Two Months

Yesterday was two months since Calli Faith became ours. April 8 to June 8. Randy and I were talking about it recently, trying to decide if we feel like it’s been two months or not. He said he couldn’t believe it’s been that long; I said I felt like it’s been longer. So much has happened in just the past two months and it’s honestly a little exhausting to think back on it! And even though it has been a lot for us, we still can’t even wrap our minds around how much it has been for Calli. We’re amazed at her courage, the way she has so easily adapted and attached to us, and at how willing and trusting she is to just give her love to us. We’re so thankful.

She is doing really, really well. She eats anything we give her, she is sleeping all night and taking a two hour nap during the day, she loves playing with her sisters, and she has (mostly) done very well at trying new experiences. We get asked a lot about how much she understands – it is so amazing what she seems to understand. Before April 8 she had never heard English, and now she can follow 2 or 3 step commands, she doesn’t seem frustrated like she can’t understand us, and she even nods or shakes her head at the right times every once in awhile! It’s pretty amazing to us how much receptive language she has and we are hopeful that her expressive language will grow so much after her palate surgery in August. Even still, she has so many sounds that she makes, which also makes us hopeful that speech therapy will go well. She is also signing more, all done, thank you, and please.

Our lives have been pretty consumed with doctors’ appointments since arriving home. It has honestly been a little overwhelming for me at times: going to all the appointments (in Houston, mostly), scheduling appointments, speaking with the insurance company, calling for results of blood work, calling to confirm appointments – we knew this would be the case, but it’s just a lot to manage when learning to manage three kids itself is a lot! This week we have three appointments, all in Houston, and I’m so thankful for all the help we’ve had with Kendall and Cooper. We really could not do this without the help of our friends and family and we’re so, so thankful.

Kendall and Cooper are doing so well with Calli. They just love her and immediately saw her as part of our family – and that hasn’t changed as the “newness” has worn off. Kendall has been such a big help and has seemed so mature since we came home. Cooper loves Calli so much, but they are so close in age that she gets a lot of Calli’s reactions to having grown up around lots of other kids, having had to defend herself. She will hit at Coop when Cooper comes to sit with me, or when she wants the toy she has, or whatever. It makes Cooper sad, but she seems to be picking up on me saying that “we just have to teach her what to do and what not to do” and now she will say to me, “Mom, we have to teach her that.” She has also seemed so much bigger since we’ve been home and I can’t believe she’s going to be three in August!

Calli seems to be doing really well with attachment, but this is still something that is hard for us to gauge. She lets me do things for her, wants me to hold her, and will sit in my lap and snuggle with me, just like she does for Randy. Most of the time she stays close to us in public, but several times she has walked away with no concern for whether or not we are following her.  People will say, “Oh, she’s so friendly!” but that’s not necessarily a good thing that she will just go anywhere when we’re out. She will still sometimes reach for other people to pick her up, and times like these show us we still have a ways to go in the area of attachment. We still are asking that when we are out in public that you don’t reach for her or try to pick her up. She gets very easily overwhelmed and overstimulated when we are in crowds. Last week we had a hard week at church. By the time I dropped Kendall and Cooper off in their class, and made my way to the foyer to see Randy, Calli was completely overwhelmed and upset. Her eyes were big and she was clinging to me. Randy is preaching this week, so the girls and I are having to stay home – I need his help during the service to take Calli to the foyer during the message. Also, when he has gone on the stage to make an announcement or do the welcome, she gets upset and wants to go with him. It wouldn’t go well if she was in there when he is preaching! I keep telling myself it’s just a season, but I really miss being at church!

We had our first experience with staying away from home this past weekend. We met Gigi and Peeps and Val and her three at Jellystone Park in Waller to camp. It was so much fun and great to get away, but it was too much too soon for Calli. She didn’t sleep well and we think maybe it was just too soon to be out of the cocoon. The second night went much better than the first, but we’ll definitely be sticking close to home for awhile now! It’s hard to know what she will do well with and what will be too much, so I’m sure we’ll make a few mistakes along the way. We’ll just keep following her lead and making decisions that are best for her.

