In the early pre-school hours of February 26, 2013, we received word of a tiny 16-month-old in Huazhou, China.
Words cannot even describe the excitement, the fear, the joy, the overwhelming-oh-my-gosh-this-is-really-happening feelings that took place in the days to follow as we filled out every form known to man to make this sweet child part of our family forever.
Even though you've only been with us for 8 short months, we've known your face for a whole year.
Even though international adoption is a crazy rollercoaster of complete unknown, there are moments when God shows up and gives gifts that you had no idea you needed.
Even though I never in a million years imagined my family would be grown the way it has been, in His infinite wisdom, The Lord has blessed us immeasurably.
We spent some family time last weekend at Great Wolf Lodge, thanks to some Christmas money from the great-grandparents. Although I honestly don't normally think twice about it and find it somewhat humorous to watch people try to figure out our family, for some reason, I had mentally prepared myself for the on-slaught of questions, stares, smiles, disapproving glances we would get over the weekend being in a different environment. All the things we normally get when ALL five of us are together. And apparently adding a ridiculously cute Chinese toddler with a cochlear implant hanging off the side of her head to our mix didn't help our blending in factor.
We got those stares and disapproving glances, just like normal. But in true putting-me-in-my-place fashion, The Lord put three different individuals in our path over the weekend that approached me and said the EXACT SAME WORDS...
"I just wanted to tell you that you have a beautiful family."
The third time it happened I almost cried. Kinda like I am now typing this out. But you couldn't have wiped the huge grin off my face if you had wanted.
Yes, there are plenty of people that think we are crazy and can't imagine why in the world we have a rainbow of children at our house. (I only have three, people. Not that odd.) And while I can't refute the crazy part, I have never once doubted our decision to adopt. Maybe a few "what have we done??" moments...but never a question to God's calling to grow our family.
God's children are a His and deserve a family regardless of what shade of human they are, what country they were born in or what the world deems is wrong with them. Can you imagine if that same God discriminated against us for any of those reasons?? So what gives us a right to do that?
Nothing. Not one single thing.
Which is why I can answer when people ask me why, with a simple "Why not??"
And I promise you can't give me an answer that makes sense.
At least not for our family.
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Sorry I got all preachy on y'all. I just love my kids! If you need more info about adoption, I know a rockin' awesome group of people who love Jesus and would love to help you out. Check out Lifeline Children's Services. Now.
We are 7 weeks post-op and Friday was 5 weeks post-turn-our-ear-on. She is still rocking the CI and making progress everyday. Here's a scattered post with random pictures about the process and how things are going...
We are asking for our ear after nap time. Not everyday. But it's happened about 3 times this past week, so it's a relatively new development. This, my friends, is a HUGE deal!! At least I think it is. It shows me that she's making a connection between the CI and what it does for her. And the more she wants to hear, the easier this whole process will be!
"Lady! Where's my ear?? You know...the one that makes me hear stuff??"
We no longer cry the pitiful cry every single time we put it on. Sometimes, yes. But not all the time. We have a theory about why the crying has decreased. Y'all know she has a magnet in her head. And a magnet in the coil that makes it stay on her head. Well, long story short, her magnet was way too strong and had made quite the little sore on her head by the time we were able to get it changed to a weaker magnet. Our audiologist said a magnet that is too strong can actually cause the internal magnet to move. HOLY MOLY! Does that weird anyone else out?? Since decreasing the strength in her magnet way, way down (to let the site heal) she has stopped the terrified screaming. I think part of the issue is that initial connection was causing her a little pain. I'm gonna go with just a little pain because I really hope it wasn't causing a LOT of pain. After 2 weeks with the new magnet, it already looks tons better and now I know better what to look for if the magnet is too strong. A red spot is a red flag. Check!
EK's favorite after dinner spot. She gets down from the highchair and goes straight to Daddy because she knows he'll give her more.
Downside to the weaker magnet...it falls off even if she's just walking. Or doing her little hip-hop-and-skip-walk. Which is typical for her. It's been hanging on a little better the last few days, but I'm hoping we can bump that strength up a tad once it's healed and we won't spend all day sticking it back on. Although if it does come off, she's really good about letting me know so we can get that sucker back on.
A lego-fabulous snow day. We've had so many snow days I don't even know which one this was.
More lego fun. With EK sized legos. AKA: How to keep EK busy while Mommy cooks dinner!
Her vocalizing has continued. She is definitely babbling more than her pre-CI days. Even imitating sometimes...like pretending to cough when I cough which she is doing as I type! Little faker. Of course, I'm pretty sure she has said "mommy".....ok, not really. But fingers crossed for her first word? She has said "mmmmmmmmm!" That's really, really close....
She's also using more signs and using them spontaneously (and with some help). Yes, we are definitely focusing on words (which means I talk to myself all day long), but that doesn't happen overnight. And the screaming and whining to get what you want is totally not cool. So to bridge the mounting frustration with our lack of communication skills, we are still working the signs. (Excuse the pj's and crackers in the middle of the day in the video. Mommy & Daddy got to "enjoy" another round of the stomach bug last week and this was one of those days.)
We had our first fever and "oh my gosh, do we have an ear infection?" scare since surgery. I say scare, but really more just concerned parental units. Ok....so we completely acted like first time parents and immediately rushed her straight to the pediatrician. A fever and yucky snot and cough makes me worry about ears. They actually tested her for RSV since we had a RSV-ish cough. It was negative and ears were clear. She felt generally crummy the rest of the week, but it was only a virus.
Hanging out at the dentist office. Who's idea was it to take all three kids on the same day?? And all by myself! Really...they did well. Well, the boys did. And the dentist got to actually look in EK's mouth in between the screams....
She's on the last program of her most recent map. We go back to the audiologist this week for another sound booth test and to continue to tweak things. Our audiologist confessed at our second mapping appointment that she was turned up louder her first time around than she normally does...."I just kept turning it up and she just kept hanging in there and not having an issue with it, so I left it turned up higher!" But what that means now, is 5 weeks into her hearing career, she is hearing at pretty much the level we want her to...speech, all kinds of noises, etc. Now, the big disclaimer is she obviously still doesn't know what to do with those sounds, so while she may be able to hear us, in the fashion of a 4 week old newborn, she straight up ignores us. Most of the time.
This is in the sound booth at her 2nd mapping appointment. Hanging out with an UofL audiology student.
See the freaky looking Winnie-the-Pooh bear in the corner?? That's what they flash when she responds to the noise on her left side. I'm not so certain the motivation with the scary bear would keep me looking, but she did well.
Now that we are 7 weeks post-op the swelling at her surgery site has completely gone down. I thought it was down before, but it wasn't until I realized I can literally see and feel the implant and cords and magnets right under the skin that all the swelling was really gone. And it freaked me out just a tad. I mean, it's kinda big! And bumpy! Made me want to put a helmet on her all waking hours.
See the incision from the top of her ear down the backside of her ear? It's looking really good. And if you look really close...there's a bulge. That's the goods, folks!
Incision above her ear. And yes, that's a dirty ear. We took care of that.
We started speech therapy on Friday and have her IFSP meeting tomorrow for her next 6 months of First Steps (early intervention). She has come soooo far since we started in September. Seriously. She was so much farther behind than she is now. But in the last 6 months we've started walking (kinda skipped walking and went right to running!), doing much better eating table food and still learning how to play and just be a toddler. She will continue with play group, will keep seeing her Developmental Interventionist, Ms. Paula (who has been loads of info through this whole process!!) and Mrs. Cheryl with Speech. And we can't forget super service coordinator, Adrienne! We shared an office during my First Steps days, sooooo....I'll just leave it at she's the best and rocks her job! (She needs a raise, Deb!!) But we have a great team helping us learn, make big strides to listening and talking and helping us every step of the way. But they keep wanting to talk about what we will do when she turns 3....and I don't want to talk about her turning 3. She's just a baby!!
We've had way too many snow days, so I'll leave you with a few snowy pics and a video of EK trying to blow kisses. Just because she's cute. Enjoy.
"I'm ready for the snow, Mom!"
Two happy boys! Enjoying one of our snow days that it wasn't -20 degrees...sledding!!
Apparently the girls thought snow and sand were interchangeable and buried her.
Good news is she loves the snow!
Precious baby. Wiped out from learning to listen. And playing in the snow.
