now she is 3

Happy 3rd Birthday Dalia - August 20, 2011. Little Dongling - I feel so fortunate that you were born 3 years ago, and that through luck and miracles I am able to be your Mama. I hope to always be able to truly celebrate your birthday and let you know how special you are, and how you make everyone who meets you smile. I thank G-d for your biological parents, and I think of them a lot around the time of your birthday. I send them my love and knowledge that the girl they brought into this world is healthy, happy, and strong, and will know who she is and that she was born in Tianshui, Gansu Province, China, on the Silk Road.

One of Dalia's teachers, Peggy, is convinced that Dalia comes from a long line of Chinese acrobats. Could be!

She had a party the night before her birthday at Baba's, with a cake decorated once again by brother Calder and Grandma Ginger. I picked her up on her birthday and took her to Twitchell Hill Farm for a little pony riding lesson. She rode Grace Dayton's pony, Hype (Hyperion) with Emily, her teacher. At first she didn't want to get on. "No thank you." she kept saying. Finally, I lifted her on... and then saw that little smile come across her face. Since her ride on Hype, we've been back to visit a few times and will take another lesson before the snow falls.

We swam at the Vergennes Pool -- on the last day it was open for the summer. That hit too soon. We had ice cream cake with Mark on the deck, and Dalia got her bday gift of a blue Schwinn bike with training wheels. Spent the next day decorating it with ribbons... And we made a spectacular Scooby-Doo cake thanks to Mark, who had the mold and the icing tips. Had a party that night with friends, and delicious Chinese food. I wished the night could have gone on for many more days!

Dalia is back at Playlab full time. Playing at the light table -- with clear colored plastic shapes with magnetic edges. She builds houses and designs with such focus - it's her favorite thing to do. Along with dancing around the room, sitting on Howdy's lap, going to the bleachers... and pretty much anything else they do at this fabulous school. She is now one of the older kids, and certainly has more words than anyone in the room (except the adults).

She runs very quickly and steadily; she has great balance. Loves to hang and swing and climb and tumble. She is pretty much potty trained (except at night). Amidst all of this independence, yet, at ballet class on Saturday morning, she is afraid, and has yet to go into the classroom. She is dressed in her leotard and tights and ballet slippers... and just at that moment, says "carry me!" And she sits on my lap and is quiet. Still 3, still a little little kid who needs to be allowed to be that way.

Grandma Ginger introduced her to the song, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." I sing this to her; we listen to Mavis Staples in the car. I gave her my interpretation of what the song means, the chariot coming down from heaven to bring people to a better place. I have a few variations of this story, some that involve negro spirituals, some less specific. One version has to do with dying and going to heaven. Dalia said, "I want to die." I said, "No, honey, you want to have a very long and happy and healthy life."
Dalia: "Grandpa Don died."
Me: "Yes, he did."
Dalia: "I think he was singing about the chariot."

One morning, I was talking with her about taking her to the doctor, when I could take her, what if we waited a day... She looked right at me and said, "Mom. Let it be."

Grandma Patty visited - yea!! We had such a great time playing. Grandma really knows how to be a kid and laugh with Dalia. Thank you, Mom for coming to visit and helping out!! Grandma goes to the co-op every day and buys yummy treats like flax sticks. Dalia brought a bag to school last week and went around up to everyone with the bag open, "would you like some sticks?"

Enjoying every minute of not having to deal with snow.

Love to friends and family!

new home in vergennes

It's been since February since I last wrote! I have wanted to capture all of the things Dalia has been saying and doing as she grows - but time is truly so limited. I usually fall asleep when Dalia does, at 8:30 or 9; get up at 6, and the days begin again.

No surgeries for now... We are working on her speech, pronunciation. I have been practicing Fs and Ss -- plugging her nose to teach her not to let the air out of her nose, but through her mouth instead, when she makes these sounds. She is getting speech therapy and occupational therapy -- though she is doing fine on her own. It may be that she will need another palette surgery soon.

Over time, she will need a lot of oral surgeries... but that won't be for a while. The past few days, she's been saying, "Mama, touch my teeth." So cute! She has all of her baby teeth except for 3.

