There are days.....

Mia has now been home 6 weeks.  I suppose I can say she has done as well as we could have possibly hoped.  Is life perfect?  No.  Is she totally happy?  No.  Has the transition gone without a hitch?  No.  But, are we still amazed by God's faithfulness and the brave heart of this little girl?  YES!

She LOVES her brothers and sisters and rarely shows anything but love to them.  She really likes school.  I think she gets tired and frustrated by the afternoon - but we are working on that.  Thank goodness for her sweet, sweet teacher.  Her English is incredible.  Her newest word is because.  Yesterday she said, "Lainie cry BECAUSE she want pink crayon."  She's learned how to communicate without words too.  She can almost figure out a way to tell or show us just about anything she wants to say.  She is so incredibly smart.  She sleeps great.  She goes to bed and sleeps through the night without a peep. 
I have seen a few attachment issues that we will have to work on - but nothing major.  She does remind us occasionally that when she is big she is going back to live with her foster grandmother.  She tells us this when she is mad mostly, but this week she also said it in the middle of a very fun playtime.  I think she wanted to let me know that just because she was having fun with me didn't mean she had forgotten her plans to go back to China to her grandmother when "she gets big."

All in all, Mia has done very well and our little family is "settling in" just great. 

However, in the spirit of "keeping it real", I will have to say there are good days and bad days.

There are days when I feel totally inadequate for the task. There are days when I am so tired that I could cry - and in fact, I do. There are days when I wonder what in the world God was thinking. There are days when I miss not having to wonder what will trigger the next melt down. There are days when I don't want to look at our family calendar because I don't know how we are going to to do it all. There are days when I just want to sit down and be the mother of one child at a time. There are days when I wonder what I could be doing with the time I spend putting laundry away.

BUT, there are also days when I wonder why am I so blessed? There are days when I look at the miracle that is unfolding before me and am filled with thankfulness that God chose us to witness such a thing. There are days when the joy is simply unspeakable. There are days when "I love you mama." spoken by my newest daughter touch my heart in a way that nothing else can. There are days when my family of 7 packed into our van, laughing together, is simply heaven on Earth. There are days when I am so proud of how all of my children have adjusted to our new life that I can't stop smiling.  There are days that I am just so happy I could cry - and I do.

I took these today of the girls on our fancy swingset.  We bought this metal swingset for Trey's first birthday and thought we'd replace it with a super duper wooden one later.  That never happened.  This little swingset has survived 5 kids and a tornado in 1999.  We drug it back out of the woods where the tornado deposited it. We thought for sure we would replace it soon after - but it just kept on seeming to be all the kids really needed to keep them happy.  So, it is still all we have.  And it is most likely all we will ever have.  It is one of the few toys we can say we have definitely gotten our money's worth out of.

Thanks for thinking of us and checking in here.  Sorry I've been such a slack blogger.  I'll try to update more frequently, but I make no promises because sometimes there are days........