4 Months Home Already!

 On July 4th, along with celebrating the day with a good friend of mine, marked 4 months that Eva has been home with us. It's been so amazing to watch her learn and grow and become the person that God has created her to be. I try not to think what would have happened to this precious little being if her birthmother had not loved her enough to give her a better life. It just makes me weep. At this time, Eva has been with us the same amount of time that she was at Hannah's Hope. In the year that she's been alive, Eva has had 5 different women care for her at 3 different locations. We are so blessed that she can now find some comfort that John and I will be her forever (and last) caregivers.

There has been such great progress with her. She just had her 18 month check up at the pediatrician. Eva now weighs 20 lbs and is 31 inches tall. She is the normal height of an 18-month old. She was so happy being at the doctor's office until that dreaded DTaP shot came. Admittedly, I didn't know they were gonna give her a vaccination. It just never dawned on me. Check up to me means to check her out and make sure everything is going well, do a little talking, get any questions I have cleared up and leave. I tried to be a brave Momma. I held her while she sat in my lap, spoke softly to her. But the minute she got stuck with that needle and she screamed and cried, all my tears came flowing as well. I hate to see her in pain. She's had enough in her short life.

Being the brave, strong girl that she is, Eva was just fine 30 seconds afterwards. I, on the other hand, was still trying to wipe the tears away and get it together 

She is also 17 months old now and doing wonderfully with her motor skills, eating, language skills. In fact, last week, I started suggesting to her that when she needs me to just say "Momma". It took a few hours but now EVERYTHING is Momma. So now we're trying to find the happy balance of all the words she does know and addressing me as Momma the way she addresses John as Dada. She's even got a quicker pep to her step. There is an ever-so-slight jog to her walk now. It's so cute. Before long, she'll be on a track   

Yesterday we had our 2nd post placement meeting with our social worker. We'll have another one at 12 months and then we do our own every year after until Eva is 18 years old. Eva was so great. Usually she's wary of strange people or even people that she doesn't see very often. In the case of our social worker, Stacy, I thought she would be very clingy....just the opposite. Eva went up to Stacy with arms wide open...literally! She went over to her toys taking a couple over to Stacy to to show her, took her pen and started drawing with it, struck up a conversation  What a beautiful sight!! Stacy is so wonderful. She's never there long enough for us. We love chatting it up with her.

This last week has held some really great and precious moments for us. We are so blessed. And so excited for this vacation that we're going on. Stay tuned...there will be LOTS of blogging about that! 