Five years ago today our lives changed for ever when Daniel Quan became our son. Daniel is now five and a half years old. He started primary school last September and is getting on really well. He is very clever and extremely handsome. Of course I would say that being his mother but it is still true. He gives the fabulous cuddles and has the best laugh. He gets away with murder because he is so cute. He has turned our world upside down - in a good way but his sister may not always agree:-)

Love you to the moon and back sweetheart xxx

A picture speaks a thousand words

From the top we have Daniel's first day in Montessori, Daniel and Grace on their first day in Montessori and First class, Daniel's 4th birthday cake - Ben 10, Grace aka spider bat girl and Daniel aka Woody ready for trick or treating, cuddling with Mom, the four of us at my niece's christening  Grace's 7th birthday cake- One direction, Grace and Daniel at Grace's 7th birthday party, Daniel wearing his Dan the Man shirt that my friend gave him for his fourth birthday, Daniel building a fort out of the boxes his Christmas presents came in, Grace and Daniel ready for bed on Christmas eve, Grace - mildly happy with the Moshi monster tablet she got for Christmas, Mike and Grace on Christmas day and finally my two water babies on holiday earlier this month in Lanzarote.

I could post pictures of Grace and Daniel all day. Every time I take their picture I ooh and aah over how beautiful and perfect they are. Mike is just as bad. I'm sure people sigh when they see us coming with the "world's most wonderful kids" but I don't care. I'll bore you about them all day long given half the chance :). That's not to say that I think they are angels. Just stand outside our house on any given day and you will hear the shouting and fighting that goes on. We are probably the best form of birth control there is for our newly wed next door neighbours. But along with the whining and fighting there is so much love in this house. There are days when I skip out the door to work just to get some peace and quiet but I never forget, even for a second, what a blessing it is to be their mother.

My beautiful girl

With her little brother

All made up and nowhere to go

Adoption day

Most mothers become mothers on the day their child is born. Not me. My daughter was seven months old before I even knew of her existence and she was almost nine months old the first time I held her in my arms. That's not to say that she hadn't occupied my every waking (and most of my sleeping )thoughts for months and years before hand. The idea of her had taken hold on the very first day that we considered adoption way back in 2002. The idea of her was blown out of the watter by the reality of her though. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine the beautiful, funny, warm, noisy, wonderful little girl who became my daughter on this day six years ago.

When she was placed in my arms for the first time I was overwhelmed by feelings of absolute joy and absolute terror. I do think the terror had a slight edge on the day.
I remember she was in her nanny's arms and I just kept stoking her little foot and toes. When she was finally given into my arms she stiffened but did not cry. In fact she did not make a sound. I started to feed her her bottle and I felt her slowly start to relax into my arms. Mike was so overwhelmed that he had to keep running into the bedroom to wipe away tears as he didn't want to scare her. I had no such self control and I sobbed for hours. She just gave my long mistrustful looks with her beautiful brown eyes.

When we put her to bed on that first night we kept creeping up to her cot to check that she was still breathing. She looked so small and precious in her little crib, in her too big Winnie the pooh pajamas. Now six years on she is even more precious than I could have ever imagined but long gone is the quietness. She has the loudest voice and a big booming laugh. She can also wail for Ireland and China when things are not going her way. She is a great big sister to her brother, even if they do drive each other mad at times. She is over four feet tall and wears a size one in her shoes. She keeps measuring herself to me and telling me she will be bigger than me soon. I'm sure she probably will be too.I drive her mad telling her that no matter how big she gets she will always be my baby.

We are raising her to love China and her heritage. It was strongly in evidence over the last few weeks as she cheered "my China" on to medal after medal in the London Olympics. She cheered them on over any Irish athlete - except for Katie Taylor, who she loves.

I think often of her birth mother. I cannot imagine what it must be like to have to give up your child. My heart hurts even to think of it. I try to look after her the best I can for both of us.

November is a very special month in our house. It is Grace's birthday (she turned 6 on the 14th ) and it is also the month that we received our referral for Daniel (almost three years ago now. Where does the time go???). Granda Hayes also celebrates his birthday in November. Grace loves that they have the same birthday month.

Anyway, we had been home a few months with Grace when Mike said to me "she brings colour to my life" I thought it was quite a beautiful thing to say about our precious girl and I knew exactly what he meant. Looking back on life before Grace and Daniel is like black and white and colour only really came in when they arrived. I'm not trying to be melodramtic and say my life before them was all misery. It certinly wasn't. I've experienced many wonderful things - the Heiniken cup final in May 2006 springs immediately to mind:), but all of the previous joys in my life are nothing compared to the gift of these two children. I'm so conscious that others - including Grace & Daniel, have suffered terrible loss and how much I have benifited from that loss. I like to think that God saw two sad situations - Mike and I unable to have children and Grace and Daniel's parents unable to raise them, and decided in his wisom that we would all be a good fit for each other.

