Camping and Kings Dominion

Yesterday Julia had a follow up appointment with her GI doctor.  She weighed a whopping 20 pounds!!  That's 4 1/2 pounds since we got her home....praise the Lord : )  She has another appt. in a month, at which point they will look at scheduling her to get a GI tube placed.   We have finally gotten them on our health insurance.  We are looking forward to getting Julia some glasses and scheduling Aaron's botox injections to help straighten his eyes.  Now that we have gotten over the major hurdle with Julia's severe malnutrition, we are going to start getting Aaron the orthopedic appts. to see what steps we can take to help him walk better.

We have been busy trying to finish up school with our oldest daughter, Kacey.  Unfortunately, I will be doing school with Ethan probably until the end of July.  He was basically without school while I was gone for 6 weeks.  Kacey had her Spring Dance show this passed weekend.  But dance is not over for the year.  She is finding out any day whether her teachers think she is ready to go on point in ballet.  This means ballet classes for most of the summer.  Regan's preschool has ended for the summer. 

I'm so wanting things to wind down and calm down, but with 6 kids, even if the running around ends....the craziness at home does not!  Evan, our two year old is still, by far, having the hardest time adjusting to 2 new siblings.  He still wants so much mommy time and there is just not enough of me to go around.  I need prayers for patience and for peace in not getting everything accomplished as quickly as I would like to.  Many days I feel like I have very little time to sit back and enjoy these 6 blessings, besides taking care of their physical needs and keeping the house running smoothly.  It is quite a challenge.....a challenge that I knew I was facing, but being so wrapped up in all the adoption paperwork and travel, I could never have fully anticipated or processed how much of an adjustment this would be in all areas of our lives.  But when we can see the noticeable weight gain in Julia or watch her roll over to her tummy and get on all fours or hear Aaron speak more and more English everyday or delight in his squeals of laughter on an amusement park ride......it makes it all worth it.  God is good and will sustain us!

Here are some pictures of our camping trip two weekends ago and Kings Dominion yesterday:

Julia getting breakfast

Daddy frying bacon for our breakfast

Kacey and her best friend Sarah setting table while Evan waits to eat

Regan, Evan and Ethan romping around with Julia just before bed

Julia, Evan, and Ethan

Julia on her tummy!

She is so proud of her new energy and strength!

Ethan and Evan at Kings Dominion

Regan and Aaron at Kings Dominion

First Month in Pictures

Ethan and Aaron building a marble run

Evan and Regan giving Julia love...

.....more love from Regan...

.....and some more!  Can you tell Regan adores Julia?

Regan feeding Julia a bottle

Ethan's turn feeding Julia

Aaron's favorite chore....helping me with the laundry

Julia at the park

Aaron at the park

The finished project!

Aaron's second favorite chore......

 ....sorting the silverware from dishwasher

Aaron playing with Julia at the hospital

Grandpa and Aaron....Aaron loves dunking his head under the water!

Kacey's 12th birthday slumber party

Evan's 2nd birthday (he and Kacey share the same birthday...May 5)

Evan's birthday gift

Julia is doing great with her NG tube feedings.  Yesterday she weighed 18 lbs. 1 oz.  I am sorry it has taken so long to get pictures up as I had promised, but I have been feeling a bit overwhelmed.   It's been very busy for us.  It is my birthday this weekend and my wish was to get away for the weekend.  So we are going camping!

Julia's coming home tomorrow....

Yay!  Today they finally confirmed that Julia is coming home tomorrow.  We are so happy....we have missed having her at home.  Of all of our children, it seems that our three year old, Regan, has missed her the most.  I took her with me today to visit Julia.  She was loving on her and kissing her.  She loves her so much.  On the ride home tonight, I told her that she is coming home tomorrow and she got super excited.  Julia's crib was in our bedroom at first, but after about a week, we moved it into Regan's room.  Regan has been begging to have her in her room with her, but we had to keep telling her that she needs to start out in our room and we'll see how things go.  When we decided to move her, Regan was so happy.  Thankfully, when Julia is up at night playing with her toys, it doesn't keep Regan awake.  So Regan has been missing her roommate.  One of the nurses went over the feeding pump with me today and tomorrow we are going to take the NG tube out, so I can place it in one more time before I take her home.  She was about 17 lbs. 6 oz.  today.  She is slowly, but steadily putting on weight.  It's almost 2 pounds up from when we first brought her home.  You can visibly see the difference.  She is also becoming more and more energetic every day.  It also seems that there is more in her eyes each time I see her.  She is coming alive and feels so much better I'm sure. 

