Computer

I just wanted to let you know that my computer has been acting up and Jason is going to be fixing it up for a few days. I hope not too long. I may go through withdrawal from not being able to blog and upload and look at all my pictures!!!

We had a HAPPY and thankful Thanksgiving. Tonight Karla's 2nd cousins and great aunt and great uncle came over to meet her. I think everyone had a good time! I'll have to post pictures when I can!

Tomorrow we are headed to my parents' house in Ohio. It'll be our first "long" drive (1 1/2 hours) with Karla. She is going to meet ALL of my side of the family. Thirty people are going to finally get to meet her. We are hoping it goes well for Karla and that she has fun. Usually my family has a Thanksgiving celebration on the Saturday after Thanksgiving but this year we are all going out to eat and then having a party at my parents' house to celebrate Karla being home (and my grandma being done with chemo and now being cancer-free)!!

Have a good weekend!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

This year we have a lot to be thankful for! So many answered prayers and a new family member!
Here is Karla getting the turkey baster ready for the big day... (We're not really cooking the turkey but I was feeling festive while washing dishes)

We are thankful for lots of loving family!

Karla was better today than yesterday. I still don't think she has been herself and her eyes looked so tired all day. I have a nagging feeling that she is going to be sick again. I may just be an over-worried mom though - I hope so anyway. Our other theory is that she is getting some teeth. Karla did wake up at 3 am again. It is weird how it is the same time each night. I'm not sure what that means. Last night it only took a half an hour to get her back to sleep.

Words Karla said today (good thing I keep a piece of paper handy!): me, jingle (for Jingle Bells), excuse me (Elmo may have helped her say this), red, yeah football (Daddy has been drilling her on this), and stool (she sits on a stool while she brushes her teeth and when I dry her hair).

Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Survived

Survived - that is how I feel about today. It all started at 3 or 4 this morning. Not sure what time. Karla woke up again and didn't want to go back to sleep. I finally took her in the guest room and we slept on and off in the twin bed there because I wanted Jason to be able to rest for work. She was up by 7:30 again. The morning went pretty well. We went to Babies R Us and she had fun playing with Grammy and the toys while I looked around. It was nice to be there and KNOW what size Karla wears and what she actually needs. I picked up some necessities. Then we had to check out. Karla screamed the whole time and of course I had coupons and gift cards to try use which took additional time.

After lunch we both took a nap. Then Karla was cranky for the rest of the afternoon and evening! She was saying "no" even more than usual, fussing - then when she started hitting she got in big trouble. She didn't like it. I guess when Daddy got home he could tell I was at the end of my rope. She started misbehaving again and Daddy initiated her first time-out. He did it upstairs so I was able to sit downstairs in quiet and pull myself together - oh, and eat dinner finally. Jason and I discussed disciplining tonight and what her limits are going to be. She did perk up after her time-out. She came downstairs and hugged me. Jason thinks she understood that she was bad but I don't know. Maybe, maybe not.

I felt kind of sad today because in my mind for all this time (past 2 years) Karla has been a baby. I mean, I knew she was getting older, but I still thought of her as a baby. She is NOT a baby, she is a toddler. I'm trying to make that adjustment in my mind and in how I treat her. Then when I get frustrated or sad that I have NO idea what she wants or is trying to tell me I think - is this the transition to our home or is this her age?? Then I think about the adoption world and how messed up it is and how some of this difficulty could have been avoided. I know I shouldn't go down that path and I know things wouldn't be perfect but maybe they would not be so hard for her. The doctor said it well when we were there last week - Karla had 2 years of a routine with her foster family and it is going to take a while to adjust to a new one. I guess I should be good at waiting...but I don't want to. :)

Anyway -
Karla has had a glass of milk at dinner for the past two days! Yeah! I flavored it with strawberry Nesquik and we let her drink it out of an open cup - something I don't think she has ever done before. She gets lots of praise when she drinks her milk. Tonight she was asking for it as soon as she saw it. I've found other ways to "sneak" calcium in at the other meals so hopefully she's getting plenty of calcium now!

I uploaded pictures to flickr today - 146 to be exact. I guess I have taken lots of pictures in the past few days. Everything is a first for me so I guess that is why. :)

Words Karla said today: Andre (foster cousin), J (her foster sister), Jayne (her middle name), "achoo" (Elmo taught her to fake sneeze), clean up, potato, roll (during pat-a-cake), good night. Several new words for one day! I am keeping a pen and paper handy so I can write them down when she says them.

Yesterday Daddy showed Karla a new trick and today Karla tried it with a box instead of a laundry basket.


