First Swim Class

Xing Xing had her first swim class on Monday.  She LOVED it.  She started out in the baby pool and then they went to the big pool.  This class mostly just gets the kids used to the water.  When she had to leave the water, she cried and cried.  She kept saying "Water, Ba Ba" all the way from the pool, to the locker room and to the car!  Looks like there's another swimmer in the family!  

CEO, Chef, or clothes model?

Will Coral be a Chef at Club LeConte or will she be a CEO of an electric company? Or a clothes model? April made the chef's apron and hat for her.  We went by Bill's work and saw him and she was "working" at his desk.  I've included a short video of her walking her puppy.  She decided since Ba Ba walks Mi Mi and Gable she'll walk her puppy which is named Aixing.  She names everything Aixing.  Not much going on this week.  We went to a multicultural music day at the early learning center.  She went to the kyuki-d0 and did the entire class by herself. The teachers were very proud b/c it was a very large class.  April also made the blue outfit with matching purse she's wearing with the china doll print.  I'm trying to hire April to be her personal clothes maker. LOL.  She has clothes from a site I found called livilu originals.  We did meet a new friend this weekend.  Her parents moved to Minnesota from Texas.  The daughter is 3 and is from southern china.  They played well together.  Coral had one little accident.  She was running on the driveway and scraped her face.  You can it in the picture of the orange dress and the polka dot outfit.  She starts swim lessons on Monday with Ba Ba.

Xing Xing is my name!

We found this shirt at Target and just had to get it for her! I swear, she recognized "Xing".  It is too cute!  As you can see, she still loves her blankie.  She was being very sassy in these pics!  I'm thinking of adding some bows or ribbon to the shirt to "girl" it up some.

Coral saying her name and I love you!

Appointment at Cleft Lip Clinic

Coral had her appointment yesterday.  She was seen by about 10 doctors.  It was very well organized and someone was with the entire time.  She has normal hearing, so we now know that she is just choosing not to listen to us..LOL.  Seriously, she is fine. She will continue to be monitored on a yearly to bi-yearly basis.  The orthodontist said  she is going to probably need is braces.  The plastic surgeon said that her lip looked great and that she would not need any further surgery.  The ENT doctor said for us to consider a larynsocopy (sp) to check her throat to see if there is anything on her vocal cords to cause her to have a raspy voice.  He doesn't really think there is and that the raspiness is caused by vocal strain.  She could have had to cry or scream a lot in the orphanage to get attention to get her needs met.  We also found out that her type of cleft, which is a midline cleft is a very rare cleft.  I believe it's like something like 1 in 10,000.  This type of cleft can also affect other midline defects. This refers to such things as the heart, brain.  The cleft and other midline effects are not related per se, but they may have occurred at the same time in the baby's gestation.  That is to say that if something affected the formation of the face that something could have affected these other parts.  The doctors do not see any red flags because she is developmentally where she needs to be and she does not have any heart murmurs or seizures.  I repeat, the doctors are not really concerned about her having any problems in this area.  We are going to have an MRI done just as a precautionary measure.  Again, the doctors really do not think there is any problem.  So, we're going to do those this summer.  We were really pleased that everything went so well and that she is fine.  

Bunny House

Bill and Xing Xing had a lot of fun building a bunny house.  Didn't they do a great job?  Xing Xing couldn't resist eating a little of the frosting.  They are very proud of their work.

Gotcha Day Video

Okay, here is the Gotcha Day video.  We had an emotional time, so there were a few minor technical difficulties.  Try not to cry...it'll be hard not to!  The video is about 1 minute 30 seconds.  That's not her you hear crying in the background.  We had to keep it short b/c we were going to post it on our travel blog...but we didn't have an adaptor.  We have the entire thing on Bill's camera.

video

this is a video of Aixing hunting eggs.  It's only 25 seconds.

