Christmas!

WOW, I can't believe that it's been a year since we first met Ashlyn. It's hard to tell through the photos, but she was VERY tiny :(. I remember being so concerned about her size. She was also significantly delayed. We had to wait 4 months to go back and bring her home. She was shaky and couldn't eat solid foods. Everything startled her and she was very sensitive to touch. She's a totally different child now. She eats everything that we give her ( even peas :) )! She's pretty much caught up in her gross motor skills ( climbing out of her crib now). She's so attached to us and very loving. She's always giving kisses and hugs. She nurtures her dolls. The only area of her development that we haven't seen great improvement in is her speech. We have a speech therapist that comes to the house once a week and she's wonderful with Ashlyn. Her receptive language is good, but she's still not really talking. We just love her so much!!! Anyways, I'm tired, and this is really choppy, so I'm going to end it now :). Oh wait, I almost forgot, we met a blog follower at chilis last night. She recognized Ashlyn right away and said that she reads my blog :) !! How cool is that?? She adopted a 3 year old boy from Poland last year. K, if you're reading this, then say hi. Maybe we could get together sometime. I also have a 3 year old son. Here's some photos of our first time meeting Ashlyn, and then some from today.

A video of Ron and Ashlyn.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y55JBEzI_JQ


Ashlyn with her caregiver. This is the last time that we would see her for 4 months :(.

Here is the beautiful girl that she is today! She absolutely refuses to look at the camera!

She's kind of looking up here, but she refused to look at the camera!

Even Alex tried to hold her head up!

The kiddos!

Alex with santa!

:)

Ashlyn continues to amaze me. She's totally caught up on her gross and fine motor skills. She's climbing on tables and getting into all the mischief that a typical 2 year old gets into. She's very loving and affectionate. She "has" to sit at the big table, with her brothers, and she's does very well with a spoon and fork. Her speech, on the other hand, is still pretty delayed. She definitely understands much more then she's willing , or able , to talk. She gets speech therapy once a week. Her speech therapist thinks that she's doing well and that she will eventually talk. Here she is sitting at the table and loving all the babies that nana bought for her :).

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

The little gym and 2 year well check

We officially started with The Little Gym yesterday and Ashlyn had a BLAST! She loves to just hang like a monkey on the bars :). She'll out hang some of the boys. She also had her 2 year check up. I'm proud to say that she's now in the 5th% for her height ( 31.5 inches) WOOHOO. Her weight (19.5 pounds) and head circumference (44 cm) still aren't on the chart yet. The doctor is a little concerned about this, but isn't overly concerned just yet because she's done such an awesome job ( developmentally) so far. She needs to go back at 2 and half , so that they can check her growth then. Oh yeah, I can finally get her hair into two pigtails :) !