Yesterday Karla had a play date with Austin. They really got along well and they both posed for pictures! Austin gave Karla kisses but she wasn't ready to give him kisses yet. However, she kept saying "Austin, where are you?" for quite a while after he left. Austin's mom called me tonight around 8pm and said that Austin wouldn't go to bed tonight because she had shown him pictures from their play date yesterday and he kept saying "more kiss Karla" instead of going to sleep! I was glad she called to tell me that....it was right after the time-out. :)

The past few days

Friday morning Karla had her first play date. Her friend Lola came over. Lola and her mom brought Karla some nice birthday gifts, they danced, chased each other around the house, and enjoyed some orange juice together.

For some reason Friday afternoon was difficult. I don't know if Mommy was just really tired and Karla could tell or what. We were both happy when Daddy got home! Then Friday night we got Karla to bed about 45 minutes earlier than usual...and then she was up at 3am. It was not pretty. I'm not sure when she fell back to sleep (finally) - it may have been about 7am. So we got to sleep from 7am until 9:40 when she woke up again. It took me most of Saturday to wake up.

Then in the afternoon Karla had another "play date" with Heather. Heather brought her parents too. :) The girls had fun playing with dolls, chasing each other around the house, and dancing. They also played with Play Dough and pretended to be asleep on the floor.

Today Karla went to church again. She was a little less shy. This week Daddy took her to the toddler room and he said she played with the other kids and adults and didn't really "need" him too much. We're thinking we'll go with her for another week or two and then let her stay by herself. :( It is good for her though!

This afternoon we went to Grammy and Pap Pap's to celebrate Karla's birthday and Uncle Ryan's birthday. Karla called Uncle Ryan "Tio" ("uncle" in Spanish). When I would tell her to call him Ryan she would roar and make her hand look like a paw. She thought I was saying lion. I'm not sure how we are going to work on this. :) She enjoyed saying "Tio" and having a new person to follow her around where ever she wanted to go.

This time when she saw the cake she immediately stuck her fingers in it and began licking before anyone else sat down or realized what she was doing!! She even said "eyeball" again (for the holes she made in the cake). Her cousins taught her well. She had LOTS of icing. No cake though. Maybe that is why it took a long time to get her to bed tonight.


We have good days and bad. Most are good though. I can't complain!!!
Check out this cute girl in her adorable outfit from Lola and Carey! The outfit is from Disney World!

I'll upload more pictures to flickr sometime tomorrow.

New words Karla has said this weekend: It's okay, Heather, yes/yah (we are really working on this since her favorite word is "no"), Mickey (for Mickey Mouse - sounds a lot like icky though), and fish.

Adoption Facts

Since adoption is near and dear to my heart I read some interesting facts today and decided to share them. According to "Pittsburgh Professional Magazine" November 2008

*1 in 4 adoptions in the US is international
*PA ranks third among the states in numbers of children adopted from other countries
*girls represent 64% of adopted children

Thanks to Craig for sharing this magazine with us. His son goes to the same pediatrician as we do and our doctor was featured in this article. Another interesting thing that she said was that 20% of the children she sees have no problems at all. That struck me because we are in that 20% and I am so thankful! Aside from Karla's little hospital stay (that I still have bad dreams about) she is healthy and developmentally on target. I'm not counting the fact that she is speaking English and Spanish. She's picking up more English everyday. In another article in this magazine that exclusively discusses language in internationally adopted children, it says that delayed language development is expected 100% of the time in these children (this was said by a speech-language pathologist at Washington Hospital in McMurray, PA). I'm not sure I completely agree with that because it all depends on the environment the child has been in.

As you all know, adoption and speech-language pathology are two of my big interests - so I decided to give you some info on both.

I want people to be aware of adoption and know that right now it is extremely difficult to adopt internationally and it makes me sad - for orphans and for parents in the U.S. that would happily adopt them. I think that there are only a few countries to adopt from right now and some of them (like China) take YEARS. It's not right for the babies/toddlers/children! Anyway, I'll stop writing about it and share some Karla with you. :)

Yesterday and today Karla said the following words (the speech therapist in me is coming out):
yummy
okie-dokie
love you - She has said this before to both her grandmas and her daddy, but never to me. She said it today - after some practice - I admit it. :)
banana
owl
dos (she will say this after you say "one" or "uno" and then she calls every number after dos - "dos"
bano (for bath)


What did we do today? Well, we folded towels:


And put the clean, folded towels in the laundry basket....wait, there are books in the laundry basket!! How'd that happen??

Karla describes her day

Since Daddy has to go back to work, I will do some work around the house for him...

Mommy and I made some messes today. We made pudding (doctor said I need lots of calcium) and drew some pictures with markers - even though I didn't like getting markers on my hands at first. I warmed up to it!



