MRI

Last week we had to be in Houston at 5:30 am for an MRI Calli had scheduled. Thankfully, Mom was here to be with the big girls, so we didn't have to worry about waking them up. Randy and I got up WAY too early, got ready, and then just loaded Calli in the car in her pajamas. She was a little confused but totally great on the ride up.

Because they needed her to be perfectly still for the MRI, and because it would take about two hours, they had to completely sedate her with full anesthesia. Ugh. So we were back in the pediatric day surgery unit at Hermann. And can I just say that we are loving that place?! They are such an answer to prayer. This was the same place we were for her lip surgery just 2 months ago. Everyone takes such good care of us and of Calli and makes us all feel comfortable. This visit, 4 separate nurses looked at us and remembered Calli from last time. We thought that was so cool! Everyone is so sweet.

Last time we didn't walk with Calli from pre-op to the operating room, but this time we were able to walk with her from pre-op to the radiology room where she would have the MRI. Before we walked down there, they gave her an oral medicine (Versed) to chill her out a little. Then we carried her down to the room and were with her when the anesthesia nurse (who did everything! way more than the actual anesthesiologist!) put the mask on her and let her fall asleep. She did great! They put the iv and everything in her after she was asleep so she wouldn't fuss. Then we left and they had her about two hours.

Here she is in her beautiful hospital gown:

After a couple hours, they came and got us and took us to recovery. She was pretty upset coming out of the anesthesia this time. We held her and stayed there for about an hour and then were released to go home. She stayed pretty upset most of the way home but started feeling better once we were home. She still couldn't sit by herself, or walk, which made us laugh a little. :) Sweet girl - she's so brave and we are so thankful for such wonderful medical care!

Also - this is not related to her cleft at all. She has another condition that we just are monitoring and getting all kinds of baseline data so the specialist can know how to move forward. We've had an ultrasound already, lots of blood work, and now the MRI. Nothing major - just lots of tests and appointments!

Her Voice

Calli's palate surgery is scheduled for the middle of August. We are not looking forward to it, as the recovery will be much harder for her. We repaired her lip back in May, but she still has no roof of her mouth. This surgery will give her a palate and will help with her speech development.

I have been following another adoptive family's blog who brought their daughter home from China less than a year ago. She is just a couple of months older than Calli and also had cleft lip and palate. Her palate surgery was just last week, and her mom wrote this post yesterday about how her recovery is going and how her voice has changed. You can read it here - such a sweet post. If you have time, she has a wonderful blog and it's great to read.

We hadn't even thought of how the sound of her voice would change! She makes a lot of sounds, but doesn't have many words at this point. Reading this made me realize how even the sounds she makes will change, and it encouraged me to record her as much as I can before the surgery.

So last night, we were sitting on the couch and I was able to get some great video! I turned the camera where she could see herself and she just babbled so much! Such sweet noises. We love how she says Kendall's name and of course I am just loving how she says "mama." One word she says very clearly is "Mol" for Molly. That was one of her first words. We will treasure these videos forever!

 

 

 

Calli's First Fourth

We had such a fun fourth! This was Calli's first fourth of July as an American citizen, so we had a lot to celebrate. We look forward to the 4th every year because our friends the Gryseels have their annual party at their house. All our friends from church are there and it's just so much fun. We eat, hang out, the kids swim in kiddie pools, and then we have a great view of the fireworks that the city of Lake Jackson puts on. So much fun!

Granny got the girls matching dresses and they looked so cute! It's a little ridiculous how much I love it when they all three match. Jenny asked Randy how many sets of matching clothes we have and Randy said "as much as the grandparents will buy!" :) So cute.

 Gigi and Peeps were here for the weekend, so they got to come to the party with us! We enjoyed having them here and just had a laid-back few days of resting and being at home. It was great!

Our friends Laura and Justin came and had their son Easton with them. Easton's birthday is one day after Calli's, and we have been so excited for them to meet. You can tell they were pretty thrilled about it too.

 Fun times with Sarah and Caleb! Seeing them on the hammock reminded me about another fourth of July many years ago out on the Hancock's ranch when I flipped Alden on a hammock and she broke her arm. I told them that story and said be careful!!

 Cheetos for dinner....ok!

 Our little American!

 Getting wet in the kiddie pools! Calli was super excited about this. She loved it!

 

We didn't know how Calli would react to the fireworks. She was sitting in my lap when they started, and she watched the first two and then quickly turned around to where she was facing me and put her head up against my chest. She left it there the whole time and I covered the ear that was not against me. A few times I tried to sit her up and she would press herself up so hard against me. Sweet girl. When they were over, I said, "All done!" and she sat up, did the sign language for all done and said "Gwo gwo!" (That's Calli for "all done." And "thank you." And "goodbye." And pretty much everything.) She was totally fine when they were finished! It was a late night and we had three tired girls, but it was so much fun!

Watching the fireworks, listening to God Bless the USA, and holding Calli made me a little emotional! What an amazing thing that she is a new American citizen and has the opportunity to live in a country where she has so many freedoms. We don't take for granted where we were born, and know that it's only by God's grace that we have had the wonderful life we have. We're so thankful she is a part of our family forever and know that to whom much has been given, much is required. We want to steward the freedoms we have well and teach our girls to not take them for granted. What a wonderful way to celebrate Calli's 3 month Forever Family day (three days early)! It has been an amazing three months since she was placed in our arms!

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!