5 Minutes!

This is one tired family, but finally all together! Tiff... thank you for her outfit and hair clippies! They are her favorite. She wore this on the plane home and as she walked through immigration. Nika really enjoys her silly sister. These two are extremely busy... this shot took about 7 tries! This was the last one. Milana kept running for the camera to see the shot before we even took it. Screaming YAAAAHHH was the only way we could get her to sit still. The kids thought it was so funny. By the end of the shots, they were all giggling on the floor. Grandma took this before we left for Taiwan... Donnie told Kole to make a silly face. This is what he came up with. I actually have 5 minutes to blog! Today is two weeks since we met Milana and just over a week since the children and all of us have been together. Funny thing is, I forgot I was bringing home a two year old. Silly me, how can I forget the super independent little 2 year olds going on 30! It's been a big adventure the last two weeks. Very emotional too as we found a few medical needs that we didn't know about that we taking care of. I was not expecting some of them so I had to adjust my mental mind-set and find specialists, take care of all 4 children and their adjustments to each other... Mind you Milana is two, teething and independent... all the while trying to connect with her and have her trust us by doing something that ticked her off greatly.... take away her freedom. Not so much take it away, but help her choose wisely with the freedoms she has and help her trust that we can care for all her needs. She wants to feed herself... sounds great right. but not when your other children believe it is a gift to be fed by mom, and Milana thinks it is torture. I mean, how can she trust us when she is a teenager and we ask her not to go to a certain party because of drugs, etc. if she can't even trust us to feed her?

Today... it is a great day! Today, something happened, clicked, fell into place, a small miracle. Today, the kids are not attacking each other, they are all wanting to share, saying please and thank you (that took a long time every minute of the day to teach to Milana and long hours of role play), and the other children are asking to sit by Milana instead of "MOM! Can you please move Milana?" or "Milana's being mean!" And here is my standard starting answer, I have found, "She doesn't understand. We have to help her." Milana is a joy... she is very sweet especially when she has learned our home manners. She wants so badly to be obedient and she is really starting to trust us.... thank heavens.

She has so many great talents that I know come from her foster family and some from her birth family. I love that she shares them with us. She also loves to teach us Mandarin and Taiwanese. Day-day is drink like milk, juice, water, etc. Bong is potty... she's knows both now. She also calls Hello Kitty: Goo Goo Miao. Feet are Wo-chi... we now use Chinglish and say, "I'm going to get your wo-chi's and she starts giggling! She says it in this deep growly voice.... wooooo-chiiiiii's. That's mostly her and her Dad's game. Oh and speaking of growling... she got tired of yelling at me in Chinese, so she resorted to growling at me like a Tasmanian Devil... she sounds exactly like a baby one... no joke. It's so funny and I feel badly laughing when she is mad at me.... but hey, she can't run in the street so growl all you want baby... but you just can't run free!

Adoption has to be the hardest thing in the world for children and this little one has strength that is so inspirational. I know she misses so many things from Taiwan, but I see her trying and wanting to be apart of all our lives. I can now say not only do I love you, but I am in love with you. So yes, we love having her here and excited to have her grow to love us as we love her. Has it been super duper fun the whole time, not exactly. But it has been life-enriching, eye-opening and a strength builder to grow our family. I haven't posted also because I was neck high in the thick of it... monitoring every moment to ensure all feel right as rain. Now, it's my turn! I get to go put on make-up! Yeah! Here's some adventures from the week.... yes, one day I will start to read others blogs and I'm sorry, I just can't right now. If you would like to leave a comment about any life adventures of your own, please feel free as I would like to know. I miss you all greatly. I'm sure you all understand though.

This is what you get when you have four: