Anna's 1st Christmas!!!

Wow, I just never thought this day would be here, and simply cannot imagine Anna not being here and being a part of our family. She is doing amazing, and caught onto this holiday thing like a pro! She did great amidst all the chaos. I tried not to over-do it with gifts, but I must have failed as she still hasn't opened all her presents. She just kept wanting to play with the gifts as she was opening them, or play with Dylan's toys, and didn't want to be bothered with opening more presents. I just can't express how lucky I feel this holiday season. It was such a long road to get here, and while I haven't forgotten the 13 month wait between trips, the pain and stress is beginning to fade. My heart goes out to all those families still waiting to bring home their children.

Wordless Wednesday

A few Xmas pictures

Anna wouldn't smile for the Santa picture, but hey, she's not crying! Thats more than I can say for anytime my mom tried to take ME to see santa. Wednesday I'm going to try to do professional Christmas photos of the kids. Her eyes are looking pretty great. There is still some redness and a bit of tissue/swelling on the inner eye of the left, but just barely. Its going away.

Its POURING rain here. Doesn't make it too fun to do all the last minute Christmas stuff. So, for the rest of the day, we will be making fudge and watching Christmas movies.

How best to help?

So I'm struggling with how to best contribute and help the lives of these precious orphans. While I'm still in the midst of paying for our adoption, making our huge deductible for Anna's surgery, and all the fed ex fees associated with the PPR's (yes, our agency is already doing the 6-month PPR), I still want to do what I can to better the lives of these kids, or maybe even just one child. I would love to think contributing via Reese's Rainbow to one of the children would help to get them adopted ( to me, that would make the biggest difference, but could we do enough to help?). Or should I put together a box of supplies to send to a baby home or older children's home, or specifically Anna's baby home (I realize it wouldn't arrive in time for xmas but does that really matter?) I look at Anna and just feel so thankful. She has made an incredible difference in our lives and I know we have changed her life, I'm hoping for the better! The need of these orphans is just so great I get overwhelmed by it all. I am fully aware that we have needy children here close to home, but so many of these children in Russia don't have the basics like diapers, toilet paper, and clean water to drink, much less toys to open at Christmas. We have been given a little miracle and I feel like even giving back in some small way could improve the life of another child. I hope many others out there feel the same way I do and want to make some kind of difference.

Eyes still red and swollen

So I'm still waiting to take any sort of xmas or santa pictures as Anna's eyes are still red and the left eye still has quite swollen tissue that seems to be going down very slowly. I was prepared for the rednesses, but the swelling and visible white tissue on her inner eye had me freaked out. We see the doctor again in a few weeks to make sure the swelling is down and the tissue is gone. I hope it goes away because I'd hate to have to have her eye bascially scraped. They tell me its normal and "usually" this tissue goes away on its own, or just requires additional time on the eye drops. Anyone with any experience with this?

I'm so excited, today I went to a banquet with Steve and won a Flip Video! Woo hooo, I needed one! My old small digital camera kinda broke and no longer took short videos so this is a perfect prize! I never win anything. Now, maybe I'll get on the ball and actually post a few videos of our little cutie pie.

Post Surgery

The surgery/hospital stay was much more traumatic than I thought it would be. She did fine waiting right up until the nurse came to wheel her crib to the OR. Even though I was walking with her she started freaking out. I held her but she continued to cry, and then they bascially had to take her out of my arms screaming, crying out for mommy. I knew she would be asleep in minutes but that was tough. I then waited just over an hour and went back to post-op as she was waking up. She pretty much picked up where she left off, crying but very out of it. Again, hard to watch. She couldn't calm down so they finally gave her a little morphin and she eventually fell asleep in my arms. Every time she would start to wake up, she would realize her leg hurt from the iv and cry again. She would go back to sleep and a nurse would come in to take her blood pressure and the crying would start again. Finally, they took out the iv and she perked up a lot. By the time we left, she gave out of few smiles and told the nurse "thank you " and "bye bye". She then slept for about another 4 hrs, then started returning to her happy self later in the night. She slept great last night, and is in good spirits today. Only once she started to rub her eyes and fussed a bit and said "oooowie". Anyway, I'm glad its done and over. Surgeries and little children is just a sad combination.

Surgery tomorrow

Anna's eye surgery is tomorrow morning instead of Monday. I hope it goes well. I'm having a hard time imagining our little girl getting wheeled away from me for surgery. This means an end to the patching, hurray!

Reptile party was a success. No rain, beautiful day. Now party stuff is put away and out comes the Christmas stuff. I can't wait to get the new stockings I ordered for the family. Of course I couldn't just get Anna one, I had to get new ones for ALL of us so they matched. Nothing else too exciting going on. Actually, I've been impressed with her "infant teacher" thru our county regional center and she's making definite progress with speech. She continues to be a delight and really has a fun personality. She doesn't really throw any tantrums, but she can pout pretty good (and its pretty cute so you want to give in but I try to restrain myself).

