Happy Baby Time

It's morning, and Gracie has had a GREAT night's sleep. She awoke after 9 1/2 hours smiley and happy. After her bottle, we snapped this picture.

While we know that cute baby photos never get old, we also know, if you're anything like us, each new thing only leads to new questions... so here are some things we've learned about our Gracie...

- It's clear that all of the children in our group have spent most of their time in heavy clothes in their cribs. Gracie discovered her hands last night, and spent some time marveling at the wonderment of these things affixed to the ends of her arms. Several of the babies (including Gracie) seem weaker on the right than left side... however they put the babies in the cribs probably keeps them from using their arms much, and so while her grip is good, she doesn't use her arms much.

- Same for her legs. She won't try to stand, and when we stand her up her legs go all rubbery. At least we're not worried about her trying to take off on us.

Mary's been doing great with this, and she already has Gracie holding her own bottle almost completely through a feeding, and later on we're going to do some belly time. The next set of pictures may have more tears than smiles. We keep telling her, it doesn't matter unless you feel the burn... eye of the tiger and all that good stuff.

- a lot of the information on the reports we received was wrong. She doesn't know what to do with anything that's not in a bottle, and even when we put some apple juice in the bottle, she took one big swig (assuming it was more formula) and then made a face like a prune. We keep throwing bananas, apple sauce, cheerios and rice krispies at her, but no dice so far. We'll trick her yet... the more we experience China, the more we see that their orphanage has neither the time nor resources to do things like fill in information sheets for American parents who want reassurance that their babies are happy and what they like- they are too busy just feeding and changing all of those babies. To be honest, we'd MUCH rather have them caring for babies than filling out paperwork so that we feel better while we're waiting.

We're having fun getting to know our Gracie, and we hope that you are too.