Mama now has my social life very organised - I have educational and physical activities every morning six days a week: Monday is Gymbaroo, Tuesday is Playgroup, Wednesday is YMCA, Thursday is another Playgroup, Friday is Music, Saturday is Swimming lessons with Baba. Lunchtime I come home for a sleep! Then two or three afternoons a week, Catherine or Nicole, Early Childhood students from the University of Western Sydney come to the house to play with me whilst Mama works on her computer.

Pouring with rain still, after a week of floods and still with a runny nose from a cold all week but nevertheless Baba and Lin braved the elements along with 3 other brave toddlers to learn to swim at the Caringbah Swimming Pool - "pool" is one of the English words that Lin can say. Our own pool is currently a blackish green colour after the floods dumped a mudslide in it this week. Oh the joys of living on a hillside - great views but shocking waterflow problems!

The batch of couples that travelled to China together (NSW Batch 7 as we are called by the Department of Community Services) had a reunion to celebrate our first 4 months home with our daughters.

Batch 7 includes a couple that did not travel to China because his mother and father, Chris and Kasuko were fortunate to receive a beautiful Japanese baby boy, Sei, via local adoption a few months before we travelled.

Two couples, one from Queensland and one from Newcastle, were unable to make this reunion. Thank you to Ken and Anne and their daughter Kimberley for organising us. The next reunion is planned for October and some of the batch are planning a visit to Tumut in August to play with Cen in the snow.

Lin is now an Australian Citizen - we completed the paperwork at the Department of Immigration at Parramatta when we went to Westmead Hospital and her certificate arrived on Thursday. It is a condition of adoption from China that we forward proof of citizenship within a year of arriving in Australia.

Social Worker visit. The DOCS Social Worker has to visit us every four months for the first year of Lin's adoption to check that all is OK and to write a report to China. Based on these visits and on our self-reports (we have just completed the second report). This is the same Social Worker who did the four home visits as part of the approval process and who brought the photos and paperwork to us when we were allocated our baby in December.

Lin rushed home from Gymbaroo in time for the appointment. Lin wanted to play with us all but Mama and Baba needed to talk to the Social Worker. She looked like so she was going to put on a good tantrum for the Social Worker but fortunately her Winnie the Pooh DVD came to the rescue and kept her occupied for a while until the bees chased poor Pooh. She gets very upset for Pooh's welfare when the bees attack him and came to tell us all about it. She can say "Pooh" and "bee" - last week at one of the playgroups we attend, she got a bee stamp and immediately started saying "buzz, buzz, buzz..." Oh, you're so clever Xiao Qiu!

Health Later that afternoon we went to the doctors because Lin's chest had been rattling for two weeks - probably swimming lessons did not help. The doctor decided to try a course of antibiotics but later that evening Xiao Qiu suddenly threw up and her temperature skyrocketed and then she fell asleep for a couple of hours. When she woke I gave her Panadol and that brought the temperature down enough for her to eat but soon the Panadol wore off and the temperature went up again. We thought it was a reaction to the antibiotics and changed the prescription. However this continued for 4 days and her coughing increased.

We had numerous visits to the doctor, cancelled all outings and watched her Pooh video a hundred times. We ended up in the Children's Hospital one night where they put her on a drip to rehydrate her and did tests which concluded she had nothing more serious than a virus and bronchitis. The drip conquered the temperature problem but coughing and wheezing, bronchitis and asthma followed over the next two weeks, then another trip to the hospital. For a fuller description see the notes we wrote in  our third report to DOCS.  Lin's first winter in Australia has been hard on her health-wise but her parents have learnt a lot now about how to manage her health. We hope we'll get better at looking after her.