Party Girl

We were in full holiday mode this weekend, as we had two Christmas parties to attend. The first was John's company holiday party, and the highlight of that for us was watching Leah go crazy out on the dance floor. There were tons of kids at the party, but Leah was the youngest one there. Since we don't have a babysitter yet, we brought her along. They had a special room for the kids to hang out in, with lots of food and activities for them (magician/entertainer, balloon animals, etc). We got Leah a balloon shaped like Elmo, which she just loved carrying around.

While the grown-ups finished eating and chatting, they had a DJ in another room playing really loud music for the kids to dance to. And Leah went nuts! She was running around and dancing like crazy and having so much fun. She saw the bigger kids sliding and throwing themselves down on the floor, and she just had to imitate it. There were times when we had to go and get her because of some collisions or near-collisions on the dance floor, but she had a blast and danced for at least a half-hour straight and got lots of laughs from everyone. She danced around with her Elmo balloon and by the end of the night, he didn't have legs anymore.

Here are a few pictures and a video of her (watch how she is trying to imitate the other kids sliding around), but they just don't do it justice. I wish I had thought to take some video earlier, but I was having too much fun just watching her!

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The next night, we went to some friends' annual Saint Nikolaus party. It was a great party for kids and there were definitely a ton of them there. Leah loved playing with all the toys there, especially the little kitchen and the art easel. Santa Claus made an appearance and handed out stockings full of goodies. I was hoping to get a photo of Leah sitting on his lap, but she was not having it! I guess we'll have to hope Santa photos go better next year. Anyway, we had a great time, and here are a few pics from that night.

The first time ever we saw her face...

...was exactly one year ago today. And it was love at first sight. And our lives were changed forever.

For the story of receiving our referral, feel free to click here.

New Camera

I fired up my new camera yesterday and here are just a few of the first shots I took. Even though I don't know what I'm doing yet, there's a noticeable difference and I can't wait to figure out how to get the most out of this camera.

Leah's latest

Time for another update of the funny things she's been up to lately.

Answering our questions with a really long "Um" while she looks off to the side, as if she's really thinking about it. Sometimes she'll then say "Um, no", and shake her head.

Saying "Hi dada" all day long (to both of us), every time she sees us. It usually goes like this: Leah: "Hi". Us: "Hi Leah". Leah: "Hi Dada.....Hi Dada". Us: "Hi baby, how are you?". Leah "Hi Dada".....this goes on and on for a few minutes...

Exclaiming "Wow!!" after each song on her Korean children's cd. She does this for the first 10 songs or so, and then she's all "wow'd" out.

She loves going outside, and says "outside?" really clearly while pulling on the patio door handle and crying. She usually chooses to do this while she's dressed in just a diaper on the coldest, rainiest day.

Doing somersaults off my lap while I'm holding her. She just falls forward with no advance warning, and loves to have me flip her over.

Holding our hands and leading us around the house. She never used to like holding hands, even when she was learning to walk. Now, she loves to grab us by the finger and drag us around.

Pretending to cry. She saw someone crying on TV while we were watching her favorite show, SYTYCD, and she started imitating it. Nowadays, when we say the word "crying" or "baby", she will squeeze her face tight and pretend to cry.

Her latest trick

She recently started doing this on the little parallel bars at Little Gym, too.

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Play kitchen

We're really lucky to have the Step2 Company right in our area, just 10 minutes away. They have a great store that we've been to several times lately. They even have free play times, which I just found out about. Leah loves playing with all the stuff there and we've been trying to figure out which play kitchen to get her for Christmas.

We know she's definitely ready for her own kitchen because she plays with her little tea set every single day, several times a day. It's so cute watching her carefully bring the teapot, the 2 tea cups, the tray of cakes, and (just lately) a tray of play muffins to one spot and sit and have a little tea party. She loves to "feed" us and pour tea for us.

So we decided on this adorable one, which is their newest one, and we think she'll love it. It seemed to keep her busy for quite a while there. Little does she know.....

Thanksgiving weekend

I have to backtrack a little here, since I didn't get a chance to mention Thanksgiving and Leah's first Santa photos.

We enjoyed a delicious Thanksgiving meal at my folks' house in Michigan, and Leah got to spend some time getting to know her grandparents. I didn't really get any decent pics unfortunately. But Leah had fun entertaining everyone and held up really well after a long day of travel, etc.

We stayed at the Marriott in the RenCen, which is where John and I worked and where we actually met, so it was a nice trip down memory lane, although it has changed a lot from the time we were there. We also wanted to stay at a place where we could let Leah just run loose since she has so much fun doing that, and the RenCen has a lot of wide open spaces and isn't very busy and crowded on a holiday weekend.

The next day was Black Friday, of course, and while we had no interest in actually doing any serious bargain hunting, we did want to take advantage of the great Santa's Castle display at the Somerset Collection Mall, which is way cooler than anything we have in our area.

We wanted to get some good photos of Leah's first time sitting on Santa's lap. But after waiting for hours for our time slot (luckily we didn't have to wait in a line the whole time and actually got to walk around the mall), by the time it was our turn, she was DONE and on the verge of a meltdown (which afterwards, hit full force). And when we got up there, Leah was not too thrilled about being handled by strangers and having to sit on Santa's lap. So the photos didn't turn out that great. We had been hoping to use them for our Christmas cards, but I guess we'll have to come up with a better idea!

It's Official!

According to my calculations, Leah spent exactly 8 months and 10 days in Korea. And we think it's pretty cool to say that after 8 months and 11 days with us, we are now officially a family.  Even though the adoption process has been one big roller coaster filled with hassles and irritations and lots of waiting, it's all been worth it because we couldn't imagine life without Leah. Hopefully, she will feel the same about us!

About our day in court, it was short and sweet. Our county does adoption finalizations in batches, so we were with three other families. We each took our turn going up in front of the magistrate to confirm that we wanted to finalize the adoption and to verify some information.

Then we got to go up again to officially press the seal on the adoption decree.



Afterwards, Leah enjoyed running all around the courthouse.

Here we are with our social worker who did our homestudy and all our post-placement reports.

And later, we were hungry and thought it only fitting to go celebrate with some Korean food at the nearby Korean restaurant. Leah loves chap chae (glass noodles with veggies) and mandu guk (dumpling soup), so we ordered that along with some dak gui (bbq chicken).

Oh, and the dress that Leah is wearing was given to her by her foster family while we were in Korea. We decided to save it for this special occasion, and were really glad that it fits perfectly and looks really cute on her.

A Touch of Dutch

I forgot to mention that not only is Leah saying "No, No, No", she's also saying "Nee, Nee, Nee" (which means no in Dutch).  One of her first utterances, way back before she started being so talkative, was "A-sha", and we weren't sure what she was saying at the time. In the past month or so, we've finally figured out that she's probably saying "alsjeblieft" (which in this case means "here you go" in Dutch), since John says that to her all the time. She uses the word correctly, when she's handing us something, and usually says it really softly and quickly.  It's really funny, especially when she says it over and over as she hands us one thing at a time.

The other word she always said was "Oy-Dis!", which she would say really loudly and enthusiastically. We'd love for her to tell us what that means! We're thinking it means something like "wow, look at this!", but we're not sure and she doesn't say it that much anymore.

John speaks to her a lot in Dutch, and she loves it when he greets her with "Dag, meisje!" (meaning "Hi, little girl"),  and when he praises her with "Goed zo! Heel goed van jou!" (meaning "good job, well done"), she just beams with pride.  I'm currently trying to teach her to say "Lekker!", which means "yummy, delicious".  So far, she just makes the "ck" sound, but she knows what it means.

Playing on her low chair

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