So...Here is How it's Going

When I went into an older child adoption I clung to the blogs of those that had gone before me. I prepared myself for some of the nightmare situations I read, but of course I prayed for the best. I also promised myself that I would be as real as possible after I returned home so that others could learn from our experience. I am happy to report that this whole experience has exceeded our expectations in every way possible.

Hope is a joy! She walked into our home like she as always been here. She immediately took to her brother and sisters and loves them to death. She has overcome her fear of dogs, it only took three days. Now she carries Lulu around and tries to feed Rags from the table. She was thrown into life at full speed once she arrived. Of course an initiation to living in Auburn would be meeting Aubie, which she was thrilled to do. I think Auburn has their newest fan.

We have been working on English skills. She still speaks to us in Chinese, and when we don't get it, she will repeat it louder and slower. We bust out laughing when she does this. Hope is picking up some English words and here are a few common ones that she uses

• Come here
• Hunter quit
• ByeBye
• Well Hello
• LeeLee, are you okay
• Momma, I okay
• Milk please
• thank you
• and my personal favorite, "Momma, I gotta go potty"

We have been working on writing her name. This has been a big challenge seeing as she has no hand preference, and was writing bad with both hands. Imagine my surprise when she spontaneously wrote her name on her doodle board. I am one proud momma. She is willing to sit and work on things for as long as I will work with her. Which is a good thing, since she has a lot to learn to catch up and be reading for first grade in the fall. She just like the others has a favorite reward, icees from Sam's Club.

Most of you know, we took a leap of faith when accepting Hope's referral. Her file stated that she was mentally delayed, and from the sound of the file that she would most likely be extremely slow. We were prepared for this, and knew that no matter what her condition, she was our daughter. I had received two videos of her while we were waiting, and while I was able to see some sensory issues, I never saw in my professional opinion much mental delay. I also noticed that she had an awkward gate in the video, that to an untrained eye was almost unnoticeable.

Now that we have Hope, we are able to see for ourselves that the mental delay doesn't exist. She is smart and has exceptional reasoning skills for her age. She however does have the awkward gate. She is very spastic, like a child with Cerebral Palsy. I was prepared for this after watching her videos, so this hasn't been a surprise at all. We will be seeing a neurologist soon to determine if it is CP or not. Also, her right leg is longer than her left. None of this was mentioned in her file, so we are trying to sort all of this out now. We start physical therapy and occupational therapy on Wednesday. I am sure there will also be an orthopedist in our future too.

We also have one other concern that we will be seeing the Dermatologist for on November 8th. She has a spot on her finger that our doctor feels may be cancerous. She also has one coming up on her back that is much fainter that is about the size of the palm of my hand. Please pray that this is not cancerous!!

We let Hope call her nanny again. This time all of her friends were right there and one by one Hope was able to talk to them. She smiled so big and was so excited to get to talk to all of them. I have pictures of them all now, so it was neat to put a face to a sweet voices coming through the computer. She loves all her friends that were left behind so much. We know that one of them will have a home as we are in contact with his family. But she has many more precious friends that were left behind with no family on the horizon. Please pray for these precious friends that are still in the orphanage. They all desire to have families of their own. The picture above isn't by any means a great picture, however it is one that makes me smile. These are my kiddos enjoying each other on a Saturday morning curled up in my bed watching cartoons. Doesn't she look like she was meant to be there all along?