Head banging

Grace and Daniel have both ended up with split foreheads this year - not at the same time, as if that makes it any better.
Daniel fell first. We were in the park on Jan 2nd and I was talking to a girl I knew about how he makes my heart go cross ways when I see him on the slide. He was climbing the steps for the slide as I spoke and managed to tumble off the bottom step and hit his head on the corner of the step. I'm not sure whether he or I was more hysterical. We went to the car and I cleaned the blood from the half inch long wound to see how bad it was. I rang Elayne to say I was on my way (where else would you go except to your sister, in a crisis???) Anyway the bleeding stopped fairly rapidly. He didn't lose consciousness or seem drowsy so I didn't take him to the hospital. I should have, but I was in shock. He was fine, thank God and only has a small scar to show for his troubles. We are rubbing bio oil on it to make it fade as much as possible.

Grace fell on April 7th at creche. She was running, slipped and banged her hear off the corner of a door. One of the minders rang me and said she had a small accident and they were taking her to a doctor in the same complex as the creche. I could hear her screaming in the backround. I shouted to my boss that I had to leave and then raced out the door. I don't know how I obeyed the rules of the road. When I got to the doctors Grace was outside with the lady from creche. the doctor said Grace's wound was too deep for him to stitch so I took her to St John's hospital. She ended up getting an inch long gash in her forehead glued and then held with paper stitches. She was frighted but very brave. She's getting the bio oil treatment now too, so hopefully it will work as well for her as it did for Daniel. Thank God this is the worst accident that either of them has had, and hopefully this will be the worst that happens to them. I don't think my heart could take it.

Florida March 2011

We went to Florida on March 17th. You have never seen two more excited kids. We held off on telling them until the end of January, and we only told them then because Mike couldn't wait any longer. He then spent the next few weeks showing them clips of Disney and Shamoo at Sea world. He also taught Daniel to bob his up and down like Shamoo does. Seriously cute.


We flew from Dublin with Geraldine, Neilus, Neil & Mags. David, Rebecca, Eve and Fiona met us in Orlando airport. It was our first time meeting the beautiful Princess Fiona, who was born the previous October. We rented a fabulous five bed roomed house in Kissimmee, just one mile away from Disney. It had its own pool and all the kids spent many happy hours there. A little lizard used to sleep beside the pool. Daniel would send ages watching him. Both he and Grace loved getting to spend time with Eve and Fiona. Daniel calls Fiona "Fuowna"


We went to Disney World on Monday 21st. When we went in Grace saw Snow White - who's her favorite, and said "oh Mommy, she's a real girl living in a real place." That set the rest of the day up nicely. Mike did have to tell me though that I couldn't keep crying everytime the kids expressed delight over something or I would dehydrate myself. I couldn't help welling up though. Anyway, he's the sucker who insisted they needed matching (expensive) Mickey and Minnie hats. Grace & Daniel had their picture taken with Daisy Duck and then we headed down to Cinderella's castle to see all the MickeyMouse clubhouse gang perform. We saw Mickey's orchestra in 3 D. It was so funny watching Grace trying to bat the flying instruments away. We went on loads of rides like the carousel the tea cups. We danced in the parade with the Toy story guys much to Daniels delight. It really was a fabulous day.


We also went to Sea World. The gardens there are beautiful. So many flowers. I think this was Mike's favorite day, as he loved seeing the whales and dolphins close up. After all the kids previous excitement about seeing Shamoo they weren't really bothered by it. They did love the huge climbing frames and sand boxes.

The other park we went to was Busche Gardens. This was my favorite. I liked everything about it, from the animals, to the gardens, to the rides, to the you get the picture. There were stilt walkers dressed as plants and insects. One pretended to bite Grace's head off, which she thought was so funny. We went around the park on a train. Grace and Daniel got to see Big Bird. Grace got her picture taken but Daniel wouldn't go near him. There was a couple of areas where the kids could splash around which they also loved, but apparently the best bit was when they got to stand in the splash area for one of the adult rides and get soaked as the people whizzed by. It really was a brilliant holiday. We will have to win the lotto before we can go again though :-)

CNY & Tet

This is the Chinese year of the Rabbit and the Vietnamese year of the Cat. We celebrated in Cork this year. We stayed two nights in the Silver Springs hotel for the IGGC CNY event. We met up with Gennie, Kai, Sonia and Dave so the kids were in their element. On the Saturday morning myself, Grace, Sonia and Gennie went to the life book workshop. It was a really lovely expereince to work with Grace on her book. She is so proud of it.
At the afternoon celebrations Grace and Gennie had their face's painted and Daniel and Kai had to be prized away from the rabbit hutch. The girls also spent hours at the arts and crafts stand. They glittered and glued and coloured to their hears content.
We sat at a table with another family for the meal. They have two little girls from China. Strangly, Gennie had a nose bleed at the meal, as did one of girls from the other family and then Grace had one later that night. There was dancing after the meal. Grace danced the legs off herself. She knows some seriously freaky dance moves:)
The following morning, after saying our goodbyes, we headed to the beach in Cobh. It was cold, but the sun was shining so we had a nice walk there before heading home again.

