6 months with our gift from God......

and it's the best little gift I could have ever imagined. It's hard to believe we have now had Cassie for exactly 6 months. Because I know in my heart she has always been a part of our lives. Sonny and I are so blessed to have been chosen to be her parents. To raise her, nurture her, spoil her, watch in awe as she blossoms everyday before our very eyes. And we are doubly blessed because we now get to give our daughter a sister. Soon -- we hope.

Cassie has made great progress the past 3 weeks in many areas. She can now say about 15 words. Her climbing skills are excellent -- mama's not so sure this is a good thing. Her balance is now excellent. She runs, jumps and dances. She's super silly. She loves three stuffed animals with all her heart -- they are -- puppy, bear and lamby. She understands everything I tell her to the point it's scary. She feeds herself now but still has no interest in a sippy cup. She babbles all day long. You can just see her trying to form the words, so it won't be long before she'll be talking up a storm. Oh, and she thinks Sesame Street is pretty cool.

Sleeping has also changed and gotten much better. For the most part she's now sleeping through the night. Except for waking for a diaper change -- the girl really doesn't like wet diapers. She's up at least once and sometimes two or three times for a diaper change but then goes right back to sleep. The only time she has issues with sleeping now is when she gets too scared or overwhelmed during the day. For example, she was up 5 times crying the night of the Halloween party. I still think she's making great progress on the sleeping issues.

As for naps, they have changed too. We tried to switch Cassie from two naps a day to one nap a day and that didn't work out so well. On 3 out of the 5 days that she had only one nap, she fell asleep while eating dinner. Once while chewing. The other 2 nights she was a complete bear. And I don't mean the cute little cub bears -- I mean the big bad papa bears who you don't want to mess with. Needless to say, we are back to two naps a day. But Cassie has decided that she will no longer take a nap if I just lay her in her crib with a bottle and her waving bye-bye to me -- as we have done for at least the last 3 or 4 months. Nope, not anymore. She now demands to be rocked. Yep, that's right. I said rocked!! My baby girl finally wants to be rocked. And I LOVE it. Other than me forcing the issue of her being rocked when she was having night terrors, she has never let me rock her. Never. Not once. And now I get to do it twice a day. Normally with her laying on my shoulder with both her arms around my neck. That's the best feeling in the world. I waited a little over 5 months to be able to rock her -- I'm not normally a patient person -- but it was so worth it.

She has brought unbelievable joy and contentment to our lives. We are so blessed. And Cassie is so amazing!!!!

Here are two photos - one from the first few moments with her in China, and one from last week.

She's found her mama and dada, and that's done a lot for her smile. And ours.