Today is our 1 month anniversary of our "Gotcha Day"!

1 month ago today, our little Katie was placed in my arms, by her nanny, the only parental figure she had ever known in two years.  She was terrified and shut down emotionally and physically.  She was shaking and twitching with a fear that I cannot comprehend. 
1 month ago today, was one of the happiest days of our lives, and one of the worst in her little life.  Once again, she was ripped from the arms of her "mama" and forced to start over again.  I wonder, how many times this happen to her?  She lost her birth mother, and she lost her nanny or "Ayi", but how many other nannies had she lost in the past two years?  One?  Three?  Ten?  I have no idea, and I will never know, but I do know that it had to have been horrible for her with each loss.
And then on Gotcha Day, here is this family that looks very strange and smells funny with tears rolling down their cheeks, kissing on her and hugging her.  Perfect strangers now bound together by a love that she does not feel yet.  In fact, she hated her new mama.  She would tremble when I came near her.  She would close her eyes and hope that I was just a bad dream, only to open them to me still largely in her world. 
1 month ago today, Katie was a completely different child than the one that now runs around the house, chasing her new brother and and sister, squealing at the top of her lungs.  There is virtually no hint of that scared little girl, so terrified and angry.   She now carries her baby doll everywhere, stopping only to feed her a bottle or to give her a hug and a squeeze.  She holds her arms up to me, asking me to pick her up and hold her in my arms, which I so willingly do, over and over again.  She smiles and babbles and talks to me in the limited baby talk that she has and we can communicate and understand each other. 
Katie still thinks the sun rises each morning for her daddy, which is truly such a blessing and so wonderful to see.  She loves her daddy to pieces, but she now seems to love me too! 
I can hold her in my arms at night and sing to her and stroke her head while we sit cheek to cheek in our big chair.  She now cries when I leave the room, not just her daddy.  She beams with delight when her brother and sister get home from school and loves it when Austin climbs in her crib at night, stroking her head and singing soft songs until she falls asleep.
Our life is more blessed than we could have possibly ever imagined.  Katie was truly picked by God as the perfect complement to our family.  She is so much like her brother and sister and such a gentle soul.  We could not imagine life without her.  Although it can drive me to tears thinking about the two missed years that I did not have her in my life, I have to give that piece over to God, knowing that he was preparing her and preparing us for each other.  He did the most masterful job of creating our family and I have always told my biological children that I am so glad that "God picked me to be your mommy".  Now, I can say the same thing to Katie, because it is clear to us that God picked these children, not by coincidence or science, but by the loving and faithful hand of God, because no other children would have worked in this family.....  Austin, Brooke and Katie were made just for us.  I am so thankful and truly in awe of Him.  What a gracious God we have.