Photo Update

Lots has been happening here between Thanksgiving and now.  I have been bad at regular updates here, so let me catch you up a little:

 A chance to catch up with dear friend, Susan House Schrock, for dinner and some shopping...so cool that we live a drivable distance from one another for the first time in many many years!

A visit from our dear friend Gracie--and a night out at the Cheesecake Factory and Jared's football game.

 I thoroughly enjoyed the fall colors this year--it has been so many years since we've lived somewhere with four seasons!  (though it doesn't quite feel like winter here yet)...

Tad nearly pulls my arm off when he sees geese or ducks swimming in our neighborhood ponds.  He wants so badly to jump in, swim to them, and retrieve them.

 Thanksgiving held a "friendship feast" at Lilly's school...

Thanksgiving dinner at Justin and Lita's house....mmmmmmm....turkey...

 And a visit to Mount Vernon with Justin and Lita's family and Nana, Pap Pap, and Uncle Doug on "Black Friday".

ooopps...back to November briefly...Lilly enjoyed having cousins Delaney and Elianna spend the night on Thanksgiving evening...while Jared and Anna stayed with Joshua and Abby

And, in December....

 

 Tom was selected for Colonel (one year "below the zone" or one year early), and will pin on his new rank in 2013.

 We visited the National Harbor with Tom's sister Judi, her husband Doug, and our niece Brittany to experience "Christmas on the Potomac"

We cound teh long-lost "Awakening" sculpture...

We went to see "ICE!" which is ice sculptures carved by artists from China.  This year's theme was "Merry Madagascar", featuring cartoon figures from the kids' movie.  I was thrilled, however, to see the final room displaying a nativity scene with the Christmas story being read:

 .Lilly loves her Brittany!

 Tom, Jared, and I spent quite a lot of time rehearsing Christmas music for the Christmas orchestra at church...

 And we've done a bit of ice skating at a local ice rink--Reston Town Center.  The girls' school had a "skate night" and Anna invited her friend, Rachel, from China, to join us. 

Anna also chose ice skating for her December family date night...fun!

 The girls and I have been doing a lot of Christmas baking...and they worked hard on chocolate covered pretzels to give to teachers and neighbors as well as our annual gingerbread nativity scene...

 And today, being the first day of Christmas break, will be filled with cleaning the house and continuing to prepare goodies for tomorrow's Christmas Eve dinner and dessert!  We are excited to be hosting Nana, Pap Pap, Uncle Doug, Uncle Justin and Auntie Lita, JOshua, Abby, Delaney, and Elianna at our house for Christmas Eve.

THen Christmas Day we'll go to Justin and LIta's house after church.

Then the 26th we'll head north to New Jersey to drop off the big kiddos while Tom and I bring LIlly back down to CHOP on the 27th for surgery to--=Lord willing--finally clear her of this nasty lingering infection.

Looking ahead, January will be full with lots planned for the weekend...and we are hoping to have our Article 5 and travel approval for China prior to Chinese New Year.  Our trip to bring home Isabel could, Lord willing, be as early as early February.  Though I realize the timing (all in God's hands) could slip and it might be late February or early March before we go...  We got some new photos of her yesterday so I'll close with one of those!

I-800A Provisional Approval is in the House

After a busy day of decorating for Christmas, making grocery lists, taking the dog for a long run, preparing dinner early so it would be ready after my typical afternoon marathon in the car with the kids, and then running around from doctors to pharmacies to labs to swim team to track practice to the grocery store to home...then getting dinner on the table, eating, clearing the table, cleaning the kitchen, hanging ornaments on the tree with the kids, getting everyone tucked in, making tomorrow's lunches, and FINALLY sitting down with a cup of decaf green tea to decompress with my man, I realized I had not yet checked today's mail.

And I had a nagging feeling that I should go out in the dark to bring it in.

SO glad I did. 

