Abby seems to be adjusting to life in Colorado very well. She is slowly getting used to the car seat - we have had several trips where she has been fine and several where she eventually gets upset. We have transitioned her to American formula and she seems to like that just fine. In fact, she eats just about anything we give her. We've been giving her some (approved) table food and she seems to be always hungry.

Abby and Annie (our dog) are slowly feeling each other out. Annie is a fairly gentle dog, but given the loud noises and the handfuls of hair that Abby likes to grab, we're taking it slow. They've sniffed and touched each other some, but we still don't let Annie have free access to Abby (or vice-versa). We've also taken Abby for several walks around the neighborhood in her stroller - she doesn't seem to mind that like the car seat. She doesn't seem to smile a whole lot while she's in the stroller, but just keeps looking around her (and occasionally pulling her hat down over her eyes).

We went to the doctor on the first Monday back and she thought Abby looked good, but maybe had a slight ear infection. So Abby is on a new antibiotic and also had a TB test (which came back negative). When we went back to check the TB test, Abby also had a stool test (also negative) and had blood drawn (also negative). Drawing the blood was not fun. Karl held her down, Jill talked to her, a nurse held her arm, and another nurse took the blood (a whole lot of it). Abby screamed as expected, but it went pretty fast and she was fine as soon as we picked her up. We'll go back in about 10 days (once the antibiotic is used up) to get her shots.

Starting that Monday night Abby also seemed to be fairly well adjusted to Colorado time. She is sleeping through the night for the most part, only occasionally waking and crying a little, but then going back to sleep. It is still a huge struggle to get her to go to sleep at night, and we are not having much luck getting her to take any naps during the day. We've had one day when she actually took an hour-and-a-half nap, but most other days it's maybe a 15 minute nap sometime (when supposedly she was taking 2 two-hour naps a day in the orphanage). She still cries and screams a lot, but it may be lessening in intensity a little bit.

Karl and Jill are very glad to be home and starting to get Abby on a schedule. Karl is going back to work (as a high school technology coordinator) after taking an additional week after coming back from China, but will only be back two weeks before winter break (when he'll have another two weeks off). Jill is taking a leave of absence from her job (teaching fourth grade) to stay home with Abby, for at least the rest of this year. After that we'll be playing it year-by-year, seeing how things are going and how finances are going. We are hoping that either Jill or Karl will be able to stay home until Abby is Kindergarten age.

Well, that's about the end of our travel story. We hope to keep an online photo album up to date with current pictures of Abby. We've also added an Abby Links page.

Thanks for sharing this journey with us and if anyone is interested in adopting from China, please feel free to contact us.