Its been 4 weeks & an update

I can hardly believe that it has been 4 weeks today since our precious beautiful daughter was placed in my arms. The tiny and scared baby who cried ALOT, now has her forever family and is very very happy. I love to hear her belly laughs and those sweet sweet smiles she gives. I love to watch her discover new toys and how they work. I love to see her sway her head to music and smile.

Its hard to believe that 5 1/2 weeks ago we started our travel journey to bring home Katie. In those 5 1/2 weeks we have traveled through 17 timezones, twice, been united with our adorable daughter, gone through many appointments in China and lived in a hotel for 2 weeks, 5 out of 8 of us got the stomach flu, Katie had surgery, and then 3 out of 8 got colds to boot!! It really has been quite a month to say the least. We are so grateful to have our daughter home with us to celebrate the best time of the year. Christmas. The time we celebrate our Saviors birth and His gift to us.

I haven't posted an update on Katies surgery as we have just had too much going on. Katie had surgery on 12-3. The plastic surgeon was unable to do all she hoped to. Katie has a very wide cleft lip and palate. The original plan was to do a lip adhesion, repair her soft palate, and ear tubes. Her soft palate was not able to be started. She now has what looks like half of an upper denture, of course with no teeth. The orthodontist will make changes to this every 1-2 weeks. The purpose of this is to mold her gums closer together. Her cleft is just too wide to repair and it needs to come closer. The plastic surgeon told us she has only had 2 1 yo have this. One suceeded and 1 did not. The one that suceeded was surgically put in with pins, and the other one , well the baby wouldn't leave it in their mouth. So far so good, although it is very difficult to put it in. Just try and picture putting a denture in a 12 month olds mouth. haha I know it sounds pretty funny doesn't it. I had a really hard time getting it in and took a break for awhile. Jeff was holding her as I had tried. So later that evening I tried on my own, on my first try I was unable to do it. I prayed "God please help me to do this, she needs this to help her palate", yes I alone was able to do it. Praise God!! So the PS hopes to do her next surgery in 2 months. We love the PS. She is also Brookes PS and is amazing. We have seen her on discovery health 3 times now for different cases. One of the reasons she didn't want to repair her soft palate was she felt it would affect her speech and if we can get things to move it is so much to Katies benefit in the longrun.

If you're wondering what is a lip adhesion is, well basically her nose has been put into place and the area under her nose is together. Her lip itself is not, so she looks like she has a split lip, or some may call it , an incomplete cleft lip. She is wearing the no no's, aka, arm restraints, but only at night and naps for the most part. The purpose for those is to keep her from touch the surgery site, as well as pulling out her ortho device.

We can hardly remember what life was like before Katie was with us. She has made huge milestones as far acclimating to family life. She loves all of us, and we all love her so much. We are still trying to get her to gain weight, as she hasn't gained much since coming home. We're still working on that one, but know in time she will catch up. She use to be tiny proportionally, however now she is not. She is 25-50% for her height, head & chest, however -3% for her weight. The Dr.s aren't too concerned at this point, but are keeping an eye on that.