Baby Shower!

I was pleasantly surprised the Saturday before Halloween with a baby shower for Wen Li. The theme seemed to be "Incredibly cute little pink girl clothes" which is exactly what I wanted!

Many thanks to all who came, and especially to Anna for hosting. She has listened to every agonizing detail from the start of this whole process and has been a really good sport about it. She is featured in the shower picture.

Look at that awesome cake! Homemade!!

I totally missed all the clues about the shower, including the ones from Kevin, who usually doesn' t do very well at hiding these things.

It's a girl!

We are thrilled to introduce our daughter and sister, Wen Li.

She was born February 21, 2005 (!) in Guixi, in the province of Jiangxi China.

We hope to have travel dates for Thanksgiving timeframe, and will bring her back to Germany for Christmas. Then off to the States in January to be spoiled by grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

[Cue Stevie Wonder singing "Isn't she lovely...isn't she wonderful..."]

Demonstrating one of her traits that makes her fit right into our family - the not-quite-ready shot.

We think the above pictures were taken recently (she's only 7 1/2 months old right now!) while the next photo was probably taken earlier this year.

We can't wait to bring her home!

Baby Names

Boy, or rather, Girl, can this be tough. Some friends from my group have had a name for months, while others made a reasonable effort and came up with one during the wait period.

Then there's us. My list has gone something like this, early to recent:

Enye, Andela, Li Lien, Liliena, Spring, Yesinia, Ming Xia, Elin, Elina, Anjali, Sophia, Elena, Zoe, Lianna, Anming, Liren, Lizhen, Sachi, Nalanda, Indra, Nia, Summer, Lia, Elia, Wren, Autumn, Tea, Mateja, Calais, Sky.

I have flat-out refused to consider Mercedes, and Kev has flat-out refused to consider Ophelia (She'd be Opie, he says.)

We are hoping to be inspired, enlightened, or even just hinted-at by her Chinese name when we find it out tomorrow. She will keep it regardless as her middle name. We also hope her startled, 5 monthish old face will let us know if she is a name from our list (including the highly guarded secret one - wait, we don't have one of those) or if we need to keep searching.

It unsettles me to have this unsettled.

The nursery - courtesy of IKEA and the US Gov't

OK, here we are entering the room, with our frog rack accent compliments of Aunt Sara. The rooms are shaped a little strange over here to accomodate large wardrobes, since they don't build closets.
Moving clockwise, the schrank, with a really cute little backpack, and the diapering accessories basket on the nightstand. It also has some hair "pretties" in it, which we have no idea how to use.

On the bed you can see a little pink teddy bear and pink blanket, from our cyber-group friends Melissa and Will. We've been having cyber-showers to pass the months, they've been great fun.

Last angle here, to show the reading chair and book nightstand, loaded with favorites like Goodnight Moon and The Going to Bed Book. Hope they work this time around!

The Stork is Flying!!

We have received our Stork Alert, which is the poetic way to say the DHL package is being transported half-way round the world in a company airplane. Unlike storks, these guys have tracking numbers.

We will find out who OAYUND is on Monday.

It's been a long wait - we are one year, one week, and five days into this process.