There it was--the envelope from Homeland Security, containing our all-important I-800 A Provisional Approval for Isabel's immigration to the United States.  Lots of alphabet soup in the adoption world...but what this means is we are in the final stages of the adoption process before the actual travel.  Hoo--Ray!

Just scanned it in (realized after the fact that Tom was only joking when he suggested getting right onto the computer and scanning it in so it's in our agency's inbox first thing tomorrow) and e-mailed it off. 

Then I realized I had to let all of you know these details.

Now--at long last--to bed.

'night.

Next Steps.

Praise the Lord, the school week has had a great start.  Lilly re-entered the classroom scene with a little bit of anxiety yesterday, but is right back in the swing of things (including today's "friendship feast" between little kindergarten pilgrims and indians).  After a good weekend of swim meets, Anna has been doing well with occasional doses of anti-nausea medication.  For both girls, we are looking ahead and more specific steps.

After discussions with Dr. Campbell today, Lilly is scheduled for another surgery to address her infection on 27 December.  As the antibiotic has done its work over the past few days, we have noticed a small collection of fluid under one of her scars corresponding to the remaining upper part of her left VEPTR device: a little clue.  Dr. C had removed the lower portion of that same device in September, suspicious that the bacteria were there.  Now we are pretty certain the remaining bacteria are harbored on that upper portion that is still in place.  We are thankful to have seen that little clue a few days ago--we e-mailed a photo of it to Dr. C--and are hopeful this may be, Lord willing, the last surgery to address her infection before we get back on track with regular expansion surgeries. 

After discussions with Anna's ENT today, we are increasingly considering the possibility that Anna has Ménière's Disease, an inner ear disorder that affects hearing and balance.  We will also undergo some genetic testing that could point to other causes of her hearing loss.  The ENT is recommending a low sodium diet to attempt to alleviate the symptoms of dizziness and nausea that she has suffered recently, which could be caused by fluid imbalances in her inner ear.  Tomorrow Anna goes back to receive her hearing aid, and is very excited about the prospect of having bilateral hearing again. Stay tuned for photos.

So now I get to design family meals that will a) be high in calories and enable Lilly to gain weight rapidly and b) be low in sodium for Anna's sake.  I think we'll start after Thanksgiving!

We have much for which to be thankful. 

Health Updates on my Girls...Fitting Together Puzzle Pieces

Last week was quite a week. 

I was blessed to be able to attend a women's retreat with ladies from our new church home--Chantilly Bible Church--and it was wonderful to get away, get to know some new friends, enjoy crisp fall weather, and hear some teaching from the Word. 

Everything was great...until the text message I received from Tom on Sunday morning, in response to my text to him asking "Are you guys getting ready to go to church?"

His reply: "No.  Lilly had fevers last night. We're staying home."

Gulp.  My heart sank.  Backing up a few days:  Lilly had finished her last round of antibiotics on Tuesday the 15th, just 5 days prior to the fevers beginning. 

"Please Lord, let it be viral.  Please Lord, let it not be the infection still lingering." 

We dosed her with tylenol and motrin round the clock to keep the increasingly higher fevers at bay.  Her pain levels began to increase in all the usual places to the point where we were back on oxycodone and valium to manage it. 

While I was home nursing Lilly, the school nurse called midday Monday to let me know Anna had come to her office feeling nauseous.  This news almost made me feel relieved, thinking that Lilly might also be fighting a viral stomach bug.  After all, she had wretched a litle bit Monday morning after taking some medicine.  Never before have I so wanted my child to show sings of the stomach flu.

So, Anna joined us at home that Monday with one of the bizarre "stomach bugs" that she tends to get now and then.  I say they are bizarre because they do not follow the normal pattern of a 24-hour bug.  Rather than feeling absolutely miserable for 24 hours, having no appetite, and basically keeping nothing down, she feels ill once every 6-8 hours or so, but has an appetite in between and seems pretty normal otherwise.  It's just that pesky throwing up every now and then that means she can't go to school. 

