Home for a while

So, at this point you can tell that we have been busy. To start, we are not exactly the "blogging type", so there has been delay in updating the blogspot. Nonetheless, here are some new pics. Everything is going well. Tristan loves his sister and she is fitting in like a piece to the puzzle we call the Vogt family. Lilly is growing and moving all over the place. She actually can "Comando" crawl - but she likes to move around sitting on her butt. Hey, she can get from one room to the other side of the house faster than any one crawling on all fours! At any rate, we have been working with her standing, she can stand on her own for a while, but she isn't quite at the point of taking steps yet. We all get there at our own pace I guess. Hope you all enjoy the pictures!

Home time

Hello all! Thanks for following along!

So we've been home for a few weeks now and we are trying to adjust to having two little one's in the house. The kids are doing great together! Tristan loves his little sister (he can't say the "ll" in the middle of Lilly - it sounds like Liddy - very cute!)

Lilly is doing very well, she is still not able to crawl or walk yet, but she can pick up her whole upper body now and is rolling all over the floor. She loves the exersauser, she has lots of fun with all her toys. She is eating baby food now (not just bottles) and she gobbles it up (usually upset when the food is all gone!)

Alicia is still at home with the kids for the next week or two and she is very ready to have some adult interaction back at work! She loves having all the time with the kids, but she needs some adult time.

Joe is working his normal hours and also training for the triathlon in May (http://pages.teamintraining.org/cpa/nervetri10/jvogtk) So things are very hectic now a days.

Hope you all enjoy the pictures! Thanks for following along!

Here are some more Pics from China ---

We had some battery problems and absolutely NO time to take more pictures since we have been home -- we will attempt to do this this week and try to upload them soon!!!

Thanks to all for following along!

We're Home!!!

OK, So... The last post was from Thursday daytime, China time --

Thurs night we all ate together at the local restaurant. We had an interesting added entry -- Pigeon - complete with head. Surprisingly the kids liked it the best.

OK so we left the hotel around 3pm on Friday, China time (so like 2 am Friday morning PA time) -- went to the airport for our 6pm flight. Our boarding passes said we would begin boarding at 7:50pm! As it turns out we waited in the airport till around 11pm! Delay was due to bad weather -- guessing the plane was coming from somewhere with bad weather, the Beijing and Guangzhou had OK weather. At anyrate, we arived in Beijing at 0200, had to contact the hotel to come pick us up - finally got a room with a king size bed 'cause they do not have cribs and went to sleep around 0330 -- so that we could be up and ready to get the 0800 shuttle.

The rest of our flights were relatively normal -- although it was a 3 hour flight followed by a 12 hour flight. We arived in Dulles around 2pm Sat -- then we had to wait, first for our stroller - which we never received, then for customs (like about an hour), then to leave the baggage area, then for the hotel that we parked our car to come pick us up... only to get to the car and realize that the hotel didn't clear out the car (not that I expected them to clean off the car, but at least allow us to get to the car)- so that there was about 4 feet of snow - you all know, 3 feet deep. Basically, I couldn't even see the license plate. So, thankfully the hotel had a shovel and Alicia and Lilly waited in the lobby with our luggage and Joe cleared out the car. Eventually we made it home, around 8pm Sat night (total travel time ~29 hours)

Lilly was great the whole time -- she slept well on the plane, she didn't fuss or cry or anything. Thankfully the plane was not all that full and we were able to have an extra seat in between us!

Now that we are home, the first few days Lilly stayed on China time -- yup, awake at 0100 till around 0700 the first day and 0030 till around 0800 the next day -- I think that she is currently on the right track, but we will see. Last night she slept from about 7pm till 0500 (alot better!)

We have some more photos, but they are not on this computer yet, so I'll have to post them another day...

Last post in China

This post is a little late (like 4 days!) sorry, blogger wasn't working well while we were in Disney




Yesterday we had to be in our room around 1130 to wait for a call from our facilitator, and luckily she called us and said that all our paperwork looks good (and I believe that Lilly has been issued her visa - which will will recieve on Friday)). We were also told that on Thursday ((actually only a couple of hours from now for us -- we will go to the US Consulate and we will take our oath.

