ON THAT MIDNIGHT TRAIN TO GEORGIA

If you're starting to understand, Lilah really made the rounds this trip, meeting everyone. This is Lilah meeting Uncle Wendell and Aunt Grace, who is very special and makes delicious chocolate and cheese toast, .... its a Bailey family tradition.
This is the Harvey Clan, Seliest is Aunt Grace's daughter, and Lilah was delighted to meet Pat and Will too.
Lilah trying to show her cousin Cheryl Ann how to use the gift she bought for her in VN.
Uncle Wayne was crazy about Lilah, and he is so tall, that they looked very cute together since she is so small.
Lilah got to meet Papa Jerry too, and he took her out for a nice dinner and her first bite of grits!

GEORGIA ON MY MIND

After Seattle, Lilah and I headed to Georgia to meet Mommy's side of the tree. This is Papa, and the whole trip was a big surprise for him! He just finished radiation for cancer and for his celebration of treatment over, Lilah and I surprised him with a week long visit. But actually, he's the one that surprised us, the day before we arrived we found out he had gone out of town to visit some family, so it took a large family effort to get him back home without spoiling the surprise that we were on our way, but it all worked out and Lilah and Papa had a great visit! This picture is taken when Papa had just found out we had arrived and that everyone was in on it except him.
This is Aunt Cindy feeling Lilah some pears while she sports her ever so stylish GA bib from Aunty LA, who is a big Gator fan, thank you Aunty LA for your sacrifice, and thank you Aunt Cindy for all the food, rides to the airport, and stashing us till Papa found out we arrived.
Lilah enjoyed meeting Aunt Kathryn & Uncle Lance, and hopes they'll come visit us very soon. Lilah loves to watch people brush their teeth, I think she may want to be a dentist just like Uncle Lance!
Lilah had a great visit with Papa Jack and Grandmama Genevieve. There was lots of tickling and fun to be had at their house along with watching all the ducks, cats, and pet Hamster.
The funny thing you should know about this picture is Lilah really wanted Papa checkbook, but he wouldn't give it too her, so about 45 seconds after I took this shot, she had a really HUGE puke right into his pocket. How classic is that! I told Papa, that's my girl, if you won't give her your money, she'll puke in your pocket!

WE ARE FAMILY...... I GOT ALL MY COUSINS WITH ME!

As you may recall, Lilah and I went to the mainland to visit family back in July. This was our first stop in Seattle to meet the Moore family, ..... Daddy's side of the tree. This is Aunt Liz entertaining all 4 girls with a story. Amazing that they all look so entertained, even if its just for a moment. This was Lilah's very first time meeting her 3 cousins and she found them quite interesting to watch. We are definitely blessed with girls in the Moore family.
This is one of my favorite photos of Aunt Liz and Lilah, meeting for the first time, looks like they are hitting it off well!
Lilah with her older cousins Norah & Katie.
Lilah also got to meet Opa for the very first time and she was of course happy to see Oma again. Oma even gave her a little sip of Pho.
This is Lilah's new best friend Lauren. Lauren is only 1 month younger than Lilah, so we expect these two to grow up thick as thieve, I can only imagine the fun these two will have growing up together!

GO DAWGS!!!

As you may know College Football Season started this past weekend. And Lilah got to watch her first Georgia game! She sported her first Georgia t-shirt from her Aunt Kathryn & Uncle Lance, and I must say the shirt brought the Dawgs good luck for their first game.
Bill keeps saying she'll be a Gamecocks fan like him, not a dawg fan like me, but since i'm the one that dresses her most of the time, i'm not all that worried. Though I must admit she was rather fussy on saturday. Bill kept saying it was the shirt, she didn't want to be a GA fan, i told him she didn't want to play favorites between the two of us, so she wore the GA shirt for me, and acted like a Gamecocks fan for him..... whiny! Ha ha
Lilah and Mommy on the couch watching a movie, one of the actual few moments that my little wiggle worm isn't moving around.
Look who can hold her own sippy cup now! She needs us to hold up the bottom at times, but i think she does pretty good.
Lilah loves corn just like her Oma! We went over to Uncle Jon & Aunty Andrea's the other night and we let Lilah chew on an ear of corn and she loved it. But part way through the meal I did have to stop and take off all the kernels and just let her suck the cob, she was getting to good at gumming the kernels off and I was afraid she'd choke.

