Mother's Day 2009

Wow! For several days I have had a host of many emotions! I can't tell you how many times that I have thanked God for all my girls! They are each precious and they were brought into Paul and my life thru nothing short of a miracle. I'll start with my JOY! I have been blessed with Melia, Brienna, Meriah, Madissen and now our newest- Mikenna! Paul is really out numbered, not to mention all those hormones flying around! Anyway, God has entrusted us to raise these girls in a godly home and to love Him. The desire of our hearts is that each of our girls would love Him with all their hearts. We know that the 4 older girls have put their trust in God's love and we hope that Mikenna will someday know of Christ's love for her and want Jesus to be her Saviour.
Since Oct. when we received Mikenna's picture, I have had a sadness for her birth mother. She will never know what happened to her daughter. I praise her for giving her the best gift- the gift of life! She could have chosen many different options, but she ultimately saved her life. I can not even fathom that she felt she had no other option than to abandon her daughter. The best we can tell, Mikenna's birth mother took care of her for the first 3 weeks of her life. She loved her, fed her and took good care of her. Then she left her in a very safe place for someone to find her. My heart aches for the woman that gave Mikenna her life. She loved her more than she'll ever know. She has missed all of Mikenna's firsts- her first smile, her first tooth, her first step, that first slobbery kiss and hug... what a sacrifice this woman made for her daughter to have life.
Last week, we received pictures of Mikenna's foster mom and the place where she spent her first 2 years. To be honest with you, until then, I really didn't have a connection to this woman. Now that I see her face and know that she helped to raise Mikenna and gave her love, I now know she also must be mourning the loss of Mikenna. She got to see all those first because 3 days after Mikenna was brought to the orphanage, she was placed with this lady. She really taught Mikenna a lot and we are grateful that she opened her heart and loved Mikenna before she came into our family.
So as you can tell, it was a mix of emotions that I celebrated my first mother's day with Mikenna. She is with her forever family that loves her so much. She has opened up so much in the 5 1/2 weeks that we have been home. We look forward to many firsts that we get to share with Mikenna.
As I close, I want to pray for all of Mikenna's Moms-
Dear Lord- My heart is heavy with the loss that Mikenna's birth mom and foster mom must feel. My hope is that somehow these women would come to know you as their Lord . They have both loved Mikenna and for that I am so grateful. You protected her from harm. You made her perfect and I pray that she will grow up knowing and loving you. Thank you for allowing me to be Mikenna's forever mom- Amen! Amen!

Church shower for Mikenna

Pictures

First Month Home !

