6 months later

Today Laila tried on the outfit she wore to our "gotcha day". It has been almost 6 months since this moment. Look at how much she has changed....

When I look at the picture of our very first moments together it is a mix of all emotions. I feel bad for her because I know she was scared. She has since told me that. She also told me that she remembers that I had a big smile. She thought I looked happy. I had a little bit of fear because in real life I could tell her heart condition was a bit worse than we may have thought. I wanted to take her right then and run to the airport and hop a plane back to the US and get her to Texas Children's ASAP. Of course they brought me a big oxygen tank and 2 large boxes of medicines. It was sorta overwhelming to have this monumental, HUGE moment and trying to figure out how to work an oxygen tank with directions written in Chinese. (Thank God Katie was with me!)

Most of all when I look at these pictures of our first few moments I feel extremely lucky that we were chosen. Its an emotion I wish everyone could experience. Looking back 6 months later its such a blur and my words are not adequate to describe it. My husband and I were talking the other night about older child adoption. While there are some parts that are hard (tantrums & grieving that I haven't blogged about...yet) it really has worked out so well for our family. Krissy loves having a sister to play with. They play a ton. Ironically their favorite thing to play is anything doctor related! I have seen them hook up enough teddy bears to makeshift IVs that I think they could do a real one! ;) They do get along great and yet they argue just like kids are supposed to! I think the time that Laila spends in the hospital away from Krissy will be one of the hardest things on both of them.

So now that Krissy is out of school for the Christmas holidays we are going to enjoy our time in "quarantine" away from all the nasty little germs out there so we can keep Laila healthy for surgery. 11 more days to go.