So, as Lilly continued to fever and suffer from pain (with no signs of any other illness...no nausea, no upper respiratory syptoms, no issues with digestion or urination), Anna was home with us for the next 2 days of school.  By Thursday, I thought she was ready to try again and sent her to school.  That was the same day Tom had made arrangements for Lilly to get in for some lab work and chest x-rays to figure out what was going on with her.  So, while I was at Ft. Belvoir's hospital with Lilly, I got another call from Anna's school nurse to let me know she was back in her office, complaining again of nausea.  Tom had to leave work early to go pick up Anna.  Meanwhile, Lilly and I picked up our new prescription of oral antibiotics, the blood work showing that her white counts and other markers for bacterial infection were highly elevated.

Back home again with both my girls on Thursday afternoon, I started connecting some dots with Anna's mystery illnesses.

The last time she suffered from this illness was back in February when Nana was staying with Jared and Anna while Lilly, Tom and I were in Philly for Lilly's initial VEPTR placement surgery.  This was when Anna had also first begun to complain that she had weird "static" and "morse code" noises in her left ear and had trouble hearing out of it.  At the time, I had written off the weird ear issues as just part of whatever her weird viral stomach issues had been and thought it would pass.  The stomach issues did, the tinnitis in the ear did not.

So, as you know if you have been keeping up with us, we have traveled a long road of evaluating Anna's hearing which will culminate in getting her first hearing aid this week (she is SO excited, BTW).  There hasn't been any other episodes of the "bizarre stomach bug" until now.  But there have been recent episodes of dizziness/vertigo, which also required her to come home from school. 

By now, you are probably all wondering why it has taken me so long to connect the dots....

I believe that Anna's bizarre stomach bugs are not at all infectious.  I now believe they are simply another aspect to her inner ear issues, triggering the nausea center of her brain.  Researching unilateral hearing loss in children, I have discovered that often times other symptoms can include dizziness and nausea.  We tried giving her some dramamine at night Thursday night and some Robine Friday morning before school (both anti-emitics that help with motion sickness), and she felt great.  Confirmation.

I hope to discuss this theory with her ENT when we see him this week. 

Lilly, meanwhile, has been on her antibiotics again now for 3 days and has been fever free for over 36 hours now.  Again, confirmation that the infection is still here.  She is still having some pain, especially at night, but hopefully that will also soon subside.

So, both Anna's and Lilly's puzzles are getting pieced together.  I am thankful for answers, even though, in Lilly's case, it raises more difficult questions. 

What to do next?

We hope to consult with Dr. Campbell this week to get his take and discuss some possible solutions to the lingering staphoreous infection.  I won't even begin to discuss what my mama's brain starts to list as possible treatment options...I only pretend to have medical knowledge because I'm married to a doc.  But I have enough knowledge only to be dangerous and/or cause myself worry.  So I won't go there with you.

This morning, I am hopeful that both of my girls will be back to school (Lilly, of course, having missed the entire week last week, is nervous about re-entry) and our lives will have some semblance of routine again, at least for a few days until Thanksgiving break. 

Thanks for sticking with me on this long post.  It was probably written more for me that for you...it helps me to process our crazy lives when I write it all out!

Moving Forward

Just a quick update to let you all know that we have, finally, received our Virginia child abuse clearances.  Our homestudy update has been finalized, reviewed by CCAI, and our supplement 3 paperwork is on its way to the USCIS lockbox as I type.  A few days from now, CCAI will file our I800 paperwork to USCIS so that our I800 approval process can run parallel to the supplement 3 processing (as I understand it). 

Our best guess is that we'll be traveling sometime around February of next year.  Not soon enough!  Especially after receiving this new photo of Isabel taken by a family who just returned home with their little boy, who was also at Luoyang Children's Welfare Institute.

I just want to hug this little girl and kiss those cute cheeks!  Lilly says she looks like she needs lots of hugs.  I am thankful for the holidays around the corner which are always a huge time warp and will be a divine distraction from the wait.

On a separate note, we are *hoping* we are moving forward on the post op infection front with Lilly....but as she is currently under the weather with fevers and some pain (having just finished her last round of antibiotics last week--5 months after this all started), we are praying that the infection is not recurring.  Because Anna has also come home from school today with nausea and sore throat, we are hopeful Lilly is simply fighting a virus...please pray with us that this is the case.

LOA! LOA! LOA!

Just a very quick post to announce that we received our LOA on Tuesday.  It is the final approval from China to adopt Isabel, basically seeking our confirmation that "why, yes we do want to adopt this sweet little girl!"  After a flurry of paperwork, it is signed and on its way back to CCAI to be forwarded on to China.  This is wonderful news, and a huge step forward in the process. 

Unfortunately for us, however, we cannot move on to the next step until our homestudy update is finalized.  And it cannot be finalized until our Virginia child abuse clearances come through; the current backlog means that they will still be a few more days in coming, even though it's been over 3 weeks since we submitted them.

Once it is finalized, we can submit it along with our supplement 3 filing to the US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS).

And THEN, we can proceed with the next big step, which is to submit our I-800 paperwork to USCIS for our final immigration approval to bring Isabel home.

Once the I-800 paperwork is submitted, we are looking at travel in the following 11-15 weeks or so   (after we receive our Travel Approval (TA) and Consulate Appointment (CA) date.)

Soooo...all that to simply say: it's looking like we could travel sometime around late January or early February 2012. 

Thank God we have the holidays just around the corner to divert our minds from the wait.  If only she could have been here to share them with us this year.  But we trust that the timing is in God's hands, and we pray that she is receiving nurture and love and care while she waits.

All about Anna

Turning the attention of this blog away from yours truly (as I continue "doing" daily life as it flies by, enjoying the joy in the journey along the way...), I was struck while out running yesterday with some of the awesome things about my beautiful Anna that I wanted to share with all of you.

First of all, she is the "middle child."  It is an obvious fact, a title that she acquired when we brought Lilly home some 2 1/2 years ago, but something that we don't often think about. It was brought up yesterday by her pediatric ENT doctor as he asked her about her siblings, and he commiserated with her (and I chimed in, too, as a middle child) as a fellow middle child.  It felt like the three of us were in a special "club" for those with an older and a younger sibling.  The term holds a certain connotation--for good reason.  In Anna's case, it is manifested in her being either considered "Jared's little sister" or "Lilly's big sister," and, truth be told, most of the time it is the latter. 

But Anna, on her own merits, is worth her own title.  Simply "Anna." 

Allow me to tell you some of the ways Anna has impressed me of late.

• She has managed a difficult school transition with very little fanfare.  With our most recent move, Jared has paved the way to High School, which has earned him a sense of accomplishment and a new level independence. Lilly has embarked on a new journey called kindergarten and kindergarteners naturally just steal the show.  But Anna's move here brought her from a school district where she had already completed the last year of elementary school (5th grade) to a new school district where her grade level is, once again, in elementary school (6th grade).  No excitement of graduating to a new level of education for my Anna this year.  Instead, she is top of the school, coming in on the last year of elementary school with lots of kids that have been together since kindergarten.  Not an easy transition.  Anna is quite social, but her interests are often different than other girls her age so true friendships don't always come easily for her.  She seems, however, to be doing really well and has a couple of new friends that she seems excited about. 

• She is learning to be others' focused.  This is something that it takes many of us years and years to learn.  Anna, however, made some big leaps in this area when we brought LIlly home from China, and continues to shine in this regard.  Most 6th graders don't have to worry about their kindergarten-aged siblings too much.  Anna, however, willingly continues to sit with the kindergarteners in the front of the school bus and help Lilly with her backpack almost every day, simply because she knows that Lilly needs and wants her help.  She did confide to me that sometimes she longs to sit in the back of the bus with the older kids, and I gave her the green light to do so, knowing that Lilly can and will adapt to not having her big sister by her side, but Anna continues on her own initiative to provide Lilly that extra measure of security during their rides to and from school.

