Ryah- 3 months home and 2.5 years old!

      Apparently having a busy toddler leaves little time for blogging, as is evidenced by the amount of time in between my posts :) but I wouldn't trade it for anything! We are having so much fun with our sweet girl! It is hard to believe she has been with us a little over 3 months now- time is going by so fast! I want to try to document things as she grows and changes, but time just keeps getting away from me! So I'm going to try to catch us up to where we are now in this post.  At three months home- we are still doing some aspects of cocooning.  We are not allowing anyone but us to meet her needs just yet(feeding, diapers, comforting, holding for long periods of time, etc) and this has been good for all of us.  We can tell that while we have a bit of a curious social butterfly- she still needs a little help in being reminded who mom and dad are and what they do.  We think she is doing great, for being here just 3 months, and these reminders are more of reinforcement now than they were a few weeks ago.  I still wear her in the ergo when we go new places for the first time.  We finally ventured to church a few weeks ago- and although we haven't made it through the entire service yet, she has been doing great learning to sit with us for a good bit of it! We also took her to small group for the first time 2 weeks ago and she did great! That was the last area of our lives we had not introduced her into just because she would be in close proximity with quite a few people and we wanted to make sure she was ready.  She really is a champ in any new situation we take her into. I think we are more anxious about how she will react than she is.  She has been so great at adapting to life with us and everyone who sees her comments on how happy she is.  She has come a long way from the sad, scared little girl we first saw a year ago! That's another thing- it has been a little over a year since we saw her face for the first time! Crazy!
         As far as how she's doing otherwise- she is still eating and sleeping like a pro. She doesn't sleep quite as long as when she first came home, but I think part of that was a coping mechanism for her. But now she sleeps at least 10-11 hrs, sometimes longer at night, and anywhere from 45min-2 hrs for a nap during the day.  Those 45 minute days are long sometimes- but we power through! She eats pretty much anything we put in front of her still- and she loves juicing with daddy in the morning.  I don't know how she does it some mornings when she comes upstairs afterwards and I can smell the overpowering smell of celery- but she loves it and chugs it! We have been to numerous doctor appointments and collected a handful of stool samples trying to kick the giardia, which I believe we finally have, thank the Lord! Nothing like a vial of poop in the fridge- just another day in the life of an adoptive parent.  Language is still coming along- it seems like she picks up a new word every other day and I've lost count of how many she knows now. Her relatively new words are: careful, car, heavy, light, cold, wet. Those are just the ones I can think of right now. She is still using a few signs that I taught her, but she also says the word when she does them- she is so smart! She is starting to repeat words that we say more often- I can't wait to see where she is in a few months! Every time we've been to the doctor, he has commented on how well he thinks she is doing and how pleased he is with how she interacts when she's in the office, reassuring words for a first time parent who is constantly questioning whether we are doing this right or not.
       We are just so blessed by this little girl! She has started to love music and dancing even more and is getting into playing with her baby dolls- which she hated when she first got home. Anytime we would offer her one she would throw it back at us.  But now she is such a sweet little mama to them and covers them up and feeds them and rocks them.  She has come so far and experienced so many new things. She loves shoes, books, bananas, peanut butter, oatmeal, and Super Why seems to be the only tv show that will keep her attention right now, although she has started to ask for Pooh frequently which makes this momma happy! Yesterday we took her to her first concert- which was a whole new experience for all of us to say the least, but she did great and was clapping and dancing with the music- we love some Ben Rector!! We are venturing out on more playdates now as well and it is so cute to see her with little friends that we have waited such a long time for her to be able to play with.  As always- thank you all for the prayers and continuing to follow our story- you are such a blessing to us!