November - a month of "magical" memories!

Wow - what a month of memories we made in November!

We started the month with a speech assessment to see if Olivia would qualify for services from Metro Nashville Public Schools.  Since she turns 3 in January, she will no longer be eligible for services through TEIS.  We spent 2 hours in the assessment, and I thought Olivia did pretty well.  Because Olivia is from China, she was assessed by the international team.  They had a translator there that spoke Mandarin.  When they didn't think that Olivia understood what they were saying in English, they would ask the translator to speak in Mandarin.  Whenever the translator spoke in Mandarin, Olivia would say, "No" which sounds more like "Naaaawwwwww" with a mischievous look on her face and a grin.  She's a mess….I'm telling ya!  They ended up determining that she had enough of a delay to enter her into the program.  A speech therapist will go to her day care once a week for one hour for a year (as determined by her progress).  At that point, she will be re-tested to see if she still needs therapy.

November is the month where her speech really took off, and we have seen marked improvement.  She is really trying to talk now, and even putting forth more of an effort at school.  By the way, we are blessed with an incredibly supportive and loving day care.  I really don't know what we would do without them!  Olivia is up to 25 words, which was our goal.  She is doing really well in her bed, and for those of you who are wondering, she still sleeps with her shoes at times.  She is now sleeping under a blanket as well.  Knock on wood, we haven't had any more screaming fits since moving her to the twin bed, thank goodness.

She is eating more meat now, and we are able to feed her more than macaroni and cheese, yogurt, and rice.  :)  She likes most chicken, some BBQ, fruit, and some veggies.  She has gained weight, and as Philip says, "We need to take her off the mac & cheese diet now."

We have entered into a different type of phase, however - jealousy.  In the beginning, it was Ansley who was jealous of Olivia.  Now the tables are turned, and Olivia is jealous of Ansley.  Any time I try to hug or console Ansley, Olivia cries and attacks me, wanting my attention.  She is stuck to me like glue.

We have been really fortunate to not deal with separation anxiety too much.  When we leave her, we give her a hug and say, "We'll be back."  She says, "Bye!" and that is that….for the most part.  I think part of that success goes back to this summer when we did swim lessons.  I left her every day for 3 weeks for 30 minutes at a time, but I always picked her up.  So, she knows that we will always come back for her.

The week before Thanksgiving, we headed out on a long drive…..to Orlando, FL!  Yes, we took the girls to Disney World.  Olivia still got in free (until she turns 3), and with the help of a friend who is a Disney travel agent, we planned a very affordable trip.  (Thanks, Alice!)  The trick to us affording Disney is going when we can get a discount.  In our case, we were able to get free dining while we were there, plus some other discounts.

We weren't sure how Olivia would do in the car.  After all, the last time she was on such a long road trip, she was left with people she didn't know….never to return.  I'm proud to say that we made it great!  We left after work and drove to Macon, GA.  Olivia got car sick 3 times on the way to Macon, so we thought we were in for a LONG drive!  We got up the next morning and drove the rest of the way.  Thankfully, no car sickness that day.  The girls did GREAT in the car, thanks to a little iPad time, some DVD time (Thanks, Lori), and some other activities that I took for them to do.  The first night, we did the "Hoop-De-Do-Revue."  It was an "Opryland" type of dinner show with singing, dancing, comedy.   It was cute, and the girls liked it!  After that, we did Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, and one more day at Magic Kingdom.  I won't bore you with all of the pictures, but a few are below.  Olivia did really, really well with the crowds and waiting.  She is a dare devil and enjoyed the rides.  We were concerned that she would get sick on the tea cups and roller coasts, but she made it fine.  She enjoyed meeting the characters, but was a little shy at first.  By the time she left each character, she was hugging them and saying "Bye!"  Minnie Mouse is her all-time favorite!!  It was a very special trip for Philip and me…..getting to see our girls' faces light up and have so much fun.  The experience is very "magical" at these ages.  We are blessed to be able to experience all of these things with Olivia, and I'm so glad that we are able to give her such experiences.

We drove all the way back in one day, the day before Thanksgiving.  The girls did great again, with only one car sick instance.

The below picture is how all of the character meetings started:  Ansley running up to the character with Olivia lagging behind.  In many instances, I ended up in the picture, too.

 In the below picture, Elsa "froze" the castle.  It was beautiful!

 Miss Mischievous at her best….I wonder what she's scheming...

 Loving the tea cups!

 Enjoying the parade and waving at the characters.

 The below picture was taken in "China" at Epcot.

 Most days, this is what Olivia looked like as we headed back to the hotel for naptime.  She fell asleep on the bus almost every day.

 She's a climber!  She climbed on anything and everything at Disney.

 Another pre-naptime shot.

