July 17

Several of you have asked me for more information about the situation with the child who passed away. I'm not sure how much to write, since it's not my story to share necessarily, but I do want to ask that you continue to pray for the mom and her case with the CCAA. There is a chance that she could get another referral, but it's hard to tell. Please pray that the CCAA would see the situation for what it is and allow this mom to adopt another baby. They have been waiting for an autopsy report to confirm cause of death, for one thing. Of course we all know that the child was ill at the time of adoption, but the CCAA has to confirm that the child didn't die as a result of something the mom did or didn't do. The other factor is that they may not think this is the right timing for the mom to adopt a second child, so close to losing the first one. However, since the rules changed in May, this mom is no longer eligible to apply to adopt from China down the road. Please just pray that God will work everything out and soon.

Now, what did we do today? Nothing in the morning! In the afternoon we visited a tea house for a fun demonstration and then some tea tasting. On our trip in 2005, Julie cried during every tea ceremony we attended, so we never tasted much tea. This time we got to enjoy several varieties while Melody sat in my lap and tore up the handout explaining each tea type. She is definitely much better with her hands and fingers than Julie was. For dinner, we ordered pizza from Danny's Bagels. Melody was so eager to eat what we were eating, so we tried some little bits of cheese and sausage. She loved it! At this point, it seems like she can eat just about any solid food if it is relatively soft and cut up enough. She definitely has preferences though, unlike Julie. Somewhere along the line Grandma dubbed Melody "twerp-itz" because of the way she will adamantly reject food but then seemingly change her mind if offered something "better" or if the same thing is offered to her by someone else. Funny baby!

Here she is using Larry's ear as a teething toy:


Here are the results of our "photo shoot" for today:












And here we are at the tea house, in the same spot we took our Christmas card picture in 2005.