One Year After

I cannot believe that it has already been a year since we became a family. I am writing this to put some closure to our blog. I always hated reading blogs that only talked about the process of adoption and did not go into the actual life of being a family after adoption. Then I became a first time Mom of a 2 year old and realized why it happens. So this is my attempt at letting the world know what the last year was like for us.

Let me start by saying that our daughter is truly amazing. She is the most resilient person I know. It seemed that it was easier for her to adjust than it was for us. It was a truly wonderful thing to give the opportunity to regress and be taken care of for awhile. It was not long until she decided that she was a big girl that could do things on her own. After being home with her 2 months I started working part time and Allie started going to preschool part time. This was another worry that I had. I had so much fear that she would relate this to being in the orphanage. Yet again, my precious little girl proved that she was so much stronger than I could have expected. She fell in love with her teacher but always knew that her Mama and Papa were coming to get her. One orphanage behavior that I can say she kept is that she is quite the charmer. She grabs control of a room the second she walks into it. This quickly made all the teachers and kids at the school fall in Love with Allie Kelley.

In August I went back to work full time and this time I was worried how I would adjust. Strangely I can say that I am a more balanced Mom now that I am working. I have a fantastic job that allows me to be there for Allie and not miss anything. Also I am able to pick her up about 3:30 most days. Allie thrives at the preschool and has made such wonderful friends there. It has been great for her to be around children that she does not have to compete with. Also in August, I started her in dance class. Oh yes, they have dance class for 2 year olds, and it is really really cute! Somehow they are going to have them do 2 dances at the recital, we shall see how that goes.

Allie's language has come along great. She understands and says just about everything. She loves to talk, and because of this, she will still occasionally ramble off some jiberish just for the sake of talking. If you don't know, Chris and I have a tendency to talk a lot as well so this is a good fit for us.

I want to be realistic. Becoming parents has not been the easiest thing in the world. Allie does have a strong personality. Like every toddler she loves to test things and will try it out a couple of times. Chris and I are not perfect, and we have definitely lost our cool a couple of times. She does respond well to time outs and quickly caught on to what this means. We also have had to work much harder at being a couple!

All the time we hear people mention what a great thing we did for her by adopting her. I will always try to explain how much Allie did for us by coming home! She completed our family. We hear laughter daily throughout our house. She is incredibly loving and will tell us and show us how much she loves us constantly. She will sometimes come in and wake me up by softly petting my cheek. I cannot put into words how much this little girl has changed and bettered our family. She took a couple and made them into a family. She taught two kids how to be parents. She taught two very loving people that they still had no clue what love could really be! She did a great thing for us, our darling Baby A!

So anyway I now realize that it is very hard to sum up a year in one blog. To say the least it has been an adventure! To us Allie is perfect and we are so thankful that she gave us a chance. We just finished our Gotcha Day celebration. We swam, ate a bunch and went to an awesome Aquarium. We tried the IMAX but Allie was a little too freaked out by it so we will have try again next year. God knew what he was doing when he made us wait for such a long time to start our forever family. Thank you to all of our friends and family who have all welcomed her so whole heartedly! We are truly blessed.