ONE YEAR!!! Time flies!!

I can't believe we have had Mia a whole year! What a blessing she has been. We are so happy she is part of our family and I am pretty sure she is happy with us too :)! She is still such a sweet girl! Mia has turned in to a typical little girl. Everything she sees me doing she wants a part of it: make up, jewelry, painted toenails. I don't mind it at all!! We have had a wonderful summer of fun!! Mia experienced her first time at the beach, swimming, water park, zoo and just fun times with family. We are so thankful to God that he placed Mia with us! Riley always says he is thankful that Mia had something wrong with her mouth so that we could have her!
To see Mia's 1 year Gotcha Day video click below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY2BZIi5JUs&feature=youtu.be

6 months home!

6 months! I can’t believe it has only been 6 months. I am pretty sure we have had Mia for her entire life- it feels that way anyway! Mia is precious! She is doing so well at adjusting. She says several words and her speech therapist is pleased with her progress. She knows about 15-20 words however one of them she has recently learned is MINE!! She has no trouble letting you know what she wants and when she wants  - but she is still precious (and a little spoiled)! We have had a fun winter. Mia experienced snow for the first time. She didn’t know quite what to think but liked playing in it with her brothers. Mia also started daycare but because of all of the snow she has not had to go a whole lot. She loves it though. She usually runs right in ready to play.

We had a great celebration for Mia’s 2^nd birthday with our family. During her party, Wyatt was the big helper. He wanted to help her blow out her candles (she doesn’t quite have the hang of that yet). He also sat with her while she opened her presents and handed her one present at a time and was so excited for her when she opened them! She had a great day! Mia and Riley’s birthdays are just 3 weeks apart so we are getting ready for party #2!  

princess cake for our little princess

Beans beans and more beans!

not quite sure what to do!

little Alabama cheerleader

all of her cousins

CHRISTMAS - wow 4 months home

I can't believe we have been home with Mia for 4 months. So much has happened since we brought her home. She had her cleft palate repair and is doing GREAT. At first the Dr. said he would need to redo the lip repair that was done in China and we were really dreading that. However at this last visit he said maybe not and that he would just watch it closely and see how it grows. Mia is just such a sweet little girl. She is adjusting great. She fits right in and the boys adore her. She loves to play especially with her dolls. This is amazing because when we first came home she wasn't even sure what to do with her dolls. Now she loves on them, feeds them and pats them. I love seeing that! Craig and I have been very blessed to be able to rotate our weeks off to stay home with her since August. Our time has come to an end and we are sad about that. However we are so glad for the almost 5 months we have spent with her to help her adjust. After Christmas she will be going to daycare. We had a 2 day trial run before Christmas and she did GREAT... she loved playing with all of the new toys and friends. She just ran right in and was so excited. Even Wyatt liked it and he is who I was most worried about :) Mia had a great first Christmas even though she wasn't sure what to think about presents!
Enjoy a few Chrismtas pictures:

Womack Cousins

                                                                Johnson cousins with Meme

                                               These are the stuffed animals that my children
                                             sleep with every night. They were all presents from
                                             Meme when they were born (and when Mia arrived)

                                             Mia loves her kitchen from nana and pawpaw!!

                                                                 Just precious!!

                                                                so sweet :)

                                                            

                                                          Mia is stealing santa's cookies!

                                                               her new baby

                                                       play dough time

they all love to jump!

Christmas morning!!

2 months home

2 months ago:

now:

I can't believe that we have been home with Mia for 2 months. Wednesday was her surgery day and that was our 2 month home anniversary and the day she turned 20 months. It feels like we have had her forever. She is just part of us now and we are so glad to have her. She is a smart, fun and happy little girl. We took several adoption parenting classes as a part of our adoption process and so far we have not had to deal with any of the hard things that could come with adoption. She is just a precious little girl. The fact that she was adopted has not been hard like it is in several cases that I know of but having 3 children can be a little overwhelming at times. The boys are doing great with her and love having her but sometimes they all seem to need things at the exact same time! :)

Since we have been home, Craig and I have rotated weeks off so that one of us is always with Mia. We plan to do this until Christmas. Riley is in 1st grade and Wyatt stays home with us. Wyatt and Mia have become big buddies. They love to play together, however sometimes Mia lets him know that she is in charge :)

Mia had her cleft palate repair on Wednesday and it was a tough surgery. When we went to see her in the recovery room tears trickled down my face. I hated seeing her in so much pain and to be honest all of the blood from her mouth, nose and ears kind of made me sick. Even though it was sad to see her go through this in a way I am so thankful for it. Without her cleft palate we would not have Mia right now. Her cleft lip/palate was the reason she was abandoned so I am thankful that we were able to have the palate repaired. We are so blessed to live in a place with a great children's hospital with one of the best plate repair doctors around. When Mia came out of surgery, Dr. Sargent told us that she would need to have her lip repaired again. The lip was repaired in China however the way they repaired it did not allow for growth of the mouth so we will go in a couple of weeks for her check up and to talk about the lip repair :(

So far we are on day 3 of recovery and it is getting easier but still hard to please her at times. She gets so sad and nothing makes her happy. I am sure she is starving. So far she can only have clear liquids and milk out of a little bottle that has a soft tube for her to drink from. Not exactly how she is used to eating. We have been taking turns eating in another room from her but last night she reached up for me and when I picked her up she saw a banana- her favorite! I felt so bad for her that she couldn't have it. She is not sleeping well because she has to sleep in a carseat. This is a girl who loves her bed and doesn't even want us to rock her. She lunges for her bed every night so the carseat is not really her favorite place to sleep.

I have a few pictures to share from the past couple of months. Thank you for sharing in our journey!