Our meeting with the Neuro surgeon

Well, we have put Katie through the ringer with medical appointments and she has been a feminine champ through it all!  Our pediatrician gave her a clean bill of health and most of her blood work (10 vials of blood later) has all come back in good shape and it appears that all her vaccinations she received in China worked.  I have to say I am shocked by this as 60% of kids adopted from China have to have vaccinations re-administered once in the US.   We went to the dentist and shock of all shocks, she does not have any cavities which was also another welcome surprise.  Surprising because orphanages are notorious for giving these kiddos lots of sugary foods, falling asleep with bottles and they don't brush their teeth.
We also met with a children's neuro surgeon a few days ago and he did confirm that Katie had brain surgery as a newborn.  He explained that the scar is very typical of an epidural hematoma which is what Katie had.  He said that he is certain that it was caused by a traumatic labor and delivery, specifically the use of a suction vacuum in the hospital or forceps which may have caused the blood clot on her brain.  He said that given her development is right on target with the exception of her language, he is not worried and did not want to do any type of brain scan.  He said that her head is very flat due to spending an abundant amount of time on her back in a crib in the orphanage, and not from the surgery itself and felt that it will gain a more rounded shape over the years. 
We do think that Katie is having small seizures throughout the day and after discussing with him and our pediatrician we are going to wait to do testing for a bit, as it can be a lengthy process.  She is not in any immediate harm and they are very mild and most people would not even notice that she has had one.  Her eyes flutter a bit and she appears a bit dazed for about 5-10 seconds, so they are very short and painless.
Regardless, as a mother it is our innate response to worry.

On a separate note, Katie is now such a typical two year old, minus any language.  She is happy and charming and full of energy.  If you would have asked me one month ago to describe her personality, I would have told you that my daughter was shy, fearful of loud situations, terrified of adults and reluctant to interact with other children.  Today, she is a loud, confident, assertive little girl who loves to play with other children, embracing them with big hugs and overall seems to be attaching superbly to her mommy and daddy.  She joins in on the WWF wrestling matches in the basement with the neighbor kids and loves to scream as she runs around the pool table while swinging her baby doll in one hand and her brothers laser tag gun in the other.  She wants me to cary her everywhere, loves to climb in my lap while I work on the computer and has a sweet tooth, just like her daddy.  I felt like I loved her to maximum capacity the moment she was placed in my arms.  A week ago, both Patrick and I felt like our love for her jumped exponentially and realized that as we get to know her personality on a deeper level, our love for her grows deeper roots as well. 
Life with three kids has not been difficult.  The difficult part is having a two year old that leaves a path of destruction in her wake.  It is part of a two year olds private little joke to leave chunks of food and toys everywhere, and to stuff bottles in the couch cushions for her parents to find as a soured science experiment a week later.  Changing diapers again has not bothered me, but when she sticks her hand in her poopy diaper and then giggles while accidentally wiping it on her clean clothes or my sweater.........now that bothers me!  :)

I pray that each of you is as blessed in your lives as we are.  We have three of the most amazing kids in the world.  They share their love with us and others so freely and they have embraced Katie as their sibling with open arms and big  giant bear hugs (or headlocks, in Brooke's case).  I cannot begin to imagine my life any other way.       

 

Today is our 1 month anniversary of our "Gotcha Day"!

1 month ago today, our little Katie was placed in my arms, by her nanny, the only parental figure she had ever known in two years.  She was terrified and shut down emotionally and physically.  She was shaking and twitching with a fear that I cannot comprehend. 
1 month ago today, was one of the happiest days of our lives, and one of the worst in her little life.  Once again, she was ripped from the arms of her "mama" and forced to start over again.  I wonder, how many times this happen to her?  She lost her birth mother, and she lost her nanny or "Ayi", but how many other nannies had she lost in the past two years?  One?  Three?  Ten?  I have no idea, and I will never know, but I do know that it had to have been horrible for her with each loss.
And then on Gotcha Day, here is this family that looks very strange and smells funny with tears rolling down their cheeks, kissing on her and hugging her.  Perfect strangers now bound together by a love that she does not feel yet.  In fact, she hated her new mama.  She would tremble when I came near her.  She would close her eyes and hope that I was just a bad dream, only to open them to me still largely in her world. 
1 month ago today, Katie was a completely different child than the one that now runs around the house, chasing her new brother and and sister, squealing at the top of her lungs.  There is virtually no hint of that scared little girl, so terrified and angry.   She now carries her baby doll everywhere, stopping only to feed her a bottle or to give her a hug and a squeeze.  She holds her arms up to me, asking me to pick her up and hold her in my arms, which I so willingly do, over and over again.  She smiles and babbles and talks to me in the limited baby talk that she has and we can communicate and understand each other. 
Katie still thinks the sun rises each morning for her daddy, which is truly such a blessing and so wonderful to see.  She loves her daddy to pieces, but she now seems to love me too! 
I can hold her in my arms at night and sing to her and stroke her head while we sit cheek to cheek in our big chair.  She now cries when I leave the room, not just her daddy.  She beams with delight when her brother and sister get home from school and loves it when Austin climbs in her crib at night, stroking her head and singing soft songs until she falls asleep.
Our life is more blessed than we could have possibly ever imagined.  Katie was truly picked by God as the perfect complement to our family.  She is so much like her brother and sister and such a gentle soul.  We could not imagine life without her.  Although it can drive me to tears thinking about the two missed years that I did not have her in my life, I have to give that piece over to God, knowing that he was preparing her and preparing us for each other.  He did the most masterful job of creating our family and I have always told my biological children that I am so glad that "God picked me to be your mommy".  Now, I can say the same thing to Katie, because it is clear to us that God picked these children, not by coincidence or science, but by the loving and faithful hand of God, because no other children would have worked in this family.....  Austin, Brooke and Katie were made just for us.  I am so thankful and truly in awe of Him.  What a gracious God we have.

