One year ago today!

October 2, 2007 - the day we first met and fell in love with the 4 1/2 month old baby girl named Nguyen Thi Lai, now known as Emelia Anne Lai - our daughter, Jimmy's little baby sister. We cannot believe it's 1 year ago already although sometimes it seems like a lifetime ago. It feels like we have always had Emelia in our lives, just like it feels like we have always had Jimmy in our lives. We are so lucky to have Emelia in our family. She is a perfect fit for us. How God could have picked such a perfect baby for us - only he knows.

A few of you (you know who you are) asked me to update the blog. It is very time consuming and so that's why I haven't done it, but I thought it was worth doing it now. It is also much easier than emailing everyone with pictures or videos.

Emelia has grown into a very happy and bright baby. She has always been happy since the day we met her. She has also been a very easy baby. She eats well, sleeps great - 12 hours every night with at least a 2-4 hour nap every day. We tell her it's time for sleepies or a nap and we just bring her up to her crib, put her in and walk out of the room and she goes to sleep. That's easy!

Emelia is very determined and independent as well. She feeds herself most of the time and has been for a while now. She is such a smart little 16 month old. We can't believe how smart she is.

Emelia is now officially Emelia Anne Lai too! We received her U.S. passport and she is ready to go to Ireland on 12/26 for the first time.

We keep in touch with our Vietnam travel mates by email and exchange pictures and stories. I love that we keep in touch. I think it's a very special relationship that will be very important for all our girls when they are older.

Below are recent pictures and video of Emelia.

















Here's video of Emelia and Jimmy

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Here is a video montage of Emelia dancing at a Christening we went to in August. She didn't get off the dance floor all night. It was so funny.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

We have been thinking about Vietnam so much lately. We all cannot wait to go back. We went for Vietnamese to celebrate our one year adoption anniversary. It was delicious!

Referral and updated pictures

When we first received our referral on 7/5/07, we were told not to post her pictures on our blog. So I am posting them now so that they will be a part of this blog. I plan on printing it out.

This pictures was taken on 5/29/07, at Emelia's medical. The below pictures were taken on 7/1/07, days before our referral.

These next pictures were taken by a fellow adopting mother who was able to take pictures of Emelia for us when she was picking up her daughter on 7/11/07.

This picture includes one of her caretakers.

This was an updated picture of Emelia sent to us on 9/7/07.

Scroll down for updated pictures and video. I'm not sure why it's posting so far down the page.

You can see how much Emelia has changed since the above pictures were taken. She is almost 11 months old and is such a joy.

Make a slideshow - it's easy!

Belated Happy St. Patrick's Day, Happy Easter

I haven't posted in a while. Don't know if anyone even checks the blog anymore. Emelia is getting so big. She is so funny and smart! She knows where her belly is, she says ruh ruh when you ask her what a doggies says, she waves bye bye, she's crawling like crazy and pulls herself up easily. She is still a very happy girl too. Jimmy is still crazy about her and she is about him. She follows him around a lot, but also will play by herself too.

Poor baby had an ear infection in both ears and she never even complained. Our daycare was very aware that she was not herself and suggested we take her to the doctor and that's how we found out. We have a great daycare, don't we? By the way, her ear infections are all clear now.


So here are a few pictures of Emelia. By the way, she's almost 11 months old!


Note the t-shirt.





These are from Easter Sunday.