You're so amazing!

 I wanted to write this sooner, but life gets so busy! There is so much to do, and so little time. Emily has also decided completely against the entire idea of sleeping, so we're tired on top of busy.

 We have had our girl for a month now. It is amazing. I get asked all of the time "What's it like?" I won't pretend that we've arrived anywhere, or even that I know "what it's like" to have an adopted daughter, but I will tell you what it's like for us after 1 month. It's incredible. It's so much more awesome than I could have even fathomed.

 People say to us daily "You are so amazing!" Really? Our adoption wasn't a humanitarian project. I really want people to understand that. We didn't go to China with the idea of saving a child, we went to China to get our daughter that was waiting for us there.

 I knew she was my daughter before we left, before we even met her, I knew in my head that I had a daughter in China. When I met her, my heart completely enveloped her, and my whole heart and soul knew her!  She was our daughter. In the time that we have been home with her, and in the time that we have spent getting to know her, she is very familiar. The spirit that we felt during 1 full year of paper work, the hundreds of prayers that ascended on her behalf, the time and energy that we devoted to bringing her home all now have come together, and that familiarity was her all along.

 We love her so much!!! We love her because we had to work so hard and wait so long to get her, and because she is so cute, and because she kisses like a super professional kisser, and because she is so fun! But far and above all of that, we love her because she is our daughter, and sister, and niece, and granddaughter. She is a part of our family.

 She's not an orphan any more. She waited for us for a long time. We got matched with her 2 months after her paperwork was finished to make her "adoptable". She is thriving so much! She has grown an inch and a half and gained 3 pounds in less than 3 weeks!

 We had our first post placement home study this week. It was awesome. Em commandeered my nieces cookie at dessert and made it her own!! My cute little niecey didn't even have a choice!! She inhaled that thing. She loooooooves chocolate.

This would be the very last picture of the nice sleeping baby. No more of that. Starting that night, sleeping was like laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame! No more of that nonsense! Oh well, sleeping is probably highly overrated anyway. This phase can't last forever right? It is just a phase right?