The Lacher Family

One month. I can’t believe it. One month ago, we were handed our precious daughter Julia. She was so scared – and I think I was a little bit too.

(You know what’s weird? Without realizing it, I am wearing the exact same outfit today that I wore the day we met.)

Those next few days seem like such a blur now, a strange mix of joy and sadness. Of tiny steps forward and major leaps back. And I see now, today, just how far we have come. When we met her, Julia could not chew food. Her skin got progressively worse while in China due to the stress rash brought on by all the change.

Since then, her spiky hair continues to grow in. She is eating everything we give her. She has learned to drink from a sippy cup. She is crawling. She walks while holding our hands or pushing her Peek-a-Block hippo. She has the most infectious belly laugh when she is tickled. She gives kisses. She is learning to play with her big sisters and tolerate the dog.

There are bad times too. Nighttime continues to be a struggle as she wants to be held by one of us to sleep. And there are moments like today at lunch. She was drinking some milk with her sippy cup. She brought it down but kept the nozzle in her mouth and gazed off far away. I took her cup to give her a bite of food, and she flipped. She has a very specific cry when she is grieving – it is almost like a howl, with pursed lips and eyes clenched shut. I was able to comfort her by holding her and a couple of bits of lunch brought her back to the present. It hurts my heart when this happens – she has been through so much.

I hope though, that the good moments will grow to outpace the bad ones, and that she will continue to grow more comfortable in our family. We love her so much and each day it gets harder to remember our family without her.