I made Mommy think I would eat some of the pudding (with calcium in it) by taking many licks as we made the pudding but I didn't eat any once it firmed up. She can't fool me. :)

Oh, Mommy forgot to mention yesterday that when we saw the doctor, the doctor said she had been looking forward to finally meeting our family. The doctor has been looking at my medical reports for 2 years and then telling Mommy and Daddy how I'm doing. The doctor said our family has the runner-up award. We are the second longest adoption from Guatemala she has ever had at her office. The first place award was a family that took 27 months. We took 24 months. Mommy said it wasn't an "award" that she wanted.

Story of the Cake....and other events

Like I said in a previous post, my brother and sister-in-law brought a birthday cake over on Saturday. We have had opportunities to eat cake with Karla before and she has never touched it or shown interest in it. After everyone sang "Happy Birthday", Karla just kind of looked at the cake. Her cousins were waiting for her to dive in. So they asked if they could start "tasting" the cake. So they all poked their fingers in the icing to get a taste. Now that I know Karla, I knew she probably didn't want to get her fingers messy touching the cake. So I poked my finger in the cake and got some icing - Karla ate it right off of my finger!! She then ate many bites off my fingers and off of a fork that Jason was holding. It was funny! She likes cake - just not when it gets on her. Also, when the girls were poking their fingers in the cake they were each making "eyeballs" (2 holes next to each other) in the cake. After my 2 year old niece made eyeballs and said "eyeball", Karla finally got brave enough and poked her finger in the cake and SAID "eyeball". We all started laughing! I was excited to see Karla likes cake.

Today we went to Jason's office and Karla met his coworkers. She was walking around and being friendly! One guy had a ball in his office that he brought out for Karla so she played with him and "knocked him over" with the ball several times. Good thing he had the ball because Karla initially wanted the globe to kick and throw.

We also went to the doctor. It was a good experience, the doctor and social worker were very nice. I have heard them both speak before about adoption but it was nice to have individual time with them. We were with each of them for about an hour! Karla only fussed at the beginning when she had to get weighed and measured and then at the end when she had to get a shot. Otherwise she was an angel. :) We talked about some bonding and transition issues and got some new ideas. We discussed a few minor medical questions that we had. Her ears looked "perfect" and her lungs sounded fine!! Yeah!! So we reduced her inhaler use to two times today and then we'll just do one dose tomorrow morning. Then we'll see how she does. We go back for a follow-up appointment in 2 months but we've decided that, even though the office is not convenient, we are going to use this doctor as our pediatrician for a while. They have hours 7 days a week and someone on-call 24/7. Based on how our 2 weeks at home has gone, I think this is important. :)

Karla is doing remarkably well for only being home 2 weeks and part of that time was spent in a hospital. The doctor said we are doing well with the transition. That is what I wanted to hear! Karla is between the 50th-75th percentile for height and at the 25th percentile for weight (according to U.S. charts). So that is good! She has lost a pound or so since the beginning of October but, we attributing that to being sick and all the changes that have occurred. The way she has been eating the past 3 days...she'll gain it back in no time.

Warning: the following contains emotions. :)
The farthest I have been from Karla since Oct. 14 was when I went to Wendy's across the street from the hospital the last day Karla was hospitalized. Karla slept the whole time and Jason was with her. I still had to be persuaded to eat at Wendy's with my mom rather than take it back to the hospital room. So, based on some things we discussed this morning with the doctor and social worker, we decided that I would go to the chiropractor and Target this afternoon - ALONE! I of course planned to text Jason after my chiropractic appointment and make sure I didn't need to come home. When I sent the text he said they were fine and to go ahead to Target. Well, I was near crying when I left the house for some reason, I guess I felt bad about leaving Karla and I knew I would miss her. At the same time, I haven't driven anywhere or been alone in quite sometime. So, I didn't cry when I left because I didn't want her to see me or get worried. I quickly put on my coat and said good-bye to her and Jason. After my two stops I started to drive home, I started crying!! It was happy tears though. I felt such relief. I realized that the heavy cloud that had been hanging over me for almost 3 years is gone. I realized I was going home and Jason was going to be happy when I got home because he was playing with his little girl. I realized I had just gone to Target and not felt a stab of pain every time I saw a baby. I just thought "oh, I gotta hurry so I can get home to Karla". We have been so stressed for so long - I almost forgot what "normal" feels like. I wasn't dreading going to our house, full of reminders of what wasn't there. I was excited! I started thinking about all of my answered prayers...and it was a bit overwhelming.

When I got home Karla gave me a big hug and kiss but she had been just fine without me here. Jason said she mentioned my name a few times and he just told her I would be back in a little while.

I started telling Jason about my drive home and started crying again. Karla walked up to me (I was on the floor), hugged me and patted my back. It was so sweet. So I quickly dried my eyes and started playing again!! :)

Tomorrow Jason returns to work. Karla and I will miss him tomorrow! I can't believe his 3 weeks went by so fast!

I've caught up with pictures on flickr if you are interested.