Think You Can Hold Up?: A glimpse of her past.

Today, my day started notsogood. Apparently, MICE have built a NEST in my ENGINE and, according to the dude at the Toyota place, they had "eaten through the #7 injector wire." I need the #7 injector wire, so we spent some time in the playland at Toyota and got it fixed. Currently, I've sent Joe to Home Depot to purchase rat poison and moth balls and, following the advice of that Toyota dude, we will spend our evening strategically placing them on my engine so the mice will GO AWAY. (Apparently, this is very common during cold "polar vortex" type weather..... mice need a warm place to sleep and car engines are PERFECT. Who knew? And YUCK.)

We finally got home and Mary promptly fell asleep..... for about 37 seconds..... and then she was awake. Her nap lasted just long enough to make her really grumpy when she got up...... so, the day continued to be just great.

MICE and a grumpy two year old. And it was 12:17. I was already counting up how many minutes until Joe got home......

BUT. THEN. THIS. HAPPENED.

An email popped up...... in Chinese..... and then translated, it said.....

Hi,

Thank you for your updates of cute Rui Yang. She changes a lot and we could hardly recognize her. It's obvious that she is loved so much. Thank you for everything you have done for her.

Please check the attachment and find her baby pictures. Hope you enjoy them.

Wish you a happy 2014. God bless!

AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Over Christmas break, we received a holiday greetings email from Shanghai Children's Home, Mary's "home" from December 2011 until June 2013. They wished us a Merry Christmas and asked for an update on our girl, which I gladly sent. I also mentioned in my response that if they happened to have any more pictures on their computers from when Mary was a baby, we would love to have them. That was WEEKS ago, and I hadn't heard anything..... until today!

The attachment was filled with at least A HUNDRED pictures of Mary that we'd never seen before! Pictures with her nanny, pictures of her as a little one, pictures of her taking a bottle, pictures of her playing in the Disney playroom (yes, I know), pictures of her outside, pictures of her in the big playpen thing...... so. many. pictures.

As I scrolled through each one, Mary was eating a late lunch. She was sitting in her high chair, munching on her graham cracker and watching Donald Duck cartoons, not knowing that I was getting a rare glimpse into her past. I kept looking over at her.....hair askew, laughing her precious laugh when Donald got stung by the bee.... then I'd look down at the pictures. Same girl. But OH MY, how her world has changed. OH MY how SHE has changed! I can't get over it. I simply cannot get over it.

Here are a FEW of the pictures they sent us......

That was THEN:

She favored this particular corner of the big play pen........

Look at the fingers..... proof that it's our girl!

Head newly shaven..... bless it.

I adore this one..... we got a similar one with her standing NEXT to the chair.... apparently, sitting IN the chair wasn't working out.

Makes my heart sigh. Wonder what I was doing on the day this picture was taken. I hope I was praying hard for her on this day......

My precious, precious darling thing.

This is more the Mary that we know!

Not sure, but we're assuming this was her nanny. It's not the same lady that brought her to us, but she's in MANY of the pictures. Do you see the Disney characters behind them? They have a whole little Disney playroom! Baby girl has Minnie Mouse background knowledge!!