Thanksgiving

I'm glad I snapped some photos before we headed out for the day because after that we really enjoyed our Thanksgiving and our family and the camera never made it back out. We had a great day at my grandmas house in the mountains. Anna loved playing with all the cousins, kids and grown ups alike. Now I just keep checking the weather for Sunday. It says we're supposed to have rain showers in the morning. Dylan's party starts at 1p and I'm really hoping its cleared up by then because I'd love to keep the reptiles and kids all outside. If we can't have the bouncer due to rain, I'm not sure how I'll keep all the kiddos entertained....lots of musical chairs and hot potato?? And that will bring the added project of cleaning out the garage so the snakes, spiders, and lizards can entertain in there.

Holidays approaching

However its hard for me to concentrate on any of the holidays until after Dylan's birthday party. Right now I am in the midst of planning and preparing for his 7th birthday party which will be a reptile theme, complete with repitles.....ewww!

Anna finally started with her "infant teacher". I'm not sure I thought too much of it, but she really enjoyed it and did start saying "all done" and "down" afterwards. Words are pretty unclear and she definitely sounds and looks like a 16-18 mo old and not a 28 mo old. But, she does seem to be adding words all the time. It gets hard having people ask me all the time how old she is and when they find out she is 2, they then comment on how tiny she is and often ask if she is normal. Patching the eye is going well, although we rarely make the 6 hrs a day I'm supposed to be doing. Her surgery is scheduled for Dec. 6th.

Today we went to a birthday party at Chuck E Cheese and she did really well. She wasn't too overwhelmed. I'm beginning to think I just may have to venture to Disneyland next month and she how she does. As you can see, I was so worried about getting pictures of her eating her first cupcake, I failed to take off the paper before she bit into it.

Fun at the Lisso Haunt

I'm thinking these pictures would be good to send with the post placement report to Russia......NOT!! LOL

Halloween Fun

What a great Halloween we had! Anna absolutely LOVED trick-or-treating, loved her costume, and wasn't scared by any of the scary stuff. Its 8:45am and she's still asleep. It was a big night. after trick-or-treating we headed over to my cousin's who set up the most amazing Halloween display in their yard. I wish the night could have lasted longer and hated having to send a very tired 1st grader to school this moring.

Happy Halloween

I don't know why when I scan the professional picture it comes out grainy and the quality looks poor, but its beautiful and one which we will proudly display every Halloween for many many years to come!!!

Lots-o-shots

Poor thing got 4 pokes in her legs yesterday and is still hurting today. Basically, next month she'll need 2 more shots then she'll be totally up to date on her vaccines. Tomorrow we have our second eye appt so I'm hoping I find out if she gets to have surgery next month.

We haven't been contacted yet by the infant teacher to set up the in-home speech, but I'm glad she was assessed last week as I think she's added like 5-6 new words in the last 2-3 days and just seems to be blossoming daily. Her latest words just tonight were "nite-nite" and "cow".

It felt great last night....I actually snuck out to the gym to do a kick-boxing class! That was my first time back. Anna stayed home with Daddy. She's not ready for the Kids Klub there yet. She doesn't even stay alone with Daddy much. When she saw me after the gym she just started crying, she was so emotional to see me again. It was cute, but I do need to be able to get away every now and then and have her be OK.

As it seems JCPenney doesn't let you copy any of the pics from the albums, you'll just have to wait a few more days for the cute Halloween pics. For now, here are a few random ones. I like the one of her sticking out her tongue like Frog..."blah!" The lighting looks kinda funny as you can see the reflection of the mirror on her chin.

Anna did qualify for some Early Start help

She was right on the borderline, but they were nice and kinda "bumped her down" in a category so she could get the boost they felt she needed. She actually scored bascially at age for her fine and gross motor skills, its her speech thats way behind. I do see her adding about 2 words a week so I think this 1 hr twice a week infant teacher that will be coming to our house will help. I know she also needs work on her articulation. For free county services, I was impressed. It was a new beautiful building with 2 therapists tag-teaming her to evaluate where she is. They even got her to say a new word while we were there...."bubbles", which she had never said before. They will also be already giving the school district a "heads up" as she will age out at 3 yrs old and will need to switch over to them if they feel she still needs extra help. I don't know why I'm so shocked that this is all available to us at no charge.

I'm so happy to report that our first potrait sitting went amazingly well! I'll have to post the pictures when I get them via email. The main purpose was to get a cute picture in her Pumpkin Princess Halloween costume and it was the BEST....smiles and all, which is a SHOCKER. What got her to smile was me imitating what she usually does when I try to take a picture of her....turn her head and hide. I seem to have better luck when I'm taking pictures of her with Dylan. I'm glad I didn't wait until after her eye surgery. You can see her eye turn it, but who cares......she looks so sweet.

I took measurements and she seems to how grown about an inch since Russia, but has only gained about 1/2 lb.....maybe 1 lb if we're lucky. She's is eating pretty darn good so I'm a little discouraged. I do see tons of new hair growth around her temples. In a few days it'll be 2 months since Gotcha Day and I just thought there would be a little more growth than that. I am used to her small size, and I don't really realize just how far behind she is until she is around another child her age. Its significant.