Good-bye Six!

In just a matter of hours my baby will not be six anymore.  She will be seven (I do realize if you are old enough to read, you probably had that one figured out).  Seven!  How can that be???  Seriously, it seems like just yesterday I was carrying her on my hip.  Weren't we just in China discovering who our little Clara Ruth Huan Pierce really was?  It seems like it was last summer that she was running around the driveway in just a diaper.  It is going by way too fast.  Next week she will start first grade...all day...from now on.  WAAAAAAAAHHHH!!

A little over six years ago we sat at our computer and looked at our Clara's picture for the first time.  We thought she'd be a tiny, petite, dainty little girl.  But she kind of looked like a football player.  She was chubby.  Her hair had been shaved.  And she was wearing boy clothes.  I remember my mom saying "well, she sure looks healthy."  When we went out to eat and showed the Chinese lady her picture she told us "what a handsome boy".

These are the youngest pictures we have of Clara besides her finding ad photo.  Wondering how the blond girl holding Clara came into the picture?  She's from Bixby.  She just happened to be on a mission trip to China, working in the XinHui orphanage with a group from Edmond a couple of months before we found out Clara was our daughter.  Weird huh?

And....the guy in the top photo with Clara is Ken...we were acquaintances here in Edmond.  It was his group that was on the mission trip.  He is now Papa Ken to my kids.  And the other guy...that's Troy.  Funny thing, I met he and his wife casually several years earlier, right before they were leaving for China to go get their daughter.  And as only God could do...he ended up in XinHui on a mission trip....holding my baby girl.  Seriously!

So, six years after we first saw Clara's picture, she is turning seven.  She's not a chubby little football player looking baby.  She is tall, thin, beautiful, artsy and oh so girlie!  Oh my, is she girlie!  When she was still crawling, I caught her eating a cricket.  She was such an avid eater that she would have food all over herself and everything else.  She had the deepest belly laugh.  And that child could make the biggest mess wherever she went.   Now, she dances and prances wherever she goes.  She sparkles and glows and lights up a room.  I have to giggle when I am doing laundry and I empty the lint trap and it is full of glittery sparkles.  She is forever fixing her hair in some sort of Fancy Nancy "do".  And a couple of weeks ago I smelled perfume on her breath.  She had stinky breath so she sprayed perfume on her toothbrush and brushed her teeth.  Isn't that what every girlie girl does?!  Oh my, how fast these past six years have gone!  This little one has been the biggest and most wonderful surprise of our lives!  What a blessing God gave us when he sent us Xin Xiao Huan.  Happy Birthday Sweet Baby Girl!   Wo Ai Ni Clara!