Festivals and Football

Piper has been very busy the last few days. On Saturday night, we attended the annual Wichita Asian Festival. It was a lot of fun and we are all ready looking forward to next year. The festival included music and performances from many different groups, as well as a lot of good food. This year, children adopted from Asia were invited on stage as a group to be recognized. It is wonderful to see the Asian community in Wichita reaching out to these children in an effort to keep them connected to their heritage. It was a great night, and we enjoyed every minute of it. We especially enjoyed getting to see many of our friends.

On Sunday, we traveled to Kansas City for Piper's second football game. The weather was very nice, and we all had a great time. Piper made a lot of new friends at the game as she signaled touchdown and gave "high-fives" to those around us. So far, the Chiefs are 2-0 in games she has attended.

Two amazing months

As hard as it is to believe, it has been just over two months since we met Piper in Nanchang. The time has passed so quickly and yet it is hard to remember life without her. Watching the video and looking at pictures of our first day together, and comparing them with life today, it is amazing to see the changes our little girl has gone through. On August 13, we met a scared, tired, grieving girl. Today, she smiles and laughs as Mommy counts to 5 or plays “paddy-cake”, claps and giggles as daddy pulls in the garage from a day at work, and “mmmms” after each bite of steamed egg is fed to her at suppertime.

The last 2 months have been full of many wonderful events for Piper and our family. Some of these include:

Attended a friends birthday party
First trip to the zoo
Learning to signal “touchdown”, waving hello, and clapping
Receiving Citizenship Certificate and Social Security Card
Lots of new food choices
Taking steps as Daddy holds her hands
Transitioning from tummy to sitting up
First trip to visit Lao Lao and Lao Ye (Grandma and Grandpa)
First trip to the farm to visit Ye Ye and Nai Nai (Nana and Papa)
Meeting lots of friends and family at shower in her honor (Thanks Nai Nai, Aunt T, and Aunt Missy)
First Chiefs game


In addition to these wonderful events, we have had some sad times too. Teething, shots at the doctor’s office, Daddy going back to work, and working on getting a sleeping pattern down have provided some difficult moments. Also, we miss the friends we made as we traveled in China.

Our first 2 months as a family have been amazing, and we can’t even imagine what the next days, weeks, months and years will bring.