Emma: 50 days later, a lot has changed!

Emma has changed so much since we first met her.  It is really hard to believe that it has only been days since we have had her, it seems as if we have always had her.  It has been fifty days to be exact.  Here is what she has accomplished in that short amount of time:

     - She can walk all around now, when we got her she could only crawl.  In fact, she wouldn't even stand very much.  When we would change her diaper, she wouldn't stand up to pull up her pants.  Much easier when they will use their legs!

     - She says quite a few words and is repeating a lot of sounds.  She can say mama, dada, baby, bye bye, Callie, uh oh, and her favorite is hi.  She will say hi and wave to just about everyone she sees!  She also does the signs for more, please, and all done and nods her head for yes and no.  I don't know if she could say any Chinese words when we got her, but the latest report on her said she just babbled.  Her first sound around us was "aagh" said like a question.

     - She eats!  She is becoming a pretty good eater.  She is starting to like quite a few different kinds of foods.  We are still working on those vegetables.  She will eat about anything if I hide them in mashed potatoes. :)  It seems like we have to try the same food about 4-5 times before she decides it is ok to eat.  She pretty much only takes bottles when she wakes up and when she goes to bed.  We are still working on a sippy cup, but she will take a few drinks out of a regular cup.  She prefers to get her liquids from her bottle.  Eating has been quite a huge accomplishment when I think back to when we were in China and I realized that she only took a bottle.  I had expected her to take to food really quickly, but she didn't know what to do with it.  Once we got a bite of food in her mouth, she would just spit it back out after a few minutes not knowing what to do with it.

     - She can be a stinker! :)  For the most part, she is smiley and happy, but she can throw some fits and likes to throw her head back when she is upset.  She doesn't like to lay still when we change her diaper.  She wants to be on the move.  It can be quite a challenging process.  When we first got her, she would lay there for a diaper change just perfectly still.  (What have we done to her? :)

     - She is comfortable with lots of people now.  When we came home, she was pretty clingy, but she likes to engage people and will go to other people.  She is even happy to be with a babysitter or in child watch or nursery.

     - She wants to be rocked and cuddled to sleep.  We have our night time routine and then she likes her bottle.  When she is done with her bottle, she pushes it away and sticks in her cute little thumb and cuddles in for snuggles before she goes to bed.  It is pretty precious.  The first couple of days we had her, she didn't seem to want or care if she was rocked.  We could just lay her down and she would go right to sleep.  That changed very quickly, though!

     - She laughs, and smiles, and can be really loud about all day long.  She is such a happy, content little kid.  Full of smiles almost all day long.  It is so stinking sweet when she sees one of us when we have been gone for a little bit.  She comes to us and hugs and adores us and has a little squeal that seems to be an "I love you" squeal.  She can be loud, especially when I am in another room and she is trying to find me.  She wants to make her presence known!

Fifty days and she has changed that much!  I am not saying that everything has been easy because there have definitely been some challenging times, but we have been so blessed.  I think the challenge has been not necessarily her, but our family adjusting to having another child.  It is much busier!

Emma is such a gift from God.  I can't imagine life without her.  She is a joy and a delight.  Adopting her has been such an amazing journey in our life.  Can't wait to see what she will do over the next 50 days!