• She is pressing on in her swimming, despite feeling like she doesn't quite fit in.  As I mentioned above, forming good friendships is not always easy for Anna, and this pre-teen stage makes it even more difficult, it seems.  With the swim team here, she has lamented more than once that she feels like none of the kids are interested in talking to her and they give her weird looks when she attempts to strike up conversation with them.  The one swimmer that she knows the best (they are in the same class at school and we carpool) approaches swimming and most things in general differently than Anna does, and so a close friendship is not looking likely.  Still, she does not complain when it's time to go to practice or a meet, and she truly sees the benefit in physical activity and wants to improve.
  
  
  
  
  
• She is learning to be more teachable and moldable.  This, again, is something that can take years to develop.  Anna will readily admit that it has been an area of struggle in her life.  By God's grace, however, we are seeing some progress in this area, and Anna understands the need for this trait.  She is learning to spend time quietly with God, looking to Him for her worth and her beauty.
• She is dealing with her hearing loss with grace and patience.  The issue first manifested itself to us back in February, just days before we headed to Philadelphia for Lilly's BIG surgery, just weeks before Nana got pneumonia and almost died, just a few months before Lilly's post op infection, and a few months before our big move.  All of these things caused some major delays in dealing with Anna's hearing loss.  We finally got started on having her hearing loss evaluated in Florida this summer, while LIlly was hospitalized with her infection.  The process takes time, and we are now, finally, getting close to having a hearing aid for her.  She has undergone at least 4 separate hearing tests and has been to at least 8 separate appointments so far as we're determining how best to treat it.  We have several more appointments to go, possibly some genetic testing.  Although she is eager to have her hearing aid and be able to hear, she is compensating for her unilateral hearing without much fanfare.
• She has been dealing with lengthy parental absences, showing growth in maturity.  Because of Lilly's many medical trips, Anna (and Jared) have been left with grandparents and/or friends on numerous occasions, sometimes for just a day or two, sometimes for a week or more at a time.  For Jared, who is older, this hasn't been too much of an issue.  For Anna, however, it is a difficult trial.  She doesn't like to have us away from home, she doesn't like the feeling that things are happening with her sister that she is not fully aware of or informed about.  She is learning to express her need for our communication while we're away and she is learning to be more self-reliant in a host of ways.

Anna with Nana...

Walking to the bus stop with Grammy just before
we left with Lilly for CHOP

• She grows more beautiful by the day, inside and out.  Yes, she's growing up on me.  It is hard to buy clothes for her, as she is sort of in between girls sizes and junior's sizes, but when shopping for an outfit for her to wear to her cousin, Tanya's wedding,  I realized how physically grown up looking she is getting.  And, because of her character development, her outer beauty is matched by her more important inner beauty.  She is not afraid to stand for what she believes in, and she has her own definite sense of style.  She is not afraid to stand out from the crowd, something that will serve her well as the teen years come hurtling our way.

I will leave it at that.  I am thankful I get to be Anna's mom, and am eager to see the plans God has for this strong, spunky, independent, verbal, thoughtful young woman.

And for your viewing pleasure, here are some pics of Anna (and various other folks!) taken recently--most of them at our niece Tanya's October 22 beautiful beach wedding in New Jersey.  (The rest of those photos are on facebook...what a wonderful day!)

Our family.  Anna is a little bit of a "mini-me"...or so I've been told.

Having fun with Tom on the dance floor.

Sharing her daddy for the father-daughter dance.

Taking time to dance with Lilly (though she confided to me

later that she "prefers to dance alone" which she did for most of the reception.)