Long overdue update.

I have been long overdue to update this blog. I have not written an update since right after Kayti's birthday in October. She has come so far in almost 8 months. We have our second post placement set up for this week so it can get to Bulgaria by the end of March. Can not believe it has been that long already. It will soon be a year. In a way it's like she has always been with us. I can't image life without her now. God totally knew that he was doing when he put us together! She is so much fun! I had to get her medical report from our Dr for this post placement and found out she has grown 5 inches and gained almost 13 pounds! Wow. Amazing what food and love can do! When we came home 24 month pants fell off. Now she is in a 4T. They still sometimes have to be tucked, because she is still thin, but they are right on lengthwise. The holidays kept us very busy, starting with Kayti's first Thanksgiving. She enjoyed every minute! We also drug her out of bed at 4:30 am on Black Friday to go Christmas shopping with us! I know bad mama, right:) She was very good and we had a nice day. Then mom and I decided to take her to see Santa one Saturday in early December. She LOVED him and could not wait to sit on his lap.  Quite a diffrence from Lianna who we could not even bribe to sit on his lap. She would only wave at him from a safe distance. But Kayti was excited about him! It was almost as if she knew who he was. I find this almost impossible though, because I can not really believe they had Santa visit her small orphanage. Then a week or so later, we had our annual Christmas party/dinner at church and Santa came there too, and guess who was the first in line? Yep, my girl! She was excited around Christmas with all the lights, but I know she had no idea what was coming. We went a little overboard with the presents, but we were as excited (or probably more) than she was! We had her picture taken at Wal-Mart portrait studios around this time. What a disaster. They turned out nice, in the end but suffienct to say I wont use them again! We had our Christmas with Grammy, Papa, Uncle Mike, and Aunt Lianna. She was a little overwhelmed with all the presents and wanted to rip into them. We gave her one and she opened it and started singing Happy Birthday...(as in her mind I guess the last time she got presents was her birthday). So we went with it and sang Happy Birthday to Jesus. She loved all of her presents and had a wonderful night. The next day was Christmas eve and we went to our candlelight service at church. I was worried she would be to excited to sleep, but honestly in 7 almost 8 months, I have never had her fall asleep faster than Christmas Eve. We woke her up about 7 so we could get things opened and start preparing for our family dinner. She was excited about everything and played with each and everything she got. Our first Christmas as a family could not have gone better!  Unfortunately 3 days fter Christmas, Mama, Daddy, and Kayti got very sick with bronchitis. We had first fever and we all had on and off fevers for 3-4 days. 3 rounds of antibiotics later for each of us and we were finally better. She had a fever of 102.9 which made us quite nervous, but Childrens Motrin brought it down fairly quickly. Dr. Stabile saw her twice for this. What a nasty bug! We are trying to plan a trip to Disneyworld the last week of October if all goes as planned. We have an appt with our IEU to get Kayti evaluated and get some help catching her up. She really is doing amazing, and come so far from the extremely thin, timid, quiet little girl we picked up in May. Her personality develops more all the time. She is so funny and has a wonderful sense of humor. She loves to laugh. She has started to talk in small sentences, such as do you have to go potty (which means SHE does), apple/orange juce please, dont do that, ouch when something hurts, thank you, please, love you too, say I Kayti when asked her name and I 5 when asked how old she is. The other day we were driving home and she says Did you see that? I said did I see what and she said it again, but I know she saw something she wanted me to see, and just didnt know how to say what it was. She also will go to the potty on her own occasionally which is real progress. She loves to have stories read to her every night. We are working on learing our abcs and how to write our name. She is getting closer on the abcs, but writing her name not so much. Oh, she now likes noodles and they are almost one of her favorite foods now. She also loves all fruits and vegetables including cucumbers, carrots, brocolli, tomatoes, peppers, etc. This mommy is very glad of that. I will leave you with some pictures and promise to update sooner!