1 month home

Time has flown by since we have arrived home. I can report that Maddie is doing great! She has fit right in to our family and we can't imagine life without her. Just this weekend we have noticed that her language skills are improving by leaps and bounds. Today walking out of the restaurant - she exclaimed "Oh its cold!" In the car, when we turn onto our street she points and says "Our House". She is still repeating everything we say and do - but has begun saying things unprompted in English.

We have had such a great time with Maddie over the past few weeks. She has become increasingly more comfortable with visitors. My sister and her family have visited the past 2 weekends and she has enjoyed their visit each time. We celebrated my brother-in-law's 40th birthday this weekend at a local Hibatchi Japanese Restaurant. She was very entertaining, just watching her eat with chopsticks brought about much laughter at the table.

We had our 1 month required post placement visit with our social worker this past week. Maddie was quite entertaining to all and the overall visit went very well.

We had beautiful weather this past weekend and so she definitely enjoyed being outside. We had bought her a scooter and up until this point she only would stand on it and want us to push her. The kids had continued to show her how to ride and push the scooter. This weekend she finally got the hang of it and had a fantastic time.

We have noticed over the past weeks that Maddie flips, climbs and rolls over everything. This fall we will find a gymnastics class to enroll her in. She also loves to DANCE. We love to watch her! We turn on the music and she starts to dance. It is hysterical - and she doesn't want to listen to the nursery rhyme songs - she wants to listen to what the kids are listening to. She mimicks their dance moves. Quite funny.

We are having a little bit of trouble getting her a US passport. I am pulling out all the stops and contacting, hopefully, the right agencies that can help me. We had a cruise booked for Christopher's sweet 16th birthday to Europe. I am holding out hope that I can get things sorted out and get Maddie a passport so that we can all go. We still have more adoption stuff to take care of in the coming months. We are pacing ourselves. LOL