Monday, September 1, 2008

Home one month today!




Isabelle has been home on Lopez for one month! It has been a difficult month. Isabelle has been sick 95% of the time. She is finally starting to feel better. Still has a bit of a cough and runny nose. We are still doing breathing treatments twice a day. We will see the cardiologist this month at Children's Hospital...hope the visit brings us good news. Kevin took almost all the kids, and one friend to the Western Washington Fair this weekend. I have been home with Madeline and Isabelle. It has been a great time for the two of them to get to know each other better. Madeline feels like she is in charge with out Nick and Grace around. Nick and Grace are great helpers with Isabelle...but, poor Madeline gets left out. They spend their days helping with Isabelle and Madeline has really felt left out and displaced. We had a lot of tears the first few days we arrived home. Madeline turns five tomorrow and starts Kindergarten on Wednesday...she is so excited and ready for school. She is already reading little books to me at night. It will be nice have just Madeline and Isabelle home for the mornings, as Kindergarten is 12:00-3:00 each day.




I will try to update again soon.

Monday, July 28, 2008

More photos from medical appointment




Medical Appointment Photos






Medical Appointment

This morning we had our medical appointment for the visa. Isabelle is 25 lbs and 34 inches tall. Two doctors listened to her heart. Neither one heard the heart murmur...the ASD must have closed. This is great news...looks like no heart surgery. We had Mr. Li call the orphanage and ask about the scar on her spine. They said it was from a boil, very common with the orphange children. Isabelle had a boil on her head that was healing when we received her.

Our trip to the orphange has been cancelled do to Isabelle being so sick. Of course now she is doing much better. Today is like we have a new Isabelle. I can already tell that our 16 hour plane trip home is not going to be as easy as I originally thought!

After our medical appointment we all went to Starbucks to fill out our paperwork for the visa with Mr. Li. It was completely crazy with the kids all running around. Made it very difficult to fill out paperwork. Tomorrow Mr.Li takes our paperwork to the American Consulate. We must wait in our room until he calls us. Just in case there are any questions. We go to the American Consulate on Thursday for the swearing in and pick up visa's one hour later. We fly out Friday...and we are now very ready. Really missing our kids at home.

Morning of the medical appointment


Monday night in Guangzhou, China

Yesterday Isabelle was not feeling well. She would not drink or eat much of anything. At about 11:30pm I woke up to find her burning up with a fever next to me (in my arm). Her temp was 104.7, gave her some Tylenol. She woke many more times through the night. Kevin and Andrew went to the mountain park with Nick and Rebecca at 9:00am. Isabelle and I stayed in the hotel all day. She finally started to feel a little better at the end of the day. We went to the Cow and Bridge for Thai food. We sat next to Bunny and family. Isabelle really came out of her shell tonight. She sat in the highchair or the first time at dinner. She chatted away in Chinese, smiling at everyone. She was so happy. At the end of dinner I handed her the rest of my rice with curry and she ate a few pieces of rice. THIS IS HUGE PROGRESS! After dinner we went to Jordan's make a few more purchases. Jordan could speak a little of the language spoken in Zhuhai (his grandfather was from there). When he would speak to her she would just light up...it was wonderful. On our way back to the hotel, Isabelle wanted to get down and walk holding my hand. THIS IS A FIRST! She has only gotten off my lap twice at Starbucks for a moment. So we are making great progress. Our airplane ride home may not be quite as easy as I had thought.

Tomorrow is our medical at 10:00am....hope to post more photos then.

Special day for Nick and Rebecca


Today was a special day! Bunny's son, Nick and his girlfriend Rebecca are now engaged. Nick proposed to Rebecca today while they were all at the mountain park! Bunny is in our adoption group. She is also adopting her 8th child, Jack age three. He is so cute and full of life.

More photos from today