So other than that we just hung out at the hotel, went for a walk around the area - saw a neat park along the water, and tried to dodge falling bamboo scaffolding. They are doing a lot of construction/ repainting around here and they use bamboo as thier scaffolding. So right now everyone is preparing for the Chinese New Year and they are tearing down all the scaffolding -- bassically, break it apart and let it fall to the ground - when done, pick up all the pieces off the ground - kinda scary.

At any rate, today we pretty much did the same thing -- walked around the hotel, took some more pics, went to see the pools, tried to go to the top floor -- apparently it's a special floor as there was someone waiting at the elevator and told us that we couldn't come up here - I think he said to go to the second floor... not sure why, but my guess is he didn't speak much English.

So for now we will be getting ready to go to the Consulate in about an hour, I think we will be getting together with the group again for dinner.

We start our Journey back tomorrow and we are very excited!!! We fly to Beijing Friday night, then leave from Beijing around 1100 on Saturday -- we should arive in DC on Saturday around 2pm, which will be a little weird since we will lose more than 24 hours. Of course that is if the airport is open by then, I here we will be coming back to 2-3 feet of snow! Should be interesting digging our car out -- hopefully the hotel will lend us a shovel.

Enjoy the pics

The only thing on the agenda today was the "red couch photo" -- this is a famous thing with the "White Stork" -- I mean White Swan hotel that we are staying at.

This was interesting with the 5 little ones. The 2 boys in the groupd didn't want to cooperate at all. The girls seemed to be fine, but they didn't always want to smile -- and I don't know that they ever smiled all at the same time.

As you can see by the pictures, everyone purchased the traditional style Chinese dress/outfit. Lilly looks adorable in hers.

Other than this we really didn't do much today, we gave Lilly plenty of time to sleep. We played with her - trying some more "belly time" to help her with her arm strength. She is now sitting up really well, she can (and has been able to) roll over front to back and back to front. Last week she was barely able to hold her head up for a few seconds when we put her on her belly, now she is using one or both arms to hold her head and shoulders up. She is doing really well.

She is still taking her medication and her ear looks great. She actually took a few bites (although she was fighting us) of rice cereal this afternoon. This is a hugh step because when we first tried she wouldn't let us anywhere near her mouth with a spoon.

So tomorrow we wait in our rooms sometime around 1130, our guide will call to let us know that everything is good to go and either we go as planned on the next day to take our oath and finalize everything as per USA or she says there is a chance that we may wind up doing this tomorrow instead.

So - a little explanation -- we have already adopted Lilly as far as China's concern, now we will be adopting Lilly as per the USA. We will go to the Consulate either tomorrow or the next day to take her oath of citizenship. At least this is how I understand it at this point -- things may change or be totally different when we go through it. We've had to roll with the punches so far...

That's all for now, hope everyone back home is doing well!

day 10

Well today was a doozie!

We woke up today, Lilly slept later than usual - we noticed that her one ear was all red and irritated - had to call our facilitator -- who called the clinic we were at over the weekend for her "check up" for the adoption -- yeah, as it turns out she had an ear infection -- well, they actually are saying that she had a boil in her ear. So the clinic felt bad I guess that they didn't follow protocol and address this on Sat, so they saw her today (quickly) and gave us antibiotics -- both orally and for her ear.

So then we headed over with 3 other families to the local markets. This was an interesting visit -- they say that the local people will eat anything that flies in the air, except an airplane, and anything that has 4 legs except a table. We definitely saw evidence of this at the market -- everything from scorpians to snakes to frogs to spiders. First we saw all these things alive as we were walking, then we went to the restaurant street I think she called it, and a couple of people in our group actually ate some scorpians on a stick. They said that they tasted crunchy - kinda like grilled chicken skin. We didn't really even think about trying it.

So we actually ate at an "Italian" restaurant -- we ordered too much pizza (I think the familiarity of it enticed us -- well, as it turns out there is no sauce on this pizza. Also there is tons more cheese than I have ever had on a pizza. And lots of greese. Although it was relatively cheap, it was disapointing.

So we came back to the hotel and Lilly took a nap.

We went out to eat with the 2 other families that we were with in Beijing -- it's crazy, but all 7 adults and 2 children had a very satisfying meal for about $50 US dollars!!

Hope you all enjoy the pictures!!!! (only 5 days left till we are home!!!)