From Arizona With Love

My mom , Grandma R, came for a visit to see Bei-Bei for the first time this weekend. We met at the airport on Valentines Day night…, I was inbound from Richmond, she from Phoenix. Both of our flights were on time and we landed within ten minutes of each other (a good omen?)... I love it when a plan comes together.

Bei-Bei continues to grow and fill our lives with love and all things good and happy. She sees therapists (speech, physical, and occupational) four times a week and has gained about a pound each week since coming home. K-Mom continues to work to get her to accept food… any food other than the bottle. Tonight we had a somewhat successful try at applesauce, which included a fun “rub the food in your hair” game. (The pictures you see in this post were taken shortly after the bath that ensued.)

There is also progress every day in the crawling and pulling up departments. This was an especially productive long weekend because endless rain kept the boys, Calvin (9) and Hobbes (12), inside and crawling around with the rest of us.

Grandma D, K-Mom’s mom and rabid NASCAR fan, was sick with the flu this weekend so she was unable to join us for an impromptu Daytona 500/Northern Trust Open get-together with our friends the Bowmans. TV Golf, racing, beer, and dirty diapers... now that's a weekend!

It is rough for Grandma R to get around these days because of a bad knee, so outings were limited to baby clothes shopping with K-Mom and a big lunch with Hobbes and me at the original AQ Chicken. I will take her to the airport tomorrow before work and she will return to Arizona and have her second knee replacement surgery next week.

Back to the Salt Mines

My first two weeks back to work were spent more away than at home with travel to Richmond and back, then to Madison (NJ), then Richmond again, and then home on Valentine's Day night.

Some of the air travel luck from Houston must have been still on my skin as not only was my connecting flight from Charlotte to Richmond cancelled, but so was the next one. I ended up flying to Newport News and driving the rest of the way. Last week I enjoyed an 8-hour long 3-hour flight to Newark. The delay was on both ends and due to snowy weather but, in case you haven't heard, Newark sucks with or without snow. Dante Alighieri probably had something like the Newark airport in mind when he was describing the eighth circle of hell.

The good news is the house is much more on schedule than I am with most of my projects at work. All the drywall is up and the exterior is nearly done. I took these photos at dawn after a Cracker Barrel breakfast one morning about two weeks ago. Gotta love breakfast at the Cracker Barrel.


I went by again late one night last week and they had put in the door frames and sprayed a first coat of paint.

Pictures!

I’ve been catching a lot of flack for being lax with the pictures, so here you go.



This first one I took this morning after Bei-Bei had her bath. She has been pretty sick these last few days with a runny and stuffy nose, making it hard to breath while eating and sleeping. Last night was her best night since we’ve been home thanks to good ol’ American drugs and a vaporizer. She went to bed at 8 p.m., woke up briefly at 3:00 and slept through until breakfast at 5:30.



This photo was taken after our group photo at the White Swan, just before our first meeting with the U.S. Consulate. Bei-Bei had let us put her feet on the floor for the first time a couple of days before this picture but had never tried to take any steps… until this. Since we had the camera we were able to capture her “first step” to share with you here.



We took this picture on one of the famous red couches at the White Swan. You may not have heard of them, but in the Chinese adoption world the red couches are famous because nearly every family adopting from China takes a picture in them. We liked this picture so much that we had a granite etching done of it at one of the local shops.