Today is all about Anna Mei

She slept in again this morning in her crib cuddled in her new pink blanket.  Morning seems to be her peaceful time.  She sleeps late and is ready for a nap again by late morning.  Come afternoon and evening she is wide awake and ready for action!  Our plan for this day was her appointment for her medical exam.  What a crowded, hectic, crazy place that clinic was!  Chinese locals stood around everywhere inside, many in masks (to avoid infection?), waiting their turn to see a doctor.  The wait did not appear to be short in any way.  Ours however, was.  We arrived in Guangzhou earlier than most families do since we did not have to fly as far to her province to meet her.  This put our schedule ahead of other adoptive families this week and we were the only family in the adoption clinic area.

Photos from day 7

(If you can't see the Flash slideshow above, click here.)

Anna weighed (21 lbs), measured (75 cm), head circumference taken (47 cm), and was generally checked over.  She checked out beautifully.  It appears her cleft palate repair was a good one, and they do not see any remaining holes to be repaired.  Her lip is done well for now, and will have a revision in the future.  She has a cleft gum ine, which was completely expected.  That means her teeth are there, but in the one section set incorrectly in position.  When she gets older, that will be a surgery to fix her gum line and set her teeth correctly.  Yes, she can hear.  They did give us a scare on that one when we were home.  She has an ear wax build up, and we will see an ENT to see if she will benefit from ear tubes.

As we get to know her habits, I can predict that this little one has had lots of ear infections.  First of all, she definitely prefers to settle herself down flat on her back or on a pillow and be handed her bottle to drink.  One note about the bottle.  Because of the cleft, she never learned to suck.  So the orphanage took a regular bottle and cut a huge hole in the top.  She basically holds the bottle in her right cheek and gulps it down as it pours into her mouth.  She can control it enough to take breaks when she wants, but takes a bottle very fast.  We mentioned the formula diet before.  We have found Enfamil formula here that is appropriate for 1-3 year olds, so we switched to that (no problems from her with the switch), and we are giving her MUCH more of it than they were.  We are happily changing many more diapers.  We are also working on introducing new baby foods.  We had packed a few, so last night she tried butternut squash mixed with apple.  She took some off the spoon.  I guess about 5 or 6 full spoonfuls (though in much smaller bites) in all got in there which we think is a real success.  We will keep trying at all meals today.  The key is, she is trusting us more now.  Before she would not allow anything into her mouth, but now she will let us try.

We are also learning her special little habits.  She LOVES playing with her hands.  The sad truth is that these were her most available playthings.  She has lots of sweet and funny finger movements,  When distressed she will stop, extend her left hand, and study it seeming to make sure it is all still there.  She also loves to put her tongue carefully between her two middle fingers either in play or when she is sad.  These seem to be her little coping mechanisms.

She also has a sweet but disgusting little habit of spitting all over her fingers and drawing on everything and everyone in reach!  We need to get this little one some crayons and paints!!  She loves music and dances.  When she is feeling silly she moves her head around back and forth, and if I try to do it too and keep up I make myself very dizzy.  Anna Mei unquestionably fits into the DiMedio mold already.  She loves to laugh, play, and even wrestle around.  She also loves a good cuddle.  I'm afraid she is also a bit opinionated and stubborn, go figure!  She can communicate just fine when she is not happy with what we want her to do.
The locals are great sales people and are very aggressive.  We got roped into going to many stores designed to suck money from adoptive parents.  Fortunately, everything is so cheap so we gladly purchased famous chinese squeaky shoes, chinese foo dogs and we are going back for a chinese chess set made from bone (don't want to know what kind of bone).

Most importantly, she is already giving and receiving love.  She has a permanent place in all of our hearts