Update July 2012

Well, it's been a year since I updated this blog.  Holly Jun has grown so much, and changed quite a bit in the past year.

She is now preparing to start second grade and will be getting just a bit of help with reading and writing but otherwise is on track.  Holly absolutely loves school, and is thriving.  Her health has remained excellent and her bond with us all is very strong.  She's become quite the comic, too.

Holly's favorite subject in school is Math, and her favorite thing to do at home is follow her sister Myleigh around and do whatever she is doing.  Her life is for the most part a pretty normal life unless you count the fact that she is Chinese living with a bunch of caucasions.  Still, we do fill some of the asian gap by going to Asian festivals and events, and our daughters have several asian friends including one from Hong Kong who spend a fair amount of time at our house.

Just this month I figured out how to transfer our video tapes to dvd and onto my laptop, so I was going through the video of Holly's gotcha day, and she was very interested in it.  Her memories of that day are very small, but, she does remember that she was afraid of me because of my glasses.  I hadn't worn them in the pictures we sent her, so, that must have changed my appearance enough to throw her off.  Weird though, because Tim wore glasses in all the pictures, but, had lasik before our trip and wasn't wearing them when she met him.

She's very keen on having things be even between her and Myleigh.  I put up some of the things I had saved from our China trips in their room.  I hadn;'t wanted them up before because they were both small and liable to damage them, things like paper scrolls and fans.  I put Myleighs up first, and she wanted to not only make sure she had one too, but, wondered why it was different.  Myleigh's was made for her during her adoption trip.  A member of the Chinese National Calligraphy Society was hired by our guide to write each of the girl's Chinese names and adoption information on a scroll that is about 4 feet long.  When we went to adopt Holly, we found scrolls of the same size for sale in the Chen Family Temple in Guangzhou, so, we let her pick whichever one she wanted, and of course, she chose one with pandas on it.  We thought it was very appropriate for her, and even though it is not identical to Myleigh's, when we tell her how and when it was chosen, she likes it just as much.