nighttime fun

she had a little energy to burn before crashing out tonight, and we decided to film some of it. you will notice that she is getting used to her mattress, in a round about sort of way, but at least she does not hate it anymore. still has not made its way INTO the crib, but 'daddy' uses it when he has to calm her at night. pretty comfy, a little short, but comfy.
** video may not be suitable for all audiences, nudie kid ahead**

naptime

So busy with Lucy. She had another doctor appt yesterday and lots of other crazy phone calls from the ENT doctors crazy nurse who is a major pain. So Lucy's palate is looking the way it should and we were told no more squirting water in there to remove any food bits, Most of the "white stuff" in there is healing skin. Her nasty cold is clearing up little by little. Wonder if the benadryl is working. She has been smiling a lot more again and making her cute little la, la's.

Now, if we could just get back to sleeping 11 hrs, life would be super fantastic. She is still waking up every 30 minutes all night long. So the schedule is as such.: John puts her to sleep between 7:00 to 8:00 and has her until 11:00pm, in case she wakes up. trust me she does. Then I have the 11:00 to 5:00a- ish shift and then get her back at 7:00am so John can get ready for work. I sleep mostly on the floor on her crib matress- most of the night I am a bit delirious at those hours and do not remember much but rocking and humming.

She has majorly bonded to me. Lucy wants me to hold her all the time-she did actually let change from my pajamas to clothes today without a fuss so that was good. She has started to not like her high chair and wants me to hold her when she eats. She threw some good old fashioned tantrums today about that.

We are looking forward to her mouth healing and just getting on with things around here. ok she's crying already

got to go. ps the two pics with john is when he came home after his first day of work away from her. she was VERY happy to see him. ME TOO!

a lil grumpy, but still groovin

so, she had a little rough day today. a bit more complaining than yesterday, but i guess we have to expect a measure of that. she did just have surgery 2 days ago. her codeine works some, but i thought/hoped it would knock her out better than it is proving. she only sleeps for about an hour at a time, waking up crying and fussing for quite a while before sleeping again. tonya has gotten a little more sleep then me in the past three nights, but not much. i am crawling on about 5 hours total since thursday.

we are finding this to be the case, and this is really written for other cleft palate families out there - everything is sticking to the roof of her mouth. i do not know what it is, but no matter what she eats, it stays up there, and then we see it there hours later. like.. a lot of food. full noodles, chunks of grapes, egg... everything. kind of like when we eat peanut butter. maybe we as adults clean off the roof of our mouth with our tongue when we eat more than we think, and since she never really used her tongue/roof of her mouth before, she has to learn to do so. i have this bottle of water and i tip her back at blast the roof of her mouth with it. needless to say, she hates that. but i do not want all that up there. whats the harm? i don't know, maybe it will rot or something, or dissolve her stitches faster of something. i just don't know why it is staying up there like we are feeding her glue. she is a strong lil kid. i just hate to see her so uncomfortable.

But then she has her good moments here - her strong personality does shine thru. on thursday night, way late, she was joking around with me in the room. try to play peek-a-boo, shake her head 'no' and giggle when i would ask her something. last night, she was rocking out to her musical cell phone, and i grabbed the camera for the tail end of it -

Hi"jack"ing the blog...

I feel totally hackerish doing this but Ton and John are too busy to post so I thought I would share a little info about how Lucy is doing after her surgery today! She is doing well! She's holding down her bottles and looking better every minute. She was really swollen right after the surgery but it's gone down a lot already. If she gets the all clear she will come home soon, but she is spending the night in the hospital tonight. While we were visiting she let out a few giggles, and Tonya said she even whispered a few "lala's". She's a little fighter.
She is just such a dream come true. She' s so wonderful and everyone that has met her has just melted and fallen for her. Tonya and John are doing such an awesome job, even if they can't see it through sleep deprived eyes;). It's fun to see them enjoying their very own little one at last. Across the house you can hear john giggling with her, and Tonya just beams with pride whenever she looks at Lucy.
Anyway, that is it for the update. I won't hijack this blog with my stories of my visit to ny, the baby shower or just all the fun Penny has been having with family! I will save that for my own blog!

Aunt Jackie (Tonya's sister)

pics of the little sweetie

this and that

So after 5 weeks, daddy aka John went back to work today. Lucy will freak out with excitement when she sees him tonight. He may too!

It's official - Lucy HATES doctors. She really freaks when they close the door. Friday they drew 8 viles of blood from her. I felt like I needed her to chew on a steak when we got her home!! She also had a tb test. She was checked today and she is fine!

She has her pre-op appt in the morning. Not too excited about that. I hope that they are able to get this surgery over with. She had another ear infection so we have been aggresively treating that to get her through this operation. In addition to the palate surgery she will be getting ear tubes.

In more happy news: She signs milk, water, more, eat, all done, fan, daddy, touchdown, baby, banan(her version), sing, aunt jackie, hello-bye bye, hat. She says mama, gramma, la la, alright(more like ahriie), uh-0h.

