Pictures!

We received Mary Hannah about 24 hours ago and this what we have observed so far:

- She currently weighs 17.6 lbs. at one week shy of 19 months. She goes rigid and her arms go up above her head when she is held.

- She prefers to be left alone to explore on her own. She can crawl to some degree, but not the typical arm/leg motion. She is able to prop up on one arm and turn to look in the opposite direction. She even knows the perfect downward dog yoga position!

- We did notice that she keeps the top part of her fingers closed most of the time. So, not a full on grip but just from the second joint to the tip. Although she is able to stretch all of her fingers out when she is reaching for something.

- She rocks back & forth on her knees to self-soothe, which is common with babies from orphanages.

- Her skin looks really good in the diaper area. Some slight bruising on her back which she is sensitive to. She appears to have a fungus on the bottom of one of her feet but does not look too serious.

- When she was handed off, it was obvious that she had a temperature and a cold with cough. This could be stress though as she had just traveled eight hours by car. We gave her infant ibuprofen when we got back to our room & that seemed to help.

- No one has ever cleaned this child's mouth! Her breath is very rancid. She is still on a diet of formula mixed with rice cereal: 8oz. 4-5x a day. We will continue that while we are here, no need to stress her further. We are also giving her 1.5 ml of multi vitamin drops in her formula daily. She drank about 3 oz. last night around 7pm and we put her down at 8pm to sleep. Poor girl was worn out as she slept to about 8:30am.

- We are concerned about her hearing. It's hard to tell with the language barrier if she can hear us. She has absolutely no verbal skills. She makes very little baby noises but is very alert and inquisitive. Even her crying is weak and I did get her to smile a few times.

Today we went back to the civil affairs office and went through two separate interviews with officials and Lissie had her picture taken with Mary Hannah. Did I mention that she does NOT like to be held? She cried for 3 hours strait during this trip because we had to hold her most of the time. She finally passed out from exhaustion and I decided that she and I would pass on the shopping trip with the other families and head back to the hotel. This is going to be a challenge for a while because our natural instinct is to hold and comfort. But this stresses her out more. Her comfort comes from being put on the floor and left alone. From what we are being told, this is common with children from this particular orphanage due to a 20 to 1 caretaker ratio.

We have one more official meeting at the consulate for her passport and birth certificate. The rest of our time will be spent on daily excursions set up by the adoption agency and getting to know our daughter. Hopefully, by the time we get on the plane to come home, she will be OK with being held. If not, it is going to be a LONG flight for us and anyone around us!!!

Next project is to work on getting "Expedited VPN" so we can use skype and facebook. We have not seen or talked with Max since last Thursday.

Oh we STILL do not have Lissie's bag!!!!!!! Hopefully we will have it late this afternoon.

** My bag came in Tuesday afternoon! Good to have my own stuff and for MH to have the few things I brought that will fit. Hope to download video later today.