Merry Christmas!

18 months

My big girls weight is 20 pounds 9 ounces 4th percentile, her head is 46.5cm 48th percentile, and her length is 29 3/4 inches which is 6th percentile.

I honestly can't believe Ella is closer to 2 than 1. She is doing phenominal. Her level of understanding is easily above level. She has great communication skills. She knows TONS of words, but many of them sound similar. Usually situationally I can fiqure out what she is getting at. Esecially since she mixes sign language with spoken language and then adds her own gestures. It is amazing how much development I see in her language every single day.

She is WALKING! Recently she just decided she would, so she did. She actually rarely walks and prefers to run. She can also climb pretty much anything.

She loves singing. Up until recently "Wheels in the bus" and "If your happy and you know it", but now she is slightly obsessed with Santa. She loves "Up on the housetop", "Frosty the snoman", and "Santa clause is coming to town."

She still likes playing with babies and trucks the most. She also likes tv. Bo On The Go and Elmo are the favorites.

Less than a year between

Someone stole my precious baby and replaced her with a darling little girl! Perhaps it was Santa!

Pain of adoption

Adoption is painful. I don't know that I could have understood the emotional complexity of adopting before having actually been there. I read a quote that "in a perfect world there would be no adoption". This is true. I am proud to have a gorgeous, wonderful daughter that happens to be adopted. However there is a flip-side to every coin. For me to have my love, someone elses had to be taken. For my family to be created another had to be torn apart. It is hard for me to not think about this. I wonder on a daily basis if her birth-family thinks about her, misses her, or if they regret their decision. I wonder if in several years she will be contacted by her siblings, or the parents that she never knew. Will she hate them? Will she feel like they "gave" her away? At the same time what is my role in the situation. I want more than anything to tell her she was loved and worshiped and she is missed every single second of every single day and have it be true, but is it the truth? The truth is I don't know. There are allot of questions she will someday ask that I simply don't have the answer to. Of course there will also be questions I know the answer to, but may not want to share. There is not instruction book for life after YOUR adoption. Figuring it out will be a guessing game. I just hope I guess right!

National Adoption Month

I just signed up for a blog challenge! The challenge is write a few blog posts this month with a focus on adoption. Keep checking back!

*also know that much of my journey to my adoption is documented under a different blog. www.meandmylittle4.blogspot.com feel free to pop over and read posts from over there is you are interested!

My Little Model

Last month Ella did some modeling for Naartjie Kids clothing. One of the perks to the job is Mommy got a copy of the pictures. Of course I have to share!

Man that is a gorgeous kid!

 

 

15 months, really really late

As noted above I am really late getting this posted, I realize she is now 16 months not 15, but it is what it is. Little miss is getting big weighing 18 pounds 14 ounces (1%), I hae no idea how big her head is as it was incorrectly measured, but my guess is around the 45% mark, and her height is 28 inches (4%). Eight teeth all in the front, still no molars through. She is still not walking although she is close. She cruises furniture and walks with little assistance. Saying she is a climber is an understatement. She climbs everything. She can climb (by herself) up her slide and once at the top can get her feet underneath her. I am constantly reminding her to sit on her bum and have decided that at this point it may just be best to get a recording of me saying it and hit play every time she is in the tub, a shopping cart, on the slide etc. etc.

Can identify her: hair, teeth, tongue, toes, feet, belly, bum, mouth, and of course she can idenify (and VERY frequently does) Mommies boobies.

Ella has always loved animals. Her favorite is our kitty Ollie. She refers to him as our "meow". She also loves the dogs. In general she is pretty nice to the animals. She likes to give them loves by laying her head on them and patting them while saying awwww. She has recently come a long way with large animals like cows and horses. We frequent the local farm where she will now ride ponies and hand feed goats. She will tell you a cow says "mmmm", a duck says " quack", and if you ask her what a horse says she giggles and turns her head back and forth occasionally she will also spit raspberries to imitate them.

Favorite song is "If your happy and you know it" however she only allows you to clap your hands. She just recently started accepting stomp your feet also. The other songs she likes are "Old Mcdonald" with cow and duck only, "Head, shoulders knees and toes",  "5 little speckled frogs", and "The Itsy Bitsy Spider". Our car rides are often an awful sounding mash-up of all of these songs to keep her from screaming.

Ella is becoming quite the little Mommy. She loves caring for her baby dolls. She feeds them (while saying num-num-num), she kisses them, loves the, and wraps them up in her blankets.

My kid loves carbohydrates. Who can blame her? She loves chicken noodle soup, noodles of any kind, pancakes, waffles, & pretzels. Ell is also quite the dairy queen and loves yogurt (strawberry banana is her favorite) and string cheese. She clearly has hollow legs and frequently want to eat constantly. She is still on formula and drinks about 22 (give or take) ounces a day. She doesn't care for juice.