April 3, 2010 - We've been home a year!

We can hardly believe a year has passed since we landed on US soil with Mikenna. It has been quite a journey over these last 12 months. Mikenna has made great strides but still has some big steps to conquer. She loves McDonald's, singing and being sung to, playing with bubbles, reading books, going to nursery at church, and eating just about anything that is put in front of her. She continues to amaze us at how smart she is. I took her to be tested thru the school district, and she tested within normal limits for a child that was born here in the US. So, she will not need any early intervention for speech or hearing. She loves being with her big sisters and demanding their attention. (Most of the time they give it to her.) She keeps us laughing at her little comments that clearly shows she has 4 older sisters and her mannerisms are really cute. The 4 older girls give her so much love and attention. We are still the 'novelty' at most places like restaurants or soccer games for 2 reasons: we have 5 beautiful girls and the youngest is Chinese. We get a lot of people either starring at us or actually asking if Mikenna is ours. (One person even asked me if Mikenna was Chinese-UM, I didn't quite know how to answer her with out making her feel stupid!) Mikenna, Paul and I went to counseling to help her bond more with Paul. We went for about 4 months and it helped a lot. She now will let Paul hold her, get things for her and even cuddle with him but she still does not allow him to put her to sleep or she does not like being left with him alone. We are still working on the trust factor with men in her life. We are also working on getting her to sleep in her own room with Meriah and Madissen. She sleeps in that bed for nap but not at night time. It has been a long year with a little person sleeping right next to us. We know it wont last forever but we both thought she would of been in her room by now. Mikenna still goes to a lot of soccer games and she loves it because she is outside- her favorite place! Mikenna has made a lot of friends with either the daycare kids or 2 other kids that have been adopted, one from Nanning, China (where Mikenna came from) and Haiti. Adoption is a wonderful gift and we have been so blessed by having Mikenna in our lives. At times, it has been stressful and then other times she makes it all worth while. Adoption has changed our lives forever- what a gift it has been to our family. Our girls have begged us to adopt again- we have responded that our family is complete. I have no doubt that one of our girls or maybe all of them, will adopt a child once they are married. I could go on and on about how adoption was a wonderful choice for our family but I'll spare you all of that. Please keep praying for Mikenna and her trust in Paul and other men and that she will grow into a beautiful young lady that loves the Lord. What more could Paul and I want for her life? This has been our first year with Mikenna and what a wonderful journey! Praise God!

March 24th, 2010 - Gotcha Day

This is Mikenna's Gotcha Day. One year ago, Paul and I laid eyes on our 5th daughter for the first time. Wow! Time has flown bye! We thought it would be fun to celebrate Mikenna's Gotcha Day with friends and family. We had an open house for her and 45 friends and family showed up to help celebrate Mikenna's special day. For those of you that are wondering what a Gotcha Day is and why we would celebrate it, let me explain. For kids that are adopted(either domestically or internationally), often times the families do not receive their children on the day they were born. So, Gotcha Day is the day that the child is joined with their forever family. Mikenna was a bit overwhelmed at first by all the people and I'm not sure she understood why everyone was here but she warmed up after awhile and had fun with all the kids that came. I had our dining room table covered with her clothes and shoes that she came to us wearing that first day, of course the green soccer ball that she carried throughout China, all the things we bought in China, her pictures while in China and since being home, and a lot of books about China or adoption. We also had all our pictures scrolling on the T.V. for people to see our pictures of the beautiful country where Mikenna was born. It was quite an evening of sharing our journey with friends and family. Happy Gotcha Day to all our adoptive family that traveled with us to China!

Happy New Year

It is the Chinese New Year. It is the year of the tiger. Mikenna, Brienna, Meriah, Madissen, Mom, Mrs. Luedtke, Jordan, Shelby and Lexi all went to Chinatown in Chicago for lunch and the New Year's parade. The lunch was wonderful and the parade was VERY crowded. At times it was hard to see some of the parade because people kept moving and getting in the way. Mikenna liked seeing the dragons. In the mass of all the people, we actually ran into Matt(my nephew) and his wife and then Mrs. LaGrassa, a teacher from the middle school in St. Charles.
Paul and Melia could not be with us this year because they are on their way to FL. to look at a college in Palm Beach (rough huh?)
We are ending the evening watching Mulan 2. Mikenna loves watching Mulan.
Well, this was a fun day for all of us and we look forward to many more celebrations!

Mikenna is 3 !!!

I can not believe that our little Mikenna that we went over to get in China in March is now 3! She has definitely lost the baby look and is well into the toddler stage. We looked at baby pictures of her(that the orphanage gave to us) and Mikenna would laugh at how her hair would stand straight up when she was a baby. I cherish those few pictures that I have.
It also has been an emotional time for me(Lori). I again thought of her birth mom and wondered if she was thinking about Mikenna and wondered what happened to her daughter. As Paul said a few days ago, if they (her birth parents) had been able to see her now, they would never had given her up. She is such a bundle of joy and I know in the bottom of my heart that God has great plans for Mikenna and she was meant to be in our family. The joy we have is her birth parents saddness of not knowing what happened to their precious daughter.
Then I also think of her foster mom, a year ago she celebrated Mikenna's 2nd birthday with her knowing that would be her last one. I know that she is missing Mikenna because of Jane our rep in China keeps us informed. I do send pictures to Jane so pass on to her foster mom. Being a foster mom takes a lot of love and courage because a foster parent gives all their love and knows that that child will eventually leave their home for the child's forever family. I don't have enough words for the gratitude I now have for Mikenna's foster mom. She loved her so much. We know this because Mikenna loves us so much and that is a reflection of what she was shown in China before she came to our family.
I will post pictures of our birthday girl so everyone can see how big and beautiful she is! Keep praying for our little one!

A lot has happened since Halloween

My girls have been telling me that it is time for me to update the blog. So, here it goes... Thanksgiving: we celebrated Thanksgiving up in MN with Paul's sister, husband and 3 daughters. Mikenna had fun meeting Veronica who is just a few weeks younger than herself and then the twins who were 6 months old. We all had fun just hanging out with one another. Two weeks later, our niece got married and Mikenna loved the dance floor. Veronica and Mikenna entertained some of us through dinner as they danced the night away. They were very cute! Mikenna, in her very pretty dress was trying to do the "worm" for everyone. After the wedding we set up our Christmas tree... I'm sure she was trying to figure out why we had a tree in the house. Anyway, Christmas was a bit mellow this year since she had never experienced Christmas in China. She was happy to get the presents but not as excited as I had thought because she had no reference point to gear her experience on. We went to the zoo on Christmas Day as a family. Mikenna had never been to a zoo so she was very interested in all the animals that we saw. I had told her that her birthday was after Jesus' birthday so after Christmas, she thought her birthday would be coming. Little did she understand that she needed to wait until the end of January.
Mikenna's speech is coming along great. I think she has been immursed in the language so much that she really should not have any problems. We are having her tested thru the school district in March to see if she qualifies for early intervention for speech and hearing(just to make sure). So, we'll see what comes from that.
In January, Mikenna and Lori had the wonderful opportunity to meet another little girl(Anna) and her mom. Anna was adopted from the same town as Mikenna. Anna is 2 years old and Mikenna would say,"My new friend, Anna" whenever she would talk about our visit. We hope to continue to get the girls together for play dates. We now know 2 little girls from Nanning, China. The other little girl is a relative of mine that adopted Ella about 7 months before we got Mikenna. We plan on visiting Ella and her family in June out in CO. We are SO excited!
Mikenna also made another new friend, Dave. Dave's family has been in the adoption process a long time and they were waiting for Haiti to give them court dates. Well, the earthquake hit and God allowed many miracles to happen last week and Dave and his family were united. It was SO amazing to see God's hand in every step of the way. All 26 orphans were not hurt in the earthquake and all 26 were able to get their visas approved to come to the US. So, we went over on Sunday and spent some time with Dave and his family. It was a very emotional week for the Malley family but God is faithful. All our children are wonderful blessings!

Happy Halloween!

Mikenna has known for a few weeks that we had been talking about halloween. She would say, for halloween, I be a lady bug. I knew that she really had no idea what she was talking about. She did not like any scary things in the stores. So the day arrived and she put on her costume. It was pretty cold here in Chicago so we had to bundle her up. She really never got the hang of saying trick-or-treat. She did open her bag and then would say thank you. She would say, 'I like candy!' She likes the idea of having all this candy around the house. Hope you all had fun with your families.

Another Unexpected Reunion in October 2009

Well, I know it's a little late to update but we had the wonderful pleasure of hosting a very quick reunion in Chicago for our friends that we traveled to China with. Let me tell you how it all started:
On September 20th, I met one of the moms with her 4 daughters that we traveled with for lunch with Mikenna. I told Vipa that Jane our Holt rep that lives in China would be coming to Eugene, OR for 6 months for training. After our lunch, Vipa called Jane and found out that she was already here and that she would be taking a break from training in early October. The next thing we knew, Jane had a flight booked to Chicago on October 1-6th. I called everyone with 5 days notice and let them know that Jane would be coming to our house for a few days and that she would love to visit Chicago. So, needless to say, I was in a whirlwind to 'clean' the house for our company. Our friends from Va. flew in on Sat. Oct. 3rd with their 3 children, the Hecky's from Ohio drove in on Friday, the 2nd and then the other family from the Chicago suburbs met us in Chicago with Jane. The other family from MI could not make it down because they had made plans already and just could not rearrange their schedule. They did send a letter and pictures of Mei Li to Jane so she could see how much she had grown. It was a fun/crazy weekend of showing everyone the sights of Chicago. We met down at Navy Pier and the kids played at the Children's Museum all afternoon. It was raining most of the day so we couldn't be outside. Jane and some of the other people wanted to go to the Sear's Tower but we decided not to pay to go up and not be able to see anything because of the clouds. We went to OvenGrinders Pizza for dinner. It was good pizza and the kids were really good. The next day, Sunday, I took Jane to our church so she could experience a church in the United States. She was quite interested. We then went home for a BBQ which Jane had never experienced. All the families joined us and it was a little chilly out but we all manged to eat outside, play in the backyard, have dessert and then head back to Chicago to the Sears Tower. It was a beautiful afternoon and evening in Chicago and we took many pictures. The Hecky's left from Chicago to head back to Ohio. The rest of us headed back to St. Charles. Melia and Meriah did not go with us downtown because of soccer games but the good thing was that they had dinner waiting for us and the Sharps. We shared dinner together and then the Sharps needed to get back to the hotel because they were heading to O'Hare by 6:15am on Monday morning.
We packed a lot of things into 2 days but it was a lot of fun to see Jane and this was the first time that she has ever been to the states and the opportunity for her to see the children that she helped place in their American home and with their families.
We had some of our family and friends stop by on Sunday to meet everyone that we have talked about.
I will post pictures from both reunions soon. We love our friends!