Christmas 2010

I say it everytime, but I really can't believe that it is 5 months since I last posted. Chirstmas has been and gone and now it is almost Easter. We had a great Christmas. Grace and Daniel were so excited. Everytime Daniel passed someone with a red hat or beard he shouted "it's Santa" after them. Baby Jesus was also a big feature of our preperations. Grace had Daniel singing all the Carols she knows. They sang "Happy Birthday" to Jesus on Christmas morning which was really cute. . They both got so many presents as usual. Daniel got a ride on car and lots of Mickey Mouse toys like the club house and the campervan. He is obsessed with Mickey Mouse. Grace got a new bike, tatoo gun (I know), loads of make and do bits and pieces and a make up set. She is quite a girly girl, but I also suspect she will be tatooed from her head to her toes when she is bigger. We bought a Wii as well. Grace and Daniel killed each other to get a turn on it. We gave Daniel a controller that wasn't plugged into the console and he was as happy as Larry thinking he was playing the game.
We had dinner in our house with Pam, Sophie and Jake, Mam, Sarah, Stephen and Jonathan and then did the visiting rounds. We finally got them to bed at around 11:30PM. A brilliant day, all round.

Grace's update

Grace turned five on 15th Nov. My baby girl isn't really a baby any more. She wanted gift vouchers for presents so she could pick out her own things. I think that's because I normally tell everyone she wants clothes. This time she got some vouchers for Smyths toy store. She picked out some dolls with changable heads and clothes and she also got books and some art stuff. She really loves to draw. I also, I mean she also got vouchers for Next. She bought a coat, slippers and a cute pair of slip on shoes. We had her party in tons of fun on 14th Nov so for this year she has switched her birthday to that day as well because apparently your birthday and your party have to be on the same day...There was 16 children including Grace & Daniel at the party.
We are going to have to go and get a family portrait done because it seems beyond us to get all four of us together in a picture at family occaisions.

I know all parents think their children are the most beautiful but they are wrong becauase Grace really is the most beautiful girl in the world. She is also so funny. The other day she clipped in her seat belt but it was twisted a little. I asked her to fix it and she said " Mom, who do you think I am, Bob the builder?" I was glad the car was relatively dark so she couldn't see me smile. She is doing really well at school. Her reading and writing skills are very good. She has a word box that gets two or three new words added to it every week. I use the words to make up sentences for her. Last night I started putting the words in the sentence in the wrong order just to be sure she was actually reading the words and not just learning off the sentence. She had no trouble and even told me I wasn't going to catch her out. Grace also started ballet again in September. She looks so cute in her outfit. A few weeks ago Nelius and Geraldine were up for dinner and Grace was showing them her ballet. When she was out of earshot Nelius asked if she was doing ballet or trying out for the Munster front row.

Daniel's update

Daniel turned two on Sept 14th. We decided to hold his birthday two weeks previously because the weather was so good. We hired a bouncy castle and all the usual family and friends were there to celebrate with us on the day. I'm glad we pulled the party forward because it rained constantly on the actual day of his birthday - not like last year when we could spend the day on the beach.

It's hard to believe how much he has changed in the last year. He is as handsome as ever of couse, but he is also a walking, talking worldwind. He thinks he is the able to do everything that Grace can like climbing walls and jumping off them. He has over 150 words. My heart gets stuck in my throat when he is on a slide because he just launches himself off them.. He is also so independant. The constant refrain in our house is "Daniel do it" He is adept at putting on his socks and shoes and most of his clothes. He has also started climbing out of his cot and knocking on his bedroom door saying "Mommy, let Daniel out" It looks like we will be buying a big boys bed sooner rather than later. I think he has all his teeth now. He won't allow me to check but when I turn him upside down and tickle him so that he opens his mouth real wide it looks like they are all there. He uses them occaisionally to bite. Poor Grace has a mark on his chest that you could take a full impression of his teeth from :-( She usually gives him as good as she gets but I really felt sorry for her when I saw what he had done. He's so cute when he's telling her he's sorry. He loves to sit at the dining room table and colour with her, though there is fierce competition over who makes the better artwork.