Time flies

Today Sarah is 20 months old, and we have been home from China for a month now. Hard to believe a month has flown by so quickly, in so many ways it feels like Sarah has always been with us. How I love this little girl! It is so much fun to see her grow and blossom. She can be quite the mischief maker, today she moved all my kitchen chairs into the middle of the room, not sure if she was planning on doing a little redecorating or perhaps getting ready to build a fort, she just looked at me and smiled as she moved each chair, I watched with eager anticipation to see what she was going to do next. When she was done playing with the chairs, she moved them all back into place at the table, quite pleased with herself. So busy, always running around here and there and taking things out of the drawers, I have a drawer in the kitchen that has a glass front, known as a pasta drawer, where there is a panel in between the glass and the main drawer and it happens to be filled with suckers, what a discovery it was for her to find that! Now each day she reaches in and smiles big as she pulls out a couple of suckers several times a day, she is persistent even when I only give her one sucker and return all the others to the drawer.

She went to visit her grandma for the first time last Friday, I was so excited for my 86 year old mother to finally meet her new grand daughter, my mom has waited along with us for Sarah to come to our family and it was so much fun to finally have them meet. Sarah enjoyed playing and she especially enjoyed looking at my moms bear collection, she wanted to go back and look several times and kept pointing at all the cool things in the room. I'm sure she'll be just as excited about it the next time we visit.

On Saturday Sarah received a little tea pot and tea set from our friend Heather and she has spent alot of time having tea parties with the family. She pats the ground beckoning us to come and sit down and play, she delights in playing with her family. Todd even had a tea party with her.

Sunday was Easter and she enjoyed a little egg hunt in the backyard, although she didn't like the grass and so all the eggs had to be moved to the cement, but she loved filling her basket. We took her to church for the first time since we have been home and she seemed to enjoy playing in the nursery and wasn't at all intimidated by all the new faces, she wore a new pair of squeaky shoes and marched around the halls almost with a mischievious grin at all the noise she was making.

Last night Todd came home after having spent an evening with Megan for a daddy-daughter event and he went to practice his guitar, Sarah followed him into the den and began stealing his guitar things, his pics, his metronome, his music stand and would squeal, scream and giggle as he chased after her to retrieve each thing, finally with something in her hand she scurried down the hall laughing all the way with Todd on her heals as she raced into my arms for safety. Then it was a game of hide and seek as Todd would hide behind the couch and she would find him and scream and then laugh and laugh, of course with her laughing it made us all laugh. How she loves to tease!

Yesterday we also had our friends Erin and Libby come to visit, this was the first time Sarah has met Libby and we found that Sarah needs to work on her sharing of toys a bit more, but we were so happy that they came and hope to get together with them again soon. Sarah loved Libby's boots and was eager to try them on when Libby slipped them off, thanks Libby for letting Sarah wear your cute boots! We also love the wonderful books you brought!

I love being a mom, I have five wonderful children which are all such a blessing to me and I love them each so very much. My life is so much richer because of them. I rejoice in each of their achievements and hope they will always know how much I love them.

Pictures, Pictures!

American Dr. Visit

On March 25 Sarah went to her first American Dr. visit. She received 5 shots, got a tb test and was there for over 2 hours, a little different then the 15-20 minutes that was spent in China at her medical appointment. We then had to go over to the hospital lab and she had to have blood taken to do further testing. I almost fell over when the lab guy started getting out all the vials and told me they needed 9 vials filled. I was asking if he was really sure that was necessary, I mean that is alot of blood for a little tiny girl. I really hate that kind of thing and I felt so bad for Sarah, it seemed she had been through so much in one day, I hate all the poking. As a parent you always want to keep your children safe and protected and shielded from all the bad stuff and its always so hard when you see your child in pain even if it will help them later. Those feelings never change, even when your children grow up. You still worry and want so much for them to be safe and protected and not be in pain.

Well, we have been back to the dr. and got the test results back and Sarah is very healthy and we are grateful ! It was funny when the dr. first met Sarah, she said, "This girl is very strongwilled" I laughed and told her that was exactly what the nanny wanted us to know about her first off. She said that she could tell that Sarah was a survivor and that it most likely was her strongwilled personality that helped her get through the first 18 months in the orphanage. She thought she probably got some extra attention due to that fact, Todd and I had already drawn the same conclusion and felt in our hearts that this was definately the case.

Sarah is doing very well, so much for her to take in and so many changes for her. She is finally sleeping through the night and usually takes a nap in the day for a couple of hours. She loves to be a helper, weather it is helping put clothes in the washer and dryer or helping to put them away when they are done, she just grins as she helps and loves to hear what a big girl she is and what a good helper she is. She has picked up the meaning of things really fast, she knows her name and knows what we are talking about although she doesn't say too much herself. She babbles and points to things, sometimes I think she gets a little frustrated with us when we don't know exactly what she wants but we are doing pretty good figuring things out. She loves to play, loves music and is often found humming a little tune or wanting to "play" the piano. She likes to put on mom's makeup and loves to look beautiful in all her cute outfits. She is fasinated with shoes and if anyone leaves their shoes lying around she is sure to try them on and try to take a little walk in them. She has discovered that licking the beaters when someone whips cream is a pretty great thing and broccoli is a favorite food of hers.

We love to hear her laugh and giggle and her smile brightens up any day. She is a busy little girl and such a blessing, we waited a long time and she is definately worth the wait!