MAHALO 4D FOR THE SHOWER

Just a few days before we left for our trip to Georgia & Seattle, my co-workers from the Neuro ICU at Queen's Medical Center celebrated us bringing Lilah home with a wonderful party/shower. Our wonderful hosts were Aunty Andrea & Uncle Jon, who held the soiree at the top of their building in downtown Honolulu. Lilah is just crazy about these two and we thank them so much for all they have done for us since we got home from Vietnam. Andrea is ever the perfect party planner, complete with clever baby games, itunes with all songs related to "Baby" and an adorable clothesline holding pictures of our trip to Vietnam and first pictures at home. The menu was southern cooking and Jon made delicious ribs and everyone brought southern dishes. Mel made the best hush puppies ever. It was weird though to go to a party in Hawaii with no rice or noodles.
This is Lilah with her Aunty Juliet and her daughter Gabby. These two were part of the clean up crew from when we first arrived home. Gabby is adorable, sweet, and very smart (just like her Mom), we hope Lilah will grow up with many of Gabby's fine traits.
This is Aunty Vanh who is half Vietnamese and half Chinese. I always tell Vanh there's a chance Lilah could look like her when she's grown. Of course Lilah is Vietnamese, but she's from Northern Vietnam where the Chinese migrated in the 13th century, so you never know. You may have also noticed poor Lilah's breakouts on her face. She got 3 big zits the day of the party, i think she was just nervous about it all..... what to wear...... meeting all these new people....she's like her Mom, life gets stressful, and the breakouts start.
Lilah's favorite gift of the night was Elmo from Aunty Heather & Uncle Ryan and their two girls Sarah and Jessie. Lilah loves this thing. He talks and she's supposed to help him get dressed. But I'm embarrassed to say just a few days ago I found this tag in his back you pull to end the demo and Elmo can really begin. So all this time we'd been hearing the same things over and over because it was on demo. I must say now Mommy finds the toy much less bothersome since he now says more than two things. And Sarah ( Heather & Ryan's oldest daughter) is so cute, she walks right up and talks to Lilah and says, "Baby Lilah would you like to play with me." She always calls her Baby Lilah and I love it.
This is Aunty Gina & Aunty KJ. Aunty KJ (in blue) was another of the musketeers that helped clean up when we first arrived home and she gave us a huge bag of yard sale goodies that were terrific.

Bill, Lilah, and I just wanted to say thank you to my work family for everything you have done for us. Your support and love has meant the world. You are one of the few people who were right there with us everyday of the adoption process and you know just how hard we worked for this little angel. You've loved us on our happy days and sad days and we just can't even begin to thank you enough. Love you all.

Happy Birthday Daddy ....... (July 10th)

I told you we'd been busy, so i'm trying to catch back up to where we left off. Bill is finishing up his MBA this summer and so his birthday, tuesday, was on the same day he had class. So that means he goes to work all day, then straight to class, and doesn't get home till after 10pm, .... not much of a birthday. So Lilah and I decided to have a spur of the moment Surprise birthday dinner for Bill on monday night when he didn't have class, the day before his birthday. We knew this would really surprise him.

So John & Andrea ( who are adopting domestically here in Hawaii) and Abel came over to help us celebrate with the birthday boy. Many of you know when we first got home, Lilah wanted to be held ALL the time. Just the amount of time it took for me to change clothes in the morning and make up the bed would make her cry, so you can imagine that dinner was impossible to get finished. The day of the party I had so much cooking to do and she was such an angel all day. She sat right in her bumbo (greatest baby invention ever) and helped me cook all afternoon, and was a trooper with grocery shopping and all the last minute running around. It was like she almost knew we had to get it done and she was such a great sport. By the way, she's doing so much better now with entertaining herself. The sitting up on her own has really helped a lot. Now I'm afraid she's growing up too fast. She can put herself in the crawling position, no movement of course, but soon enough she'll be running around and will not want all that snuggling anymore. So i'm enjoying every bit of snuggling I can for now. I whisper in her ear at night to please not grow up too fast. Think it will work?

When our friends came over that night for the birthday, the boys helped Bill assemble Lilah's new highchair. We laughed about how times have changed..... They used to come over for relaxing & socializing and now we've got 'em busy putting highchairs together instead of enjoying sports center. But everyone brought Lilah a gift along with her Daddy's gift, so she felt like it was her birthday too, so much so that she wore Daddy's crown instead of him!

Lilah Can Sit Up Now!!!

Lilah started sitting up last weekend. She now can sit up by herself from anywhere to 5 to 15 minutes without falling over. I put pillows all around her to cushion the fall when she does finally tip over. She's really enjoying sitting up and will sit next to me while I'm going through the mail, putting on makeup, etc. She does not want to hold everything that I've got. She makes this grunting whimpering type of noise when she wants what I have. It doesn't matter if I have a pen, paper, or machete, if I've got it she wants it.

She's now eating all kinds of baby food and I must brag and say she's doing quite well. She hated rice cereal, so we just skipped it and went on to fruits and veggies. She loves everything except green peas. She'll still eat the peas, she just makes a face when she does. She's also started using her sippy cup. Bill came home and said, "you've got the sippy cup out, isn't it a little soon?" She hasn't totally mastered it yet, but already she's making big improvements. She can now get some water out, but can't quite hold it high enough without a little help.

Lilah and I planned Bill a boys weekend in Vegas for his birthday. So he's off this weekend enjoying some friends he hasn't seen in a long time. We of course miss him, but are enjoying our girl time. We hope he comes home rich! But could he ever be richer than having the two of us?

I know we have been MIA from the blog for almost a month. Things just got crazy around here with finishing up the reconstruction, planning Bill's surprise birthday dinner, then Lilah and I headed to GA & Seattle for almost 2 weeks to let all the family meet my little pumpkin! Then we were back a day and my friend Leslie from nursing school came to visit with her family, so we've been busy bees. Hopefully things will slow down just a little now, but i'll never be able to blog as well as I did pre Lilah. Already I'm watching the clock knowing I better get to bed so i'll be ready when my little Sunshine wakes up.