Three weeks home now - Happy New Years!!!

I know, I know, sorry for the delay, but it has been a very busy last few weeks! Billi is great! We spent Christmas for about 9 days in northern California. I was very worried about this trip as I didn't want to overwhelm Billi right after we got back, but it turns out I was SO wrong! I had my friend from Taiwan explain to her where / what we were doing and she completely understood that she was going on a trip to meet her grandma and all of her aunts and uncles and cousins. She was so happy to have a grandma! She followed my mom around the whole time and was just so loving and grateful to have her new family. It was also great for Chad and I as there was so much distraction for her and we were even able to sneak out and see some movies while my mom watched her!! Billi really trusts us, she gets that we are her family, she is learning so quickly and understands so much English now. She also knows a lot of words and phrases. My master plan was to wait 6 months before putting her in preschool, but now I see this girl is just too social to stay home with me - she needs the additional stimulation, so I am going to try to put her in a few mornings a week staring in February. This weekend we spent relaxing and enjoying some really nice beach weather - Billi got her first bathing suit and we put it to good use spending time playing in the ocean and sand! I am constantly reminding myself how lucky we are in that she is such a happy child!

Now for the challenges - I don't want to leave these out because I believe its important, especially for all you bloggers out there who are researching adoption to know some of the challenges that have come up. While we were in Taiwan Billi was kind of aggressive with us, especially Chad. She was doing things like biting, kicking, hitting, etc. She's tiny, so its not like it was that horrible, but we still knew that this would be an important challenge to work on when we got home. I am really happy to say that about 90% of this has already been resolved - she gets that these behaviors will not be tolerated and has really modified them, if she hits she gets a time out - but the main learning factor has been watching how other children act and she wants to be just like everyone else so she is realizing this is not ok behavior. I am amazed at how much progress there is every day. Another challenge was feeling secure enough to let me out of her sight. The first two weeks I could not leave the room without her freaking out a bit, but now, even though she calls out my name a lot, she knows I am not leaving her and she has really relaxed and is starting to mellow out the more secure she gets. Billi also had some teeth that were rotted and were causing her a lot of pain. They couldn't be saved, so we had them pulled. This really helped her sleeping at night, and I might be imagining this, but I think it has mellowed her out a little as well. We continue to have sibling rivalry, but this is normal considering my son has been a single child for so long and Billi just needs to feel like she belongs, so I am confident that this will get better over time - they tend to battle for my attention, but they really do love each other.

As far as medical updates, everything is A-ok. She had the full blown check-up. Besides some malnutrition, it really is just her teeth - we had three pulled and will have to have some more dental work done soon. As far as malnutrition concerns, it will all work itself out - she eats and drinks like a ten year old and I am going through milk by the gallons, so she will catch up.

What an exciting, adventurous and character building experience this has been! When I see Billi, she just fits in - she seems to look like us - her personality is the perfect fit for us by some act of God. She is active, busy, funny, strange and a little crazy all at the same time! Even though it has only been three weeks, it seems like she has been with us forever, she is my silly little winker been, my silly little monkey and we lover her dearly. More pictures to come - have to have my husband upload some camera stuff!