Today my little girl is 18 months old, she is growing so fast. We have been together a little over 10 months now..... Hard to believe!

She is definitely not a baby anymore, she has made the turn into a big girl. We have been working on potty training for about 2 months now, she is getting pretty good at telling me when she has to go, she will say "mommy poo poo" and then run to the bathroom. She has a little toilet seat that sits on the regular toilet and sometimes she will bring me the seat and tell me she has to go. We are not really pushing it but, figured we would introduce it.

She is picking up so many words these days it's mind blowing to me. She loves animals, so needless to say we bought a pass to our local zoo.

Her new favorite thing is to have a Sponge Bob tattoo on her arm, on Fridays at daycare if she has been good all week she gets one. Once we get home I have to put it on her right away and then she makes sure her sleeve is rolled up so she can show everyone. She will say "look Bob" and then show who ever the tattoo. If you look closely at one of the pictures above you will see her Bob tattoo.

We have her 18 month check up next week and I am hoping she is 20 lbs.... She is such a skinny minnie with the tiniest little butt and waist. Everything I buy her has to be adjustable waist or it will fall off her, even with a diaper on her butt it super tiny!!

I am looking forward to summer, my family has a lake house up on Lake Michigan and I am excited to take Cami there this year. We did not go up last summer, I thought it might be to much for her. We just bought her a wagon to pull her around up there, we also bought bikes and a pull behind cart for her to ride in. I had not ridden a bike in over 15 years, so needless to say it took a few minutes to remember how to do it. If bike ridding does not kick your butt I don't know what will!!! Our neighborhood has a cute little park in it with swings but, in order to get to it it's all up hill, I was hoping my bike would tip over so I could just lay in the street and hope someone would run me over...... We'll see if I do better this weekend.

Since I am feeling a bit chatty tonight, I too might as well hit on the sleep subject I have read on a few other blogs since everyone has kiddos that do different things.

With Cami, she was just under 8 months old when we met. In our hotel room we had 1 queen bed and 2 twin beds. Jon and I took turns sleeping with her and then the other would sleep in 1 twin bed and my mom would sleep in the other. Cami needed someone close to her so she could touch them, in her orphanage they did not have cribs so all the babies slept together snuggled up, so she was used to close contact with others. And being that she had never been in a crib before, we did not want to scare her there.

We would have to hold her and rock her and bounce her until she fell asleep and then you could lay her down and pat her back for a while. Most of the time she would wake up and scream so you would have to start all over. She co-slept with us for 8 months and a lot of the time she would crawl right up on you in the night to sleep, so we went 8 months with not much sleep.

Finally about 2 months ago I rocked her to sleep and laid her in her crib and she slept all night (I must have checked on her a million times) and after that night she has slept in her crib. She is a wild sleeper now and I think she has more room to stretch out more in her own bed. Now when it's bed time I say "time to go night night Cami" and she says "okay night night" and gets her blanket gives Jon and I hugs and kisses and then she walks into her bedroom and waits for us to put her in her crib. To us, this is the most mind blowing thing considering all the sleep issues we had for 8 months. My mom about passed out when she witnessed it, she always says " this is not the same baby we met in Vietnam."

She has changed so much from being a baby that we had to hold all the time and cried alot into a very secure and happy little girl that hardly every cries. She is so independent now that is unreal to us.

I personally did not read any parenting books, I read several adoption books to kind of get an idea on what to expect. Probably the best advice I picked up from a book was "REMEMBER YOU MAY HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS CHILD FOR YEARS BUT, THEY HAVE NOT BEEN WAITING FOR YOU, THEIR LIFE IS ALL THEY KNOW SO GIVE THEM TIME" it is something along those lines. It's a hard truth because we all waited so long that we want our child to be so happy to come with us and love us right away but, that's not how it goes. Now 10 months into parenthood we have a little girl who will stop playing for a second and come give us a hug and kiss and them go back to playing, it's a hard road but, so worth it.

I may be rambling now but, I just want to stress to waiting people that adoption is a long hard bumpy road but, it is so worth it. You know it's worth it when you have a little girl who cried a lot but, now falls on the floor because she is laughing so hard.

Cami has brought more joy into our lives than I could of ever imagined, it's so hard for us to believe our 1 year as a family is coming upon us soon!!!