Things are looking brighter! (Lots of Pictures!)

Now that we have been home a full five days, things are starting to look a little brighter around here. We were up at 8:00am this morning as opposed to our usual 10 or 11am all week and our sweet girl has been sleeping much better at night too, which really helps with the tiredness. She has been a bit congested with a runny nose all week and is still having some tummy pains, but she has been amazingly content and happy despite all of that. She has a doctor's apt tomorrow too so that will be good to get her all checked out here.



Randy & the boys headed off to San Francisco for a baseball game with the guys today.

Which meant Elliana and I had a sweet day all to ourselves. It consisted of us playing together, napping together, having a few different visitors over, and taking a walk together. We enjoyed ourselves and I look forward to many more "girl-days" to come.

I am so in love with this little one. She has melted my heart and Randy's too. I love to just get down on the floor with her and talk to her and tell her she's a pretty girl and try to get her to kiss me. She usually just smiles or lets out a little giggle or waves her arms like crazy, but no kisses yet. She is now letting me feed her the bottle consistently, but still no other foods. She loves bathtime and story time right before bed. We are starting to get a routine going and I can tell that she enjoys it each evening. I love it because she smells so good when I snuggle up with her!

She is amazing. She has all of us just smitten- including the brothers. Yesterday we turned on a Baby Einstein video for the first time, which normally the boys would gripe about and they actually started to- but as soon as they saw how much their baby sister was smiling and dancing to the music, they actually chose to watch it with her!

She is such a ham!




She has a very sweet personality and pretty much smiles at every person that will look at her. This is very cute but hard at times, because it's difficult for family and friends to understand that it is not healthy right now for her to be wanting to go to everyone and smiling and cuddling up to them. She has zero fear or apprehension of strangers. She now recognizes me I think, but I am still not mommy to her and so we will continue to stick close to home for awhile and work on knowing the difference between just our family members (the 6 of us) and then others. Thank you in advance for being so understanding and patient with us. We really are just as anxious to show her off as you are to meet her! It just takes time!


Ok, so for now I will leave you with plenty of pictures from our first five days home with our beautiful baby girl Elliana.







She's so funny- she wakes up from her naps and talks to her baby and laughs at it. She loves this baby!

The morning face and hair!


Helping daddy blow out his birthday candles!


Oh how she has captured his heart already!





Playing with her new baby doll


Have I mentioned we're in love with this cutie??!!



And oh how she can make me laugh!


That's all for now!

Welcome Home Pictures

Just because they needed to be shared!

No commentary. Just enjoy the pictures of this sweet little orphan coming home forever! :-)

Another adoptive mommy from the Holt BB with her sweet son. We finally met on the way to the airport!


Who could resist this face looking up at them- not me!

Home and Recovering

Yes, I know I know- it is so unlike me to skip so many days between posts... but of course I know everyone understands that we just flew across the world with a new baby daughter after being gone to a foreign country for 10 days and are still adjusting, right? Good.

Ok, well I am going to keep this relatively short because quite honestly- I am exhausted.
And secondly, even if I had the energy to do the big home-coming post... I don't have the pictures yet, and what is a good post without pictures? Not much in my opinion. :-) So there you have it- a better post with lots of pictures coming soon. Be looking for it.

Anyway, here is the condensed version.
*Yes we survived the long flight home and Elliana did great after the first few hours. We were relieved to have the bulkhead seats- thank you Lord for more leg-room and a baby bassinet!
*No she does not like the car seat and was not too happy during the 4 hour drive home.
*Yes we were very surprised and excited to see A LOT of family and friends waiting for us at home. There was a huge banner and balloons and lots of happy faces. But more about that when I share the pictures!
*No she did not hardly fuss at all the first night at home. She was exhausted with the rest of us!
*Yes the boys slept in until 2:00 in the afternoon on Sunday after going to bed by 9:00pm the night before.

No I have no idea why I am writing like this. Okay enough of that. On with the update.

We have all been just so exhausted that we have been sleeping off and on since coming home on Saturday. Our clocks are all messed up and this afternoon I feel like we may have finally gotten onto a somewhat normal schedule. We actually ate dinner before 8:00 and the boys were in bed before 10. Last night we were all in bed at 1:00AM, because we had slept half the day. So I guess you could say that jet-lag has got the best of us.

Like I mentioned earlier, Elliana did great the first night and slept much of the day yesterday too. But the poor thing was up a lot last night with tummy troubles and was in a lot of pain. I will spare you the details but just know it has been impossible for us to get her to eat or drink anything but formula so we had to resort to other methods. She finally calmed down this morning, but I was a zombie so Randy took care of her for a few hours while I slept a little longer. He went to work for a while today and we just kind of survived the day. She wasn't overly happy, but her tummy wasn't hurting anymore so she wan't screaming in pain either. The boys have been a bit grouchy and acting bored, but I have zero energy to want to do anything with them either and have felt bad for pretty much ignoring them since I am trying to sleep when Elliana is sleeping.
At one point today I remember thinking I sure hope it gets better than this because I don't know if I can handle much more of this. Of course I know it will and that there are many factors that we are dealing with here. We are just trying to take it one day at a time. I have not even felt like taking pictures since we've been home, and you KNOW it's bad when that happens!

As for the grieving, she has been doing fine during the day, but she still has a very hard time when it gets dark. She cries and cries while I hold her until she falls asleep. She won't even take her bottle when she's like this either. Tonight she seemed happy after her bath and I put her jammies on and turned the lights low and got her all ready to feed her the bottle. She screamed and refused the bottle even though I knew she was hungry. She ended up falling asleep and I laid her down in the bassinet in our room. It is so hard for me to see her like this and I know that it is a process, but I am praying that it will pass soon and she will take comfort in her mommy.

That's it for now. I am tired and need to sleep when i can.
Thank you to all who have prayed and commented and followed along on our journey to our baby girl. I will have pictures soon of that sweet happy face we all have fallen in love with.


***Oh and a big birthday shout out to Randy today! Happy Birthday to my man!!!!!!!

Here are a few photos from Korea with his little birthday present! :-)



We love DADDY!