that God had planned for our family!

2 Days Old

1 1/2 Months Old

1 1/2 Months Old and Check out my Hair!

2 1/2 Months Old

Yay!  That's my family!

4 Months Old

4 Months Old

5 Months Old



11 Months Old

Yesterday Ciana turned 11 months old.  Over the last few weeks she has learned to walk by herself.  It seems like one day she was taking just one step.  Then the next day it was 5-10 steps and now all of a sudden in just the last few days she has taken off and is walking all over the place.  She is really strong and her balance must be pretty good, because she can even carry pretty heavy objects in one hand while she is walking.  Her two bottom teeth are in and they look really cute.  She has one tooth on top and the other front top tooth is starting to poke through the skin too.  I can't believe her first birthday is only one month away.  The last few months have gone by way too fast.

10 Months Old

Today Ciana turned 10 months old!  It is also Chinese New Year.  The year of the Snake!  Ciana has changed a lot in the last month.  She's not quite walking on her own yet, but getting really close.  She can stand solidly for quite a while, she just needs to pick up her feet and she'll be off and running.  Her crawling has hit record speeds, I think.  She also recently learned how to clap her hands.  She loves to play patty-cake and will start clapping her hands to get me to say it to her.  Another favorite game is peek-a-boo.  Sometimes she will squat down behind the chair and when she pops up I'll say peek-a-boo.  She smiles and laughs and then she keeps doing it.  She also has really gotten interested in music lately and dances whenever she hears it.  For some reason, one of her favorite songs, that she hears when Maya is playing Just Dance 4, is "Good Feeling" by Flo Rida.  Whenever she hears any kind of music she throws her hands in the air like she's praising the Lord!  She's a good eater and likes to drink water out of a cup.  She has also recently started to get her first tooth.  There is one on the bottom that is visible and the other bottom one is close to popping thru the skin as well.  We moved her from her infant carrier car seat to a convertible seat today.  She also moves to a new room at daycare starting this week too.  She's getting to be a big girl and she loves it when I tell her that! 

9 Months Old

Look at me go!

Ciana turned 9 months old yesterday!  She is now 16 lbs 12 oz and 28 1/4" tall.  She is getting into everything!  She especially likes to pull all of the Wii games, controllers, charging dock, etc. off of the shelf, which keeps us busy trying to keep her away from them.  She has gotten in on a few games of Just Dance this way, however, and Maya is always amazed when she sees Ciana getting "Good" on some of the moves!  She is crawling all over the place, pulling up to things, standing up in bed and can walk pushing her walker.  She just needs to get a little more balance to stand on her own and she'll be off and walking.  We started her on baby food about a month or more ago.  She had a little bit of a late start, because she didn't want anything to do with the cereal when we tried it.  So we finally just tried some baby food and she is loving it, except for the green beans and peas!  Her favorites so far are sweet potatoes, squash, carrots, beef and turkey.  We had a 10" snowfall a few days before Christmas and that was her first look at snow.  She really seemed interested in it and kept looking out the window.  There was a drift against our sliding doors as tall as she was standing next to it.  We took her out in it recently when Maya wanted to go sledding in our backyard.  Ciana didn't seem too thrilled, however.  I guess we'll give it another year and see what she thinks.   

Green beans, no thank you!

 

 

First time playing in the snow