Happy Gotcha Day!!!

After ten years of longing for another baby in our family, "Emma-Liza" arrived and she's now been part of the Thompson family for 10 amazing years!!

On this day in 1999 we were making the crazy trip by van from Kostroma to Moscow, with our Mom dangerously close to just taking the wheel herself as our friendly but daring driver spent more time on the wrong side of the road than right! In between gripping the seats for dear life, we were all getting used to our new baby, and her to us. She weighed only 12 pounds at 8 1/2 months old and didn't sit up yet. Everyone said she looked just like a little doll! (She would be so embarrassed to hear that now.) I can only imagine the sight now as I remember all four of us jumping when she made any little peep or move.

We GOTCHA!!
Leaving the Kostroma Baby Home with our precious bundle
September 1, 1999

Emma gained a pound a week for quite awhile and her hair fairly sprouted, till she barely looked like the same baby we picked up! (As an aside, it's fun to get new babies here who also gain a pound a week until they catch up. Amazing what a little lot of milk can do!!)

She shook up our family like a little Texas tornado! We always said she took one look at our all girl family and decided to introduce us to a few things.

Like refusing to stay in the crib. (Emma, remember the nightly "bottle drills"? You know you did it!!)

Like hunting for bugs and creepy crawly things and then keeping them in insecure containers (or pockets!).

Like dreaming of driving a motorcycle.

Like requesting pocket knives for gifts.

Like preferring the great outdoors to the indoors any day, even a rainy or cold one!

And I could go on and on and on....

Emma Elizabeth certainly turned our family upside down, but in a God-ordained way. I would not be here if not for how she and Russia changed my life on that first trip out of the US when I was 17!

Turns out I have quite a few pictures of her on this computer (all the "early ones" are scanned in, because in the OLDEN days we didn't own a digital camera) and I've had fun looking through them. Maybe these are mostly for my family, who will enjoy this little little walk down memory lane more than anyone - enjoy!

The very week after bringing her home to Texas! My sister Sarah (then 11) used to call her smiley eyes because she said she "smiled with her eyes"



Playing with the photographer



Love those chubby little arms



Will always be one of my favorites of her



Makes me think of Anne Geddes pictures!



She was just 3 or 4 years old here




At the Dr. Pepper Museum in Waco, Texas
Like father like daughter: the beverage of choice for BOTH of them!




Playing a Bolivian charango while wearing her Bolivian sweater (before even living here!)





Emma with her new bunny (one of my little boys was in the same shirt a couple days ago...)




Just 6 1/2 and reading through one of my emails to tell my family CDA news (while wearing her "CDA Baby Home" shirt, which is now S.'s in the Baby Home...see a pattern?!)




The sisters on Thanksgiving Day 2005, at our home in Texas (Emma: always in the driver's seat!!)

Holding our baby A. when she weighed the same as Emma at birth (4 1/2 pounds)

Making a fishy face, Inka Chaca, Bolivia, 2007

Me & Emma, the day she finished and gave me this hat she "knitted" for me (she also made the one she is wearing)

Saying goodbye to "her" beloved horse here in Bolivia, March 2009

I love and miss you, Emma!!!

Я люблю тебя!

¡Te quiero mucho!

I'd say you're growing up too fast, but each year with you just gets better! And now to call you and see how your first Gotcha Day in Tennessee is going. =)


(I now have the full day in the office I've been needing, as Cochabamba is all blocked up with a widespread transportation strike, of indefinite length...lovely. The cook and one office person still haven't made it in. Today is little J.'s birthday at CDA II but we've had to postpone her party till Thursday. Sigh.)