Happy Birthday, Tess!

PaPaw is a babyhog.

Tess' First Easter Basket

Two of our favorite girls Annelise and Ella Forrester had a bunny party and invited Tess.

Today is Tessie's first birthday. She spent the day with her Mom and Grandmere. We went out to eat lunch and supper! The big party is Sunday but we had a nice day together. Aunt Barbara sent Tess her first flowers. What a fun surprise. They are beautiful!!!

I know everybody thinks their child is "advanced for their age." But here's proof that Tess is definitely beyond her years. Not only does she read the local Chinese newspaper she also speaks fluent Chinese. We can't understand a word she is saying but we're sure it's proper Chinese.

Tess has had a hard couple of days with a runny nose, cough and fever. We were concerned about her passing her physical exam with all her symptoms. If they thought she was too sick, China would not let us take her out of the country until she got better. Fortunately, her fever went down and she started feeling better the morning of her exam. Thank goodness because there was no way we were leaving without her. Today she still has a cough but no fever or runny nose.

Here is Jane, our guide, doctor, teacher, caregiver, protector, bargainer and much more.

Tess is still battling her bad cold but she's such a trooper. This life on the road is hard on a little girl with a stuffy nose and sore gums.

We had a wonderful time yesterday at the zoo and art museum. By the end of the day Tessie started sneezing and coughing. Today she has a full blown cold. We have decided to keep her in today in hopes that we can get her better before we fly out to Guangzhou tomorrow. Here's a few pictures of Tess and her Grandmere per Abbie's request.

More Tessie Pictures.

Playing peek-a-boo

Tessie loves her new toys.

Trying to walk already.

Tess finally drinks a bottle.

At the CCAA with Tess' orphanage nanny.

We got Tess around 7:30 this morning. She cried on and off (mostly on) till about 1:30 in the afternoon. At times it was heartbreaking. She would scream so hard and long that she couldn't catch her breath and she would not be comforted during those times. She also refused a bottle even though it was way past feeding time. After we left to go fill out paperwork at the CCAA office, she started to calm down. She didn't cry at all when we were at the CCAA office and we were there till 4:30 with lots of other crying babies. She took her first bottle since we got her during the middle of the adoption ceremony around 3:30. After we brought her home, we put her on the floor and played with her. Slowly, she started to play back and eventually started cooing and trying to stand up. She doesn't know how to crawl because she has spent a lot of time in a crib. But she is already pulling herself up and standing. I think she might just skip crawling and go straight to walking. After awhile her personalty started showing and she had us all laughing with her silly antics. We were also delighted to see her smile and eventually laugh. At bedtime she was a trooper. We put her in her crib and she played with her toes for awhile then fell asleep without a tear. As you can probably tell, Mike, Momma and I are already so in love with this baby we can barely stand it. Tomorrow we will spend the morning with Tess in our suite then everyone is going on a tour of an ancient Chinese village in the afternoon. No paperwork just fun time and bonding.

We have our beautiful baby! Our lives have changed and we will never be the same. We are filled was such love for the precious child.

Disappointing news. We went to the CCAA to pick up our babies and waited and waited and waited. No babies. They finally called and got in touch with the orphanage. The van carrying the babies broke down on their way here. So looks like it will be tomorrow before we can get our baby. We have hopes that she will be here in the morning. In the meantime, we are trying to stay optimistic (me more than Mike). We plan to go out to dinner then call it a night.

We are going to get our daughter in a few hours and we are so excited we can barely stand it. We spent the morning buying groceries and walking around the area. It is quite overwhelming the numbers of people everywhere. We had computer problems again this morning so hopefully I will be able to post later on after we get her. We will try and post pictures as soon as we can. This is by far the most exciting thing I have ever done in my life. Wish us luck and hopefully everyone will see Tess' pictures soon.

We are in Chongqing and just a day away from getting the baby. We are staying in a fabulous hotel overlooking a city of 10 million people. We are meeting with our guide, Jane this evening and going over paperwork. Then she is taking us to the grocery store to buy supplies for the baby. I will post more later.