Family of 5

We have three kids!  I've said those words to Tommy many times over the past few weeks, usually as if it's the first I've noticed.  In fact we joke that through all of our training videos, conference calls, and meetings we were never told that part, that we'd be parents to THREE kids!

We want to share with everyone a short video Tommy made the moment we met Allison.  Please forgive the poor quality.  If it had been left to me, I wouldn't have remembered to even turn on the camera!

Click here for Gotcha Day video!

Allison has been home for just over three weeks, and we all feel like she has always been a part of our lives. It's as though she was always meant for our family, but it took five years for us to get everyone under one roof.  Our household is busier than ever, as you can imagine.  We thought we were busy with the boys! Allison is such a happy, energetic, bright little girl.  She is eager to learn and experience everything.  We have begun to truly see her personality.  She is strong-willed for sure and thinks it is already her full-time job to keep her brothers under control as she sees fit.  They don't always seem to agree.  With that said, Ethan and Aiden have far surpassed our expectations with their little sister.  The typical sibling dynamic has fallen into place, and you'd think that they've been together her whole life.

Aiden, Allison, Ethan

Our 3

We have so many things we could share about Allison at this point.  Here are a few.

1. Allison eats anything we put in front of her.  She will sometimes make a face and is sure to smell anything new before tasting it.  Once she tastes it, she eats it!  She did gag on her first taste of cheese and spit out her first applesauce, but now she will even eat those.  I guess the love of chicken feet and spicy tofu in China should have clued us in.

2.  She now knows her colors, ABCs, many body parts, and counts to 10.  She has also learned more words than I can count.  Some favorites right now include armpit, no,Ethan, Aiden, yucky, yellow, and apple.

3.  "No" is not a term that she has heard much.  We speculate that this is probably because she was so sheltered in the orphanage.  The kids weren't in rooms where there were many things that they couldn't have/touch.  We also believe that she was a favorite there.  This helps us tremendously with attachment, so we are certainly grateful for the care and love she received.

4.  She is OBSESSED with fashion, hair, nails, and make-up.  She has put together some interesting outfits so far, and as I type I have three clips, three pigtails, and a braid in my hair.  Our household has changed drastically!

5.  Allison's love for Disney already rivals that of her father, and she has not even been to a park.  She sings along to Frozen, and her favorite show is Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.  She walks around singing, "Let it go!" and "Do you want to build a snowman?"  We also hear, "Oh, Toodles!" frequently.

6.  She has already made it known to us that her hair will be lonnnnnggg.  Just to be sure that we understand, she throws her arms out as far as they will reach and repeats, "LONNNNNGGGGG!"

7.  Allison adores her brothers, even if they need to hear no from her about 700 times per day.

8.  She is learning "boy" and "girl".  I bring this up because it recently became a pressing issue.  Allison learned "baby" pretty quickly.  Recently while out running errands, we realized that Allison points to any crying child and loudly calls them babies.  They don't look amused (neither do their parents).

9.  Pets are a very new idea!  Allison can't help it.  She just has to wuv them and pet them and wuv them and squeeze them and wuv them and pull on them and wuv them and get put in her place by them.  Oh well, she is learning.

10.  She is happy!  We know this because she tells us multiple times a day with a huge smile on her face.  Last night after her bath, Allison told me, "Allison happy, Mama happy, two happy!"  Then she hugged me (something else she didn't do until the boys showed her how)!

Our lives are so good.  We know it.  We are blessed and have THREE kids!