So I think our biggest adjustment at this point is to having three girls. It’s so much fun and also so crazy! Especially with them this young and this close in age – there is just always someone – usually at least two people - who need me. And Calli is so busy. She has learned to climb the bunk bed ladder, she loves to dump out the contents of drawers, and she never stays focused on anything for too long. Typical stuff for this age, but oh so busy!

Such a full two months! Travel around China, home to Texas, first to Ft. Worth then to Lake Jackson, meeting her big sisters, lots of doctor visits, lip surgery and recovery, first times at church, the library, friends’ houses, dinners out at restaurants, the splash pad, visits from her grandparents, swimming, camping, riding on the golf cart, riding in a car seat, sleeping in her own bed, playing at the park, swinging, swinging and more swinging. We’re so proud of how well she’s doing and can’t imagine our family without her in it. We are so thankful for her and can’t wait to see what the next two months hold!

 

One Week Since Surgery

We have been amazed at what Dr. T was able to do with Calli's lip and with how it has healed this past week. We have had a lot of people ask us questions that we thought we would try to answer here.

 

One question we get a lot is if he had to use tissue from somewhere else or if it is all her own tissue. It is all her own lips! He just pulled each side to the middle, used stitches and glue, and then even did some stitching on her nose to open up her nostrils. Pretty amazing!

 

So, we are also asked a lot about the no-nos on her arms. These are not for any kind of wound or anything that had to do with the surgery - they are to keep her elbows from bending so that she is not able to touch her nose or mess with her wound. But as the week has gone on, she has figured out a way to touch it if she wants to even when she has them on. She is so smart! We take them off some so that she can feed herself, but we also leave them on a lot so that we don't have to worry about watching her 24/7 to make sure she's not messing with it.

 

She had a combination of glue and stitches, and the glue has fallen off and the stitches are starting to dissolve/fall out.

 

Here is a progression of pictures throughout the week. I think these first two were Thursday, day after surgery.

 

 Friday

 

Saturday

 

Sunday (and her first swim - with us!) 

Monday - also the day we had three doctors appointments in Houston.

Tuesday

We had her post-op check up on Monday and Dr. T was still very pleased with the outcome! Some of her glue was starting to come off, so he cleaned and clipped it and said the rest would fall off that night - and it did! We also started talking palate surgery and are tentatively planning on August, before Kendall starts school. This will be a much more extensive surgery, and will require three or four days in the hospital - no fun! We'll learn more about that throughout the summer and start making plans toward that!

Randy put these pictures together - before, early after surgery and then one week post surgery. Amazing!

 

We are so thankful for Dr. T and the work he has begun to do. We think he has done an amazing job. That being said, this week has not been totally easy! We have felt a lot of emotions watching her little face change from what it used to look like. We obviously know that we needed to do this for her, but we thought she was beautiful just the way she was. We want her to know that as she grows, and know that we only wanted what was best for her in terms of development, speech, and growth.

When we received Calli's referral in November of last year, we were given three pictures. We looked at those pictures many times a day, for a month. Then we got two new pictures in December. Again, we just studied and studied her sweet little face, praying over her picture and dreaming of holding her. We got two new pictures right before we traveled in April. Then we held her and knew her for the first time on April 8, brought her home and she became part of our family. Her surgery was 5 and a half weeks after we first met her, but we had already fallen in love with the way we knew she looked for all those months. Her face looks completely different to us now. We love it now, we loved it before - it's not an issue of better or worse. It's just different. And that is strange, especially when we have been working so hard on attachment. It's just a little strange and hard to look into a different face, even though we know it's our same Calli. The swelling will continue to go down, and other moms in the community of moms of cleft kids I'm in have told me they felt the same way but that you get used to it over time and just get to fall in love with them twice! :) We just weren't expecting her to look quite as different as she does, and the emotions have taken us by surprise a little. We love her so much and are so proud of how strong she has been through this whole process - it's crazy when we think back through what she has been through in less than two months! She is crazy strong, crazy resilient, and we are so very blessed to be her mom and dad.

