Congrats Uncle David and Aunt Heidi!

A couple of weeks ago, Matt's brother, David, proposed to his girlfriend Heidi. We are so excited for them both! We have felt like Heidi is a part of our family for a long time already. It will be really fun to have her officially become a Nash. I remember when we all had lunch together almost 3 years ago and we told them that we were going to adopt a little girl from China. Heidi was so excited. It has been so great having her in our family through this whole process. Emma just loves her! She talks about her all the time. We are also excited that they asked Emma and Matt to be involved in the ceremony this September. Matt is going to be performing the ceremony and Emma will be the adorable flower girl. I can't wait to have a front row seat for THE WEDDING OF THE YEAR!!!

Colors

I don't know what the normal age is for kids to learn colors. Emma is 25 months old and already knows purple, pink, red, blue, yellow, green, and black. I like to think that she is brilliant! I know...I'm biased! It really does amaze me though how quickly she has caught up with the English language. She has been home for 10 months and it seems like she has been hearing English her whole life. She is just talking away. Last night she "read" a whole book to Matt by pointing to each picture and saying what is was and what was going on. We just looked at each other amazed. Our little one is growing up so fast.

One Year Ago Today!

One year ago today our lives were forever changed. After a two year wait, we finally received "The Call." It was a Thursday afternoon at about 3:30. Matt happened to be home because he was getting ready to go to softball practice for the team he was assistant coaching. When the phone rang and it was Beth, Holt's China Director, our hearts just skipped a beat. We new that this was it! We had only selected one condition and had always known that we would accept the referral when a call came. Matt turned on the speaker phone so that we could both hear the details. Beth told us that there was a little girl named Yu Cai Juan in Xinyu, Jiangxi province who needed a family. Her birthday is January 29, 2007. She told us that she enjoys music and is shy. She is a happy little girl in fostercare. She asked us if we would like to review her file. Of course, we said, "yes!" She emailed us Cai Juan's file and told us that we had 24hrs to make a decision. As soon as we saw her gorgeous little face and huge eyes and lips, we fell in love and knew that she was ours. We just sobbed. The whole thing was so surreal. We printed off all the info and got in the car. My parents were at their church practicing for the Easter Cantata. We made the 1hr drive and ran into the foyer. I asked a friend who I saw in the hall to go have my parents come out of practice. They came out and we just started to cry tears of joy and held up Emma's picture. I said, "We have a daughter." We all cried and word quickly spread back into the sanctuary where the choir (most of whom I have known my entire life) were cheering and clapping. It was such an incredible moment. I'm so glad that I was able to share the news with them in the church that I grew up in. It was very special. Next it was off to my brother's house. We walked in the door and they were really surprised to see us. I held up Emma's picture and they all started jumping up and down and screaming. Tressa, quickly took some photos of us to send with our LOI to China. Then we went to my grandparents' house to tell them. By this time, Matt's family in California was finally getting out of work. We called them and emailed them Emma's pictures. They were all just thrilled, too! Matt's mom went shopping that night! For the next 2 months our lives were pretty much chaos! We submitted our Letter of Intent to China on March 14. On May 20, we were on a plane heading for China. Five days later she was in our arms forever. When we were waiting, it seemed like the years just dragged and dragged. Now it seems like yesterday that the phone rang. How time flies when you are having fun!

Happy Birthday Uncle Jimmy!

Today is a great day! It's Uncle Jimmy's Birthday. Emma has also reached another great milestone in the life of a little girl...pig tails!!! Oh, Happy Day!

Feet

One of the funniest things about Emma is that she...I dare say...is obsessed with feet. It is hilarious! Every time we read a book, look at a magazine or watch tv, she points out all the feet. She always wants to take off her socks and play with her feet and take everyone else's socks off and look at their feet. It is really pretty funny. We joke that she is going to be a podiatrist when she grows up. Yesterday, I surprised her after her nap with a foot book. I looked through old magazines and cut out all the feet I could find and glued them onto some card stock. She was so happy! We knew through the reading that we did before getting her that most institutionalized children play with their hands and feet a lot because that is pretty much all they had in the orphanage to play with. We just didn't think it would be like this!

A Trip to Rochester!

Last week Emma, my mom, and I drove to Rochester, NY to visit my brother and his family. We had an amazing time! Emma did so great on the 9 hour drive. She was a real trooper. She had so much fun with her cousins, Jade and Sidney, that she is now incredibly bored with me at home. She played with their 2 siamese cats and ran around the house naming everyone to make sure we were all there. One day, we went to the Rochester National Museum of Play. It was so fun! They have Sesame Street and Elmo's World there so Emma was in Heaven. The grocery store was a huge hit, too. Jade is in the swim club at her school and we were able to go to one of her meets. She did such a great job! We are all so proud of her. We had to wait about an hour before Jade's first race so I took Emma and Sidney out to walk the halls of the school. She was doing great at first. The halls were colorful and covered with art and trophies. Then we kept walking and the farther we got from the gym and the pool the more sterile and white everything became. It was really quiet and a little creepy even for me. All of a sudden Emma started looking around really carefully. She was staring at all the walls and started to get a nervous look on her face. She was getting upset and wanted me to pick her up. She started to just grab on to me so tightly. then she started to say, "car. car." I didn't get it at first but then it hit me that the halls looked just like the halls in the background of her referral update pictures that were taken at the orphanage. I couldn't even believe it. She was so scared. I took her back to the pool and she was upset for the next 1/2 hour or so. Then after Jade swam her first race, I took her back out in the lobby. I asked her if she wanted to go for a walk and we went over to the edge of the hallway. She started shaking her head and saying , "no, no, car, car" and wanting me to pick her up. It was so crazy. I eventually had to just take her and sidney back to the house early. It was the weirdest thing. She totally had a flashback. That is the only explanation. I was worried that she wouldn't sleep well that night but she was fine once we got home and for the rest of the week. I guess now that she is getting older she will actually be able to communicate some of those things that she is feeling better to us. We actually drove through Canada because it is a straight shot from Muskegon. We stopped at Niagara Falls on our way home because it was such a gorgeous day...just freezing! We took a quick picture and grabbed some Tim Horton's coffee before heading back on the road. So, Emma has now in her 8 months of being an American visited California, Texas, Illinois, Indiana, New York, Canada and of course Michigan. She is really becoming a great little traveler which is a good thing since she has us two crazy travelers for parents.

Sick Days

In the 8 months that Emma has been home, she has really only had 2 colds and the beginning stages of an ear infection. I have thought about how fortunate she...and I...have been that she has been so healthy. The poor little girl has so many other things to heal that it has been nice for her not to have to deal with being sick. This week she has been suffering from a high fever and a bad cough. She has been so miserable that all she has really wanted to do since Wednesday afternoon is lay on top of me. She has been shaking, crying and just all around sad. It has made me think about what her sick days were like in China. When she was sick, did her foster mom let the dishes and laundry pile up and just lay on the couch all day with her? Was she held in the orphanage by her young nanny when she was sad and shivering? Did they just give her some meds and move on to the next little one? She has physical scars that make me really question how she was cared for there. I have been trying to understand it from a cultural and situational sense and not from a "that's my baby" heart. Now that we have had some time to get to know each other and get through the initial struggles, I find myself thinking more and more about her life in China. I thought about it while we were waiting but it was so much more vague...is she born yet, where is she, what does she look like, is she in the middle of the terrible snow storms? I catch myself thinking about what the details of her life might be all the time.
My hope is that when Emma begins to ask these questions...which everyone says that she will...I will have an answer that will satisfy her need to know her past.