We're still here...

Things have been a little crazy lately, but we are all doing good. We had our first visit with our Parents As Teacher educator...she is WONDERFUL! We were lucky enough to get the name of a PAT lady that is also an international adoption social worker!! We were thrilled to find her! We had put off our first visit because Anna is still pretty leery of most women until she gets to know them...which takes a while! Lisa (PAT teacher) knew just how to interact with Anna and by the end of the visit (she stayed 2 hours), Anna let Lisa hold her and gave her a big hug. If you know Anna, you know that this is huge!

Not only was Lisa able to talk to us about Anna's development, but since she's an international adoption social worker, she also took almost half of her time talking about Anna's adjustment. We appreciated this so, so much!

She reassured us that she thought Anna's attaching and bonding to us was going great. We were pretty sure about this, but there are times when we've questioned it. Lisa was encouraged by Anna's eye contact, her affection to us, her preference for us, and her letting us comfort her when she's upset.

She also reassured us that we've made the right decisions by keeping our circle pretty small. She said it's good that Anna just wants us (and sometimes the grandmas) to hold her and that, over time, she'll feel comfortable going to others, but to certainly not push it. Anna has had many disruptions in her young life and it is very normal for her to be leery around new people and a very good sign that she likes to know we're near.

The only bad part about the PAT visit is that this will be the last visit until the school year starts again in the fall. Lisa did say we could call her any time...we might take her up on that, we don't want Anna to forget her new friend over the summer!

Here are a couple pictures from this week. Anna is finally in all 12 month clothes now...she's growing like crazy, we can't wait to see her measurements next month at the dr! The bottom picture is from this morning and is especially great to see from the girl that 4 months ago didn't want anything to do with touching anything soft and had no idea what to do with a stuffed animal...now she can't sleep without her snugglie and won't get out of bed without bringing her doggy, elephant, blanket, and snugglie with her!