Home 3 Months Today

What a difference 3 months with a family makes.  

Official

Maggie is officially an American citizen!  Although she technically became a citizen the moment our plane landed in the states, we now have PROOF that she's a citizen. It's called her Certificate of Citizenship, and it recently came in the mail! We also got her social security card!

Equally important, she's also now officially a Cincinnatian... she now loves to eat Skyline chili and Larosa's pizza!!! :)

She's doing AWESOME.  She is blossoming right before our eyes.  She is walking all over the place, eating regular meals (much less baby food), most of those painful teeth are in....whoo!!  She is using more sign language, understanding more and such a participant in this family.  You can tell she KNOWS now that this is her home. She feels safe and secure to explore, be silly, etc. 

Here's some of what we've been up to in pictures.

To avoid fighting while brushing, they took turns hiding under the sink. Whatever works!

 At 16 months, we're finally busting out the 12 month clothes!  Her feet are still TINY. 

She wears a 2, which is the size an average 3-6 month old wears!

Chocolate dipped marshmallows for Sam's Valentine's Day party.

She still hangs with us during church.

 She loves the worship music. She sings along!

Visiting with Great Grandma Toodie and Moby.

 Our underwear super hero making bracelets.

Maggie loved her first time in the snow.

Snacking in the car waiting for everyone to finish sledding.

 Watching her siblings sled. She was pointing to them and blowing them kisses. 

Look how thick her hair is getting-and it's so soft now!!

 A trip to Meijer.  I probably would not attempt this without Jeremy. :)  

Lemonade

The other day Ben was upset about something and I was trying to explain the saying "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." It went right over his head. Sam and Allie overhead and kept saying, "Are we having lemonade? Are you making lemonade?"

Never mind.

But Jeremy and I are making lemonade out of the surgery being postponed. It is what it is and we have moved on.  We were able to participate in some fun things this weekend that we thought we were going to have to miss out on.

We volunteered with good friends & Uncle Matt at Hands Against Hunger, one of our favorite things to do. If you have never done this, GO!!! It's a great place for kids to help serve and it's helps to feed hunger kids. 30,000 kids die a DAY from starvation and 4500 a day die from drinking dirty water. Hands Against Hunger is literally saving lives.

Other fun things this weekend:  Allie's Korea New Year celebration with our Korean Adoption group, Maggie's Chinese New Year celebration with our Chinese Adoption group (more on those in another post), Sam got to go to a friend's house, Ben to a birthday party, dinner with Jeremy's family to celebrate birthdays and Jeremy to wallyball. All things we would have missed.  In fact, we really haven't been out and about much since Maggie got home, so it felt great to do some fun things.

Not to mention the fact that this Miss Maggie is clearly deciding she is ready for some new things.

She is loving beginning to walk. She can take up to 6 steps at a time. She giggles the entire time-she truly could walk farther if she would stop laughing! She is so proud of herself and we are just so entertained by her practice.

She's eating real food!!!  She has turned a huge corner with eating. She now loves soups and casseroles. She'll eat any kind of cooked veggie, pasta, ground beef, tiny bits of chicken, spaghetti, etc. She'll eat a graham cracker for a snack... Hallelujah!! We are all much happier now that she can munch in between meals.  She's also much more receptive to drinking from a cup, although she still loves her bottle too.

Real food!!

This cup idea isn't so bad!


Ahhhhh......


At the same time that she was feeling bad from the bronchiolitis, she also got all 4 of her molars and her eye teeth are breaking through as well.  She was pretty unhappy about those molars trying to cut through for a few days; we're all glad that's over!  It'll be interesting to see what all teeth she gets in and where since she is missing sections of gum on both sides on the top of her mouth.

Being sick and getting a bunch of new teeth and a bad hair day to boot... not so much fun.


We tried creating a safe, cozy place for her to play when I can't hold her.  That did not go over well!

It was a rough few days.


Thankfully she's feeling better!  She also has qualified for help in speech and language from a free county program.  They came to evaluate her in all areas (fine and gross motor, cognitive, etc), and while she was slightly behind across the board, she's also making up for lost time quickly in most areas.  Her one big area of deficit is speech and language.  They're going to be coming to our house for free to help her develop her speech and language skills!!! Awesome!!!


I've gotten really behind on blogging.  In addition to Maggie being sick, Sam also got a cold and double ear infection and Allie was really sick with a cough and high fever. Not to mention more snow days with everyone home.  So I got really behind on, well, everything. Here's some other pics and tidbits.

Nightly mouth-cleaning ritual with Daddy...


First brush my teeth....


Then Daddy cleans out my palate.



Speaking of an awesome dad, this guy is celebrating 15 years at his job!

We have a guitar player in the house! First lesson was a huge hit.

Kids used a plan from Grandpa to build a mouse trap... they plan to catch 2 mice in our garage. One to give to our cat and the other to keep in a cage.  Hmmm.

This girl is happy to be feeling better and getting back to school.

 More snow. I may have inadvertently locked the door with them outside. 

Just for a few minutes. It wasn't that cold.  :)

This shirt hit the nail on the head for this girl!

Standing tall.

Her infamous head tilt.

Pretty girl.

 I spent a little extra time putting Maggie to bed on the night of her would-have-been surgery.  It was so odd to think we could have been in recovery mode at the hospital at that point. Instead, she was clean and fuzzy from her bath and oh-so snuggly.  I was overwhelmed with a sense of peace that it was the right thing to postpone the surgery.  Her time will come, but until then, we're enjoying this sweet girl just the way she is right now.

Clapping

blowing kisses

 making faces

laughing

And again, the head tilt. 

Sweet girl.

The Right Time

Thank you all for your prayers and well wishes for Maggie to be well enough for surgery today...but it was not meant to be.  She is much better, she really only had a couple bad days last week. However, she still has a lingering cough that is typical of bronchiolitis. Plus, we found out it's generally the surgeon's policy to wait a while after bronchiolitus anyway, to make sure she has a clear airway, so regardless of how she was feeling, the surgery was a no-go.

Ugh.

They originally told us they had hoped to reschedule in a few weeks, but they weren't able to fit her into the schedule until the beginning of spring.  They have to block out 4.5 hours for her surgery and coordinate 2 surgeon's schedules, so fitting that in is not easy.

So we wait some more.

It has recently been pointed out to me that waiting is the ongoing theme in our life these days. Waiting through the entire process to bring her home, waiting while in China to be able to come home, waiting for jet lag to pass, waiting for adjustment to happen, waiting for surgery to come. And now more waiting.

I was pretty upset at first, but there is nothing I can do about it. I trust that there is a greater reason why she was not meant to have the surgery today.  It will happen when the time is right for her, so we'll wait for that time to come.

In the meantime, she's been pretty busy rocking some new skills: