One year later...

Today is a day to celebrate! The Huffmans have been back in China for a whole year after being in the US to have Emma Grace! When I realized this fact, I began to reflect on all the ways our life is different now from those first few months back in China. Man, those were some tough days! Adjusting to being a mom with NO ONE around to help, adjusting to living outside the city, and adjusting to a new house with lots of unpacked boxes awaiting me were just a few of the challenges that we faced when we first got back. So seriously, get up right now and do some kind of happy dance for us-WE MADE IT! This year has been full of challenges but it's been full of so much joy. I decided to make a little list of how my life is different from those first few months back in China when I really wasn't sure if I could cut it as a mom in a foreign country! Praise God for his grace to sustain us and please laugh with me as I think about how different my life is now compared to August of 2007...

Now...


10. We don't have to hang towels on our windows at night...we lived 30 mins from the curtain market and taking my 2 month old to walk around the curtain market for hours til I found something that matched our American tastes wasn't the first thing on my list of to do's when we got back. But we have curtains now! (and cute ones, might I add)


9. I can actually cook more than 10 dishes now. Living outside the city with no nearby restaurants and being a stay at home mom has given me lots of opportunity to learn to cook! That was one of my goals for this year and I've come a long way


8. We sleep through the night-all of us!


7. I don't cry at random times, for random reasons or no reason at all. Those first few months were quite emotional. Leaving my family after having a baby was really tough and with no other Americans around for my first month back, I cried a lot. And oh yeah, and the fact that I had no idea what I was doing as mom added to the emotional instability just a tad.


6. I have pictures on our walls...took me about a half a year to finish decorating our house. I still have one spot in our bedroom that I need to find a picture for but overall this place is very homey!


5. My Chinese vocab has expanded drastically but in a very limited area of affairs-the home-I now know words like: diaper, pacifier, diaper rash, constipation, cinnamon, melt, thaw out, spit, spit up, spit up all over me, spit up everything she just ate all over me and the couch. You get the picture.


4. I don't lug my 2 month old with me to the market everyday to buy raw meat. hehe. ok, I didn't really do that everyday, but sometimes I had no choice! But now with the amazing, wonderful, almost perfect Xiao Li I don't have to handle babies and raw meat at the same time.


3. I really really really like where we live. At first, it was a tough adjustment to be outside the city but now I love our little town. All the little people with their quirks-like Uncle Qi who is obsessed with cleaning his car and whose favorite weather is "man capri" weather and milk Gmaw with her gruff way of loving our family-this place has really grown on me! And it's sooo quiet compared to the city!


2. I now have conversations with my daughter and her responses always include one of the following words: mama, dada, ball, ahhshoesss (shoes) quack, roar, boo (moo), ruff, outside, and apple. Despite what you might think, she and I have very meaningful conversations with those few words! All that to say she has changed so much over this past year-going from a precious little bundle of joy who didn't do a lot to a bigger bundle of joy who does something ALL THE TIME! I love that girl!


And the NUMBER ONE way my life is different than Aug '07....


1. I bathe. Seriously. I didn't really have time to bathe in Aug '07. I was busy feeding a child every 3 hours, trying to learn to cook, crying my eyes out, handling raw meat, unpacking boxes, learning how to say diaper rash and rummaging around a Chinese curtain market. I didn't have time for everything and bathing just seemed to always slip through the cracks. But no worries. We are back on track and I bathe daily now...well most of the time.


Now why is it that just when I started to figure out this whole life with a child, in a foreign country, outside the city, we go and decide to have another child? I am sure there will be another list like this next year! But for now, get up, do that happy dance, and join us in celebrating a great year! And say a little prayer of thanks for God's help in getting us through!

That was then...

This is now!