Calli's First Surgery

We went to see the cleft doctor we chose for Calli on Monday, May 6th. We really liked him! He is very experienced and has a great personality. He is part of a team that will see Calli all the way through her many surgeries as she grows: plastics, craniofacial surgeon, orthodontists, speech therapists, etc. We were excited about her first appointment, just to begin learning about the process and to see what he thought about her lip and palate.

He said we would repair her lip first, and then do the palate closure in about three months. He said there was no reason to wait and he wanted to get started as soon as possible so we could begin working on speech. When his nurse came in to schedule us, she asked us how soon we were thinking we wanted to do surgery. We told her he said as soon as possible, and she said, well how about next Wednesday, the 15th? Pretty crazy, but we didn't see any reason not to go ahead and get started, so we planned on that!

Last Wednesday we had to leave Lake Jackson at 4:30 am because we were supposed to be at Hermann in Houston at 5:30. Her surgery was scheduled for 7:30. We were so thankful that Kathy and Greg let the big girls have a sleep over at their house - and the girls were pretty excited, too! So much fun. Erin Martin also came to our house that day to keep the girls when Kathy had to go to work, and they had a blast.

We have been so impressed with Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital. All morning, everyone that would be involved in Calli's surgery came in to meet us, explain the part they would be doing, and see if we had any questions. We felt very well-taken care of!

Here are a few pictures we took pre-surgery. We were soaking up all we could of her sweet cleft face!

One of my most favorite pictures!

After waiting in the waiting room, we were taken back to the room where they got her ready for surgery. This is where we met all the nurses, anesthesiologists, Dr. T came and saw us, and we put her gown on for surgery. She started getting a little cranky back here because she had been awake for so long with no food, but the t.v. and being goofy with Dad helped distract her.

 

Dr. T's nurse that came to get Calli to actually take her back for surgery was so sweet and great with Calli. Even though she had been starting to fuss some, she was really liking this nurse and went to her easily. She went and got Calli a toy to hold and then just carried her back to the operating room! Calli didn't even cry at all when they left us. I loved that they just carried her back instead of wheeling her on the bed. They had given her some kind of mild medication to chill her out, but whatever it was helped!

Dr. T had told us to expect about 2.5 to 3 hours total surgery time. We got updates as they got her under the anesthesia and then as they started surgery. An hour and a half later, Dr. T came in the waiting room! I was reading and Randy was sleeping on a bench out in the hall. I stuck my head out and woke him up and he was so startled! He was a little out of it during our meeting with Dr. T.

I told him I was a little concerned to be seeing him so soon. He said if he is ever late to start worrying, but that if he is early it means things went well. He told us he was very pleased with how well the repair went. He didn't have to pull her nose down as much as he thought and he said it was just a really clean repair. He said he thought we would be very pleased. About 15 minutes later we were able to go back to see her in recovery.

She was in and out of sleep as she came out of the anesthesia. Her nose was pretty bloody, and when she was awake she was sad. She let Randy hold her.

 

The nurse there in recovery was with us the whole time. She was great. She told us kind of what to expect over the next few days, and told us what to worry about and what not to worry about. After about 45 minutes, Calli was awake and we felt fine about taking her home. The nurse took care of our discharge orders and we were free to go!

She did great on the car ride home. She slept on and off, still because of the anesthesia, and the drive went by quickly. We were home by 11:30 that morning! Crazy!

I took this picture on the way home. All our family was sad they weren't able to be with us, but I loved that she was covered by the quilt that had all their fabrics on it. They were praying for her and covering her even though they weren't physically there. We are so thankful for them, as well as for sweet friends that helped us with Kendall, Cooper, and even dinner that night. We are so blessed!

 

Check back soon for pictures of her lip as it has healed this past week!

Mother's Day and Calli's Dedication

Sorry some of these pictures are a little blurry! I only had my phone and didn't think to grab my camera.

Mother's Day 2013 was wonderful! It was so great to celebrate my three girls and having Calli home with us. It was also special because we dedicated Calli in the Mother's Day dedication at church! Kendall and Cooper were both dedicated on Mother's Day, so we loved getting to do Calli's on that day, too!