Easter

We've had a wonderful Easter weekend.  We dyed eggs and hunted eggs.   Xing Xing had a really good time.  She is a very good egg hunter.  She picked up on finding eggs very quickly.  Xing Xing wanted to find more.  She was very happy to find money in her eggs.  She loves the Disney movie Cars, so we got her a Cars basket and we used Cars Easter egg dye that had stickers.

She has been saving for a fish.  So here's some pictures of her fish.  She has three fish and they are all named Aixing.  She enjoys feeding them. 

She goes to the cleft lip clinic on April 15, so we will post results on April 16.  It will be a very long day.  There will be 10 doctors  who will be examining her.  Her exam is from 8:30-11:00 and then the team meets from 11-12 and then we reconvene to hear the results. We will be there the majority of the day.  

We are in the process of doing of our readoption.  This enables us to get an American birth certificate.  At this time, she has no official American documents (Louisiana gave us an immigrant ss card, so we have to change it anyway)  So, we've decided to shorten her name.  We never use Rose, just Aixing or Coral Xing.  Coral Rose is a beautiful name but Coral Rose Lai Fu Xing is too long and Coral Xing Rose didn't flow.  It was important to us to use use her Chinese name as we love the meaning of it (Xing means happiness or star or prosperity). Her nanny named her Xing b/c she wanted her to have happiness daily and she brings us happiness daily.  So, we have named her Coral Xing Libi.  I had wanted her to have a part of us or a family member name and never could find the right name.  Someone close to me suggested Libi recently  (and said if they had known they were to combine Lisa/Bill they could have easily done that).  Libi also means "my heart".  She is from our hearts.  So, Coral is for Hawaii b/c if we hadn't lived there we wouldn't have her; Xing is her Chinese name, and Libi is for us since we couldn't give her any of our genes.  Her nickname will still be Aixing (eye-sheeng) or Xing Xing (sheeng sheeng).  We hope everyone will be respectful of  our decision.    

Gathering sap

Today Aixing went to a friend's house.  This friend's daddy works with Bill.  She went to help gather sap from the maple trees.  The family makes maple syrup from the sap which alot of people do here.  They have 7 kids and each tree is color coded for the kids to have their own trees.  Aixing really enjoyed getting the sap from the buckets and pouring into the big sap container.  She thought it was alot of fun to walk in the woods.  It's hard work to make maple syrup. You have to get it in the bucket and then carry your bucket of sap and pour it in a big container.   Next, you pour all that into a big stove.  You have boil and filter it and stuff.  Karen gave us a quart jar of maple syrup that they had made previously.  It was very tasty and didn't seem to taste as sugary as store syrup.  I guess we'll have to put a spout on some of our maple trees so she can get more sap.  Oh, Aixing didn't have to walk all the way up and carry her bucket down.  She was just walking with the big girls.  Her tree was near the container.

Earrings

Aixing is doing a back bend and chatting with her friends.  She looks so grownup walking out of Claire's with her bag.

Busy Weekend

We've had a very busy weekend.  On Thursday, she had her speech playgroup.  She had a great time and loved the shaving cream.  We left Thursday to go to Madison.  Daddy had an employee named Terri graduate from the Management Internship Program and also our friend, Anne -Aunty Anne to Aixing - was also graduating.  We had a good time visiting with them.  The next day we went to the mall and Aixing got her picture made with the Easter Bunny.  She wore a different dress than I had posted b/c we didn't bring hers with us b/c we weren't sure if we'd have time to get the picture made.  Anyway, she loved the bunny and didn't want to leave.  She wanted to show him her hat.  Then, we went and visited with Rob, Stacy, Charlie (and the future baby Schmidt)  Aixing enjoyed playing with her uncle and aunt and her cousin.  It was alot of fun.  After we left them, we went back to the mall and got her ears pierced.  She didn't cry at all.  Well, she cried when Bill came but after that she stopped and got her ears pierced.  She looks adorable.  Then, Saturday we decided to try chinese dance again.  To have missed so many weeks, we (teachers, other parents) all thought she did a great job.  I think the purple tutu helped.