My Momma said "THERE WILL BE DAYS LIKE THIS" But Weeks?

It is all catching up with me and the faster I run the closer it gets.  We have been home three weeks and it has been interesting, fun, challenging, frightening, arduous, tiring, adventurous, and down right different.  Yes, another child should be down right different.  It didn't help that I had a nasty flare up of my Lupus and that my Renaud's reared it's ugly head too.  (Yes I have these wonderful diseases and very rarely if ever talk about them but will do a side bar on it one day in all my free time --I secretly hope that by me having these wonderful issues coupled with my infertility that I was double whammied so someone else wasn't). Add to that the fact that it took both David and I a LONG time to recover from the jet lag and we are a Class A Coma.  Getting Old has it's privileges.

The difference between adopting an almost new born (Luke was 10 months old but looked like a 3 month old) and a 3 year old is as different as it comes.  Duh...............For everything that Luke is Maran is not.  They are so different but their hearts and souls are so similar.  They just want to be loved.  I guess we are all connected that way.  A few things that are kind of cool:

• Maran, I guess,  has never seen anyone cook and the mixer (brought out only for OOEY GOOEY PUMPKIN BARS) is better than a sucker and that is saying a lot.
• Since she  was constantly with others in the orphanage there is no such thing as 'entertaining herself' therefore the insane but sweet fear that she is going to be left alone which by the way brings on that incredibly painful cry of hers along with about a 1/4 cup of tears (Truly her tears are so big that they would fill a measuring cup). 
• It is challenging trying to entertain her. Don't get me wrong here.  She loves an art project but would much rather be taking the TV apart to see how it works in an attempt to possibly make it better. 
• I can bet that she will not be a VIDEO junkie or a couch potato.  Girl has got to go and be on the run (like me).  She can not be bothered with sitting still as there is so much to investigate. (YES I REALIZE THIS IS ALL NEW TO HER).
• She would touch anything & everything no matter what it is if she could.
• She would brush her teeth 30 times a day if she could (we have had to hide her toothbrush and ours too for that matter) so she won't brush her teeth too much.  I bet many mom's would love to have this problem.  She even  brushes them GOOD. I mean each one squeaky clean.  GOOD THING:  it has rubbed off on Snickerdoodle Luke.  His toothbrush is hidden as well.  There are worse things in life I know.
• She would constantly be putting something into her mouth if she could. FOOD THAT IS.  I think that I may have to move to a farm and plant some crop and get some livestock so we can keep her fed.  BOTTOMLESS PIT. This makes my heart feel good.  It's not that it is my good cooking it is that the child has been hungry for three years and she has some catching up to do.  JOKING...she has not been hungry for three years but I am sure the 'access to food' versus what she had has a lot to do with it.
• She still will not drink milk or milk products. No matter what I buy (and I have bought it all) she will take a sip and shake her head no. 
• Sassy can put a hurting on a glass of water.
• She now knows all the parts of her body (in English) and can tell me what hurts.  We do a little bit of baby sign language (I know only a few and I mean FEW signs which I loved doing with Luke). She knows the word "ouch" and can correlate it with a true ouch.

There's so much more but I have to make a path through our house so that our Thanksgiving guests won't fall over our luggage (it is almost unpacked --- see I told you I have lost it but can I use the excuse (which is true by the way) that my fingertips are so tender from the Renaud's that it kills me to pick up stuff?  It truly does and the fresh layers of skin are not at all tough.  Makes it hard to unbuckle a car seat without wanting to shed some tears yourself and I am buckling and unbuckling for three).  There's baking to be done and beds to have stuff shoved under.  OOOOhhh..... Fairy Godmother!