Turning 3 and Celebrating 1

Dearest Vivienne,

You are three.  Finally!  You have been waiting for this day for months, asking when it was going to be your birthday and what would happen. Would we sing to you? Would you have a party? Would there be a cake?

No wonder you had those questions.  This was your first birthday with us. While we were preparing for your birthday, we were also preparing to celebrate your first Gotcha Day with us.  One year ago, we were meeting you in Zhengzhou, China.

We were holding you for the first time,

being in complete awe of you actually being right there in front of us when you were just a picture for so so long,

falling in love with you.

And when we sat down to lunch, we realized that while it was the day after your birthday in China, it was still a few minutes before midnight in America.  So we sang "Happy Birthday" to you while you chowed down on a roll.  Not so much a cake.

So this year, we did it up right. We celebrated as a family on your actual day, then had a party for you a few days later.  On December 1, you finally got your crown, birthday princess.

You opened your presents.

You got a cake, an ice cream one that you picked out yourself, colors and all.  (Well, Mommy may have added the flower because it looked kind of lame without it. Then it turned out that the flower looked silly, but I tried.)

A few days later, we had a little party for you at our new house, complete with the one thing you wanted and kept asking for over and over - a ladybug cake.  You have a little obsession with the "Ladybug Girl" books and the cake turned out to be such a sweet treat for you.

 

Grandma and Aunt Bobbi were able to be here to celebrate with you.

You helped yourself to a ladybug.

You got a little birthday love from your brother and your new friend.

And you were SUPER excited about getting a new "Ladybug Girl" book. Also, you might have been a little hyped up on sugar.

It's so difficult to adequately express in words just what it means to have had you with us for a year now.  This has been a year of figuring you out, and of you figuring us out - learning to trust us, realizing that we are family forever.  We have learned how to be a family of five.  We have learned what it means to have a daughter and a sister.  We have learned what you love (gum, making up words, "Ladybug Girl", school, calling the shots, guacamole, being read to, picking your outfits, school, being with your family, saying "hi" to everyone everywhere) and what you don't (corn, chicken, being left out, being told what to do by your brothers, not doing what you want, riding in a grocery cart).  We have loved seeing your big personality emerge from your little body, and consider it a privilege to be your parents.

I think the best way to close a post that celebrates your birthday, one year with you (we got home a year ago today!), is to reflect on a question I saw on a different blog: What would life be like if we had not adopted you? So hard to comprehend, but important to consider in order to remember what a gift you are.  So what would life be like?

• Our house would be so much quieter.
• We would not laugh as much.
• We would not know the privilege of see you turn into the person that you are becoming.
• There would still be a sense that someone is missing, the sense that led us to pursue adoption.
• There would be much less pink in our house.
• Our boys would not know what means to have a sister. 
• We would not know what it means to have a daughter.
• There would still be a sense that someone is missing, the sense that led us to pursue adoption - and you.

Adoption is hard.  Even when it goes smoothly, even when everyone starts bonding immediately and there are no huge issues to overcome, adoption is a disruption.  It's a disruption to a family, it's a disruption to the natural idea that children should be raised by those who gave birth to them, it's a disruption for the child.  It takes time for everyone to feel comfortable with one another, and yes, it takes time to really feel love.

Viv, I look at you now and I just can't imagine what our lives would be like without your sunny spirit brightening every day.  During these days, we celebrate you, who you are and who God is continually creating you to be.  Thank you for learning to trust us and love us.  Thank you for being your spunky little self and changing our lives.

 Happy birthday, sweet girl, and happy one year home.

Love,
Mommy and Daddy

Soaking Up the Sun

We are looking forward to the northern chill and snow, but we also know just how much we're going to miss the winter Florida sun.  So we're soaking up as much as we can in our last few days of living in it. And when we decided to go to a playground this afternoon, I decided to grab my camera. And here's a little of what happened in our couple of hours outside in the sun.

This last one is my boys catching a glimpse of a train.  There are tracks right outside of the church where I work, and the boys love seeing a train speed by when they're visiting me. I'm pretty grateful that there was a train today while we were there, and that I had my camera to catch them seeing their last train there.

Halloween 2014

Halloween 2014, Vivi's first, is in the books.

Our sweet girl dressed as a doggy, and grew to love her fluffy ears.

She walked in her class's Halloween parade.

A party with pumpkins and snacks and juice, and kids dressed up as all different things.

Now that the boys are in elementary school, Viv is the only one who got to have a Halloween party.  Dear friends invited us over for a Halloween party on Halloween night.  Since this is our last year in Florida, we thought that it would be good to mix things up a little bit, so we accepted the invitation and went there instead of doing our usual neighborhood trick-or-treating.  Here is Team Black, all ready to cruise the neighborhood and collect the candy.

It appears as though the candy is glowing...

Viv insisted on walking so much of the way.  We lagged a little behind the other kids, including her brothers, but I am so proud of her wanting to do everything just like her friends.

Happy Halloween!

Breaking the Rules

So if rules were made to be broken, we successfully broke a big one on Sunday.

We didn't go to church.

When you work for a church and you're married to a preacher who is himself a preacher's kid (and grandkid!), not going to church is something you just don't do.  And we're totally fine with that. We love making it a regular part of our lives to worship God, and we love modeling for our kids how important it is to carve out regular space for God. 

But on Sunday, on Tim's last weekend as a Floridian and our last one together as a family for several weeks, we communed with God on the sunny shores of the Gulf of Mexico.

We built castles and played with our buckets.

We put our toes in the sand and felt the grains.

We ran into the chilly surf,

and ran out with our buckets full of sea water.

We relaxed, and breathed the salty air,

and ran free on the shores with the soccer ball.

We fed the seagulls some of our snacks,  

and rejoiced when we tossed them right into waiting beaks.

And then we realized that we should have listened to the voice of reason (a.k.a. mom) when she warned that the birds will become your best friends if you feed them.

We sat on the shore,

and we watched as our own little miracle walked in the very same water that she couldn't navigate on her own just a few months ago.

We found lizards in the shadow of a fallen palm tree

and pretended we were birds when Mom wanted to take serious pictures.

We walked around with what Micah called "snowy feet" - a whole different kind of snow than we are about to experience.

We sat together for one last time on the warm coast and left ready to transition.

And when we reached for our snacks, we found a little sign that might have come directly from God - a bag of Peanuts from the Phillies stadium, 

and a reminder of our new church home.