Family of Four…..at Last !

Our official family picture. It’s official (ya know….there’s official and then there’s official….).

Things are getting better. Milana is coming around, she’s getting stronger and responding more. Getting some food into her and she’s “exporting” well. (Oh yeah…a little too well lol.)
She thrilled us by taking a few steps ( I almost cried – I thought, what the heck, let’s just try out those legs and sure enough, she wobbled along with support.) She obviously isn’t much use to it so we’ll be practicing that to get those leg muscles strengthened. I think she never really crawled either so when we get home, we’ll be doing some crawling around together. Brain doesn’t work properly unless we crawl first, right? So, I’m carrying her a lot and my arms are killing me. (The good kind of pain, ya know.) It is a lot of things to keep your arms and eyes on and no matter how organized I was/am, I still am spending far too much time searching for things. Ahh…but that’s just part of the package of this incomparable adventure.

Oh, I haven’t even mentioned the heat. It’s hot! Yeah, really hot – the wet kind. Like you’re never really dry – so best to give it up and forget about it (say that with an Italian accent).

We are all doing better. We finally did take that 6 hours bus ride (each way) down to Wenzhou (another incredible city, very modern and wealthy – a commercial center, but a small city in comparison – only 2 million. A tiny village. A gruelling 2 days of travel and red tape. This was after a 10 hour train ride the babies took on Monday to get up to us. We visited Milana’s SWI (orphanage) in Wenzhou and I may never be the same. I’ll wait till we get home to elaborate on that (!). I was able to speak with the Director about Milana’s condition and she added a few details which were not in her health and progress report which we received at referral. Milana is withdrawn and more frail than some of the others and considered more delayed. As long as I know what we’re looking at – I can work with that. We’ll just have to work a little to catch her up. Massage, rocking, bouncing, lovin, lovin, lovin and lots of interaction will do wonders, I know. She’s already responding really well. She’s very attached to me (I’m air for her right now) and I’m just lovin on her as much as my other sweetie (little D) will allow (!??#!). It’s an interesting (mild choice of words) tightrope we walk – trying to balance the yin and the yang.

Just took a little break to give Milana her bottle and I must say. She gives me these little gifts every once and a while. I do something like let the little blankie fall on her face and pull it off quickly and she opens up and giggles. She has such a sweet personality when she shows it and a lovely smile. Her face just lights up – I just can’t get it and the camera in one place. But I will. Working with Dahlia for the past almost 5 years has taught me a few tricks. She will be mine HAHA!

We were just told that the baby’s passports have been expedited and arrived. This is such good news as the possibility of a delay which seemed inevitable would have delayed us a week and we would have had to stay. So, we’re back on schedule – thank you God!

Time to go. Milana is almost napping and Dahlia and I have a date. There’s a little art gallery downstairs with our name on it.

Ciao!