Her vocabulary is off the charts. She says "Do you like to eat crustaceans?" (We read a book about them). Long, full sentences, "I was reaching for a toy in my Mama's car and my finger got caught in the door." (This happened yesterday.) When we read about any animals, for example, a unicorn, she starts to call me that animal. I have been: Mama hyena, Mama unicorn, Mama elephant, and first - Mama bird.

What have we been doing between February and now?

We visited Grandma and Grandpa Ginger and Ralph in Atlanta, along with Aunt Cindy and Uncle Pete. The Solomons in Macon threw a little party for Dalia, with a delicious lunch on a gorgeous day at Nan and Peter's house for family and friends. Peter said grace, with everyone holding hands, welcoming Dalia into the family, and blessing her. I still cry when I think of it.

Time passes and the hours and free moments are few to write thank you notes. Thank you Birdseys and Solomons - Dalia's southern relatives! - for the love and warm welcome to her.

We visited Grandma Patty in California, along with cousins Vivian and Peter, and Uncle Adam. Vivian and Dalia ran "up the mountain", i.e. the perfectly groomed mound on the golf course outside Grandma's door. We swam, went to the Living Desert, on the Merry-go-round, had a visit from cousin Barbara, played and played with Peter and remote control cars, Thomas trains. We fed the ducks and the turtles and soaked up the desert sun.

I traveled to Asia again in May -- Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong -- and both of Dalia's Grandmas came to help. Dalia's Ayee (auntie) Renee also was very helpful. 10 days is still too long to be away, the recovery difficult. Skype helps, as does email. Dalia had an ear infection the whole time -- she was in many good hands. I hated being away. Though still feel very very fortunate to do what I do, to be able to go and come back. In Hong Kong, I saw my good friend and roommate from Beijing in 2000, Mancy. As I became a Mom, she is getting engaged and moving to the U.S.! Dalia will have another Aiyee.

In June, more travel - to Minnesota - annual trip to Bob's Cabins on Lake Superior to watch the marathon. We watched the start of the marathon up on the Scenic Highway in Two Harbors and Dalia was riveted as we watched the runners and the wheel-chair races at the start of the race. Now, she play acts "I"m going to win the marathon!"

June 27, home to pack up the house on Drew Lane... and then moved into our new home, on the second floor of Mark's house on Green St. in Vergennes.

It was an exhausting move - physically and emotionally. Six weeks later, I am finally feeling more settled. We share the house with my old and good friend, Mark, who has two dogs -- Copper and Smokey -- and a cat named Juicy. We have a large balcony/deck, we can walk to the playground and to the wonderful town pool -- both in front of the elementary school. The pool is open until 8 pm -- and has been a godsend in this heat. Come home from school, play for a while, then off to the pool to cool off, late supper then bed. Ahhhh.

I really love living in a neighborhood right in town like this, rather than having to drive to the playground. The architecture of the homes, churches and buildings is interesting; as is the layout of the town, with a river and waterfalls and a dam on one section, huge fields in another, and other roads that lead us to Lake Champlain via two points -- Button Bay State Park (near Basin Harbor Club) or Kingsland Bay. I am doing and seeing things here that I haven't ever done since I moved to Vermont.

We also visited cousin Barbara and Bill in Amesbury, MA. Thank you, Barbara!! We stayed in a nice hotel, with a pool... Barbara took good care of us, fed us very well at home and out, gave Dalia her very own Lego animal set and ice cream when needed. Bill drove us all to Plum Island for Dalia's very first swim in the ocean! I will never get her huge smile and unstoppable laughter running into and out of the crashing waves. What a memorable visit.

Playlab is going very, very well still. I am SO grateful to her teachers from last year. I realized that her teacher, Haley, was the first person other than Dalia that I saw and spoke with all year. I really miss her now that she is back at the Parent Child Center with her own room of babies. Howdy is still her lead teacher -- along with Christina, who is "on it", and Shelly, who is great. Dalia is now one of the older kids, and a "language leader" for them, according to her occupational therapist, Sandy.

