Day 6- Baby's First Christmas

This has definately been a unique Christmas. For starters, it is a white Christmas. For all of you followers from the south you know how special this is. The only problem is here it happens so much that it might as well have been raining. Personally I like when there is fresh snow because there is less of a chance that I will bust it on the side walk! We got a late start due to our driver and translator running behind. You would think that this would mean that we would get more time later with our sweet girl but unfortunately this is not the case. Today is not a holiday here. They celebrate new year as if it were Christmas and the "Russians" celebrate christmas on January 7th. So this was only special for us Americans. So we got to the orphanage late but luckily our translator rushed to go get A as soon as we got there. Again she let A down to run to us and I will be honest in saying that she was definately running to her Papa and I totally intersepted. I can't help it, I love to have those sweet arms around me! We immediately gave her the Christmas gifts. Like every young child, she cared less about the gifts and more about the paper and strings that it was wrapped in. We litterally sat and played with the wrapping for about 20 minutes! During this time two of the other kids came over. A started saying "Nyet, Nyet" to them and doing her hand at them to tell them to go away. Our translator thinks this is becausee she did not want to share us but I think it had more to do with her new toys. Sharing is a hard thing for every toddler to learn but even worse for one who has never before had things of her own and has had to fight for toys in the past. We then took her to take a picture by one of the Christmas trees. I had no clue that it would be the 3 foot tall one, oh well it was just a formality for the picture books. After we took her back we tried giving her a rasberry on her belly. She laughed and laughed. This is the only time that I can get prolonged eye contact is when she is laughing! I will take it. We also had the first fall. She bumped her head and really did not have time to start crying before Chris swooped her up to comfort her, 5 seconds later she was all better. Chris also learned that she was ticklish, so sweet. It was definately a Papa day, which was a little hard but I love watching her bond with him! Sadly, our short meeting was cut even shorter by a caretaker coming in to bring her back upstairs for lunch. As she was leaving the caretaker told her to blow a kiss, it was almost the cutest thing I have ever seen. We were sad to have had so little time with her today but so thankful that we were able to be together as a little family on this special day. What a blessing it is that God allowed us to be with her on the day that we celebrate the birth of his son! It is so amazing what the addition of one small person to our lives can do! Merry Christmas!