Almost Complete…

Just wanted to remind everyone how hard it is to blog w/o being able to take a complete family picture. Our little miss is soon going to be officially ours, hopefully by early fall.

In the meantime, I still want to document all of our fun family adventures, but it is sure hard to only post pics w/o a certain little miss in the picture.

I must tell you she sure is sweet. She smiles like crazy, and just had her first birthday. She got her 4 front teeth in late May. And boy is she flashy in showing them off. Her first words thus far are “Ba ba”, which according to Chinese belief means the next in line sibling will be a boy (Ba ba means ‘Father’ in Chinese).

She can furniture walk, and stands on her own all the time. She, just like the boys, loves to show off for Daddy. She will pull herself up and stand by herself, while smirking at Tim and waiting for his praise. She claps when you say “Yeah AnnaLeigh, yeah AnnaLeigh!”

She loves bananas, and when she sees one on the way to her little high chair, she wildly flaps her arms and coos. Another cute thing she does when she’s anxious is she rolls her wrists while pointing her chin upward.

This last week she started a funny little growl. I think she’s trying to be like the boys. She switches off week to week in choosing her favorite brother. Lately, Tanner has loved feeding her little snacks and laughs when she eats them. When she started taking his toys he just about had an outta body experience. He flipped. He was not used to having someone younger in the house. Now, that little smarty takes his toy back right away, and slips another into her hand to replace the one he wants.

Hunter is a very methodical boy, and reminds me alot of Tim. He likes projects (like me) and will obsess until something is done (like rebuilding an entire lego ship using the booklet)… at the age of 6. So he didn’t pay much attention to miss Leigh at first.

But lately, he likes to sneak up on her and make her laugh. Tim will hold her and she’ll look over his shoulder for Hunter. He will sneak up on either side of Tim’s back and she’ll chuckle ‘till it seems her abs would bust!

His new thing is to ask me what she is saying. My mom used to pretend to talk for animals when we were kids and tell me what the hamster or rat (or whatever pet) was thinking. It was so fascinating to me at that age. And as weird as it is, I do this for Hunter and AnnaLeigh. Now Hunter will ask a million times a day what she is thinking and what she is saying. He will answer her questions and explain things to her.

We took the whole family to see the Chinese acrobats this last Saturday… all 5 of us. The show was over 1.5 hours. Little Miss sat through the whole thing and I just kept an open tap on the cheerios. Hunter kept asking me what she thought about all the different stunts. He was so curious how things must look from a 1 year old’s perspective. I couldn’t keep up with the conversation, as I was trying to watch the show, so towards the end I was answering with “she likes it, and wonders why the acrobat isn’t wearing pink”, lol.

Last week another baby (2 months younger) came in from HeNan, the exact orphanage AnnaLeigh came from. That’s a whole other story, but it was great to show AnnaLeigh off to to an Ayi that knew her when she was a tiny little 4 month old. She has grown so much, and is in the 50% percentile (US standards!). She’s a chunky little monkey, and is now wearing her 18 month clothing.

Can’t wait for you to meet her. She is everything I have ever dreamed she would be. Everything and more. Daily, my life has been a dream come true, in so many ways. I feel so overwhelmed with gratitude that sometimes I just get misty eyed thinking about how much Heavenly Father really loves us on an individual basis.

It will be 4 years from the time we started the adoption process to the day the paperwork is complete. On our original paperwork, we requested twins, as many of you know. Some of you have asked if that plan has changed. Maybe it has? We have been blessed on so many levels with the deepest of our hearts desires that it would almost bee too much to reach beyond what has already been given. I don’t know.

What I do know is something simple. The Lord is kind. He is merciful. He is mindful. He is knowledgeable, and all-powerful. He works in mysterious ways.

Two years ago I heard a song written by Cheri Call. In the song it talks ‘believing’. In the song, she talks about a ‘sunset making you cry’. It sounded so strange to me. That year, I decided work on gratitude and be appreciative of the smallest of blessings. I had many many moments of gratitude that year, yet never ‘cried at a sunset’.

Then just a month ago, I could see the faint light of the sunset coming through a window. The sky was a beautiful uncharacteristic blue here in Shanghai as the day was coming to a close. I remember feeling weak at the exuberance of love I felt. I felt so connected to my Heavenly Father as one of his children (as we all are his children). Then a gush of emotion filled me and I couldn’t help but sob in acknowledgement of the things I’d known and felt all my life. He loves us. He truly does. He is in the big picture and in every transition of our lives. From bringing AnnaLeigh home to an almost unnoticed sunset in Shanghai.

God be thanked for bringing our family together and keeping us together forever.