Coleman Family Blog: One Year Ago

One year ago today:

Firsts

Today was a day of firsts and milestones. For the first 30 hours or so of us having her, Yu Fei was VERY somber and serious. She didn't cry unless she was hungry, but she wouldn't crack a smile or show any emotion. It really seemed like she was in shock. She took a 3 hour nap yesterday, slept 11.5 hours last night, an hour morning nap today and a 4 hour afternoon nap! So far she seems to be handling the transition and any grief she's feeling the same was her sister did: by sleeping.

By mid-day today, though, we started to see some of her personality come through. We got our first smiles out of her and giggles. Her giggle is adorable. She likes to be tickled and teased. She loves music and does this little twist move with her upper half when she's sitting. We put Chinese lullaby music on the ipod, gave it to her and she was content to sit and bop to the music for a while. Adorable. After being literally silent for over a day, she's starting to babble and make noises. It's the best sound. I can tell she's feeling much more relaxed with us so all these great things are starting to come out.

She seems to be doing pretty well developmentally. She's crawling and pulling up to standing. She can take something from our hands, bang 2 toys together, transfer toys from hand to hand. She really surprised us when she started to clap when we did!

She has not been flinching to our touch anymore, and instead seems to be craving it. She is definitely bonding to both of us, although prefers me a little more when she needs to be comforted or fed. She really likes to be held and snuggled. She is content to just hang in our bed with us and play.

We continue to marvel at how petite she is. We're not worried; it's just a wonder! Her 9 month clothes hang on her. Yet she has the biggest budha belly and chunks and rolls.

She loves her bottle and is doing great with it. She's sucking on a regular nipple, much to our surprise. I didn't expect her to be able to do that. In fact, she has a little comfort thing she does with her mouth all the time, a little sucking action with her tongue. She has more of a palate on the roof of her mouth than we thought, so I guess that allows her to suck.

However, when it comes to eating solids, she isn't eating them at all. It seems that she's had no exposure to eating solids. We were told she has egg but we tried that and she wouldn't even open her mouth. She has no idea what to do with a puff or a cheerio or a cracker or baby food on a spoon. She's not interested and when it gets in her mouth she doesn't know what to do with it. In fact, the cheerios she finally put in her mouth today came out her nose. :) I know she'll come around with practice and exposure, I just find it very interesting, and it makes her very reliant on a bottle. In that way, she's much like a younger baby, needing to have a bottle at regular time periods. When she decides she's hungry, we can't get her bottle ready fast enough. Chinese babies are used to having their formula very warm (almost hot) and that's true for her. We tried a lukewarm bottle today and she was furious! They did tell us they put rice cereal in her formula so we've been doing that too just so she gets something else in her. In time we'll wean her off of that and onto solids.

This morning we went back to the registration office were we were presented with her adoption certificate and her adoption was finalized in the eyes of the Chinese government. Pretty exciting! We also had to go to the notary office for more paperwork. I don't know what all the papers are, but our reps are awesome at guiding us through each step so we don't have to think!

We had the rest of the day free today from lunch on. It's been nice to have lots of down time to just hang out with her and bond. Tomorrow will be a big day. We'll travel to her birth city of Anyang to apply for her passport. It's a 2.5 hour drive and I've heard it's a very exhausting day. We've hoping to visit her orphanage while we're there.

We've been able to Skype every day with the kiddos back home. We miss them so much, seems like we've been gone from them forever. And our trip isn't even half over yet! They got to "meet" Maggie via Skype this morning. Cannot wait till they get to meet her in person.

Meeting her siblings, grandparents, aunt and cousins via Skype. Her siblings thought it was hilarious that she had poop in her diaper while we were talking. :)