These Are the Days

I wanted to do a quick post as today is Monkey's "Family Day". Three years ago, Stu and I were in a Russian courtroom and legally became Monkey's parents. What an amazing day that was. We picked him up later that night and life has never been the same. Monkey was described by his caregivers as "spirited". And is he ever! I have never seen a little boy so full of energy and smiles. He is truly one of the happiest kids I've ever seen. He never slows down from the moment he wakes up and keeps us on our toes. But he always has a smile on his face or a hug to share. We are so blessed to call him our son.
Amazingly enough, I was looking through some old papers (still on my organizing kick!) and I discovered that today is also the day that we received the referral call for Chipmunk. I can't believe I never realized it before. It is incredible to think that this time five years ago we were just beginning our journey to parenthood; now we have three beautiful children to love. Life truly is amazing.
HotDog is doing great, as always. One big development: She started crawling a few days ago! I was really, really hoping she would wait until after the Christmas tree came down, but there is no stopping this girl. I think she just wants to keep up with her big brothers. She definitely wants to be in the middle of all the action. She doesn't do the traditional crawl or army crawl for that matter. She gets on her elbows, straightens her back legs so her butt is straight up in the air, and then juts forward. We call her our little Inchworm. It's slow-going right now as she has to think about every movement, but she can get across the room if she wants too. And I don't think it will be too much longer before she can wiggle her way in an instant. Guess it's time to start getting my baby-proofing gear back out.
I wanted to add a few pictures too. The first is a picture of Monkey as we picked him up at the orphanage. The next is Monkey today. Can you just see the gleam in his eye?!

Next of course is HD. Is it possible for those cheeks to get any bigger?

And finally, a good family picture taken a couple of weeks or so ago. I think it's the first time where we are all looking at the camera at the same time.