Tonight, Dalia is with Lenox, MA with Ginger and Ralph, visiting family... her first overnight away from Mama or Baba!

February 20

Happy Valentine's Day. Thinking of you, Grandpa Don, as it would have been your 83rd birthday. I miss you so much; I tell Dalia about you all of the time. Dalia wished everyone "Happy Valentine's Day" for a few days. "Smooch?" she says. BaBa came over with a beautiful watercolor card, some flowers, and a cupcake for Dalia.

She got through the 2 weeks of "liquids" after surgery (apple sauce, yogurt, hummus, ice cream, soup, soup, soup) just fine. Dr. Laub says she is healing well. We've had 2 post-op visits - he is very happy with her speech, her pronunciation. She is still having some food come out her nose....I have asked about this many times. Dr. Laub says, "we can accept this." He says it is likely that there is a tiny hole in her hard palate but as long as her speech is developing, we should not worry. The hole can be fixed later when Dalia will have her bone grafts and other work done for her teeth and jaw and bone structure. So - rejoicing for now, knowing there will be more later.

In this picture, Dalia is wearing a beautiful rain coat sent to us by Liz and daughter Lily in MN. She still prefers the diaper-only look, plus bathing suit, and/or rain coat. Her snow suit has come in handy, as I just throw it on her body over her diaper, throw on her snow boots and it looks like she's dressed. Many of the other kids at day care also go through the day gradually stripping... But - Dalia is always wearing her clothes when I pick her up.

She says some really funny things, very observant. The week after her surgery, she was watching me get dressed. I put on a white button up blouse. I don't usually wear shirts like this. So, she looked at me, seriously, "Mama, what you doing?"
I said, "Honey, I'm getting dressed."
"Mama, you a doctor?"

The phrase "I no like" is used often. "I no like you leave", "I no like empty bottle," "I no like shirt." She also is wanting to "snuggle" - -"Mama, want to snuggle?" Last week, at nap time, the entire daycare had finally quieted down, all the kids were about to fall asleep, and Dalia turned to her teacher, and said loudly, "Howdy, want to snuggle?"

Another funny thing she said a while back: She tried on some sneakers that belong to her classmate. The sneakers are sparkly and light up. She put them on, turned to her teacher, Hayley, and said, "Hayley, say 'Lookin' good, Dalia!:' "

She will stay at Playlab over the summer, 3 days/week. Her best friend, Bella, will also be there. On Friday, Bella walked up to the door, Dalia was already inside. Dalia went running up to the door, smiling and squealing -- Bella ran up to the door and through it, smiling and squealing, and the two girls hugged. They are exactly the same height - Bella is sandy blonde hair, hazel eyes, a cute little chunkster who wears Carhartt overalls some days.

Dalia loves books. THANK YOU all for giving her books as gifts -- we read them over and over. She reads a lot of Dr. Seuss with Tal - great repetition and rhyming.

Thank goodness for Ilsley Library (in Middlebury). I check out about 10 books at a time... find the ones she loves. And DVDs. "Mama, watch Looney Tunes?"
Recently, her favorites are:
any of the Olivia books
anything by Ezra Jack Keats ("The Snowy Day")
Froggy Plays Soccer
Curious George
and Mama also loves anything by Rosemary Wells, e.g. Yoko (we have 2 Yoko books), "Carry Me", "Emily's first 100 days of School," etc. I know there are many more that we have yet to discover! If anyone has any of these books in their collection and would like to hand them down to us... we would LOVE it!

I am making a habit of buying some of the books that we've read that we love, like "City Dog, Country Frog." Highly recommended for children and adults alike.

We are off to Atlanta next Thursday to visit Grandma and Grandpa Ginger and Ralph. Yea!

post surgery / new voice ?

Dalia's surgery went without complication. Yea! We asked the anesthesiologist to try to have her come out slowly... to avoid her waking up without us there (like last time), rushing back and hearing her scream for Mama. This time, we had plenty of time to talk to Dr. Laub, and then go back to post-op. It took her about 20 minutes to "wake up" and then we waited another 45 minutes before heading up to her room.

