I cooked the goose.

So yesterday I decided to wash the blankets and stuffed animal that we dragged around China with us. I specifically waited this long because I didn't want to take away any remaining "China smell" that might be of comfort to Nedy.

Nedy's gray goose ('Goosey') is her buddy. He has been since day 2 in China. He's not a "security blanket" kind of thing, as she leaves him alone most of the day, but she loves to give him hugs and kisses and says "hi!" to him whenever he's in view. Goosey is important around here.

You know where this is going already, right?

Ummmmm...although Goosey's internet description says he is washable, I guess they meant 'surface washable' because...ummmmm...I cooked the goose. Turns out Goosey *was* stuffed with wool. I retrieved him from the washer as nothing but goose skin with a large lump of compacted, matted wool inside. THE HORROR. Dan was distraught. I was distraught. We were even more distraught to find out that Goosey is no longer available in gray, so there was no replacement option. (And, how the heck could we just replace Goosey?! I mean, he's GOOSEY. You don't just go out and get another because he's a little...ummmm...jacked up.)

Sooooooooo...after Nedy went to bed last night, I got out my seam ripper and went to work. I pulled the matted wool out his side, restuffed him with some machine washable fill, and sewed him back up. I was careful to reattach his tags, as Nedy loves his tags. And then I decided to do one better and give Goosey a new tag. A big, robin's egg blue tag. When the repair was done, I went at him with the lint brush for 10 minutes or so to work up his nubbiness. And I have to say, when I was done I was proud of myself. Goosey looked nothing short of AMAZING.

But the test came this morning when Nedy got up. I'll let you be the judge. (Yep, I'm proud of myself.)

How is Hank doing, you ask?

I've had some requests for a Hank status update. I am soooooo happy to report that Hank has decided to eat again. The days of force feeding him several times a day are gone--I now use that time to force formula on Nedy. :)

So he's no longer starving himself, but the hyper-salivation continues whenever she gets within 3 feet or so of him. Every time Nedy sees him she is all smiles and waves and says, "hi...hi...HI!...hi" repeatedly...and he walks as far away as possible from her (lots of wall-hugging) to escape. But if she's reasonably contained (by Hank's definition), he can get relatively close to her without gagging. I offer evidence below...

Busy Saturday!

What a crazy-busy, fun day! Nedy went to Grandma and Grandpa's house (Dan's Mom and Dad--my Mom and Dad are 'Nana and Papa') this morning to see her cousin Kaitlin and meet her cousin Nick who is home on spring break from UW-Madison. And Nick's girlfriend Ashley came, too! Let me tell you, Nedy has no shortage of awesome cousins. We had lunch, played with Sophie the dog, fed Grandma's baby doll, practiced stair climbing (*cough*--Nedy is far too ambitious in such endeavours...) and Nick even demonstrated for Nedy going down the stairs belly style. It's so cute to watch her watch them with such interest.

After her afternoon nap and downing more formula (18 ounces in today with the turkey baster-whoo hoo!), we stopped in at Holly, Pat and Zhi's for an hour. Zhi is so cute. He looked at Pat and said, "Zhi carry the baby?" Dan and Pat told him it'd be better if he held Nedy Monster. So he sat down on the floor, pulled her little self into him and wrapped his little arms around her. ADORABLE. Seriously freakin' adorable. I mean, just look at them together below--aren't they just a lovely little pair?! Of course I snapped a million photos and commented that these pics would totally be in their wedding reception photo PowerPoint--but Pat quickly pointed out that by the time of their wedding, it'll surely be some sort of hologram. :)

Tomorrow is lunch at Nana and Papa's--more photos tomorrow night, energy level permitting!

Play date, liquid intake and baby doll lovin'

Today was so much fun. E and the kids came over this morning for a play date and we had such a blast hanging out, eating snacks, waiting for the cuckoo clocks, and just enjoying little people being little people. I love watching Nedy watch other kids, always with a "hmmmm...I wonder if I could do that" look on her face. I'm looking forward to Nedy growing up with E's kiddos--we just love them.

Nedy continues to amaze us. She is such a curious, outgoing, strong-willed little being. It seems every day brings some new discovery. Today she was having fun with her baby doll--feeding her, hugging her, patting her back. It makes my heart swell to see her mimic nurturing with her doll. Just the idea that she knows how to give love to a baby...it just makes me so grateful for the love she's been given and that which she is open to receiving from us.

Nedy is now napping twice a day in her crib! HOORAY! We are hopeful that nights in the crib are just a couple weeks away. In the meantime, she is continuing to sleep through the night in her stroller. Man, am I ever thankful for a kid that sleeps!

