3 months in our arms!

First Carousel Ride

Lily Grace, you have been a Wallace for 3 whole months!  It seems like so much longer.  Everything just feels so right with you here with us and we can't imagine it any other way!  What a busy month we have had.  There have been doctors appointments upon doctors appointments, all sorts of family activities, and I went back to work a couple of weeks ago.  But we are still here and albeit crazy a lot of the time-we are settling in nicely to this family of 5 thing!

Getting ready for momma first day back to work!

From a medical perspective Lily Grace has completed the first round of almost all of her appointments.  Almost all of these have lead to need for follow ups.  The good news is that nothing serious has been found and most of the follow ups are out of an abundance of caution.  She will have a swallow study to further evaluate whether or not she is having any aspiration with fluids later in the month.  If it shows any signs of aspiration (fluid going into the lungs instead of down the esophagus) we will further look into why this could be happening.  And she still has yet to see opthamology for her vision screening.  We did find out that she will be eligible for Early Intervention Services, which will be great and help her catch up on lost time for various skills that she is a little behind on.  This is completely expected for children spending time living in orphanages.  Overall we have no reason to believe she won't catch up quickly!  

Dentist visit for all three girls!

Meanwhile at home we have been having all sorts of fun.  We enjoyed some prolonged summer weather and it is just now starting to feel like Fall around here.  We've enjoyed the zoo, visiting Taylor for lunch at school, and just spending extra time outside with the nice weather!  We had a fun outing to the pumpkin patch with family and friends.  

Eating lunch at school with Taylor!

Waiting for Taylor to get out of school

I am happy to report that Lily Grace has discovered that ice-cream is indeed delicious!  She still loves climbing and can pull the pillows out and crawl under the gate onto the stair case with no problem!  She LOVES going into the pantry and grabbing bags of cheetos or other chips.  She still won't eat many other fruits aside from bananas and sometimes blueberries.  Not a veggie girl either.  She still loves her carbs-pancakes, cereal, bread, casseroles, etc.  She repeats a lot of words now and will says "eyes", "uh-oh", "thank-you", "no-no-no", along with so people names. She loves the rocking elephant in her room from her MeMe.  

This month has not been without its challenges though.  Madelyn and Lily Grace seem to be in a little sibling rivalry for momma these days.  They both "need" to be held all.the.time.  And we have moments when we have all the tears.  Guess I should get used to it with 3 girls.  (Pray for Matt- I'm a crier too!)  I'm not gonna lie, earlier this week the two youngest were both crying, while I was on the phone with Comcast who was telling me they couldn't talk to me as I'm not an "authorized user" on our account, I had a migraine, and I definitely hid in the hallway eating a cup of icecream in order to cope with my "situation".  So there's that.

Sleeping is still a struggle at times, however, I'm happy to report we are making improvements!  Some nights we can rock her to sleep and others not.  She always wakes up at least once (normally more than once) throughout the night and cries out.  But, she always wakes up so happy.  I so wish I knew what was going on in that little head of hers.  I recently read that nighttime is when trauma can come out because during the day things are busy and there isn't time to think about things or process anything.  But when it is quiet and calm people (and children) can start to remember or process what is happening.  Don't get me wrong-the orphanage in China cared greatly for her.  But we can't forget that she was literally ripped from everything she knew and a routine that was the same every single day and placed in a completely different place where everything is different-smells, sounds, appearances, routines, everything.  She is absolutely THRIVING.  But man, the girl has to be thinking, "what on earth?!?!" at times.  So I have to remember that and remember this adoption journey we are on.  It's messy but it is a beautiful story of redemption!  And she definitely knows she belongs to us and for that I am grateful.  What a privilege to be her parents.

Just this past week we were able to celebrate our first holiday with Lily Grace since arriving home to the United States- Halloween!  As you may see in her pictures, her personality is just blooming even more every day.  She enjoyed dressing up and watching all the excitement around her with her big sisters and all of their friends.  We live in a fabulous neighborhood with great friends and lots of houses go all out for all of the holidays.  We walked around with a few families and then the girls had just as much fun passing out candy to trick or treaters when we got home.  Madelyn was yelling "We have candies over here!!!"  And we have discovered Lily Grace is a fan of KitKats, Twix, and lollipops so far. . .  ;)

Happy Halloween!

Thanks for checking in on us.  We are good.  Most of all we are grateful and blessed.  The Lord has been so good to us! We look forward to sharing these next few months and together as we celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas together.  Thank you for being a part of our journey!