 It came a torrential downpour the day we were at Hollywood Studios, but that didn't stop us from having fun!

Philip also put together a great video of our our week at Disney.

Check it out:  http://youtu.be/7B66U2JJeno

After we returned from our magical trip, we celebrated Thanksgiving with our family at Susan's.  We enjoyed seeing everyone, especially the babies.  We are blessed to have not only Olivia join our family this year, but Case (born Dec 2013) and Jake (born May 2014) as well.  What a fun (and crazy) time it is with everyone together.  Disclaimer:  it is difficult to get all of these kiddos to be still for a picture!

Below:  Ansley, Olivia, and Case

Below:  Ansley, Jake, Olivia, and Case

Olivia's 1st Thanksgiving, 2014

 The Martindales are THANKFUL - thankful beyond words.  Thankful for good health, friends, family, children, the gift of adoption, and all the blessings God has bestowed upon us.  Thank you for being a part of our journey.

Until next time,

Jill

October Fun

Ni Hao, Y'all!

I'm trying to get caught up on our blog.  October and November FLEW by, and the year is almost over.  Yikes!

The Fall always seems like the busiest time of year, but it's also my personal favorite.  I love everything about it - the weather changing, pumpkins and hay bales, leaves turning their brilliant shades of orange, yellow, and red, football season, my birthday :), and the anticipation that Thanksgiving and Christmas are just around the corner.   This year was no different, just busier!  Juggling work with 2 children is interesting, to say the least.  We have to take it one day at a time, literally, or one event at a time.  It sometimes feels overwhelming, but we're hanging in there.  All-in-all, we're doing really well and adjusting nicely.  The girls are still "hangry" when we leave day care, so we're in the same situation with meals as we were the last time I blogged.  She is still eating really well.  Olivia is pretty much stuck to me when we are at home, and doesn't really like it when I leave the room.  But, she is doing better with that, and as long as I say, "I'll be right back," she is usually fine with it.  However, if I leave the room for what she considers a long period of time, she either calls for me, or comes to find me.  She doesn't really enjoy playing by herself and would like for one of us to be playing with her.  We are still working with her on sharing.  She is very possessive, which is normal from her background, and is a survival skill that she had to learn at any early age.

We enjoyed quite a bit of outside play this fall.  Our girls love to play outside, and they enjoy riding their bikes.  Olivia is doing really well learning to ride, which makes Philip very happy.  She continues to be a dare-devil, and we really have to watch her.

In early October, we took the girls to see Disney's "Frozen on Ice."  Olivia had never been to anything like that before, and she was absolutely AMAZED.  She loves Mickey and Minnie Mouse, and they were the first ones on the ice.  From then on, she hardly blinked.  What a privilege it is for us to share in her "firsts."  Ansley, of course, loved it, too!

One fun story from this particular day was that during the program, Philip got the girls cups with Anna on one side and Elsa on the other (They are the main characters in the movie.).  Olivia looked at her cup, and said "Elsa" plain.as.day.  We were so thrilled!  We had no idea she knew who it was, much less, knew her name.

We also took Olivia to her first pumpkin patch in October, which included a hay ride.  She enjoyed that, too, especially picking out a pumpkin and a fun slide that they had.

We also host a pumpkin carving birthday party for our cousin (and major helper-outer), Susan.  We typically have soup and chili, and everyone brings a pumpkin to carve.  We always have a lot of fun.  Olivia wasn't sure exactly what we were doing with the pumpkins, but she enjoyed "helping."

We also made it to a Predators hockey game in October, which was also a first for Olivia.  Good news: Bridgestone Arena has Chinese food, and Olivia was so excited!  She did pretty well at the game, and enjoyed all the fun activities they have for children.  (I have to brag a minute on Ansley.  She is a hockey fan and is very knowledgable for a 5 year old.  She can tell you most of the players names and numbers.  Go Preds!)

Halloween was also a fun "first."  Olivia wasn't so sure about her costume at first, but when she got to school and saw her other friends dressed up, she was fine with it.  I got pretty emotional when Ansley's teacher sent me a photo of the 2 of them together at school that morning.  You can see the happiness in Olivia's face, and it fills my heart with pure joy to see this.  This was the picture that she sent me.  (The other little girl is in Ansley's class.)  Olivia is SO HAPPY!

For those of you who don't know, Ansley is dressed up as Elsa from the movie, "Frozen," and Olivia is Olaf, the snowman from the same movie.  To show the popularity of the movie, in Ansley's class of 15, 7 of them dressed up as Elsa.

