November 14, 2009 - Citizenship Day for Adelie!



We had our final court hearing and our adoption is finalized - this also granted Adelie's Citizenship!  If Tom and I had both traveled to China to bring her home, then her Citizenship would have been automatic upon arrival in the US.  Since Tom stayed here with the rest of the awesome kids, we had to do an adoptional finalization through the court system in KY. 

Judge Bushelman, who also was the judge for Hunter's adoption finalization, was absolutely wonderful!  What fun we all had in the court room.    She suggested that we walk around, she let us take pictures during the hearing and afterwards she had Adelie come sit in her chair, then she sat on the floor and visited with Hunter and Adelie, children whom she helped. 

Here are some pictures from the big day:

Wow - it's amazing how time flies with a 2 year old in the house!  Adelie is speaking quite a bit more now, using more 3-5 word phrases.  I knew that would come and it came quite quickly.  It's fun.  She's a happy girl!

On Friday, November 14th, we have her court appearance to grant her citizenship and to officially change her name from Jiang Yu Xuan to Adelie Mei Wartman.  That will all be great!  We can then get her KY Birth Certificate, her passport, her Certificate of Citizenship and her Social Security number. 

My laptop was stolen in mid October and some of my pictures were on there from the past few months.  That was sad.  I'm getting the lap top replaced.


My favorite of Adelie from the pumpkin patch.  She LOVED sitting on the various pumpkins for photos or even if we weren't taking photos! 



Adelie with her family - look how proud she is!
L to R: Georgia 17, Martin 12, Tom, Adelie 2 1/2, Nancy Ann, Camille 10, Calvin 15




Our grandson, Hunter, age 16 months.




What do you think they're saying to each other?



Camille and Adelie at Kings Island on 11/2/09





Georgia has been accepted at Georgetown College in Georgetown, KY



My mother Betty celebrating her 80th birthday!

Adelie likes to sit in her froggy chair with her daddy in the drive way.  Here she is reading the paper....ok, she's looking at pictures from the great balloon lift off on the first day of school at the elementary school - we went to the great balloon lift off.  FUN!


photo taken with Georgia's iPhone 
I have one too, but Georgia took this one 

Hi friends!
It was suggested by our school principal to have Adelie evaluated by First Steps to see if she could receive services from them.  She's had the evaluations and does qualify for speech therapy.  Her comprehension seems to be very good.  The verbalization is the area where she could use some help.  She's come a LONG way since January, but it'll be fine to have some help with this.    The therapist will come to our home once a week.  We met her today at the final evaluation and she's very nice and Adelie likes her. 

Right now, at almost 32 months:

• Adelie uses 1 word most of the time - occassionally will use 2 words together
• she doesn't use pronouns
• she gestures more than uses words to indicate what she wants

Yesterday was her 2 1/2 year old check up.  She had her Hep A and DPaT shots.  She weighs 28 1/2 pounds and is 35 1/2 inches tall!  She's growing so nicely!!    She's been very healthy and everything is good.  The doctor is very pleased with her progress.  He says she's changed so much since the day after she arrived home, when we took her in to have him look at her skin. 

We're still waiting for the final court date to finalize the adoption in KY and to legally change her name to Adelie Mei Wartman.  Then we can get her Certificate of Citizenship and her Social Security number.

Adelie has really enjoyed swimming this summer at our wonderful neighbor's pool.  It's been a highlight of the past few months for her.  She also loves blue jeans.  Even on days when it's 96 degrees, she'd rather have jeans on than anything.  Today I put shorts on her while she was napping and when she woke up she realized I had made the switch...."No!  Jeans!"


Nancy Ann

Adelie and I arrived in Kentucky 7 months ago today. Here is a THEN and NOW picture:
 
Adelie and Georgia right after we arrived home January 30, 2008





Adelie likes:
riding the train at the Cincinnati Zoo or at Totter Otterville
pasta
playing outside
apple juice
ice cream cones
taking baths
sleeping with her mom and dad 
drinkable yogurt
her siblings
jeans

Today we made a chocolate cake - she likes licking the beaters. 

This is one of Adelie's favorite recipes - Nutella on graham crackers and she can COOK it for everyone who's around.  YUMMY!

Tom, Georgia and I took Adelie to the 4th of July parade.  She had lots of "big people" coaching on how to wave, say "hi", and how to put candy in the bag.  It was a rainy 4th, so there weren't as many people and the candy seemed to be thrown in buckets!  After we had been waving, saying "hi" and collecting candy for about 15 minutes, someone threw some Smarties right at Adelie's feet - she got it and looked at them with a great big "THANK YOU!"  That was the only time she thanked anyone for candy that day.  She loves Smarties.

This 100 Good Wishes Quilt has been an incredible project!!  Thanks to all who sent fabric to be a part of it!!!  It is an incredible treasure!!  It is now complete.  I pieced the quilt by hand and intended to do the quilting by hand, however, since I wasn't making much progress on it and wanted to have the quilt completed during the next few years, I had a friend of a friend do the quilting for us.  That's what she does and she does quite a few of the good wishes quilts.  It's a beautiful vine, leaf, ladybug pattern she used - so cool!!

Here is the finished project...Adelie gives her approval:

Everything is going so nicely.  Adelie is talking more - she has a cute way of telling us about something and it goes something like this, "blah blah blah blah blah blah DOG. blah blah blah blah blah BIG."  She has inflection as if it were a sentence.  It's cute. 

She has been in the pool about 5 times in her life and is LOVING swimming.  She can manage with a noodle and not the swimmy swimsuit, but I think you can see from this picture that she's completely at ease with the water. 

Adelie is loving life and her brothers and sisters are loving her more and more each day.  The boys stop to smile and chat with her now, enjoying her cute 2 year old ways. 
She's now 34 inches tall - she's getting taller.  I'm not sure how much she weighs (it can't be much!)

We had family pictures taken at Sears on Sunday and here are the little bity digital images that they give to us.  They're just big enough to be able to see how nice the pictures are. 

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Here is the first picture of all 10 of us since the airport on Jan 30th when Adelie and I got back from China:

 
June 22, 2008 above
January 30, 2008 below


Here is my first picture with all 6 kids:
Martin, Georgia, Michelle, Calvin in the back, then Adelie and Camille in front.



The Winters Family 



Hunter just turned 1 year.  You can see pictures of his recent haircut on his blog (link to the right), but I'm still loving these baby curls. 



1 year old Hunter with his Momma, Nana and Pops

Hi!
Here is the photo from our favorite time in Alaska.  At our first port, Ketchikan, we decided to take the children up in a float plane to see the area and have the experience of the small plane, which took off and landed in the water!  It was thrilling and spectacular!  The kids absolutely loved it!!!  Tom and I did too! 



I'll post more pictures later on.  We sure do appreciate the trips we earn with Usborne Books at Home!  The next trip is going to be to Rome!