Five Months Today

I haven't had a chance to post in a few days. Shayle has been recovering from surgery and my daughter, Myranda has been sick with pneumonia for the past week. She is getting better and hoping to go back to school on Monday. Today, my oldest son, Arron came home from school and went to bed. When I had finished dinner, he came downstairs with fever and a sore throat. This is how Myranda started out at the end of last week. Please pray for restored health in our family and that Shayle will stay well along with the rest of us who have not come down with anything.

Gotcha Day 11/03/08

04/03/09

Shayle enjoyed planting flowers with mom

Time has passed so quickly since traveling to China. What seemed like an eternity waiting for a referral and then waiting for approvals and then waiting for gotcha day to finally arrive, seems like a distant memory now. I decided to have Shayle wear the same outfit she wore the day we first met. She hasn't worn it since she took it off that first night in China. She really has filled out a lot since then. I could tell a big difference in how it fit when we put it on today.

As I sit typing this, Shayle has been sitting next to me eating yogurt. When she finished, she said "down" and then began saying it in her dialect from China. I asked her if it meant down and she said "yes." I asked her if she knew anymore Chinese words to teach mommy. She shook her head no. She is not only learning more and more English, but now she is beginning to translate her Chinese dialect into English. This will help her as she continues learning English. Who knows, maybe she will teach the rest of us some of her dialect from China along the way. I would love for her to be able to remember her language and to be able to tell us all about Shantou City, where she lived for the first 5.5 years of her life.

She has come a long way the past five months. It has been two weeks today since her palate was repaired, and she is doing great. I am so proud of how brave she has been through all of the medical appointments and surgeries since being home with us. Now, hopefully she will be through with surgeries and she won't think it is a normal thing around here. She did lose 3 lbs. over the weekend after her surgery. She has gained half of that back, praying the other half will be put on soon. Shayle has been more of a blessing than I ever could have imagined. I am so blessed that God chose me as her forever mama.