Where do I begin? It has been a month full of firsts for Mikenna. She has really bonded well with all the girls. She can say their names as best as a 2 year old can. It is really cute how she calls for them. I will try to highlight each item for you to get a glimpse into Mikenna's first month.
* We celebrated Easter. We started out by decorating Easter eggs. She didn't quite understand what we were doing. She watched her sisters. On Easter, we went to Lori's parents house in the afternoon. She really enjoyed herself among all of the family. She even showed us a silly side of herself. She was hamming it up for all to enjoy her show.
* That next week Mikenna decided to follow me downstairs to the basement and she somehow tripped and fell down the last 4 steps and landed in the kitty litter! YUK! Her mouth was filled with litter. I rushed her upstairs to rinse her mouth out. The rest of the day she smelled like kitty litter- gross.
*That 2nd week we also got all of Mikenna's blood tests back. She was low in iron so that is being taken care of with vitamins. The tests also showed that she had Hepatitis A. The Dr. was not really concerned about that.
* By the end of the 2nd week, I was really done with having her sleep with Paul and I. I started trying her bed at nap time. That did not go well. That night, she went to bed for about 4 hours and then cried for 3 hours in the early morning. She tried to sleep on the bed rail and every time she would start to doze, she would fall down to the mattress. Then she would pop right back up. She was not about to give in. She finally fell asleep sitting up in the corner of the bed and she eventually just slid down to sleep the rest of the night. We had some rough nights but she sleeps all night in the crib. Some night she still wakes up to hold my hand or just let me know that she is not happy about sleeping in her own bed.
* The following week-end (week 3) Mikenna made her first visit to the ER. We were walking out to a soccer field and she was holding hands with 2 girls and suddenly her arm went limp. They said that they were not swinging her so we were concerned. After 2 hours of not moving the arm, we took her in. As we waited to be seen by the Dr. she suddenly started using it again. We decided to stay and have the Dr. take a look at it. They called it Nurse-maids elbow. It dislocated but she was able to pop it back in. While they were checking her out they took her temperature and she had a 101 degree temp. By the next morning, it was up to 105. We were able to get it down with Tylenol and Ibuprofen and cool baths. On Monday, I noticed that she was getting a molar. Poor girl! She was miserable. She ended up that week with a cold and cough. Welcome to America and all these new germs!
* Mikenna is really understanding most everything we say. She repeats almost everything. Her most favorite words or phrases are: 'What's Up?', 'Peace Out!'. 'Have a good Day!', 'Yo Dog!' (Can you tell she has older sisters?)
* On April 26th, our church had a very lovely shower for us. Paul and Madissen brought Mikenna over to the shower when she had awaken from her nap. She did very well considering there was a house full of strangers. Lisa, a very seasoned adopted mother shared from God's Word as well as her own words of wisdom. She spoke from her heart! We opened presents, that were very cute and fellowshipped with one another along with some very tasty treats. It was a great day!
As you can see, she has been introduced to a lot of new things. She enjoys going to all the soccer games, playing with all the daycare kids, and learning the ABC's in English. She still is very reserved around Paul. She will play with him if we are all in the room. She even gives him kisses but only on her terms. I told him that I think we have gone from stage one of not liking him or making eye contact to stage 2- liking him from a distance. Our social worker was out here on Friday and she said that this behavior is very typical. Please continue to pray for their relationship.
I wanted to share something that I read from Steven Curtis Chapman- he was talking about adoption and he said," God was saying, I'm going to bring these children into my family, but I want to invite you to be a part of that. I'm going to glorify myself through this. That's why there are so many waiting children; those are opportunities for God to show up and reveal His glory. They are each an invitation from God's heart, saying, Come and know Me. And I will make myself known through you, members of my body, the church, as you experience the miracle of adoption." A truth to ponder is that adoption is the visible gospel. John 14:18 says,'I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you'. What a wonderful assurance! God is good. We could not have asked for a more perfect little girl for our family. We love her so much and we are being blessed each day with Mikenna! Our girls show her so much love and attention. Someday, Mikenna will realize how much this forever family loves her.
I will promise to update more. Many of you have asked me what is going on with Mikenna. Her world has been turned upside down. We think she is handling it pretty well. This is a process that she may have to work thru her whole life. Pray for her heart that she would come to understand that God created her just as He wanted her to be and she was meant for us so that she could have a good life and most importantly that she would hear of God's love for her.

Home for a week

It has been a week that we have been home and Mikenna has been very busy. We started off last Saturday going to Melia's soccer game. She was introduced to our crazy life from the get go. She went to a total of 4 games and seemed to love it. I'm sure the fact that they are outside helped a lot. She also was introduced to the daycare kids. She enjoyed waking up each morning to see who would be coming over to play. She even started to cry when some of the boys would leave at night. We went to the Dr. today. She did just fine until the nurse stuck her for the TB test. She thought it was done until she got a shot in each of her legs. The US does not recognize immunizations from other countries, so we have to start her all over again. She cried for about 1 minute and after getting a sucker, she was fine. Tonight her little legs are sore. Thanks goodness for Tylenol. When the nurse measured her she said that she wouldn't measure correctly on our charts and I said that I thought she would be pretty close to an average 2 year old. She was in the 45%tile for her weight and height. She really wasn't that little. Mikenna has started sleeping thru the night again. Thank goodness. She is a crazy girl in bed so our next step is trying to get her to sleep in the port-a-crib. She is picking up new words each day and continues to show us the true side of Mikenna Kruit. Our girls are really enjoying her. She has given all of the girls and Paul kisses only when she decides that she wants to. The Dr. said that she is very social which means that she was well taken care of. The Dr. said she was happy with how she interacted with us and how she bonded with me already. Let's hope that she continues to make adjustments to her new life. I want to wish you all a very blessed Easter.