Prior to the dedication, we listened to three talks done by our children's ministry, each with homework to complete. We wrote a letter to Calli, identified core values and habits we wanted to prioritize. Then we went to an orientation where we talked about ways to implement these. We love the way BPF does parent/child dedication - it is very meaningful to us.

Our friends the Fipps also dedicated their two sons and their new daughter in the same service as us. They are in our small group and we loved doing this together! There were 12 other families dedicating their children in the other two services, but we were the only two in the 8:30 service. We were both so proud of ourselves for getting all six of our kids there - not only on time, but early!

 It was also a special weekend because all 6 of the girls' grandparents come down to LJ! They all got here on Saturday and left on Sunday and we just had so much fun eating at home, hanging out, and playing. Very laid-back and relaxed and great to all just be together! We are so thankful for our family!

 It was a beautiful weekend and we spent lots of time outside. We are soaking up all the outside time we can get before the mosquitoes arrive. So far so good! It was a great holiday!

On Mother's Day...

As Mother's Day has approached and I have thought of how blessed I am to be Calli's mom, I have been thinking a lot about her birth mother (and father). So many times I wish that I could talk to her. If I could, I would want her to know this:

To Calli's first mom,
Words could never express how thankful I am for you. I cannot imagine the enormity of the decision you made to take Calli where she could be cared for and how difficult that was for you. I have two other biological children, and the bond that I had with them from the minute they were born is something so strong and incredible. You were with her for almost two months, trying your best to care for and love her and you did an amazing job. Your decision to take her to that hospital was the most loving and sacrificing thing I could ever imagine.
I want you to know how much we love her. How she has become so much a part of our family and we have become so attached to her. She has two big sisters now that are over the moon about her and dote on her all day long. We have been making lots of big decisions for her lately and we are really trying to do our best to give her the best care we can. Soon the way she looks will change, and we are a little sad about that. The face she has now is the one we fell in love with 7 months ago and we will miss the sweet little mouth she has now. We're confident that the smile that lights up her whole face now will be the same smile she will have after her surgery and that her contagious laughter won't change.
You need to know how brave our girl is. From the minute we first met her, we saw how she was being brave. She has flown all the way around the world, has left everyone she ever knew, and has let us love her the way we have wanted to for so long. She is happy to try any food we give her, she plays so well with all of us, and she sleeps soundly all night long. She's so brave and we're so proud of her.
I also want you to know that I pray for you a lot. I pray that you have peace and that you will find the love of our Savior who created you, Calli, and who allowed her to be placed in our arms. I thank God for the brave decision you made for her, even placing her somewhere where she would be cared for quickly. No doubt she got her bravery from you.
Happy Mother's Day! I will always share this day with you and honor you when we celebrate. Calli will always know how much you loved her and how thankful we are for you.

Bonding Check

Nothing makes you realize how much your love for your child has grown like deciding that they will have surgery next week.  Yes, next week!  We met Dr. T for our first appointment today at UT Pediatric (or t.u.).  He said, "Let's do this ASAP!"  It turns out ASAP is next Wednesday, May 15.  He sees no reason to wait, and we don't either.  This was faster than we ever expected but not faster than what we are comfortable with.  However, our heads are spinning!  We left the appointment wanting to throw up.  Not because we made the wrong choice, but because:
- We've never had a child that needed surgery
- We don't want her to hurt
- We don't want her to be scared
- We don't want her beautiful face to change
- We don't want her smile to change
- We don't want her to not like the way she looks when she is older
- We love her
But, those are the very same reasons that we are doing this.

It was a major gut check.  A clear indicator of how deep our love has grown since we met 4 weeks ago yesterday.  We hurt at the thought of her hurting.  She is our daughter!

It is so much to process, and we feel like we have already processed so much.  We're exhausted - but we are up for this!

This may not make sense to others, but we fell in love with her little face just the way it is.  Her smile makes us smile just the way it is.  The thought of her face changing is strange.  Her face will continue to be beautiful and her smile will still light up a room - but it will be different.  And that makes us a little sad.

