Our daughter

I thought I would write a little about what Norah was like in "the beginning" because I have a feeling that this will not last and I want to remember every little detail.  Right now she is sleeping, again.  So far in the last 2 days she has been up for a couple of hours and then asleep for a couple of hours.  She does not like to be woken up and last night I had to wake her at 2 am for a bottle.  She ate for about 30 minutes and was back asleep until we woke her at 7:15 am so that we could go to breakfast.  Then she fell back to sleep right after breakfast, and at the zoo and again after we went to the coffee shops.... So she is sleeping a lot!  It may be because she isn't feeling well or because of the cold medicine even though it is supposedly non-drowsy or this all might be too overwhelming for her right now and she is just shutting down from the over stimulation.  On the times where she does wake up by herself she is all smiles with me.  She is just starting to interact with her toys and eat her stuffed hippo.  she is fascinated with the TV, especially the animal shows and the English TV seems to hold her attention more than the Chinese or Vietnamese channels.  She absolutely LOVED her bath yesterday and grinned almost the entire time.  She kicked and splashed and talked to us, it was super cute.  She also is a huge thumb sucker, and sleeps with either one or both thumbs in her mouth.  She gets very mad when I try to take them out to replace them with a bottle or when she is in the snuggli and cannot get to them.  So far she can't seem to keep the bink in, probably because it is hard for her to suck with her CL.  She mostly chews on her bottles when she is awake and starts sucking as she is falling asleep.  We have not been able to get her to eat the cereal or much of the yogurt the orphanage said she was eating and she would not drink juice until this morning, maybe because she was feeling better.  She likes the peach juice from the breakfast buffet and it makes her smell really good too.  ;-)  She rolls from front to back really well and can push up on her knees and rock back and forth.  She cannot sit on her own and does not have much muscle mass in her legs, we are working on that.  She sweats a lot in the heat and doesn't seem to calm down until she is back in the AC.  That is good news for us because if you know us we like it COLD at home.   She is a big fan of the bounce, bounce, wiggle, wiggle move and smiles BIG.  I have only gotten one big laugh from her at this point but she is starting to attach to me and wants to be touching me when she eats and falls asleep.  She likes to stroke my face too and her hands and skin are so soft.  No sign of eczema yet.  She is wearing her 3-6 month clothes and some are too big.  The 6 month clothes are way too long, they keep her from eating her hands.  Today she pooped, twice!  APs know this is good, it means she is getting comfortable with us.  We love her so so much and cannot wait to get her home!!  That is about it for now, she is awake and Barnabas is back from a fun and exciting trip on a moped!  He will have to talk about that later and post pics of the zoo.