Frances is turning eight!

Can you believe it? What ever happened to the tiny bald baby that came home from Kazakhstan? She is so grown up... She just had her hair cut, really short. As much as I would love for her to have long hair, it is her hair, and she can wear it however she likes. She is athletic (the photo is of her playing basketball in the driveway with Colby, and Abby is the speed bump) and is good at most everything she tries. Wow. She will be a tough act to follow, but I think that Abigail is up to the challenge! We have tried to attach Abby's toys to the car seat, because she likes to throw them. She figured out how to take apart those plastic links almost immediately, so we switched to carabiners. She has now figured out how to open those as well! She likes to unscrew the knobs on her dresser drawers. And she just about charms the socks off of everyone she meets. As much as she imitates Frances, Abigail is definitely her own little person.
I am so blessed by my little girls!

When will she walk?

Abigail at 20 months of age, is still not walking. I am not really worried; I know that it will come. And really, she CAN walk. She just doesn't think she can do it, or perhaps she just likes being carried! Abby has taken 12 to 15 steps at a time lately. I tricked her into doing it one day. I put her down on the lawn, then walked about 10 feet away to set up the sprinkler. She did not like being this far away from me (she's become more clingy since beginning day care), but she could not crawl toward me, because she does not yet like the feeling of grass on her hands and feet. So she stood up and walked to me! At the babysitter's last Thursday, she was walking a lot, and each time someone noticed, she sat down and reverted to crawling. Little stinker!

Thank goodness for email storage on yahoo...

In September of 2008, another family traveled to Zhengzhou, Henan to get their daughter. On the day that they toured the orphanage, they took pictures of every child that they saw. They then posted a link to their family's album, so that people like me could look for pictures of their children who were waiting to come home. I was thrilled to find a picture of Abigail, and saved it to my desktop. Unfortunately, my computer died! But today I wondered whether I had saved the original email in my Zhengzhou info file. I had! So I was able to find the photo of Abigail, at naptime, while she waited for her forever family.

You've come a long way, baby!

For those of you who missed out on the beginning of our adoption story, here are some photos of my little Abigail, or Li DanYang, as she was called by the orphanage.


She was found on August 4th, 2007, in the elevator of the Zhengzhou City Hospital. A "finding ad" was placed in the local newspaper, but of course, no one responded, so on August 7th, she went to live in the Social Welfare Institute (orphanage). Based upon her size and development, she was given a birthdate of May 19th, 2007. Also at that time, because she was listless, they performed some tests and determined that she had an unrepaired VSD (ventricular septal defect, a hole in her heart).

Sledding at Mt. Baldy

Before the snow all MELTED with the miserable Santa Ana winds (the temperatures have been in the 80's for a week. What happened to my lovely winter?) we went up to Mt. Baldy with the Waite family (a.k.a. the Colbys - he has been Frances' best buddy since before they were two) to go sledding. With Carrie and her three kids, me and my two kids, nearly all of the children in either a car seat or booster, and about 5 sleds, plus assorted bits and pieces of snow clothing, we all packed in to the Waites' big SUV and headed out.

Neither of us moms had been to Mt. Baldy before, but had heard that it is closer than Big Bear, so we decided to give it a try. We found that there were lots of people there sledding, but also plenty of room for everyone. We found a little slope that was perfect for the kids. Carrie is a genius - she brought a Pack-n-Play for her daughter Karley and Abigail. The girls are about four days apart in age, but Karley is much taller. Everyone in Colby's family is really tall!


We had a great time sledding. I took Abigail with me on the sled several times. As I pulled the sled back up the hill with Abby on it, I had to have her lie down or lie on her tummy. If she sat up, the minute the sled moved, she fell over backward!

It was about 50 degrees and sunny, so things were getting a bit slushy and wet, but we played there for about two hours before Frances finally broke down crying because she was so wet and cold! Right up to that point she had been laughing, shouting and sledding, but all of a sudden, she was done. We packed everyone back into the car and headed back to Orange County, where we stopped at a McD's with an indoor playground for dinner. It was a really fun day!

Happy New Year!

We celebrated New Year's Eve with Dana and Haley by going out to dinner at Mexicasa (our local blue-collar, very affordable Mexican restaurant), complete with our own bottle of Martinelli's Sparkling Apple Cider.

The Bushnell Girls were in bed by about 9:30 p.m. (heck, it was already the New Year somewhere in the world...) but I was jolted out of a sound sleep at midnight, by the fireworks at Disneyland! Both girls just kept right on sleeping.

"Hooray for me, no VSD!"

Don't you just love this picture? It's one of my absolute favorites.