So, why now and what exactly is happening?
Calli will be having the surgery on her cleft lip.  Her palate reconstruction will be a separate surgery toward the end of summer.  The lip surgery is (shockingly) an outpatient procedure.  We will go in early on Wednesday morning, the procedure will take about 3 hours, and we will be at home before the end of the day.  Unlike the palate surgery, the pain and recovery are not too bad when you do just the lip.  She will even be able to eat the same day.  We know that will be very important to her - our little bottomless pit!

The reason to get this moving is mainly a speech issue.  At 20 months old the timing is very important.  All things considered we would not have made this decision if bonding, attachment, and the process of adjusting was not going so well.  Things are going so good!  We've obviously never done this before, but we feel like we are seeing rapid progress - everyday.  Calli is so comfortable at home.  She has connected so well with the girls.  She is "attached" to me and Ashley.  In fact, she cried big time while I was holding her at the doctor appointment when Ashley left the room to go speak to the business administrator.  I was shocked, a little offended, but totally excited.  We have even heard from friends that have been down the exact same road that the surgery can accelerate bonding and attachment.  We are praying that is the case.  We have every reason to believe that it will be - God has been so good to us, and answered every prayer - big and small - throughout this entire journey.  As always we are grateful for your prayers.

So, next week is another big week.  We will continue to love our baby through this - just the way she is.  And she will continue to be so brave!  It will be another bonding check, and we will find that somehow our love has already grown, again!

 At Dr. T's office.  We really liked him and all of his staff.

 Sweet pink cheeks!

Snack trap in hand!

One Week Home!

We have had a wonderful first week home! The girls are loving spending time together and we just love watching them. We have been staying home a bunch but also getting out just a little here and there.

We love these three girls in their towels!

 Calli fell asleep on Randy's lap one night right after bath. Look at her hand on Molly! She is sleeping so great - in her own bed, 10-11 hours each night, with a 2 hour nap. We couldn't ask for more than that!

 Calli loves to eat. She definitely has some issues with food, but we're working on those as much as possible. She gets so excited when we walk into the kitchen that she squeals and laughs. She eats all the food we give her and then all the rest of the girls' food. We have to put the food away, clean up, turn out the lights and all leave the kitchen or she just wants to keep eating and eating. If we walk into the kitchen for something and don't get food, she throws a fit. We can't wait to see how much weight she gains in the next few months!

 She loves bathtime!

 And swinging!

 We went to Dr. B for her first appointment on Tuesday. She did great for him and we loved getting to introduce him to her. He helped us so much throughout the whole referral process and we are so thankful for him! Calli weighed 22 lbs 5 oz and was 33 inches long. That's the 30th percentile for weight and the 75th for height. We're curious about the percentile she's in for her head - it measured 46 and a quarter cm: her head is so big! Maybe just compared to her skinny body. Dr. B said she's tall and skinny like her mama. :) Loved that. He ordered a bunch of labwork that we have started working on this week and also spoke with the cleft team that we'll be working with! He went ahead and made us an appointment with the cleft team in Houston for the week after next! Things are moving along!

 Cutie bug!

 We've given her lots of kisses, but these are the first ones she gave us! One of the sweetest moments yet! Love this so much.

 Kendall and Cooper's strawberries are growing from her Strawberry Shortcake party in February!They were excited to try the first ones!

 Kendall started back to school this week on Tuesday and Thursday. They have been learning about insects, and brought home worms to put in a garden. Kendall was excited to put them in her flower bed in front of the playhouse - look at how well their flowers are doing!

 We made our first trip to Chick fil A with Calli! She ate a whole nugget meal by herself - crazy!

We always see our friend Kristin Walker and her boys when we go to Chick fil A. She even said on facebook when we were in China that she couldn't wait until we came home and she saw us walking in Chick fil A. Well, guess who was there when we walked in this week - Kristin! So funny. I had to take a picture with her. :)

And, last but not least, her very first DQ blizzard. Guess what...she loved it!

We've had a great week and are loving learning more about Calli and watching her learn about her new family. We're so thankful for all the support we've had coming home - especially having meals brought for dinner every other night! Seriously - such a wonderful gift. It makes it so nice that we are just able to stay home and work on becoming a family!