My China Blessings: Six months with Anna!

Well it’s been over six months since little Anna joined our family and what an adventure it has been!

In January and February we had weekly appointments at Children’s Mercy getting Anna’s club foot fixed and checking that she had no kidney problems. We are very excited about the amazing transformation of her foot and also finding out that her kidneys look great. In March Anna had a baseline MRI of her head and spine to make sure that everything was the same as we had been told from the doctor’s reports from China. Everything looks good and there shouldn’t be any surgeries in the near future. We pray that she won’t need any more surgeries-ever.

Anna continues to amaze us with her incredible ability to adjust and learn and push her little body to the limits. She can now stand on her own for about 10 seconds and can walk around holding on to something. She even tries to walk up and down the stairs! She loves to climb and recently started doing somersaults with a little push from behind. She tears around the driveway with her walker and loves to be outside. She’s always cracking us up with her antics and as always is Little Miss Personality. It’s never a dull moment around our house.

Our latest news is that we bought a new house! It has more space for our large family and we are pretty excited about our new pool! We can’t wait to have friends and family over this summer. We close next week and will probably move in after the kids finish school. We’ll be putting our existing house on the market in a few weeks, so if anyone is looking for a completely remodeled four bedroom house in an awesome neighborhood in North Overland Park let us know. Our new house is at 10037 Farley Lane and is only about 10 blocks from our old one. We love this area and are really glad we found a house that meets our needs without moving very far. We also love that the new house will be easier for Anna to get around in without all of the stairs our current house has. Plus there will be lots of room for Anna's physical therapy in the finished basement.

We continue to praise God for the blessing of Anna to our family and for providing this new home for us. K.C. and I also just returned from a four day trip to Miami courtesy of Sprint. K.C. won an award for all of his hard work and was selected as being in the top 1% of employees at Sprint this year. We are so thankful to some very special Grandma's, Grandpa's and Aunts for taking care of our kids so that we could go. We feel very refreshed and rejuvenated after a long stressful year, and hopefully we will have some extra energy now to get ready to move! Anna did great while we were gone, and we continue to be so thankful to God for helping her to understand that she is completely part of our family and that mommy and daddy will always be here for her.

Thanks to all of you for your prayers for Anna this winter during her casting and surgery. Everything went so well. It wasn’t easy for us, but she didn’t seem phased in the least. She is well on her way to walking on her own and we are hoping to get her some crutches in the next few months to give her more opportunity to walk instead of crawl. Her leg strength and balance improves daily and we look forward to the day we can post a video of her first solo steps. She’s a true fighter and it will be exciting to see what she is able to accomplish over the next several months.