We had several events to attend, and by the time Halloween night came along, the girls were pretty tired.  We enjoyed Trick-or-Treating at a few houses with our baby cousin, Case, on his first Halloween as well.   Olivia got the hang of it pretty quick, once she realized that candy was involved.  She is a chocolate "chockit" lover!  It was SUPER cold that night, so we only made it to a few houses before the girls were ready to head in.  Here are some snapshots:

Happy Fall, Y'all!

In terms of progress, she is still doing really well.  We did hit a snag in late October.  It all revolved around bedtime.  She began climbing out of her crib, which we weren't really surprised about.  I was hoping to make it to January before moving her to a bed.  In the midst of climbing out of her crib, she was also getting really upset and crying unconsolably while putting her to bed at night.  Our typical routine was that I would do bedtime, but that began to not work anymore.  She was crying for HOURS at a time, which was heart-wrenching, especially since we hadn't seen this side of her.  We weren't sure if it was adoption-related, and perhaps we weren't as "attached" as we thought.  Was she grieving?  Or, was it something else?  Was she sick, and we just didn't know it?  She didn't have any symptoms or fever.  So, for a week, we dealt with hours of crying at a time.  It.was.exhausting.  We finally had the opportunity to set up her "big girl bed" and get rid of the crib from her room.  After that, no more tears at bedtime.  Whew-instant relief.  Philip has since then taken over bedtime duties with Olivia.  

She is very, very independent and strong willed.  She has about 14 words (hot, cold, Mama, Da, uh-oh, help, please, up, eat,"I do it," "Let Go," shoes, Elsa, and Anna.  Our goal is for her to have 25 by the year-end.

She is still receiving therapy through TEIS (Tennessee Early Intervention Services) once per week at her day care.  She is beginning to speak a little more at school, but mainly only when asked to imitate words.  She typically does not initiate conversation or words without being prompted.

I still can't believe that 6 months have passed since we met her in China.  It is true what they say:  the child that you meet in China is not the child you have months later.  She is blossoming before our very eyes and is truly a joy.  We are blessed beyond measure and can't imagine our lives without her.

As always, thank you for following our story!

  

Catching Up

Ni Hao, Y'all!

Let me start out by saying that I began writing this post 2 weeks ago and just finished it up tonight, October 19th!

I'm sorry that it's been so long….life is crazy these days.  We are doing well…..really well.  The last time I posted, I had just returned to work, and we had just celebrated our 3 month Gotcha Day.  Well, today is October 5th, and we just celebrated being home for 5 months.  We have come a LONG way in those 5 months.  Let me see if I can get you caught up.

In early August, the girls had their "official" first day of school.  This is the last year Ansley will be in pre-school.  Next year, she will be in kindergarten!  Here are a few pictures from their first day.

Since these pictures were taken in August of their first day, the day care came to me and recommended we go ahead and move Olivia up a room.  They started her in a room with children approximately 6 months younger.  They quickly realized that she needed to be with children closer to her age.  One reason was for language development.  The younger children were not talking quite as much, and Olivia really needs to be with children who are speaking more in order to pick the language more quickly.  We have seen marked improvement over the past couple of weeks.  She now has about 20 words (goal is 25 by the end of the year), and she is beginning to put 2-3 word sentences together and is repeating after us more willingly.

One thing we started when she moved up a room was potty training.  Ugh.  My least favorite part of parenting so far.  She goes when you take her, but she still hasn't gotten the hang of telling us when she needs to go.

She is still eating well and sleeping well.  The only challenge we have is that we have to still be in the room with her while she falls asleep.  I'm not really pushing the issue.  After all, she's only been with us for 5 months, so we have time.  She is still in a crib, but I think we will start transitioning her to a bed around the first of next year.  We'll see how that goes.  :)

In early August, we took Olivia to her first Titans game.  The game itself was slightly a disaster because of the rain, but we had a great time before the game in the kids area.

At the end of the month, we celebrated our 4th month Gotcha Day.  A week later, Olivia got her first taste of Tennessee football!

Since being with us, Olivia has also learned how to ride a bike (with training wheels).  She learned pretty quickly!!  She loves to be outside, and my Mom thinks she's a tom boy.  She is a climber and still has no fear!

In early September, we celebrated Ansley's 5th Birthday with a fun painting party!  This was also Olivia's first birthday party.  She seemed to enjoy herself, especially the eating!

Olivia really loves all of our family members.  She is comfortable around everyone, even those she doesn't get to see regularly.  We are so blessed….in every way….she is just precious….also mischievous, funny, flirtatious, daring, and often stretches our parenting skills….but we wouldn't have it any other way.  Ansley is doing such a great job as a big sister.  She gets so excited when Olivia does something new or says a new word.  Again, truly blessed.

I will post again about our activities in October.  After all, we are approaching our 6 month Gotcha Day this week!  Thanks for reading….

Jill