We have never really minded our kids getting in bed with us.  We have always kind of liked the extra snuggle time.  However, that was when it was one child climbing in in the middle of the night.  Recently we have had 3 children in the bed very consistently.  5 in the bed is just too many!

Yesterday I said to the kids, “I think maybe it is time for us to come up with a schedule and take turn sleeping in Mommy and Daddy’s bed”.  D said, “That is a great idea!  One night you can sleep on the couch and we will sleep with Daddy, and the next night Daddy can sleep on the couch and we will sleep with YOU!” .  Um, not exactly what I had in mind …

It was absolutely an extra special Christmas this year.

Of course one of the highlights of every Christmas for me is watching my kids be a part of our church’s Christmas pageant.  I’m always a bit nervous about their behavior in front of the crowd, and you may remember the wrestling sheep we had a couple of years ago.  Still, I love it.  This year was a memorable one.  They missed their part.  They were in the bathroom… Oh well.  They are still my 2 favorite shepherds.

Z using his night vision glasses to look for Santa.

Christmas morning was the amazing wonderful fun that it should be.  Hannah seemed to love it.  Several people asked me if I had a hard time keeping Hannah away from the Christmas tree.  Honestly, she barely seemed to notice it.  I figure she thought it was a strange as anything else in her life that we would suddenly have a decorated tree inside our house.

Santa brought the girls a little play kitchen, and Hannah played with it while all the other kids opened all of their gifts and went entirely through their stockings.  She was a happy girl.

All this sweet girl wanted for Christmas was "Sleeping Beauty".

My favorite line of the day came from little D though.  He took a look at his gifts from Santa, and in an amazed voice said, “I was good??”.

My New Year’s Resolution was to blog more.  Since it has been 2012 for 10 days now and this is the first blog that I have written, I don’t think I’m doing too great so far.  It isn’t because I have nothing to write about, because my circus is as active as ever, but any time in the last few weeks that I have sat down to blog, the words just have not come.  They just seem to insignifcant.

I hate cancer.  I HATE cancer.  I have hated cancer since the day that it took the life of my mother’s best friend on my brother’s 5th birthday. I was 12.

Five years ago cancer hit my best friend since 8th grade.  My maid-of-honor,  Karson.  She is now dealing with Stage IV Metastatic Breast Cancer.  I have watched her handle the pain and grief of the last 5 years with such grace and faith it has been incredible.  She showers everyone with her positive, bright attitude, so no one can help but love her. Still,  I know about the deep pain that she has to deal with constantly due to her life’s hopes and dreams having to be completely altered.  I hate it.  I don’t think anyone “deserves” cancer, but Karson certainly doesn’t.  Even after her initial diagnosis, she spent her days working as a Social Worker at a local children’s hospital.  She is truly one of the kindest and most loving people that you could meet.  Karson, I love you dearly. I hate your cancer.  I wish that I could wave a magic wand and take it away, my dear friend.

Have I mentioned that I really hate cancer?  Several weeks ago, cancer struck another one of our closest friends, and yesterday he was officially diagnosed with Stage IIIa lung cancer.  He has begun blogging about his journey.  I urge you to read his story, and please send him your prayers.  Their pain is what I think about when I wake up in the morning, and what I am praying for as I go to sleep at night.  Everything else in the world seems insignificant right now.  Ryan and Julie, we love you so much.

Our children love you all like family.  I don’t know why this had to happen, but I know that we will be there for you every step of this journey.

I hate cancer.  I despise it.  I really needed to be able to say that before I could say anything else.

This morning I decided to take Hannah to our “measuring wall”.  I figured I would see some growth, but I was shocked!

She is still eating nonstop, which makes a little more sense now.  Her body has needed all that fuel!

She has just slid right into our family like she has been here forever.  We are so excited to celebrate this holiday with our very full house.

Happy Holidays!!

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you might remember that my husband has struggled with being able to pick the correct pull ups.  Not once, but twice, he bought pink pull ups for D.   So I would have thought that the shame of me blogging about this TWO times would be enough to make him double check his work when he has been sent to the store to buy pull ups.  Apparently not.  Poor Miss K was devastated to have to wear “boy” pull-ups. This prissy girl in the tu-tu pajamas did not want BLUE pull-ups.

Honey, I know it got hammered into your head not to buy the pink pull-ups, but our next two children are girls.  Please buy the pink pull-ups.

In honor of Thanksgiving, I thought that I would share one of our favorite holiday recipes:

   PUMPKIN CAKE

1 large 29 0z can pumpkin

1 cup milk

3 Eggs

1 cup sugar

1/4 tsp ginger

1/8 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp cinnamon

1/8 tsp cloves

1/2 tsp salt

TOPPING:

1 box Yellow Cake Mix

1 cup meted unsalted butter

Mix canned pumpkin with other ingredients.  Pour in a 9×13″ cake pan.  Sprinkle yellow cake mix over pumpkin mixture.  Melt butter, pour over yellow cake.

Bake at 350 for 1 hour.

Enjoy hot or cold.  Wonderful hot with vanilla ice cream!

I never publicly shared this part of Hannah’s story, but when we got her referral, we were told that she had a faint positive on her Hepatitis C test.  In fact, I believe the whole reason that her referral came to us is because of that Hepatitis test.  There were certainly families that had been waiting longer than we had waited (just 7 weeks).  There are many families that would have been open to a 10 month old with a heart condition, like Hannah was.  However, there are many families that are not open to a child with a communicable disease.