She is super smart! She is also very friendly. Our awesome family and friends hosted a shower on Saturday and she did great with all the smiley faces talking and looking at her. We were overwhelmed with the generosity. Let's just say she will be well dressed through 1st grade. It was a lot of fun and lots of family came up to visit from binghamton too. Lucy was with her great grandmas and grandmas. I wish her great grandpas could have seen her. They would have melted.

I have to go and enjoy the rest of her nap. C-ya!

the latest medical update

tomorrow morning at 9:45 we have our 'arrival' pediatrician appointment, a head-to-toe check up i think. really good chance there is going to be some blood work too. we will bring her medical updates from china, with her immunizations and such, and the blood work here will determine if what she was given at her orphanage was any good.
it is reported that many times the vaccinations given to orphans is old and dead, or has not been stored correctly and dead. so, although the report states a recent shot, it was a dud. i hope she is good to go... we all know how good i am at shots (pass out mess), tonya is no better, and now we have to try to hold a crying baby. someone should shoot video of this, no joke. it will be funny years from now.
surgery update: we have scheduled her palate surgery appointment for next thursday, sept 18 first thing a.m. it is a big surgery that we hope she does not ever remember. she will spend the night there, see how she does with taking in soft solids before she goes home. the subsequent four weeks will be tough. only soft solids and when we are not holding her, she will need to wear arm restraints so that she does not reach in there. poor bubs.

so, thats that. jackie and penny are here, loving that. lucy watches penny as she moves around, i think she is amused by her. have to post a video of g-ma, jackie, penny, tonya and lucy later. that requires downloading and everything...

sleeping update

we have been asked a couple times on lucy's sleeping situation. here is what we have. her afternoon naps take place on one of us. they seem to only last 45min avg. once a day at noon.

nighttime, we got it figured out. as much as we were trying to show her a much better life than that she left behind, it seems mimicking the past is what she wants. with help from a straw mat (like the one she used to have at the orphanage) given to us from lydia and dan, we decided to ditch the mattress and throw the mat on the crib plywood base. (putting it on top of the matress did not work, she lifted the mat and pressed her hand on the mattress, like telling me she figured out my trick). i covered half the mat with a blanket, so she has both worlds in there. i find her sleeping on both halves of the bed now. she is too funny. i will have to try and get a pic some night without waking her up. but, now we put her in there awake, sometimes give her some warm milk, and soon enough, she will lay down and pass out without trouble. bedtimes now: 7:30pm - 6:00am. straight thru. we are pretty happy about this arrangement.

new vid clip 2

Funny lil girl

new vid clip

Watermelon tease

Our Adoption Story

We decided to take a short trip, about 4 mins worth, down adoption memory lane and put together a little montage of some of our activity these past two years. it really has been worth it, even with waking up and having to sleep on the floor. turn up the sound.

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

ramblings of a tired mom

So just a recap. The flight home was 20 hrs in the air. Lucy only slept a total of three hours and not all at once. I had a slight meltdown on hour 14 I think. I think I have been scanned through so many Xrays that I glow at night. Once we arrived in Detroit and literally ran to catch our flight home, we got a boost of energy, we were almost home.

The airport arrival was a blur and just awesome. So many friends and family came to greet us and get a sneak peak of the newest little one in the family. My aunt jeanie and cousin shannon actually drove almost 3 hrs to be there!!! what a suprise. ( i always spell this word wrong)

Sleeping has been our biggest thing. Jet lag has hit me pretty hard. The other thing is Lucy is not taking to her nice soft luxurious crib. She is used to a board and bamboo of sorts, so she will sleep on the hardwood floors for a few hours and then we have to move her into our bed. I will wake up ever couple of hours worried that i am squishing her and hoping she is not going to fall off the bed.

Naptime, she only wants me to hold her. 2 hrs in the middle of the day is a long time with a sweaty little baby. John is actually trying right now to see if she will go down on her floor for a nap. (he has been in there a while )

She is saying mama which is cool. I really do not know why she likes me so much. I feel like I am boring her most of the time. I am still so tired to carry on a one sided conversation for too long.

Her appt with surgeon is this friday. I just want to know what to expect. Her palate is wide open so it will be extensive surgery. I wonder how soon they would do it! poor little baby. She hates doctors more than her parents do.

John just went to the store and bought me yogurt and pudding and ice cream. I want all three right now. what a guy. Lucy loves him so much. I kinda miss him though. We are together all day but seem to not spend any time together. I just want to watch a movie with him and eat nachos.

Lucy is not a super fan of the outdoors. It is all so new to her. It must feel so big to her.

Ok gonna go get some ice cream now.

See ya.

new pics of lucy from the orphanage

we developed the two cameras that the orphanage gave back to us when we picked her up - we were excited to see 'orphan lucy'. a bunch of pics were of some other girl. i will post her picture at the end - if you recognize her, please let us know. we will be happy to forward them on to you.






Here is the other beautiful little girl - we hope her parents are looking.