Her first words were, "My mouth hurts." Which she repeated many times until she received some morphine... and fell back to sleep. We had a nice room, down the hall from where we have been the previous three times, i.e. right outside the nurses' station. We didn't have a room mate. After a few hours of reading Dr. Seuss and Go Dog Go, Dalia was ready to drive her cars -- Baird 5 has a variety of toy cars and carts for the kids to sit in while parents "drive" around and around the floor. The playroom was fun for her - a pool of plastic balls, play ovens, plastic Plutos with cars, more and more. Oh, and the zebra that Dalia can sit and jump on.

She watched an Elmo video - lately her favorite is about the Outdoors -- animals and the weather. Her favorite part is at the very end, when a big brown swirling tornado with bushy eyebrows that comes into Elmo's house. She calls him, "mado".

We had a good time playing with her. At 8 pm, she and I were up on the "crib" bed, she was jumping up and down as if it were trampoline. She took the Oxygen sensors and put it on Tigger's foot and ear... Playing Dr. Dalia again. A few hours later, she was complaining of pain again - a full 3 hours before she was to get her next meds. "I'm not feeling well." "My mouth hurts." Then to sleep - sleep most of the night, so we did, too.

The next morning, Dalia was up and playing at 6 AM. Finally drank her fluids, which meant she could go home! Dr. Laub stopped by, heard her speak and was VERY pleased. Nasal sound... practically GONE. It's amazing. She really does sound different. Dalia ran around the hospital lobby in her diaper, bare feet and Elmo pajama top while I chased her and waited for a prescription. She yelled "neega! neega!" which is her version of "Areeba, Areeba" from the Speedy Gonzalez cartoons...Everyone coming into the hospital from the 10 degree weather smiled as they saw her. She took a wipe and cleaned off the list of donors to the hospital, carved into glass. Then at 9:30 AM as we got into the car, she slept.

She is saying full sentences, "I dropped my notebook." "I want to snuggle with you." Every day, she says more and more words and sentences; she talks about events, people and animals from the past with no prompting.

Now she is sitting across from me at the table, drawing with two little pens into her Lightning McQueen notebook. Ready to go back to Playlab tomorrow!!!

Thank you all for sending your good wishes.

some video - Jan 2011

...
-- flying in the air with our friend, Mark ( a week ago)


-- playing at home a few weekends ago
(still trying to load this one!)

New Year's travels, January surgery, gifts for Orphanage

Subject + verb + object. Dalia's got it down. She is speaking frequently in complete sentences. When she wakes up in the morning, it seems that her brain has learned everything from the previous day. And then she comes up with a memory from weeks or months ago. Amazing! Or, as Adam Sandler sings in his rhyming song about Elmo, "Incredibelmo!"

We had a grand adventure of travel and reunion last month. The day of the big blizzard in Boston, we drove to White River Junction and got on the oversold Greyhound bus to Logan Airport. We would overnight at the airport Hilton, spend the day in Boston and take a flight out to MN the next night, and be at Grandma Patty's in Wisconsin by 11:30 PM. Yes, long trip - but cheap flight -- and it would be fun, right? Right! No worry that the airport closed, that we waited over 30 minutes for the Hilton shuttle, which drove right by us. Or that our bags, stroller, and car seat disappeared from the sidewalk while we waited in the warming hut as the thick snow thundered down on... no one ... on this ghostly snowy cold night. "Oh no! Where are our bags??!" Thankfully, after running out into the street, anxiously looking for some sign of humanity or our bags, we saw Dalia's stroller wheels were sticking out of another hotel's shuttle, and the nice driver took us to the HIlton. Dalia loves to replay this scene over and over, "Where go Mama's bags? I dunno. Wheels sticking out. Nice man." We swam in the cold pool while the snow howled. We ate carbs. We walked around and around the airport from terminal to terminal, Dalia dressed in her snow boots, diaper, and shirt, pushing the stroller while travelers smiled. Thankfully, our flight was the first out of Logan in two days -- left 90 minutes late but we made our connection in MIL and to Grandma's that night, Thank you, Air Tran!

