Thursday, May 17, 2018

{Journey to Ailee James: 1 Month of Forever}


I almost gave myself an out with the 5th kid BUT this is our family scrapbook we print out at the end of each year so I just couldn't not do this!  Besides, my memory isn't what it used to be & this kid is pretty funny...which means I'm totally going to want to remember these moments!


AJ's the chunkiest kid I've ever seen come out of an orphanage!  She clearly was fed a lot and often.  :)  She is 26 pounds and 10 ounces {43rd percentile} & 2 ft 10 inches {67th percentile} thanks to MUSC giving me all the specifics at her visit last week!  Most importantly, her oxygen saturation was at 100%!  She's a tall girl and has some big hands and feet.   Everyone in China would see her hands and say "Oh, she will be a tall girl!"  So, I'm guessing here before too long the girls will look more like twins.  :)

Her shoe size is a 6 although those shoes run big so it's probably closer to a 7.  Yep, big foot!

She runs everywhere she goes and Scott has given her the nickname "Lady Kluck" from the hen in the Disney Robin Hood movie.  It's absolutely hysterical to watch her run.  She goes all out regardless of if it's 100 ft or 10.

Things she loves:
~food, running, taking a bath, playing with anything, putting the tiniest little things together, putting things in the "traaaaa" {trash}, babbling nonstop, putting on "she-ay" {or xie which is mandarin for shoes}, taking golf cart rides to see the goats, holding things that remotely resemble a cell phone to her head and walking around, push the babydoll stroller around, mimicking anything we do but especially funny faces with Wyatt, welcoming her daddy home & playing Patty Cake with Mama

Things she definitely does NOT love:
~grass, flowers babydolls {she has no issue with a stuffed animal but anything with a small plastic human face freaks her out}, to not get her way

Her favorite words in English:
~Ha-lo for hello
~Hey!
~all done!
~Mama, Dada, Guh-Guh (brother), Jia Jia (sister)
~AHHHH for put food in this mouth
~Pease for please
~Me-yore for more
~Buh-bye
~Nigh-night
~Yuv You
~She will repeat just about anything we ask her to try to say...and she does so pretty accurately so I know it'll just be a matter of time before she starts connecting the dots
~She definitely understands English pretty well and knows what a good bit of what we are saying means.

She talks NONSTOP in Mandarin.  Lullabies, lots of sentences, you name it.  She surprises us every day with her unending and quite impressive 2 year old vocabulary of her native tongue.  I had several people tell me in China how smart she is and how she not only understands Chinese but speaks it correctly with the right tones.  I love saying her Chinese name to her and she just smiles and squeals with the delight.  She loves that we still call her that, too.  :)

She may be a big girl but she's also very strong!  She has the cutest little muscles and can go from sitting on the ground with her feet out in front of her to standing up without using her hands a bit!

I cannot believe she's been ours for only a month...it really seems like she's been here all along!  SO thankful that God plopped this little nugget of JOY in our laps!  We truly are the lucky ones!





No comments: