11 months

I can't believe we've almost been home 1 year. A year ago at this time we had travel dates and were packing up and getting everything ready to go get our girl! My goodness we love her so much!

 At 11 months home, we have a spoiled little (I mostly blame Lily) who knows what she wants. She's signing a ton, rarely cries, sleeps like something out of a dream with unicorns in it, and is the cutest funnest thing in our house!

 She runs non stop! It's always go go go go! She has never been more pleased with her life than she is right now. She is all over the place constantly! She doesn't want to stop for any reason! I was filling out a paper for China describing her progression since we got her and MAN! That poor sick weak little thing has come such a long way. Her development is coming right along brilliantly.

 Our awesome therapists that come to our house are coming to an end as on paper Em is turning 3. Such a bummer. She's really only just recently 2, but what is there to be done? This conundrum is to be part of who she is forever. She will be the 30 year old that is really only 29! 

So as her birthday rolls around, we will celebrate HER instead of a number. She is worth so many celebrations daily! We love this girl more than we ever thought would be possible. She is amazing, and wonderful, and cute and fun!! She has her US passport and come what may, she's heading back to China to collect her brother.  I think she's going to be thrown for a loop but it will be wonderful, once were home.  I can't wait to be HOME with all of my babies under 1 roof! 

When we went to China for Em, I was so nervous! Scared half silly would be accurate. The reality of being handed over a baby with some serious special needs, and she would forever after be MINE overwhelmed me a lot. This time around, I am so excited! I'm going to really enjoy China. I loved it last trip, but I was so concerned for Em and just wanted to get her home and get her healthy that I wished away my days there, and just couldn't get home soon enough.  I cannot WAIT to get my little boy, special needs and all, I. CAN'T. WAIT!!! I am so head over heels in love with him already. I know-ish what I'm in for this time, and it's going to be marvelous.

LOA

This has been the best week ever! The whole entire wait for the boy has been hard. I know too much now, and I just want him home! My heart has been half way in China for too long, and I'm tired. I want all of my littles to be together in one place. Our LOA wait has been hard, because the time frame is so wonky. 2-30 weeks. That's forever. It was narrowed down to 2-4 months for someone in our particular situation, but that was still FOREVER! I wanted him home before he turned two. You shouldn't turn 2 in an orphanage. You should have a party. and cake. and presents.  I have been praying for that since we got matched. Please let us be home before he turns 2! With the 2-4 month wait, and friends on FB that have waited that long and longer, I was loosing faith. Earlier this week, we received a great gift, an update!

Fluffy hair!! Is he not the cutest ever??? He climbs, he talks, he sings, he plays, he laughs. We are in LOVE! We have been waiting for this update for 3 months! I thought that this was a tender mercy helping me to be patient for another couple of months. I was crying to my sister last night that if we didn't get our LOA tomorrow (today) that I didn't think we would be home before his birthday. We all prayed so much last night that it would come, and it came, after 31 days. We're going to China in November. We're going to be a forever family!

 Sisters!!

 A brother??

 A playmate and best friend.

 Still has the best bed head ever!

We are so super completely and totally excited.

10 months

10 months ago

today

 Chicken has spent 2 of the last three weeks traveling and she has been a trooper to say the least! We spent a week at the ocean and baby girl was in heaven. Sand, water, more sand, more water.  It was a dream vacation for her.

 We all loved it.

 She still will not use her hands to put things into her mouth (except for shoes. Shoes go straight to her mouth). So when you want to taste the sand, just bend on in and take a bite. Tasty.

 She chased after and loved the waves.

 We celebrated our LID for the boy! 7-22-13! Next stop LOA.

 We came home with enough time to do some laundry pack a totally different wardrobe and head south for a week on the river. I have done river trips with all of my babies and I don't remember thinking a thing of it. A 7 year hiatus of not having a little baby on the river turned me into a paranoid mama. I was a mess before the trip. How was I going to keep her happy in her life jacket all day, keep her fed, hydrated, happy, rested, not sun burned .......

 She styled it. As usual. She LOVED it! I mean look at that face! That is the expression of true love. I tell you this girl and the camera don't get along. I don't know what it is! She will be so happy and smiley and giggling and I'll whip out my camera, BAM! Dead dog serious. Just like that.

 She went from crawling about 50% of the time to walking about 90% of the time.

 More sand, more water, and rapids! She would laugh and giggle all the way through the rapids. She'd take a big splash to the face, and crack right up about it. amazing.

 A fourth river rat was born.

 She took two long naps on the boat every day. She'd go through rapids, water fights, lots of happy chatter, and sleep through it all. She in every way is our girl.

The boy. Oh how we want our little man home. The one document that we are waiting on right now, has about a 2-30 week wait.  Somewhere in that range. Oh dread. We got Emily's in 21 days. That would be in 3 days. I'm counting on it, praying for it, and anything else I can think of.  Everything is on hold until we get it. When we receive it, we will travel in about 12 weeks. Still no update on him. That is the hardest part. Not knowing. I just want my baby home.

9 months

9 months ago today we adopted Emily! She is still our favorite thing to wake up to every morning, and everyones favorite thing throughout the day, and the one that gets her face kissed off before she goes to bed. She is still sleeping so amazingly well. We are so beyond thrilled with that. She is such a happier baby too.  At nine months home, Emily's favorite things are:

 Walks around the block although the stroller is waning in popularity, she used to love it a lot.

 Being outside is always the best! If she spies someone going outside without her, oh my watch out. Her tantrums are the only thing about her that is 2!

 The swing set is the best! I love her end of the day hair. And her morning hair. All of her hair!

 Peek-a-boo. At all times.

We left Em for the first time with our girls for longer than a few minutes. We went to a conference for our church, and were gone for about 3 hours. About 20 minutes into the conference, I got this text from Lily. We laughed and laughed about it. She was well taken care of!

 

This little chicken will find water. The local splash pad is so perfect for her. She loves it. The other evening we were outside and the neighbors sprinklers came on and she was in them faster than fast. She loves water!!

 4th of July! Loved the fireworks and of course more swimming.

 Em LOVES her sisters. Each one is so wonderful with her and to her. Lily walks her. Everywhere, all the time. When no one else will walk with Em, Lily will.

Chloe sings to her and plays hide and seek. Emily loves to play, and Chloe gives her lots of play time.

 Austri is her other mother. Austri makes her laugh harder than anyone. Austri is also the only person next to dad that gets hugs.

Our favorite thing TODAY is that Emily started WALKING!!! She just up and walked across the room to daddy! AMAZING!! She is a darn heavy little tiny, and her walking is going to be so nice!

What a blessing this girl has been to our family. We love her more than we can say. She is just the coolest thing ever.  We really got her from new born on. She couldn't even hold her head up when they handed her over to us. It was so scary! There were a lot of unknowns with her. The only thing we knew was that she was meant to be out daughter. Everything else would have to sort itself out.

We cannot believe how far she's come. All the way around, she's about at a 12 month old level. In all of her therapies, she was soooo delayed, they all placed her at newborn status. She is doing amazingly well! There is still a lot to do, but she's progressing just beautifully and we have no reason at all to believe that she won't be completely caught up in another year.  It's been fun to get to witness all of her stages.

The Boy on the other hand is at his age level already. It's going to be a whole other story with him. He can walk and talk and hear, and he understands Chinese, and he is very aware. It's going to be different but oh my we cannot wait. Our documents are on their way to China. We didn't get the June LID that I was so hoping for, but we will get a July date. This means that the soonest we can possibly travel will be November, but we'll take it. Let's just get him home.

8 months

8 months ago yesterday our adoption was finalized! Yahoo! At 8 months, Emily is loving summer and being outside so much! We spend lots of time on the swings and the trampoline, on walks, and in the grass. She LOVES outside. She is a total water baby. She will seek out any water, and get herself wet. 

 She is so smiley and happy! Em is so close to walking!! She can totally do it, she just won't. Stinker. We spend our days and nights like this...

...or this.

 Our favorite thing lately is that Emily sleeps! She has played musical beds like crazy. In our room, in her room, in Chloe's room, in her crib, in her bed, in my bed, and my personal favorite for the past two weeks, on top of me in the guest room!

Earlier last week I went into her room and she reached out for her crib. This is a far cry from where she has been, but I stuck her in it, and from that day on, she's loved her crib. Again. She has been sleeping all night, waking obnoxiously early, like 5, but sleeping all night. It's been nice.

 The crown hair do. Our favorite.

 The carnival came to town. She wasn't feeling well, but tolerated it ok.

 Emily loves Austri so so so much!! She prefers her to anyone. Gary is next in line. His identical twin brother stayed with us this past weekend, and Emily had two dad's! Awesome! I'm in third place, or sometimes 5th place if anyone else remotely interesting is in the room.

 best. bed head. ever!!