Froggie went everywhere with us. Froggie was a gift from Grandma Ginger and Grandpa Ralph ("Right").

We played with Grandma, cousins Vivian and Peter, Auntie KT there, Uncle Adam, Susan and Ned on New Year's Eve -- and later that weekend as Dalia played soccer with a sock monkey and giggled with cousin Sela. Visits with my loving and fun friends Michele, Liz, Kelly, John, Katie, Marc, Linda, Jay, Tam, Judy, Julie, Laura, David, and Danny -- and everyone's kids and dogs -- filled my heart. Dalia is finally having a chance to meet her extended family in the Twin Cities and Wisconsin. Tony and his mustache, Pat's toy animal hair salon... so many generous friends and family that we wish we could see more of in person. Our other friends - we missed you! We will see you in JUNE. For sure, please. Dalia and I dropped Grandma off at the airport on her way to California. As we drove off, Dalia said, "I want my Grandma!" On the way home, we stopped for a few hours in Boston, made a new doggie friend named Lady, played on Newbury Street, and went for a beautiful winter walk on a sunny day down Commonwealth Ave while waiting for our friends to drive us back to the bus station in White River Junction as they continued to Midd.

Dalia is so fun to travel with. On our last flight, Dalia got on the plane all by herself, in her purple snow suit. She walked through first class, saying "Hi" to everyone. The man in the first row said, "She is beautiful. God Bless Her."


Monday the 24th brings Dalia's next surgery on her soft palate. She has a fistula (hole) that needs to be closed. This fistula started as a pin-hole; a remnant from her last surgery August 30th. It has grown into a something easily visible. It needs to be closed to help her speech, so she will learn to make sounds that don't involve air going through her nose. She needs to have "negative pressure" in her mouth so that she can start making more percussive sounds, so she can use her tongue more. And so that food and liquids don't come out her nose.

Even though she's been through this before, it's not a snap simple, easy thing. I have been trying to keep her rested, and less sick for weeks. This is major surgery; an operation on the upper back inside of her mouth - a tiny tiny place -- Dr. Laub will this time -- I think -- be sewing some sort of patch, "alloderm" or something like that - made from tissue... on it . The most common question I hear is " Is this the last one?" The answer is "I don't know." It is certainly not her last surgery, as she will likely have many, many surgeries for her teeth and bones in her mouth, but not til she is 4 or 5. We hope this is her last surgery for her palate. First, she has to get through it.

She had blood drawn yesterday to make sure that her palate count is high enough, i.e. to avoid another incidence of excessive bleeding. See: July 12th surgery, PICU, intubation, terrifying, and mystery.

I will try to post something to the blog when the surgery is over and we are in her room on Baird 5 watching Elmo, Winnie, Mickey Mouse, or Tom and Jerry.

Last - I am getting ready to send a package to Dalia's Orphanage (Tianshui Social Welfare Institute). The package won't be there in time for Chinese New Year... next year I will try to start earlier. I want to express that I am grateful to the orphanage and the nannies there who took care of her. I am extremely grateful to her foster mother, her "Nai Nai", with whom she lived for six months? nine months? We don't know. But Nai-Nai was loving to Dalia, taught her many things, and sent her to us with gifts: a beautiful hand-knit, embellished sweater (see photos), hand-made Chinese shoes, too small now; an gorgeous, traditional red silk wall hanging with a Chinese knot.

Nai-Nai, I love you.

I will be sending some photos, along with the following items. I would really appreciate any additional items from this list to send. I cannot send money. This list comes directly from CAWLI, our adoption agency. If you would like to send something in this package, please send it to me -- email me for my new address.

1) treats ( candies ) and beauty products - like bath and body works and co bigelow that are made in US for the nannies
2) for children send coloring/activity books, crayons, stickers

I think that small, clean, newish stuffed animals are also ok.

Thank you, friends and family for your love and support. I love you!

Merry Christmas, Henry and Calder

Thanks for a fun afternoon! Love, Mei-Mei and Dina.
We love you.