One month later.....

I meant to write a blog "post-adoption, one month later", however I forgot, and our computer is messed up. So I'm a couple days late and writing from my blog app on my phone. I'll apologize now for any "auto-corrections" that may be wrong......
So today is February 24, we got Olivia on January 20, and have been home 3 weeks now. It's so hard to believe we have only had her for 5 weeks. It honestly feels like she has always been ours. I don't really have any negative things to report. I'm not trying to sugar coat anything, we really have had an amazing transition here at home.
Has it been all rainbows and sunshine? No. Have 3 children had to learn and adjust to a new little sister? Yes. Is Olivia 3 in every meaning of the words "3 year old"? Yes. I always said, whoever named it the terrible two's was completely wrong, three is worse. Three year olds know right from wrong and know how to manipulate and push and get what they want, two year olds are learning and exploring. Olivia is three and even though she has lived the first three years of her life in an orphanage, with nothing to call her own, she has come home where everything is hers and she wants what she wants. If she doesn't get what she wants then she turns the bottom lip down and pouts. It's actually really cute. I will say, that has been the hard part. Here she is three and newly adopted, all the books and "experts" say, no time out, never make her feel alone or bad. But how do you establish boundaries? I can't wait another 6 months and then stop giving in to every request she has and tell her no. We have to start now. So when she wants something she can't have, like my phone, or the channel changer that works (she doesn't want the one that doesn't work), or cookies for dinner, she pouts. I have started doing time ins, where I hold her while she pouts. She wants to roll around on the floor and look miserable. The kids have a hard time with this too. There have been a couple of times where she has tried to take something from them and they won't give it to her, so she would hit them. Of course I sternly tell her "no, no hitting" and she does the adorable pouty thing again.......and she then sits in my lap for another time in....... Of course this is hard and feels like I'm rewarding her by letting her sit in my lap, the others would have thought, "ha, I showed her!" But I can never let her feel like I'm going to leave her or she is bad. When children are adopted at an age where they can understand change, they don't have a sense of security for quite sometime. How could they? She honestly felt like the orphanage was her home and knew nothing different. She had no idea of what life was suppose to be like and what a home was and what a family was. I mean think about it, she lived there from infancy, never leaving, never experiencing anything else.

So we have dealt with some normal 3 year old behaviors but other than that everything has been really good. She has settled in to her home and expresses love and is repeating so many English words. The other night the girls and I were at dinner with some friends, Ella was in the bathroom and Olivia started screaming her name because she didn't know where she was, then I stood up to tell someone good bye and she reached for me, like take me with you. She has attached to me so well. Here I was worried in China and now she looks for me and calls me and wants me over daddy (which I sometimes feel bad about.....). She gives kisses and even says "wuv wu" (love you), not sure if she really knows what it means but she'll learn!

I just can't express or say enough, how thankful to God I am for this amazing little girl He has trusted us to raise and love. She is just perfect. She is very determined, that and God is how she survived at 3 1/2 pounds. Her inability to walk doesn't stop her! She has amazing upper body strength. She is loud and silly and loves to have fun and the rougher you play, the happier she is, just like the other three. There is no doubt in my mind that God picked her for us and us for her. She fits perfectly into our family. I just love her SO much, just as much as the other three. My heart has only grown bigger. WE are so blessed to have her as our daughter.

These are just some random pictures of the past couple of weeks.
We celebrated Chinese New Year. Last year I took the kids to a Chinese New Year lunch to get more information on adopting from China, this year we got to take our little Empress with us!