It's been a week and a half since we returned home

So what a difference a week makes!  We have been home a week and a half now and Katie has improved by leaps and bounds!  Each day, we seem to make progress, with the weekends being a step backwards (I'll explain), but overall we are still moving in the right direction! 
Patrick is back to work and I am on maternity leave which means that Katie is "stuck" with me during the weekdays.  This past week, she really began warming up to me, letting me hold her and kiss all over her and she even began babbling with me, which had been something only reserved for her daddy and siblings.  I was so thrilled!  Once daddy was home in the evenings, she preferred spending time in his arms, opposed to mine, but I wasn't offended since I got to hog her all day long.  She has begun to understand so many english words as well!  She understands changing her diaper, snack time, bottle, and even nap time because she goes to hide in a closet!  I find her peaking out from behind daddy's suits!  She is still not saying any english words but with the language barrier and the speach delays due to institutionalization, I am pleased to see her babbling and experimenting with words.  She will point at an object and look to me for an explanation of what the object is.
Over the weekend, we did take some steps backwards, however we took her to a pumpkin patch and I think that may have been a bit overwhelming.  She then proceeded to refuse any affection from me and wouldn't let me hold her which was honestly hearbreaking, after making such strides.  Tomorrow is Monday, so we will have more alone time which means 5 days of hopeful progress!
I have to say, that Brooke and Austin have been so amazing through this process.  I really expected them to struggle more with the adaptation of a little sister, and they have been truly remarkable.  Austin puts her to bed at night which is so sweet.  He climbes into the crib with her and strokes her head until she is sound asleep.  Katie cuddles up against him and is out like a light within 5 minutes, and Austin is soooo proud of himself!  And Brooke, whom I thought would really struggle with a new baby sister, has just smothered this poor child with love!  She literally mauls the poor child with hugs and kisses.  I don't think another child has received so many kisses in a single day.  Katie is such a trooper and puts up with it, and even seems to enjoy it.  She follows her brother and sister everywhere and they get to running around the house screaming jiberish wish makes Katie laugh until she snorts like a pig.  Pretty darn cute, if you ask this mama pig.

Brooke also wants to feed her all her meals, which means that I have been replaced in that department but its too hard to tell Brooke "no" as she enjoys it so.
I have loved watching Katie flourish, seeing that she is gaining confidence to tell me when she is hungry.  She goes to her highchair and pats the seat when she wants food and she has learned that mama comes a runnin' with fistfulls of snacks when she does this.  I want her to realize that she can get food when her belly is grumbling and that she will no longer only have 2 meals a day.

We had our first doctors appointment this past week, and she passed with preliminary flying colors.  We still have to run some blood work at the hospital and meet with a children's neuro surgeon, but she was 50% in height and 25% in weight on the american scale, so she is healthy and thriving.  A little excema medication and we were on our way!

To sign out, I just want to say thank you to all of you who have followed our journey and prayed for our family along the way.  It has meant the world to us, and we are so incredibly grateful for the support and good friends that we have as our support system.  At church today I weeped through the entire service as I looked at my newest daughter in my husbands arms and realized how incredibly blessed we are.  We all needed each other.  Katie needed a family, and we needed a little girl to bring us more love, hugs and giggles (or pig snorts, whatever you want to call them).  Austin and Brooke are so much more enriched with their new little sister and although I see some attachement therapy in our near future, I think that our family will soon feel whole and normal and fulfilled in short order. 

I will continue to update our blog  with pictures and stories as our lives progress over the coming weeks.  And if anyone is feeling led towards adoption, I would love to talk with you about it!  I think that we are all called to do different things in life, and if you are feeling called to find a child, its a dramatically wonderful journey, that you have to experience to truly understand!

We are finally home from China!

So we made it and better yet.......so did our luggage!  When our plane touched down in San Francisco the 4 adoptive families on the flight burst out into applause and shouts of joy.  The Chinese on the plane all looked rather offended, but we were just so thankful to be back in the states.  Katie cried for a total of 5 minutes the entire 15 hours of flight time and had been up for 30 hours with more than 2 hours of sleep.  She was such a trooper.  She was so happy exploring her new home and actually started babbling some last night which we had yet to hear.  And, to top it off we got to hear her first words!  Any guesses as to what her first word was?  You guessed it...... "Da da".  Her next words will be "get away from me Mom!"
Yep, she is still not liking me much these days, but we are working on it. 
Last night she grieved a lot.  She went to bed around 8:00 and at 9:00 woke up sobbing and it went on all night.  I finally got up and journaled and read my book for a few hours (NOT easy after taking an Ambien) and then she finally fell asleep around 4:00am.  At 7:00am we were all up and getting ready for school. 
Today after the kids got home from school, she just beamed.  She sat hugging Brooke on the floor for hours and Brooke combed her hair and made up stories as they thumbed through book after book.  When someone came to the door for a visit, she just clung to Brooke, putting her head in her lap as if she was her safety buoy out in a vast, scary sea. 
And tonight as I tried to put Katie to bed, she cried and cried until Austin got out of his bed and came in to comfort her.  He asked if he could climb in bed with her and the two of them fell sound asleep cuddled up in the middle of our king size bed.  Tears are streaming down my face as I give thanks for my amazing children.  They have proven to be such little heroes to me.  I wish I had half the amount of grace and patience that they have.  Austin fed Katie his entire chocolate chip cookie after dinner tonight.  Brooke shared her lip-gloss with Katie (which she wouldn't do for ANYONE else, trust me).
And as I sit hear writing, I realize that not only am I so lucky to have such an amazing family, but I also live in the best darn country on earth.  There is no one telling me what I have to believe, or scaring me into believing how great my leader is, even if I don't believe it (example, Mao who coldly murdered a guestimated hundreds of thousands of his own people.) 
There is no one indoctrinating me about other countries, and forcing me to endure socialized medicine.  America is the greatest damn place on earth, and if you EVER doubt that, take a risk and go visit a communist ruled country like China or Russia.  I have been to both and I have seen the dead zone that lies right behind the peoples eyes.  I came away from both countries with such a sadness, as I watched and saw that you don't see groups of friends gathering at restaurants for dinner.  You don't see laughter on the faces of people on the street.  Very few people smile and the children lack the vigor and energetic happiness that is so mainstream here in America.  To be free, is priceless.  And as a Country, we love to complain about how horrible we are at polluting the earth, and how the gas of our cattle is burning holes in the atmosphere and how big trucks are bringing down the sky.  Folks, you ain't seen nothin' until you have been to China.  I did not see the sun for 3 entire weeks, and it wasn't because of clouds.  The smog and pollution are flabbergasting.  I had heard about the pollution in China and how they had implemented driving restrictions but you truly have to see it to believe it.  Astounding.  You can not see farther that a few city blocks because the haze engulfs the giant buildings, trapping the odors of raw sewage that permeates from doorways and alleys.
 
Overally, China was a great experience and I am so glad that I got to take in all the beauty that is a big part of China.  I will forever have those memories to share with Katie as she grows and her curiosity about her origin of birth emerges.  And maybe someday, the difficulties of traveling with a toddler for 3 weeks in a foreign land will fade, and we will once again return to her roots to explore her history, if she so desires.  But for now, it is sooooo good to be home!
 
And for what its worth, here are the things that I missed most during my 3 week stay in China: Being able to drink water from a faucet without boiling it first, wearing my sunglasses, the ring of my cell phone, hanging out in the alley or at the park with my neighbors, bear-hugs from my children, battling traffic at my childrens school during morning drop off,  eggs that are cooked all the way, raw vegetables, knowing that whatever meal is placed in front of me wont contain a chicken foot, an ox tail, or shaved tongue, a soft bed, and the sun.
These are the things I took for granted.  Now go and kiss your children and your spouse.
I will post more pictures of Katie this weekend, once I get some sleep and get settled in....
Kristie