A milestone on Easter

My first glimpse of our girl brought a flood of emotion that words can not describe. After years of envisioning blurry scenes of a faceless tiny brown skinned babe with dark wavy hair interacting with us, it was hard to comprehend this beautiful pudgy face with black piercing eyes and rosebud lips in it's proper spot. I don't know what I expected, but she clearly blew me away.

...and still is blowing us away. That was from my blog post one year ago today and Devi can still be described to just two words "beautifully perfect". When I take a moment now and then to step outside of my daily routine and reflect on the monumental turn of events of the last year, I am astounded not only by the changes we all have endured, but how well this transformation from a married couple to family of three plus a dog has gone. It is as if she has been a part of us all along, but none of us were quite ready to be joined until that fateful day in September. Now the cute pudgy face with piercing dark eyes and rose bud lips is right where it should be, sharing a life with the two soon-to-be-permanent-parents who love her to pieces. We have completed our final post placement visit with our social worker and are meeting with our attorney next week to set the date to go to court. There, the judge will declare us Devi's parents, her last name will legally become "Ross" and the adoption will be complete at last.

Together six months on daddy's birthday, March 18th, we just had to blowout the candles twice to commemorate this 6 month milestone AND celebrate daddy turning 44 and being the same age as mommy...at least for a little while. Devi is changing daily - faster, sometimes, than we can keep up with. A year ago we beamed as we, after an eighteen month wait, were finally able to share a tiny photograph and rattle off a few precious memorized statistics from the medical pages we received describing "our daughter" who was living a world away.

Today we are proud to actually know this still tiny person whose image was captured in that photograph. Devi Rose is a very smart, inquisitive (also could be described as mischievous :) ) , and active little girl. She has a funny sense of humor and loves to smile and laugh. She loves animals, especially pup-pups and Elmo. She loves to be quized on what she knows and sometimes likes to joke with her answers to get a laugh. She has an enormous appetite with blueberries, tomatoes, and mushrooms topping her chart of favorites. She is a huge bookworm and loves all kinds of music, dancing, marching, and playing any kind of musical instrument. Favorite past times include baths, playing hide and seek, petting the dog, waving Hi and Bye bye, unrolling the toilet paper, emptying drawers the dishwasher and dryer, and my personal favorite...giving kisses. My heart melts with each and every one of them. How rich our lives have become having known about her this one full year with these past 6 months actually together under one roof. It makes me giddy with excitement wondering what more the future holds for us.

Daddy's birthday and our family's six month anniversary

Our first year of dying Easter eggs!