On the food front, I think we have a foodie on our hands. Nedy will try anything new. Last night we sauteed spinach in bacon and ground it up in the Cuisinart and she LOVED it. I mean, LOVED, LOVED, LOVED it. We had to cut her off for fear of a stomach ache. Tonight we had Bob-Bob and Ne-Ne's fantastic beef stew and ground that up for her--again, LOVED it. She really seems to love new foods. The only time she seems to reject food is when she had it recently--aside from the yogurt and apple sauce staples. She needs variety, I guess. :) Dan is loving that she likes food and is making all sorts of stuff to grind up in the food processor. She has teeth and can chew, but we find she tends to "hold" food in her mouth much longer when she has to chew, so we grind up the main part of the meal and then give her self-feed food chunks as a supplement after we get the main stuff into her. We're kind of obsessed with getting a lot of food into her, as she's not much into drinking at all. I can get 3-4 ounces of formula into her via her sippy cup first thing in the morning, but after that, it's a huge struggle. She will take water from a spoon (yes, a spoon) so we give her about 8 ounces daily of that. And tonight we discovered that we can give her formula with a turkey baster (yes, a turkey baster), so that's what we're doing for now. We've tried a million bottles, sippy cups, and different liquid options, but she's just not into it. Our doctor told us we could move her to milk if she rejects formula, but she doesn't like milk either, so we'll continue to try getting the formula into her with the turkey baster. Between that, the water via spoon and liquidy foods, she has wet diapers and enough liquid to make a ton of drool, so I guess I'll be content with this system for now. As everyone tells me, the phases pass eventually. I'm not a big liquid person myself, so you'd think I'd get it! :)

Re-entry

Okay, okay. I know I'm now eligible for the Worst Blogger Ever award. I left you with the cliff-hanger post about wishing us luck with our 20+ hours of travel home and then failed to post again for 10 days. And I truly have no excuse because she's amazing. And easy. And funny. (We're having a blast. I guess that's my excuse.)

The flights...well, it was 22 hours of parental baptism by fire. Nedy (her official nickname) is a busy kid. She slept about 6 hours of the 22 hours and demanded our undivided attention the rest of the time. (Actually, to be accurate, she demanded Dan's undivided attention the whole time. Back then--you know, 10 days ago--she favored one of us or the other each day seeming not to get the "two are better than one" concept. She's since figured that out and we're both the bee's knees now. It rocks.) Anyway, she never cried the entire time in flight. Just played and ate and bounced around and made faces and ate. Nedy is a dare devil. She was never so giggly and excited as when we hit horrble turbulance just outside Chicago. You know, the kind where the plane feels like it dropped 50 feet in 2 seconds? Yep, she laughed herself silly. But eventually--after layovers in Seoul and Seattle--we arrived in Chicago and were met by my brother Johnny and a 'KENNEDY' sign. We headed back to John's house and were met by my Mom and Dad, Aunt Janet and De Anna, Holly, Cory and Jeremy who all hung out late on a night of nasty weather to welcome us back home. It was so sweet.

The past week has flown by. Nedy and Dan moved through the jetlag much faster than I. Nedy, in fact, has been sleeping 12 hours through the night since her 3rd night home. (She's still in her stroller, but we're working on that with daytime naps in the crib hoping to transition her to sleeping there at night within a couple weeks. For now, we rock her to sleep in the rocking chair and then move her to her stroller in her room.) We initially planned on co-sleeping with her, but she sleeps soundly in her own room and I'm of the opinion that sleeping soundly through the night is great preparation for daytime bonding activity. Actually, the most surprising thing about this whole experience is that, while she is delayed physically, she seems quite advanced emotionally. She makes solid eye-contact, loves to watch our faces and mimic expressions, gives hugs and kisses, has appropriate reactions to strangers, loves her baby massages, says "Mama", "Baba", "hi!", and "book", sings and babbles, looks for our reactions to whatever she is doing, giggles and laughs, throws an occasional tantrum (always about not wanting to drink her bottle), and loves playing both with us and on her own. I am amazed by her. When I think about how her life has changed in the past several weeks and how she has blossomed in her trust of us, I am so grateful. She is such a little wonder.

Every day something new unfolds--today, for example, she learned the Obama bump. :) She still enjoys holding fingers and walking around the most, but has been working on crawling and is probably a week or so away from full crawling mobility. (God help us.) She is so determined and works so hard without frustration--she just keeps plugging away. Dan and I look up from her at least 50 times a day and smile at each other in absolute amazement that we get to be her Mama and Baba.

This past week has been full of new experiences. I fully expected to hunker down after coming home and not leave the house for weeks while she adjusted, but I've learned that so much of what I've read over the past three years in preparation really just depends on the individual kid. Nedy loves hanging out at home, but she seems to really enjoy getting out for a little while every day. So, we go somewhere each day--to see family,Target, Schlitz Audubon Center, walks around town, etc. It is so fun to watch her take in new places. And getting out of the house is good for Hank. While Nedy is adjusting beautifully, Hank is completely distraught. He has been refusing to eat since we brought him home last Sunday. For the first couple of days he walking around uttering this gutteral sound. I'm glad that stopped. We've been in conversations with our vet a couple times and have been "force feeding" him small amounts of wet food 3 times at night (12am, 3am, and 6am) because he cannot eat when Nedy is awake as the sight of food makes him gag. Not kidding. Apparently, he has this extreme nervous condition where he hyper-salivates causing him to gag whenever she is close by. It is so sad. And she just loves him. Every time she sees him she starts kicking and giggling and clicking her tongue--she learned that from us. And then he runs away in a panic. And then she shrugs her shoulders with this "what the heck?" look on her face. Hilarious. Ironic that I worried about Nedy's adjustment but she's sleeping 12 hours through the night while I'm getting up 3 times to feed the cat... Life is funny. Anyway, the past 2 days he has eaten a few bites of dry food here and there and is braving into the kitchen when we are in there with her, so I think we're seeing some improvement. (But not to worry, the vet said if we don't see improvement within a few weeks that there are mental health drugs that might help... Poor Hank.)

So, below are a few photos from last week. I'll try to do a much better job with updates. I can't wait to see what this week brings. :)