We are home safely

Wow! what a long trip. Mikenna didn't do good. She started to cry before we even took off. I knew I wasn't going to make any friends with the people sitting around us. The good thing was that we were sitting right by the engines so when we did take off,it was harder for anyone to really hear her. She took a 2 hour nap and woke up cranky and we played a little bit with one other little boy that we had been with the whole trip. Then it was miserable until about 10:45pm. She slept until we landed. We made it thru customs and immigration just fine. We got home around 4:15pm. The girls were very excited to see Mikenna. She had just fallen asleep again from the time we left Arlington Hts. to St. Charles. She did not like the car seat. We had a wonderful dinner that I really don't remember much about because it was early morning hours in China. I fell asleep on the couch and didn't even hear my parents leave. Mikenna let Melia hold her for a little bit but then it was back to Mom. As I reflect back on our trip it amazes me how God has been with us every step of the way. For those of you that have known me since I was little, you would know that I have always loved children. Paul and I had always wanted a big family from the time we were first married. God decided to lead us down a path that we would never had chose for ourselves with miscarrying our first 4 children. God doesn't always make his ways clear to us but we know that He always had a plan and His ways are better than our ways. So, our adoption story really began about 18 years ago when we had miscarried several times. We had started to look into international adoption. We had never even discussed which country that we would like to adopt from. At that point is when I found out that I was pregnant. We put things on hold to see if I was going to carry this baby full term. That was our Melia. From that point on we didn't have any trouble with carrying Brienna, Meriah or Madissen. Although God gave us our 4 beautiful healthy girls, I still had a longing to adopt. At different times, I would bring it up to Paul and he usually just blew off the idea. In December of 2006, I told Paul again that I really felt the desire to adopt. At that point, Paul and I prayed about it for 2 months. We felt that this was the time in our lives that we could go ahead with an adoption. We told our girls about what we had been thinking and praying about and told them that we wanted them to all be in agreement on adopting otherwise we would not go any further. It took the girls about 5 seconds to respond that they all wanted to adopt. So, here we are with our little Mikenna. My heart is overwhelmed with the love I already have for her. We have been waiting since October for this little one and our hearts have been prepared to love her just as she was created. Before time began, God had a plan for each of us and what a blessing for us to have the newest addition to the Kruit family. Thank you again for all your support and love thru this new path that the Lord has set us on. God's love and blessings to all of you, Lori

WE'RE COMING HOME !

Hey everyone! We are SO excited to be on the last leg of the trip. It was a free day for us again in Guangzhou. Yes, I found more things to buy. We needed to be out of our rooms by 2pm. We left for the American consulate around 2:45pm. We all checked in our belongings because we couldn't bring anything in there except our personal items on our bodies. We took an oath to state that all the information that we gave was accurate to the best of our knowledge. We then took a train to Hong Kong. It seems a bit different from China. It was originally founded by the British so they drive on the opposite side of the street and the cars open the opposite of ours back home. It has been an emotional day of good-byes to all the families we have become so close to over the last 2 weeks. Some families will be on our flight back to O'Hare to catch connecting flights so we will say good-bye at customs back in Chicago. When we got off the train in Hong Kong, we could smell the good old greasy smell of McDonalds. We all sat at the train station savoring every bite of our hamburgers and fries. It was so good to taste food that is familiar to us. Mikenna has totally adapted to American food. They usually feed the Chinese children this rice mixture called Congee. She gave that up after the second day. She loves chicken nuggets, fruit(which was abundant in Nanning), toast, juice, fries and pizza. That is about the extent of the foods she has tried. Mikenna has slept the last 2 nights which has helped me out a lot. She'll wake up about 2 times just to make sure I am touching her somewhere. She had a crying time for her foster mom on the train tonight. Everyone around us knew what she was saying and it was breaking all our hearts. Someone said to me that she really must have been loved and well taken care of for how much she is mourning her loss of her foster mom. I know she has been loved because sometimes she just gives me tons of kisses and hugs. I wasn't sure a week ago if that would ever happen. Oh me of little faith. God has created us so wonderfully and He knew that Mikenna was created for our family. I can not wait for our girls to meet her. She is so loved already. I don't know what will be more exciting for Paul and I- to be home or for Mikenna to meet her new "Gigi's"(big sisters). God has been so faithful in supplying all the strength to get thru these last 2 weeks. With all of Mikenna's crying there was only 1 time that I really felt frustrated and we all made it thru that first week. The next time I write on this blog, we will be back in St. Charles. Thanks to all who prayed so much for us. Many of you were such an encouragement with your notes on the blog or the emails that you sent. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Good night from Hong Kong-