5 Months with Flower

Yep, it's already been 5 months.  And if I'm being completely honest?  It's been 5 long months.

(As some of you might notice, I took these before her special self-haircut last week)

This girl...

We love her with all our hearts.  Truly we do.  We tell her and show her every chance we get.

And we think she loves us.  She certainly tells us she does & gives us both hugs & kisses.

But oftentimes, she still doesn't like us very much.  It's hard to go from taking care of yourself to moving into a family where Mommy & Daddy rule your world and you no longer get to do everything you want to do the second you want to do it.  Girlfriend has serious impulse control issues & we are working on those.  In fact, there's a lot we are working on, but that's a story for another day.

Lily is also a funny, goofy, loud, sweet, crazy, & silly girl!!  She has about a thousand facial expressions & tries to use as many of them as she can on a daily basis.  She LOVES to swim, run through the sprinkler with her school uniform on, draw & color pictures, but most of all, she loves flowers. Seriously, this girl tries to pick every, single flower she sees and if there's not a flower, she'll just pull leaves off.  No matter where we are out in public, she will bend down to a plant & Matt and I will have to yell over to her "DON'T PICK THE FLOWER" and she will reply "I JUST LOOKING"... but she's not. Haha!! As evidenced by last Sunday's journey two houses down where she picked 3 hibiscus flowers from the neighbors plant, then rubber-banded the stems together to make a bouquet.  Now that I think of it, she may be a florist when she grows up! ;)

She also decided that Mommy & Daddy's "Lily Bug" & "Lily Girl" & "Lily Bear" wasn't good for her... She has now asked us to call her "Lily Flower".  (Yes, I tried to explain that a lily is a flower, but that just wasn't good enough. It had to be Lily Flower!)

And after a long and tense first three months, where sibling rivalry was at an all-time high, she is finally starting to learn that Laila can be her best friend, if she can resist the urge to pester her and just be nice. ;)  It's a work in progress.  But we are seeing progress.

She is doing well in school.  Her language is growing extremely fast.  This girl is very, very smart!

Her health has drastically improved!  When she first got home she could make herself throw up on cue.  Seriously.  If she didn't want to do what we said, she could make herself throw up within only a few minutes of her fit.  She would also get terrible nose bleeds, often during fits, but also at night & in the morning.  She would cough uncontrollably at night to the point she would throw up.  She was so used to it, that often times it didn't even wake her up.  She would just keep sleeping... It was terrible to see her so sick.  On top of that, she came home desperately in need of proper thalassemia treatment.  I look at pics from our time in China and I am just sobered with where her health was headed there and where it is headed here.  It's a miracle, truly!  She is no longer sick and lethargic.  She no longer can make herself throw up (she gets really annoyed by this too when she is trying to manipulate during a fit. Haha) and we are down to only an occasional nose bleed.  We've figured out her allergies, and shortness of breath, and thal treatment.  She's doing really well!

We know that God has great plans for her life. 

Parenting her is a tremendous responsibility that we don't take lightly. 

We try our best for her everyday. 

Sometimes we mess up, sometimes Mama loses her cool, but every, single day we keep trying to be the best parents we can be for her.  She deserves nothing less. 

She is a treasure.  She is our daughter.  She is our "Flower".

"The flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful of all."

Happy 5 months a Wilks, Lily Flower.  We love you more than you'll ever know!