It has been so warm here and Aaron sweats like crazy!  He plays hard outside.  Yesterday, he and the other kids were so sweaty that I got out the sprinkler.   Aaron loved it.  We got his bathing suit on and off he raced (crawling as fast as he could) toward the water.  He sat there kneeling for something like a half an hour while the sprinkler went back and forth and up and down his face and body.  He laughed every time and the water hitting his face hardly phases him.  After a while he did get cold.  We had placed the sprinkler in the shade so he wouldn't get sunburned.  Unlike my other kids, his skin is very fair.  Not sure yet how well he tans/burns.  Our 4 feet deep above ground pool is now ready, so while Regan and I were at the hospital today, daddy took the other kids for a swim.  He said Aaron is not very comfortable with the large quantity of water, but he had fun as long as someone was holding him.  He was not ready to float on his own yet.  We buy these life jacket/water wings type things that have a part of it that wraps around the front.  It is made to hold them up higher in the water than just regular water wings.  They are also not inflatable, but made from the same material that life jackets are made with.  They are great and I'm sure he'll get used to it soon.  It never ceases to amaze me how quickly he acclimates to new things.  Oh, before I forget.....today we were driving somewhere and our two year old, Evan, was crying in the car.  Aaron comes out with, "What's the matter?"  Yes, his English is coming along.  He is like a 10-12 month old age baby, when you know the baby can understand much more than he/she can say.  And then shortly after this stage, the speaking comes on rapidly.  We can't wait.  We know it's coming!!

Wow!!!!!!

I have never posted twice in one day and this is not going to be a long post.....but we are soooo excited!  Julia weighed 17 pounds 2 ounces this morning!!!  This is 10 oz. up from yesterday's weight.  So incredible: )  Praise the Lord!!  She is also tolerating her daytime bolus feeds very well.

Aaron wanted to get in her crib today and play with her while she was getting her noontime feed.  He was so sweet and gentle with her.  She enjoyed having him in there.  Oh, also.....we were at Chick-fil-A for lunch on our way home from the hospital and Aaron sang 'Jesus Loves Me' to Grandma.  He knows the whole song and it is very sweet....he is so proud of himself : )

Update on Julia and Aaron

Julia weighs 16 pounds 7 oz!!!!!  That's almost a whole pound gained since we brought her home.  She is thriving in the hospital.  Last night she was smiling, laughing, playing and very rambunctious.  As of yesterday she was up to 55 mL of continous feeding an hour....that's up from 30 mL when this started and their initial goal was to get her up to 42 mL.  Last night they upped it to 65!!!  Today they are also discontinuing the "continuous feeds" during the day and switching her to bolus feeds.  She will get fed at 9, 12, 3 and 6 and then go back to continuous feeding throughout the night.  I am sure she will contiue to gain weight steadily.  Yay!!  So the dr. told me that she is doing so well, that she may come home by the end of this week.  We cannot wait : )  She will have to continue to be fed through the NG tube for about 2 months.  Then she will be evaluated to see if she will take enough food orally or if she needs to have a GI tube placed in her stomach.  Some of this will depend on when she is strong enough for surgery.  But for now, when we bring her home,  we will need to be placing the tube down her nose to her stomach.  They had me do this once a couple of days ago and it's not easy.  Not because it's difficult to feed it through, but she is a fighter and is very strong.  The nurses are impressed with her strength.  It takes two people to hold her still and one person to actually put it in. 

Aaron continues to thrive here at home.  He is coming out with more English on his own.  We are starting to realize that he understands more than he can say.  We will be at the dinner table and talking about something and all of the sudden he chimes in (in Russian) with hand motions and such and we realize he is joining in on our topic of conversation.  He knows what we had been saying.  It's so awesome.  He loves to play outside with all the kids.  He got a little bit of a sunburn on his arms a couple of days ago.  Good Vitamin D for him though. The mosquitos LOVE him.  His poor neck, face and arms got bitten up as it got to evening time.  His favorite is the sandbox in the back yard.  He was so proud of himself when he mastered the monkey bars dome.  His upper body is very strong and his muscles are very defined.  He pulls with his arms and draws his legs up to the bars.  As he was accomplishing this feat, he yelled, "Ethan! Look!"  He wanted his "big" brother to watch him. 

We are off to the hospital again today.  Since Julia's roommate was moved out of her room, they said they will make an exception to the rule of no children under 12 allowed back in the rooms....as long as no one is sick.  Grandma (Steve's mom) wants to visit Julia today too, so she is driving here this morning and we will all drive down together this morning.  On Saturday, we all went down and we were able to bring Julia out of her room to a family/toy room, so the kids could see her and play.  Yesterday, I went down by myself and left the hospital at 9pm and didn't make it home until 11:30pm.  It's normally a one hour drive, but two lanes were closed down on 95N for 3 miles of paving.  I was in almost complete stand still traffic for almost 1 1/2 hours.  I was very exhausted by the time I made it home.

We will continue to update you on Julia and Aaron's progess.  Pray that Julia continues to thrive and that she can come home before the weekend!!  My mom, dad, and brother from CT are coming down for Memorial weekend, as well as my brother from Chicago.  They all can't wait to meet both Julia and Aaron and it would be such a blessing for her to be home and not to have to meet and visit her in the hospital.