A Day of a Few Firsts

Just a quick note about some of the fun "firsts" we experienced today!

Rebekah lost her FIRST TOOTH today!!! How fun! Go Rebekah! You are getting so grown up!

Jonathan sitting up in his crib for the FIRST time!

Now, I have to explain this. Because J spent the first year of his life laying down w/ zero stimulation, he has not been able to transition from lying on his tummy to sitting...until Sunday night. I put him on his knees and hands, and he pushed and pushed until he could sit up! Way to go Jonathan! He even did his new trick for the PT on Monday AM. But today...my little man can get from flat on his tummy to sitting up - and quickly too! YAY!!! He's getting so much stronger.
So...nap this AM. He thought it was fun to sit up and NOT sleep. :-) Thankfully, he can go back down to his tummy when he wants too. He'll sleep when he's tired enough I guess...just about time to lower the mattress before he surprises me by pulling up and standing. Now, that will be a celebration!

This is a good example though of celebrating all of those little milestones that my chromosomally enhanced boys reach. I don't remember even noticing when my other kids reached this milestone. They will reach those milestones, just takes them a bit longer. :-)

And our 3rd FIRST for the day was going grocery shopping....with ALL SEVEN CHILDREN!!  Yes, this was the FIRST time since Jonathan has been home with all of them. I don't think I ever went with all 6 after Elijah came home either. I must say, having a daughter old enough to babysit ROCKS!  But anyway, today was just a quick stop at the small store here in our small town. The kids did GREAT!!!! We had 2 carts and E & J were both sitting up front. Rachel sat in the big part of one of the carts and away we went. We were going to count comments (much like we count comments about the stroller), but we didn't get any. Imagine that! Sarah said we got lots of looks though and people doing the little "head nodding" thing.  The "head nodding" is when people are silently how many kids there are. LOL Love it! (To be honest I do the same thing when I see a big family. Love big families! :-))

Speaking of which, here's a photo from Monday just for fun....Ok, do the head nodding thing and see if there is anyone missing!

Look how nice and big and straight Jonathan is sitting. He's come SO far in  4 1/2 months. Hard to believe he still had head control issues in June when we met him. 

The Last Day...

Today is the last day to enter the iPad2 giveaway to help bring Teagan and Kelten home! Click HERE to donate and read the details. Just $10 gets you an entry. Every single dollar helps the incredible Burman family bring home their boys.  Teagan and Kelten are in an orphanage in EE. But many of the children in this orphanage are VERY tiny and VERY malnourished. As you see below, Kelten is TWELVE YEARS OLD and is an infant walker!!! Teagan may very well be in the same shape as Carrington was when she came home.  (As you may remember, the Burmans adopted Carrington from Elijah's orphanage earlier this year. She was literally hours from dying when they got home.)

One of the precious little ones has just come home from this orphanage. Little Katie weighed less than 11 pounds and is 29" inches long. Now given that my children were about 7 1/2 pounds and 20" long when they were born, you will realize that Katie is long and very thin (by baby standards). What you wouldn't know by looking at those stats is that she is NINE YEARS OLD. Yes, she is the same age as my 4th grader, Anna. I was looking at the photos on her blog and just started weeping. I was holding Elijah at the same time and just keep thinking that could have been him...

Folks, Carrington, Katie, Kelten and Teagan are not the only ones in this state of just existing (they are not even in the same country)...locked away from society. Why??? Just because they have Down syndrome. That's it. This is why these children, Teagan and Kelten need to get home ASAP. This is why it is SO important to support adoptive families with your prayers AND your financial gifts. Please don't let money stand in the way of Teagan and Kelten coming home to their mommy and daddy and a whole lot of siblings that are going to love them to pieces. :-)

Oh, that reminds me of another thing I wanted to say about large families adopting (again). But I guess I'll save that for another day. It's one of those posts I've had swirling in my head since we got home with Jonathan. Sometime soon I hope I can get that post out of my head and onto the screen.

Please pray for the Burmans to pass through USCIS and to have all of the funds they need to travel to get their boys.

Teagan Chance         Kelten Drake

 

4 years old                12 years old

Hearing tests x2 - Check!

Jonathan had his hearing test on Monday afternoon. Our unscientific test with the pot lids was pretty accurate. Neither of his eardrums seem to be working very well - if at all. I do believe he can hear something, but not much. The past few weeks he has really started to babble a lot more, so that's a good sign. So, he will see the ENT doc next week for a medical evaluation. He has super tiny ear canals (pretty common in kids w/ Ds) that were pretty filled with wax. So, please pray with me that a good cleaning (probably will have to be cleaned fairly regular) and tubes to drain any fluid behind his ear drums will take care of his hearing problems. Thanks!

Ok, on to Elijah whose test was this afternoon. I didn't have any concerns about Elijah's hearing. His speech seems to be developing well and he usually hears all that we say to him (minus "selective hearing" :-)). A hearing check was on the list, and something I should have done months ago. Well, his LEFT ear works just fine. His RIGHT one, not so much. :-( He definitely favors his left ear when she tested his side-to-side hearing. She did say she saw some wax in his right ear as well. So....we have yet another appt with the ENT doc to get it checked out. We tried to combine both boys appts but we couldn't. So, we left J's appt for next week (right after Elijah's eye appt) and Elijah's will be the week after Thanksgiving. Thinking about it, sometimes when we ask Elijah to come back from standing too close to the TV, he has his left ear turned towards it. Not always, but sometimes. That probably explains why he ignores us when he is standing like that! :-) He hasn't had any ear infections since we got home. We had his orphanage medical records translated when we got home, so I'll have to ask Dr T if any were recorded.

So, that's the scoop from here. I've been pretty busy with helping Pat "process" chickens and canning spaghetti sauce from tomato puree we had in the freezer from last fall. We have more meat coming this week so the tomatoes needed to get out of the freezer.

God's Blessings to all of you! Thanks for reading.

11-11-11

Happy Veteran's Day! Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all of you have served this country and have sacrificed so much to protect our precious freedoms!!! We are SO blessed to live in this country!

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I love the date today! I'm going to schedule this post to autopost at 11:11pm tonight. We'll see if it works! :-)
I'm not being superstitious. It's just fun to write and say.

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Today, we had our readoption hearing for Jonathan at the county courthouse. (The post about Elijah's readoption is HERE.) It really is just a formality so we can get a "Certificate of Birth Facts" from the State of WI, the equivalent to a regular birth certificate for a child born here. He will need this if ever wants to apply for a passport, plus it covers us in case his original Ukrainian birth certificate is ever lost. Anyway, the only thing the judge asked us today was if we had any questions and if we wanted a picture. LOL Sarah and I both forgot our cameras, so we used Pat's phone. If we figure out how to get the photo off there (and if Isaac will stop playing Angry Birds on it), I'll post it here.

So, Jonathan's readoption hearing was on 11-11-11. Elijah's fundraising benefit was on 10-10-10. I wonder what 12-12-12 will bring us in the adoption world. Hee hee...I wonder if our mothers are still upright after reading that...I'm totally joking though!

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GUESS WHAT?!?!  Carter is OUT of the orphanage FOREVER!!!! Praise God!!!!!  Hop on over to Jake and Ashley's blog at http://homeiswhereitsat.blogspot.com. Can't wait to meet that boy! Hopefully on Tuesday! Please pray for them as they finish up the visa processing and for a safe flight home!

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Lots of crazy busy appointments coming up. Earlier this week, I brought Jonathan in for an eye check up. Pretty amazing what they can tell with a non-verbal kid. His eyes are fine. Praise God! She just wants to see him every year to see how he's doing. Elijah gets his eyes checked in a week or so. Both boys have hearing tests this next week too. Yes, I should have brought E in a long time ago, but I didn't have any concerns. Well, if they audiologist could fix "selective listening", that would be a concern I'd bring up. :-)

I've always had mild concerns about Jonathan's hearing. I just never knew if it was hearing thing or a cognitive thing or a ??? (no idea) thing. But last week, I had Sarah come up behind him and bang two metal pan lids together - 12" from his head while he was drinking his bottle. He.did.not.flinch. Hmmm....Then she gave one big BANG. He only batted his eye lids. But yet, when he is laying in his crib with his back away from the door, I can come in and say his name a couple of times and he will turn to me. Hmmm....So, we shall see what the audiologist says. But you know what? If he has hearing loss, we will still love him all the more. If he has an auditory processing problem, we will still love him all the more. If he has nothing wrong and just has a high tolerance to loud noises, we will still love him all the more. :-)

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The cutest thing...Rachel is now walking around the house singing this song. It is way too cute. We'll have to try to get a video of it.

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Just all over the place tonight with this post, so I'd better stop. We are all doing well. I'll try to post some more pictures soon! Have a great weekend!