Week of August 20 - Emily Sarah & The Judge

This last week was a big week once again for Emily as Friday was the big day for our court session to finalize her re-adoption in California. As with most things, Emily took everything in stride, even meeting 3 other little girls waiting also for adoption/re-adoption while we were there. The judge was very nice, took only a few minutes to finalize the papers that result in the state court order completing the adoption. Emily got to pick a toy from the Judges shelf (the judge let's every child appearing pick a toy), and she went right for the little pink teddy bear as you can see in the group photo below.


While Emily was legally adopted in China, and the adoption is recognized as legal by China, The US, and California....readoption is a common practice for foreign adoption as it fulfills a couple of important events for Emily. 1) it entitles her to a California birth certificate (called a delayed birth certificate) so Emily will not be dependent on any foreign documentation as she grows up. The same is true in terms of the actual legal adoption paperwork for us as parents. 2) It is a perfect opportunity to legally change Emily's name from Xia Dou to Emily Sarah as well. 3) Since she will have legal adoption, as ordered by the court, in California now this will insure that any local or state government in the years to come will recognize this legal status of adoption in all 50 states (probably not an issue, but great additional insurance).

Emily made great progress this week as we worked to wean her from a bottle to a sippy cup for her milk. After a day or two of rebellion at milk time, she has accepted this now and is addusted into the new routine. This was a step that Emily's Dr had advised at age one, since there is overall benefit by moving from a bottle early as part of her ongoing development. The rebellion for the first couple of days was a laugh for both Nancy and I as Emily has been drinking water from a sippy cup now for almost 3 months. We put a sippy cup full of water down with her during the day and it is not unusual to check the cup later in the day and find she has drank it almost dry as the day progressed. She just was not willing to go that route for milk until we stood firm and it became clear to her that milk was only going to come from the cup from now on.

Nancy took the opportunity this weekend to teach Emily to drink from a straw as well, and that went very smoothly once she cut the straw short so the pull distance was more in line with Emily's capacity to suck up the liquid. Since Emily loves to sample whatever mom is eating or drinking, this makes the sharing of liquid pretty easy now. Although, I have been letting Emily sip water from an open cup for a couple months now at the end of her meal time and she does very well (providing I hold the cup of course).

New learnings again this week, with Emily learning an all important tradition while at grandmas..... the "give me 5". See Emily has a great unle, who is actually the patriarch of Nancy's extended family in the US, who likes all the grand kids to be able to give him the five finger hand slap when he holds out his hand and says "give me 5". Well sure enough, Emily has learned this and will give you a little five finger hand slap to your palm when you say this.

Emily has also learned to sing along with her Elmo Cell Phone this week by singing Laa laa, la la, laa laa, la la with the phone. Emily will also sway from side to side while sitting and listening to music and if standing will shake and stomp her little legs to a tune as well. She loves music and often stops whatever she is doing to listen to music on the radio or to watch and listen to music on the Sprout Channel. She has a musical flower that she will sing with and hug as well when it sings music. If mom or dad pick her up and start to dance and swirl to music she laughs and giggles with glee.

We see the beginning of 4 more teeth coming in now this week. Emily seems to grow them in 4's in fairly quick clustering (based on our limited experience to date). She has one peeking through on the top, one more starting to peek, and the gum line on the bottom is showing signs of two matching teeth beginning to start the same journey soon. So far we have experienced little or no teething troubles, nor even much in the way of drooling with Emily. I'm sure that will start to change later in the year when the side teeth begin to grow.

And then.... there is the DVD collection. Emily seems to think that Mom always needs assistance when picking out a DVD to watch, as you can see in the photo below.

Hey Maa!! Can we watch this one!!??

Emily may let Mom pick the DVDs, but Emily wants to have the right of review and final approval of any choices, and is not shy at all about chatting Mom up in the process as you can see here. :)