On January 5th, Abigail had her appointment with the cardiologist's office for an echocardiogram. Here's a question: Why do they even make appointments, when you arrive on time and then have to wait 90 minutes? Anyway, they finally did the echo, and the technician asked me if I could get Abby to calm down. She was sitting on my lap playing with the toy cell phone he had provided - if she were any more calm, she would be asleep! After the test, he sent us into another room to wipe off the gel (and the sticky drool from the lollipop he had given her) while the cardiologist looked at the results. She said, "Let's go ahead and do an EKG right now." So I knew that something was up. The EKG only took 60 seconds, and Abby was happy to comply with getting stickers put all over her chest, if it meant that she could have another lollipop. The cardiologist finally told me that Abigail's heart is structurally normal, that there is no VSD. So it must have closed on its own (with a little help from The Great Physician). But her heartbeat was very rapid, and they can't figure out why. So we are waiting for the insurance to authorize a 24-hour holter monitor, which is like a long-term EKG, to see what Abby's heart does when she is not in the doctor's office. Perhaps it is just "white coat syndrome." We'll see, but it is good news about the VSD.

Christmas with the little Bushnell family

Frances played "The First Noel" at the Christmas recital at her piano teacher's house. I also made her play it at church, which she was not really enthusiastic about...


On December 19th, we exchanged gifts with the Molyneux and Hunter families. Frances received a Nintendo DS (not from Mommy, but I did finally allow someone else to give her one) and a Nintendogs interactive Golden Retriever puppy. Abby was thrilled with her Cozy Coupe, which currently resides in our kitchen, so she can play with it regardless of weather or dark of night!


What a fun Christmas we had! My parents commented that they've never before had so many presents under their tree! We open the gifts from Santa here at our house, then we bring everything else to Gramma and Grampa B's with us. On Christmas Eve, as has become our tradition, we went to the Hunters' party. It is always really fun, and the evening culminates with Zenia assigning parts for "The Twelve Days of Christmas." Frances, Abby, Aunt Linda and I were "Six Geese a-laying." The funny thing was that as Zenia dashed around the room, pointing at the different groups to cue them, Abby started imitating her by pointing her tiny finger at people! It reminded us of when Heather was little, and she would copy Zenia by grabbing the paper (the master list of words) and running around the room! Christmas Eve was a little hectic; we had both Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy bumping into each other in the middle of the night. I hope that the Tooth Fairy wasn't jealous of the treats that were left out for Santa. I haven't heard of any sort of snack protocol for the Tooth Fairy...

"Welcome to your new life, Abigail" or "America is a strange place!"

After being dressed up as an insect and taken to a stranger's home after dark to watch all sorts of people in costume come and take candy from our friend, Abby's next big adventure was Disneyland! We got signed in on November 11th, and took our grown-up friend Haley with us (to go on the rides with Frances). We all had a great day! Frances rode all of her favorites - Space Mountain, Star Tours, Thunder Mountain, Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters, Splash Mountain, and the best ride of all, the roller coaster that goes upside down: California Screamin'! As we wandered through Disneyland and California Adventure, Abigail wanted to hold Frances' hand while riding in the stroller. I guess that it made her feel more grown up. Abby only took one short nap the entire day. She did not want to miss a thing!


Frances is adjusting to her new role as a big sister, and is learning that having a younger sib is not always all its cracked up to be. Still, she tries to play with Abigail (and I am trying to teach her how to be successful at it) while Abigail tries to copy everything Frances does! I think that some of Abby' favorite times are when Frances helps her to sit at the table in the living room, to do "big girl" things, like drawing with colored pencils.

Adjusting to our new family

We got home on Halloween morning, the girls both napped, and then we went to visit Lori and her little girl Phoebe (adopted from Kyrgyzstan) in Old Towne Orange, to go trick-or-treating. Abigail was not thrilled at being dressed up as a ladybug! Frances was Gymnastigirl, a superhero with the power of gymnastics (her own creation). I took both girls up and down the block, and then Haley, Dana and Roger arrived. Haley took Frances much farther (translate to "much more candy") than I had, while I sat with Abby on Lori's porch, watching the trick-or-treaters. We were wiped out by bedtime!

The next day, I had a "Not Quite Ready for Mother of the Year" moment. We had stopped at WalMart to pick up a few things before meeting friends for dinner. I pulled a cart over to our car, and put Frances into the big section in the back, then went to the other side of thecar to get Abigail and all of her paraphenalia. When I emerged from my car... where was the shopping cart with Frances in it? She had rolled across the aisle, and the cart was resting against a planter, while another family stood next to it giving me reproachful looks! Frances asked me, "Didn't you hear me calling out 'Help me, Mom'?" No, obviously not! Frances was not upset or scared, and the cart was not hit by a car or anything, so I guess all's well that ends well. But now I have Frances stand with the cart until I get Abby loaded into it, then I help Fran climb in.

The Girls are back in town......and are online again!

I have finally managed to acquire a computer (long story), and now that both girls are in bed (one just came out to tell me that she needs a drink of water) I am hoping to stay on top of this again. Not having a computer was a problem, especially when I was on a leave of absence from work! I checked my emails about every two weeks, and there would usually be between 800 and 1000 new emails each time. Yikes! The next step is to remember how to move photos from the camera to either the hard drive or a flash drive. Hopefully, I will post some tonight!