Settling In

The days are quickly going by and before I know it, I will be back at work. I am not looking forward to that day. I like my job and what I do, but it is going to be so hard to not spend the day at home with Natalie. the good news is that on Friday I found a Day Care that I really liked and she seemed to enjoy too. The nice part was that the class is small and that they have had one child who was recently adopted from Eastern Europe and another child who attended who did not speak English initially. To me that is one of the key issues, having a place that understands that it takes time for her to speak the language and teachers who will be sensitive to that. Her desire to speak English is growing and every day I hear her using a new word and repeating two to 3 word sentences.
Nap time and bed time have also gotten better. Not that she was ever bad about going, but there were always tears and sadness. The last 2 days there have not been any tears. I am wondering if part of that is getting over jet lag (which I still have yet to do) and part that I have upped the time for her nap and bedtime.
The last 2 days we have been working out in the yard transplanting the flowers that my mom brought from her old home. She has been digging in the dirt and helping "haul" the dirt from place to place.
Now I am sure this is not a new discovery for Natalie, but we have had several days where she has just screamed! Not just cried, but screamed. One time when she was overly tired and the other time was yesterday when we had to have blood drawn. The funny thing (to me any way) was that she was screaming at the top of her lungs and they had not done anything. Somehow she just knew what was going to take place. There ended up being 5 of us in the room to hold her, comfort her and switch out the tubes. I have to say, I was so impressed by the staff there. They were so sweet to her. She was done screaming by the time they actually put the tiny little needle in. But I may need to get my hearing checked at I was talking in her ear the whole time, trying to get her to calm down!!
For myself, I feel like life is slowly returning to some sense of normalcy. Almost everything is put away, cleaned and if I had about 4 hours nonstop, the mail and email would all be up to date!!
Tomorrow will be our first time to church and I am looking forward to it. Before leaving for Russia, I was not at church for several weeks due to my nephew's wedding and work. So I feel like I have been gone forever.
Today I received a birthday card from a friend and she wrote the sweetest note inside. It brought me to tears as I was reminded of God's faithfulness through out this journey to bring Natalie home. I think because it has been less than 2 weeks that we have been here and it was almost 3 years to get her here, the difficulty of it is still fresh, but the fulfillment of desire to be a "mama" continues to just touch my heart daily. It was also around my birthday that I began to seriously pursue the adoption process. I will always be grateful to my friend Todd who encouraged to pursue this path and helped me to take the first step by attending an adoption conference.