The Boy:

We got his primary immigration back and it is presently being sealed and authenticated at the state and federal government levels, and also at the Chinese Embassy. We will send it off to China hopefully in 10 days! We are still on track to potentially travel in late October, early November. I'm counting on it. I need the boy home! I have requested an update, and new photos, but I haven't heard anything back. I want to hear about him so badly! The poor little orphanage workers have such a tremendous job simply meeting so very many children's basic needs that pictures, updates, and paperwork don't always happen. Our next thing that we are waiting for is a Log in Date (LID) to China. When they receive our paperwork, they log us into their system as adoptive parents.  We can travel as soon as 4 months after LID. I'm praying for a June LID.

The Boy

As I am typing this, Emily is trying to go to sleep.  She struggles with sleep and hence we all struggle with sleep. We try this and that and everything in between. I think it's just going to take a lot of time. The boy hopefully will sleep.

I am having so much nostalgia.  Last year this time we were matched with Em. We thought about her all of the time. Everywhere I went I thought "In a few months I'm going to be doing this with a baby!" Now everything I do I think "In a few months I'm going to be doing this with two toddlers!" Sometimes I have to stop myself because I want him so desperately bad it physically hurts to not have him here.

His story is such a testament to me of how Heavenly Father is so present in the details of our lives. We are a family of girls. We never wanted boys, we never thought about boys, we hoped that each of our pregnancies were girls and when it was time to adopt, we felt we were having girls!

We are doing the boy's adoption on Emily's paperwork. You can do two adoptions on one dossier but it has a time limit.  Right after we got home from China, I was way too overwhelmed to even think about adopting again. Gary asked me one night, "Would you do it again?" My answer was "No.  Too hard." His response was "I'd do it again in a second, that was amazing!!" I thought for a while that Emily would be the tail ender, sort of an only child, and it will be fine. But the nagging continued.  I couldn't leave it alone. We looked at a couple of files, but it was all wrong. I couldn't figure out why or what, but I was unsettled completely.

One night, my awesome friend (the one that originally opened up China to me in the first place) sent me some pictures of 4 little boys. They were adorable to say the least and for the first time in my life I considered a boy. When I prayed about it, it was a boy! That was my answer. I was no longer unsettled, I was on a mission! I had been looking at the wrong files, girl files. In January, I was completely anxious. I knew something was happening, I just didn't know what. One morning, I got online and CCAI had posted several new children. I immediately looked at the boys.  I opened up a file, and there he was. My little boy.

I knew him immediately, he was ours for sure. I emailed right away and got the response "I'll add you to the list, I can't believe how many people are interested in this little boy!" NO NO NO NO NO!! He was mine! Only one family at a time can look at a file, if they say no then it goes to the next family. Where was I on the list? #5. 4 families would have to turn him down! I prayed like crazy for the next month. I checked on him 20 times a day to make sure he was still on there.  I was sent another file of a little boy who had the "severe" special need of low birth weight.  I tried to love him. I tried to make him mine, but in the end, we felt nothing at all for him.  We gave his file back after only a day.  A couple of days later, CCAI called me. She said "Do you know that that baby is healthy? You turned down a healthy baby. I have to ask why?" "He wasn't mine." it was the only response I could give her, and it did not satisfy her. I told her "We know how it felt when we found our daughter, and that little boy was not ours. We would not take him from his family just because he was healthy." She scolded me a little bit and sort of told me that we were running out of time, and we needed to do XYZ if we were going to get a second baby. I was so frustrated! I knew my little boy! I told her that I was still on a list for another little boy to which she replied "Don't get your hopes up for that one, he'll go fast." I hung up and cried my eyes out! I told Gary "He is our little boy, if we don't get him, I will not look at another file ever again. He is my baby." About two hours later I got a voicemail from CCAI that said "You'll never believe that right after we hung up, the little boy's file that you have been waiting on came available!! I'm supposed to get your permission to send it over, but I'm sending it anyway!"  And that is how we got our boy.

We weren't ready to have a boy last year. He was barely born when we were ready to say yes to two. God knew how to prepare our hearts and minds to accept a baby boy and to know him when he came. We have sooo much immigration work to do for him.  It's taking forever! We pray for our paperwork everyday that it will go quickly. We're hurrying as fast as we can and we hope the US Government will do the same!