One Year

I blame it on second child syndrome...I never got around to updating Johanna's blog to commemorate her being home for one year! Better late than never, right?!

Stats:

-43 inches tall (gain of 2.5 inches)

-36 pounds, 4 ounces (gain of almost 6 pounds)

-4T shirts and pants (definitely no smaller than that, especially with pants-long legs!)

-size 10 shoes

-2 haircuts, including 1 major one to even out the bangs with the rest of her hair once they grew out

-sleeps from 8pm to 7am and takes a 90 minute nap each day that we have to wake her up from

-definitely an introvert

-meltdowns only occurring a couple times a month now (hooray!)

-fully fluent in English with an ever-increasing vocabulary and some lingering pronunciation/grammar issues

Activities:

-DU gymnastics

-Chinese dance classes

-Denver rec art classes

-Denver rec swim lessons

-Skyline soccer

-play therapy

-Music Together classes

-Children's Music Academy classes

-Chinese Heritage Camp

-camping, hiking, skiing

-Stephen Knight Center for Early Education preschool (Ms. Hilary/Ms. Bev's class)

Visitors She's Had and Places She's Visited:

-Grandma and Grandpa

-Mimi and Papa

-Aunt Morgan

-Uncle Justin, Aunt Cindy, Bryce, and Warren

-Godparents Uncle Jason, Aunt Amy, Elena, and Emery

-Various places in Colorado (Fruita, Twin Lakes, Granby, Aspen, Winter Park, etc.)

-Michigan (Holland and Traverse City)

-Chesterfield, Missouri

Favorite Things:

-the color pink (and also yellow)

-anything frilly, lacy, fancy, or princessy

-Frozen and The Little Mermaid

-wearing dresses, hair accessories, and fingernail polish

-eating meat (LOTS of meat) and also noodles...actually just eating in general!

-snacks (especially chips and sweets)

-singing along with the Moana soundtrack

-playing pretend with Jonas (for hours on end!)

-reading books, dressing dolls, building things, putting together puzzles

-art projects and drawing pictures

-practicing her letters (she's definitely left-handed)

-dressing up like a princess or wearing her China dress

-animals (feeding farm animals, small dogs, cats, etc.)

-helping me cook

-going to the park, zoo, museum, library, pool, etc.

-dancing, swimming, playing games (she can legitimately beat me at her Frozen memory game!)
-holidays (she loved being Tinkerbell for Halloween) and presents (she got her first baby doll for her birthday)

Other Items of Note:

-I still get asked a few times a week if she and Jonas are twins! He automatically answers now, "No, we are five days apart." Then I really get the confused looks from folks!

-Johanna doesn't seem to have retained any of her Mandarin, though we're suspicious she still understands a bit of it when others speak. We're hoping she gets into an immersion school for kindergarten next year, so she can get it back.

-Her heart continued to look healthy at her yearly checkup, so we hope she's good to go forever on that front!

Johanna is a sweet, eager-to-please, helpful, and intelligent little girl. She can be overly sensitive, awkward, silly, dramatic, and delicate at times. But she is thoughtful, honest, musical, quick-to-learn, and basically the little princess who has completed our family. She and Jonas are the very best of friends, and I can't imagine a world in which they weren't siblings. We love our little Johanna!

Follow @aubreekeys on Instagram for nearly daily pictures of both kiddos!

Happy Adoption Day!

Johanna has been ours for one year! We've gone from this picture of a very scared and sad little girl, taken on the first night in our hotel room in Nanchang, China...

...to the much more confident and happy girl pictured today, in front of our house in Denver. Yes, I pulled out the orphanage clothes (including the coat!) and let her wear them for awhile. I think it'd be fun to get a picture of her in them every year.

Johanna did have a pretty severe "traumaversary meltdown" (yes, that's a thing!) this afternoon, which was kind of unexpected, as she's been meltdown-free for over a month. But a day like today is probably a lot to take in. She's been looking at a lot of pictures from China as I finish up her Adoption Book, and she's been vocalizing how she misses NaiNai and her friends. It's also been a hard weekend of being cooped up and left to her own devices, as the rest of the family is sick.

We're pushing our family's Adoption Day celebration to this Saturday, as the flu has hit our household hard, and everyone but Johanna feels pretty miserable (she had it a few days earlier than the rest of us). So more to come on that, along with what she's been up to since the last update. Now to find some chicken soup!