Happy Birthday Chun Le!!!

Chun Le turned two on Friday the 13th! When we woke up the morning of her birthday we had our first significant snowfall of the season (about 3-4 inches maybe). It was also the last day the Welkners were in the States as they were due to board their plane home later that evening. So at 10:30am we met up with my sisters and their kids and I had Isaac and Chun Le with me (Rachel at school) at O'Brien Park sled hill. It was quite cold (well below freezing with wind chill) but we took Chun Le down the sled hill twice before Aunt Susan rushed her back to warmth in the van. Chun Le and Aunt Susan watched from a distance while we continued sledding for another 30 minutes or so and then called it a morning due to the cold temps. Chun Le kind of liked the sledding idea I think. We went down on a four person sled (her, me, Isaac, Charlie) and she did not cry--no giggles out of her either though. I think she was just too cold to have much of a reaction. She enjoyed snacking on a croissant and hanging out with Aunt Susan much more than enduring the cold. :)

For dinner that night we made pancakes with homemade strawberry jelly and whipped cream squirted on it and a small scoop of ice cream for birthday dessert. So not healthy but they are some of Chun Le's new favorite foods that we knew she would enjoy.

We had a family birthday party for her on Sunday night and ordered out some yummy Chinese food and made congee. Chun Le had a fabulous time celebrating with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. Her adjustment to our family and to life in the USA is going so well. It is truly amazing to think about how far she has come in the past 6 weeks since meeting her for the first time in China. She has gained almost 2 pounds and grown 1 inch in that time (a testament to how well she has been enjoying food and is willing to at least try anything these days); she understands probably 50% or more of what we say to her and follows simple instructions quite easily most of the time; she can clearly speak only a handful of English words, but she constantly mimicks what we are saying and tries to imitate sounds we make (just today when I started cleaning up a game we were playing she joined right in and started singing as best she could the "clean up, clean up" song!); she loves to give hugs to family and friends and has such a loving temperament; she can get up stairs very safely and does well going down stairs on her own if she sits on her bottom (a HUGE accomplishment since she did not even know how to move her legs to go up one stair when we were in China); she sleeps through the night almost all the time and will enjoy quiet play in her crib for an hour or so each afternoon (and we no longer need to be in the room with her); she is starting to say words that she has learned to sign (things like all done, thank you). I could go on about how much this very smart little two year old has learned and accomplished in the past 6 weeks since she joined our family. Her big struggle is and will be (until her palate is repaired) getting words/sounds out that are intelligible by those outside the family. She just does not yet have the mechanics in the roof of her mouth to make so many of the letter sounds. We actually have a team of people coming to our home tomorrow morning with the Early Intervention program of IL to evaluate her on things like fine and gross motor skills, speech, feeding, etc so it will be interesting to find out where she falls developmentally vs. her biological age in each of these areas. To us it seems that her only big delays will be in speech, but we will be interested in the input we get from the professionals!

Chun Le is such a joy to be around and has added so much to our family already. Rachel and Isaac are improving in their bonding with her also and our "new normal" seems to be getting more and more comfortable for everyone. We have our moments and sometimes entire days that are just difficult, but as we look back on where we all were even a month ago it is easy to see that God has graciously granted us so many little victories that we are gratefully praising Him for. He matched us with a wonderful fit when He brought Chun Le into our lives!

Here are a few pictures of her birthday celebrations over the past few days. Oh---I forgot to mention the smash cake for her party--our little Chun Le who does not like to get messy at first just looked at the cake and wondered what she was going to do without a spoon or fork or something! We gave her a fork and then she felt freedom to dig in. :) We had stripped her down to her diaper just in case it got messy, but she did not go too crazy. She was most definitely, though, the messiest I have ever seen her after eating a good quarter of the cake with a little ice cream on the side. She thoroughly enjoys her sweets. :)