Honestly, we were one of them.  Having 3 young children already, I purposely did not check off anything on our Medical Needs Checklist (the checklist of medical needs that we were comfortable with) that our other children could acquire.  Hepatitis C however, is fairly rare in adopted children from China, so it was not even on the checklist.  The wonderful people who work at our adoption agency, CCAI, took a chance, and gave us the call.

When she called, she told me about the Hepatitis C. Initially, my heart sank.  I thought that I didn’t want to take that kind of chance.  It was  fleeting though.  I just felt in my heart that it would be okay.

I still only shared with a handful of people that it was possible that our daughter could have Hep C in addition to her heart condition.  Until we knew for sure I didn’t want people to be worried about being around her, or to have their children close to her.  Maybe that sounds extreme, but I know that parents will go to any lengths to protect their kids, and I was in touch with other families with children with Hepatitis B who had lost friends over it.  I wanted to be cautious, but again, I just  felt like it would be okay.

Today we got the official news that her Hepatits test was negative.  Even though I felt in my heart that everything was fine, it was so wonderful to hear those words.  And I will be forever thankful for that initial pesky test that led her to our family.  She was meant to be ours, and we are so grateful!

I really wanted to get this up yesterday, but since my life like now is kind of busy (a.k.a. insanely busy), that didn’t happen.  Regardless, it was a special day around here.  Hannah has been with us for one month!

It has been absolutely wonderful to be with her for the past month.  The love in my heart for this sweet girl is growing by the day, and it is an incredible feeling.

Here are some of the things we have learned about Hannah:

LIKES:

FOOD-  All of the time

Having her small blankets to stuff in her mouth

Emptying all of the kitchen cabinets (I could do without this one)

Carrying a purse

Pretending toys are telephones

Making people laugh with her eyebrow trick

DISLIKES:

Not having food

Being told no

Sharing Mommy

WORDS THAT SHE HAS SAID:

Dada

Mama

Uh-oh

Hi

Bye

Thank you

Pat Pat

Yeah

All in all, this has been such an amazing month.  I am so excited to have her with us for the holidays this year, and to see how she will change and grow in the next few months.  I sure do love this girl!

Hannah doing 2 of her favorite things. Having a snack and pretending to talk on the phone.

Happy One Month to all of our friends in travel group 1771!!

Oh how much better it feels to be getting sleep!  Finally, after 2 weeks home we are all sleeping during the hours we should be sleeping.  Thank goodness!  I had no idea how hard it would be to re-adjust to EST!

A great Halloween with a Kitty, June from the Little Einsteins, Batman, and Ron Weasley.

It has been fun watching Hannah day by day.  I can already tell that she is understanding more and more English.  She is responding fairly regularly to her name, and has said, “hi”, and “uh-oh”.  When we were first together, she would only sit in my lap facing me, frequently holding on for dear life.  Now she is content to sit in my lap the regular way.  She also did not seem to have the muscles to help hold herself when being carried on a hip, like most children do who are carried regularly.  That too is starting to change, and she is learning that she likes to be carried, and locks her legs onto me when I start to put her down.  She also doesn’t seem to be making all of the same little sounds that she was making in China.  I’m kind of sad to see those go…

Today we went for her visit to the cardiologist.  As the time came nearer, I got really nervous.  We really had no idea about the quality of her heart repair.  We got there today and she had several different tests for her heart, including an Echocardiogram, where she had to lay still for more than 20 minutes.  Luckily I thought to ask them if they had a lollypop.  She didn’t disappoint me. Her love of all things food won over, and she lay nicely sucking her lollypop the entire time!

After it was over, the cardiologist explained step by step what it means to have Tetrology of Fallot.  I had already done a lot of my own research, but it was reassuring to hear it from him also.  He said what I was most wanting to hear; that her heart was repaired well.  The downside was that one of her valves is leaking pretty badly.  He said that she is definitely going to need a valve replacement at some point in the next 5 years or so.  He really couldn’t say when.  We will be followed closely by the cardiologist, and when the right side of her heart begins to enlarge, she will have the valve replacement.  It wasn’t the best news, but so far from what it could have been!

We are just so glad to have this happy girl!

First of all, Hannah is doing great. I think that she is adjusting as well as she possibly could be. She is sleeping, eating, playing, and affectionate with us all. We are so thrilled to have her here with us.

There is no way around it though. This week was HARD. Adjusting to 4 kids is hard. Getting no sleep due to extreme jet-lag is hard. Meeting the needs of a 6, 4, 2, and 1 year old is hard. Add to that 2 family members getting the stomach flu, and me busting the back windshield of my van, and we have over-the-top hard.

Then, yesterday, we had to have our dear dog, Rizzo, put to sleep. It is hard for me to even type those words. We have had Rizzo for more than 13 years, and loved her deeply. Unfortunately, right before we left for China, something bit her (likely a poisonous spider). She fought hard, but her body was just too week to overcome the damage that this bite did to her body. So we had to say goodbye. A very painful goodbye to a member of our family.

This week was definitely not what I had in mind when I imagined bringing Hannah home and finally being together as a family. I expected that in our adjustment period, we might have a lot of tears. I just didn’t realize that most of them would be mine.

A mother wears many hats, however. Despite my deep sadness right now, I have to be excited about the tooth fairy coming to Z tonight. I have to be ready for 2 school Halloween parties tomorrow, and one of the kids’ favorite nights of the year.  I can do this because my love for my kids surpasses everything else.  And I have faith that week #2 will be better…