"Big Girl" Syndrome

The past few weeks Caroline has really been into being a "big girl." I don't know if it was the new big girl bed that we got her or the fact that she sees Lily as little, but she is obsessed! In fact, she is so concerned about being a big girl that she cried at school last week because she wanted to go to the big girl (3 year old) class. No, she's not 3 yet, but she apparently thinks she is since she recently told me that she's almost 4. What?! Slow down little girl! Thankfully our preschool is wonderful and let her go up to the 3's class. She of course loves it! Here are some recent pictures of our sweet "big girl".

 Borrowing Matthew's rain boots

We match! Yes, I did bribe her so she would get dressed. She's very picky about her clothes and only wants to wear the same 4 t-shirts. Desperate times people!

 I'm a princess girl!

 Last night in her crib! I don't know how she fit in there with all that stuff.

 So excited about her new bed! She has to line up all of her animals every night before she goes to sleep.

She loves running super fast!

Much Overdue Lily Medical Update

I have been meaning to sit down and give an update on Lily's surgery and progress since it happened last Monday, and I just haven't found the time! And it has taken me three different occasions to finish this post. So here goes:

Monday we woke up bright and early and headed up to All Children's with Lily. We got her all checked in and were quickly called back to the pre-op area. We had a quick visit with the RN, anesthesiologist, OR team, and Dr. Ruas. Then we waited for our turn. And we waited. And we waited some more. Turns out our surgeon works faster than the hospital's sterilization machine so they bumped a few surgeries in front of us while they waited for the machine to finish. Lily was a trooper, even though she wasn't allowed to eat since the night before. It helped that Brian found these mobile stairs they use for rehab and let her climb up and down them over and over again. Finally it was our turn and they took her back.

She always cries when we hand her off to the nurses, then they take her down the hall and use the mask to make her sleepy. Then they put in her IV and start the surgery. This surgery was a rather quick procedure (the lip and gum line repair will be much longer) so we waited in Dr. Ruas's conference room. He came out about 20-30 minutes later to let us know that everything had gone well. Then we had to wait another 30 minutes or so while Lily was in recovery so we decided to head down to the cafeteria to get some food. All Children's has these beepers like you'd get in a restaurant that they use to tell you your child is out of recovery. Ours went off right after we went back upstairs to the surgery waiting room. We were led back to the post-op area and found our sweet Lily asleep in a nurse's arms. She handed her off to me and I just sat and held her while they monitored her. Apparently she was super mad when she woke up and nothing would calm her down so they gave her some morphine.

After her vitals were registering consistently for about 10 minutes it was time for us to head up to our room for the night. Since Lily was still asleep I was able to carry her up instead of putting her back on the stretcher. We continued our peaceful cuddling time for another half hour or so, and then little miss Lily woke up! At first she was pretty groggy and just kept looking at us sleepily. Unfortunately this was quickly replaced with lots of screaming when she realized that her arms were restrained with no-no's. For those of you unfamiliar with these lovely things, they are hard plastic tubes covered in fabric that Velcro around her arms and attached together with a strap behind her shoulders and back. Considering how much she hates her carseat and ergo carrier, I knew we were going to be in trouble with these things.

 

The next several hours are kind of a blur. They were filled with lots of screaming, lots of crying, us trying every trick in the book to calm Lily down, and finally ended with some additional morphine. She finally was able to settle down and sleep a bit longer, but not much. We finally realized that maybe she was hungry and needed to eat something. We had asked Dr. Ruas immediately after the surgery if she needed to eat anything different, and he told us that we shouldn't have to change her diet too much. Then the nutritionist came in and told us that Lily would need to be on a full liquid diet until her next surgery. That pretty much left us with options of oatmeal and chicken broth for a month. Have you seen this girl eat? I don't think so! The SLP said soft foods, and the nurses were on team liquids. Thankfully our nurse realized that Lily was much older than most CLP kids, and since she had done well drinking water she got us some pudding to try. Lily really enjoyed that chocolate pudding, and started to act more like herself. It was also at this point that we decided to take her no-no's off. The combination worked, and she was finally playing and smiling again! She was definitely still more clingy than normal and I was anticipating a long night with her sleeping on me.

 

Brian snuck off the cafeteria to get us some dinner, and we took turns eating across the room from her so that she wouldn't get upset about not being able to share our pizza. I was pretty exhausted from holding a screaming toddler most of the day, so around 7:30 I lay down on my "bed" for a few minutes to rest before I had to hold Lily and sleep. The next thing I knew it was midnight, Lily was asleep in her crib, and Brian was asleep on the couch. Score! Lily was stirring because it was time for her next dose of pain medicine so we called the nurse in. She took it well, but then wanted to snuggle with me. She slept on me for about 30 minutes and then I put her back in the crib. The pattern repeated every 4 hours when her pain medicine wore off. A much better outcome than I expected!

Since we would be discharged in the morning, Brian left early to go to work so he wouldn't have to miss a surgery day. I was excited because I planned to get up with him around 6:30 and then have an hour to myself before Lily woke up. As he was about to walk out the door, the resident who works with Dr. Ruas came in to check on Lily. Much to my dismay, she flipped on all the lights and then went over and opened Lily's mouth. So much for some alone time. Lily was mad, and nothing I could do would calm her down. She was awake too early, tired, hungry, still with an IV in her foot, and in a strange place. Finally I decided to take her down to the playroom on the floor. She wouldn't leave my lap, but at least she wasn't crying. She played on me for about 15 minutes and then ventured away. She discovered a shopping cart and disappeared into the hallway. I knew that a shift change was about to happen and I wanted to let the nurse know that we wanted to be discharged ASAP so I coaxed Lily and the shopping cart down the hall back to our room. Sure enough the nurses were in there, and after reporting what the resident told me said that we could be discharged sometime this morning.

