Finally A Family: Finally an Update!!!

Wow, what a whirlwind! It is hard to believe that Emma has been a part of our family for almost two months already. In fact, it will be two months exactly on Monday. This little one is a completely different girl than the one we met on May 7th. She is just thriving and amazing us every day with the new things she is learning. She has been crawling since China, but now she is all over the place and trying to stand on her own (and succeeding a couple of times!) and walking holding onto our hands. In China, we could barely get her to take a bottle, and now she is eating baby food and starting to feed herself Gerber puffs and Cheerios – something she has resisted until last week.

Our lives have been crazy since returning from China also. In addition to getting used to having a little one around (which is WONDERFUL!), we have put our house on the market and bought a new house. We are moving to wild, wonderful, West Virginia! We have known about this move for a while, but we didn’t put anything in motion until we returned from China because we didn’t want to jeopardize anything. Since coming home, we haven’t spent more than 10 days in one place, and Emma has been just wonderful with all the transitions. We have spent time at home in Virginia, house hunting in West Virginia, and visiting family in Pennsylvania. I think when we are finally settled, she will think it is pretty boring! The best part about the move to WV is that it cuts our drive time to our families in half. We have both spent almost 20 years driving 8+ hours to visit our families, and now it should be only 4. We will get to spend much more time with family and friends, letting them get to know Emma. Another benefit is that this move will allow me to be a stay-at-home mom for a few years. I am thrilled to be able to do this. We have waited so long to be parents, and I really want to be the one with her all day.

So, how many stress-filled changes can we make in a few weeks?
- Become parents of a 14 month old
- Put our house up for sale
- Buy a house
- Move
- Quit my job

Now, I know everyone comes here for pictures of Emma Lee, so I won’t disappoint! Here is a sampling of some pictures of the past couple of weeks. Enjoy!

When Emma gets tired, she sucks on two fingers. The little red bracelet was a gift to all of the girls in our group from one of the families in the group. She loves wearing it and holds the beads from the ends in the palm of her hand. So cute!

OK, who doesn't love little fingers and toes??

Emma kept crawling over to the window to watch Daddy painting the back deck.

Once she started eating with the spoon, she started grabbing it with her teeth and holding on.

Gotta love a fish face!!

Proud daddy holding his little one as she sleeps.

Emma had blood drawn for some tests, and the only place they could get it was in her hand. She cried a lot, but her daddy held her and she seemed fine when they were finished and gave her a sparkly bandaid.

Some cute faces as Emma Lee is mugging for the camera!

Swimming with daddy.

This toy was my nephew Jeremiah's when he was little (he's now 20 something - yikes) and he named it the Banana. Rodney dug it out of the attic for Emma, and she seems to like riding it.

When Emma was in the pool, she got 3 mosquito bites on her face in less than 3 minutes. They left little welts on her face for a couple of weeks! Poor thing!

Here is Emma being read to by my friend Cathy and her daughter Emma!

Emma got to see Uncle Weas, Aunt Miranda, and her cousin Caleb when they stopped at our house on thier way to Myrtle Beach. Emma loved playing and reading books with Caleb.