Life gets crazy with 4 kids

I've debated back and forth on if I should continue this blog. The adoption process is over, but life is still plowing on. Seven (wow really seven) months have passed since I last posted. Life is really busy, but great and Tori is doing FANTASTIC!! I can not tell you how impressed I am with this little girl. She has such a positive attitude and love each day God has blessed her with. She wakes each morning with a smile on her face and usually a question on her lips. Oh how I forgot how much preschoolers ask questions. "What's for breakfast?" "What are we going to do today?" "Is it my school day?" "Is Nana coming?" "Can I..." "Will you..."  It's probably the place that we but heads the most. She is full of life and ready to tackle the day bright and early. I am NOT a morning person. Ethan and her sometimes bicker like any 2 siblings do that are that close in age, but they have made great improvements and are bonding. The novelty has worn off some for the boys, but they still dote on her from time to time. They have both become busy busy teenagers.

Tori is now speaking 100% English now. Despite our attempts, she has lost almost all of her Lithuanian language, so she is relearning it with her brothers at Lithuania school on Saturdays. She attends preschool 3 times a week and absolutely loves it!! In school she works with a Special Ed teacher and a Speech teacher which are helping her build her vocabulary as well as learn proper sentence structure. She has come such a long way! She can't wait to go to school and be with her friends. I think that is the only thing she is missing from the orphanage, to have 12 to 13 kids around your age around you all the time to play with. For the first time about 2 weeks ago she brought up "her other home." Before this she has never mentioned or had questions about where she used to live. I'm actually really happy she did. I kept waiting for that shoe to drop. Her question was about being able to see her friends, not about going back there. I explained that they were far away and it would be hard to go see them, which made her a little sad, but then we talked about all the new friends she has made and then it didn't seem to matter to her anymore. I met a family through my blog that adopted from the same orphanage and we were able to get both girls on facetime to chat. Unfortunately Tori was mostly English by then, and the other girl hadn't learned that much yet. Hopefully we will be able to do that again soon.

In August, we celebrated her 5th birthday. She loved all the attention even though she had to share it with her older brother who's birthday is just 2 days after hers. My mother made her a beautiful doll cake that looked like the Disney princess from the movie Brave. This has been a tradition in my family that you get a doll cake on your 5th birthday. I'm so happy we were able to continue it with my daughter too!! This fall brought on football and cross country. Tori just loved to watch and cheer on her brothers. My sister tried to teach Tori some cheers which was so cute. She also loved Halloween. Once she understood that people were handing out candy she just kept saying "Candy, my candy?!?"

We had family pictures taken the beginning of October. We went to a park and had lots of candid type pictures taken, so to her it was just her family playing at the park. The pictures turned out great. As we were leaving she looked at me and said, "Mommy, I so happy." Just melted my heart. She has adapted so well to our family that I think anyone who did not know us and watched us in the mall or at the park would never know she was recently adopted and hasn't been  apart of our family for her whole entire life. We are so thankful that God laid it on our hearts to open our home to a daughter. We love having her as part of our family!!