Falling in Love

I am humbled and overwhelmed at what God has done in my baby girl's heart in just 2 months! He truly is the healer of the brokenhearted, as we have experienced first-hand in the Mason home. Eden is thriving. We have settled into a routine, and even amidst all of the doctor visits she is growing more trusting and secure with us each and every day. I even left her in the church nursery with a close friend last night for the first time and she did great! Glory to God for His work in her life. It's been a while since I posted so I'm going to give you a quick run-down of what we've been up to around here. I have also posted photos that kind of go along with the post.

We went to the Lifeline Adoption Agency's Annual Reunion earlier this month. The theme was "Game Day" so we bought Eden her first Auburn cheerleader outfit. We enjoyed meeting other families who have experienced the blessing of children through adoption. There was a book fair there as well and we got a few books for Eden. One was a book about going to the doctor that has a doctor's kit with it (since she's going to spend a lot of time with doctors). The kit came with these hilarious red glasses that she loves to wear. Then we got her a cute Panda book and a really cool book called, "My First Thousand Chinese Words." This last book has 1,000 Chinese words with the pronunciations and pictures, so mama and ba-ba can learn with Eden! For those of you who may be interested in this book it's an Usborn book and I'm sure it's available on Lifeline's website.

We also were able to get together with two of the families who we traveled with to China. The Pintaro's adopted sweet Lilly, and the Young's adopted precious Sadie. We had lunch at the Cracker Barrel a couple of weeks ago. I've included a photo of Eden with her Chinese "Gi Gi's," this means "big sister." That's what Eden calls them. It was so good to see these life-friends and to see how far God has brought their families.

We had our ENT appointment and found out that Eden will have tubes put in her ears on October 12th. While we were there they also noticed (thanks to Eden screaming at the top of her lungs) that Eden is "tongue tied." This means she has a small membrane (lots of kids do) under her tongue that they are going to snip while she's having her tubes. This will help her with language development.

We also found out that Eden has the TB germ. She does not have TB, but she had a reactive skin test that shows she was exposed to TB so we are going to have to treat her with medicine for that. She is in NO WAY contagious to others. The reason for treating her is to protect that germ from ever attacking her organs later in life. Her lung x-ray looked great so we can rest assured she does not have Pulmonary TB. We go to the health dept. tomorrow to pick up her medicine.

Lastly, the 3 of us were able to go to the lake on a mini vacation this past weekend. There was no water because of the drought, but our friends have a beautiful home they let us borrow and we enjoyed the fall weather. Thanks to the Watkins family - it was such a blessing to get away! We slept in, ate hot breakfasts, watched movies, and played with Eden. She has started this thing where if she is reading a book that has a hat in it, she runs and gets one of her hats to wear. There is a photo of Gene reading to her in her hat.

The three of us are falling in love, us with Eden and Eden with us. It's so amazing how your love grows daily for your children, isn't it? I can't help but think that this must be one of the ways that we are "created in God's image." It blows my mind to think that as much as we love our children, God loves us even more than that. What a good God He is!