We went back to the playroom until it was time for Lily's next dose of pain medicine. Then it was all I could do to keep her entertained while we waited to be discharged. And waited. And waited. Thankfully she found it great fun to climb in and out of the stroller they had brought us and fasten the seatbelt. Finally at 11:00 they told us we could leave! They took Lily's IV out, had our prescription ready at the pharmacy, and off we went. Lily was obviously exhausted, and any time she is even a tiny bit tired or hungry in the car she cries. So I knew this was going to be a fun ride. Sure enough, she was not happy to be strapped in, especially with her no-no's. She started crying in the garage and didn't stop. And lucky me, there were two accidents on the Skyway so it was bumper to bumper traffic literally from the toll plaza to the base of the steep incline. A 35 minute trip took over an hour, with her screaming almost the entire way. I had to stop by Rowlett first to get the minivan from my dad, then head straight over to the preschool to get Matthew and Caroline. We finally made it home around 1:30. Hallelujah!

 

  

Lily's Cleft Appointment

On Friday we took Lily up to All Children's for her first appointment with the cleft team. I was a little worried about how she would do because the appointment was at 12:45, which is - you guessed it - right in the middle of nap time. Add a few strange doctors shoving things in her ears and mouth, and I was expecting a total disaster. We fed her an early lunch and prayed that she would sleep in the car on the way there. She slept for about 20 minutes, then woke up crying because her poor neck was at all sorts of strange angles and her head kept hanging forward. I remembered a little too late that I could tilt her carseat back a little. (FYI she is normally not so uncomfortable, but we moved her to the Jeep and the seats are super straight up. I swear we aren't bad parents ;o)

Anyway, we got there and signed her in, she got weighed and measured, then we headed back to the room where we would see 8 different specialists. The audiologist came in first and took us back to a soundproof room to do Lily's hearing test. I went in with her and had to keep her sitting on my lap and facing forward. The wall in front of us had three sets of speakers - to the left, right and center - and positioned around the speaker were robotic or mechanical animals in boxes. There was a dog right in front of us that would bark and walk, but obviously couldn't go anywhere because it was in a clear box. That one was great for getting Lily's attention when she started squirming. To the right was a monkey playing drums, and I'm not sure what was to the left because I was instructed not to look around and influence where she looked. The audiologist would play sounds of varying volumes in the different speakers to get Lily to look at them, and then activate the animal to keep her interest. She did pretty well with most of the sounds, but there were definitely several that I heard that she didn't even react to. Oh, did I forget to mention that she finished amoxicillin the day before for a double ear infection? So basically the hearing test was kind of pointless. The audiologist said that she might have hearing loss, or she might not, it was hard to tell since she still had fluid in her ears. She recommended another hearing test in 2 months. The ENT that we saw a bit later was more encouraging. She said that her hearing test was right on target for fluid in the ears, and that when the fluid was gone she would probably have normal hearing. However, the fluid might not clear out on its own which is very common in cleft kids. Then she would require tubes. Apparently about 90% of kids with clefts require tubes. She's going to check Lily's ears again at one of her upcoming visits, and if the fluid is still there then she'll have tubes put in during surgery.

After the audiologist we saw the speech pathologist. She was impressed that Lily was comprehending many English words and that she has learned a few signs. She encouraged us to teach her more signs to help her communicate until she's able to talk and showed us a few strategies for teaching them to her. Then the social worker came in and talked to us about what to expect during our hospital stays. After that was the ENT, along with our surgeon Dr. Ruas. They examined Lily's cleft and talked a bit about what approach they would use. Dr. Ruas was hopeful that Lily would be a candidate for using braces to start closing her gum line which would enable her to have one surgery instead of two. Unfortunately when the orthodontist got there and looked in her mouth (Lily was NOT a fan of this or of him as a result) he didn't feel that he could do it with only one tooth on her left side. So that means that we will be having two separate surgeries - one for the lip and gum line and another several months later for the palate.

Next a pediatrician came in. She examined Lily briefly and asked us if we had any concerns. We didn't, but she promised to send us a developmental checklist for 18 months so we could see if Lily was on target. We also saw a pediatric dentist who thought that Lily would only be missing one tooth. He told us that if the baby tooth is missing the permanent one will be too. Last was the nurse who coordinates everything. She told us that she would be calling us in a few days to schedule our appointments.

All in all we were there from 1:00 to 3:30 and Lily did amazing! The only times she got upset were when someone was examining her. The rest of the time she was wandering around the room laughing and entertaining us. I think she was loving having two parents all to herself! She is definitely a brave little girl.

So, for those of you who want to know, here's what our upcoming process looks like.

Next Monday we will be heading up to All Children's to have impressions and photographs done of Lily's mouth. These impressions will be used to make the Latham device that will close her gum line. We have to be there at 6am, yikes! And she has to be put under which of course makes me a little nervous.

Then a week later we go back to All Children's and Dr. Ruas will put the Latham device in her mouth. The nurse told us to expect an overnight stay, which I was surprised about. I guess Lily will have to drink before they let us leave, and she will be pretty uncomfortable.

A month after that on March 3rd we go back to All Children's again for surgery to close her lip and gum line. This will be a more major surgery, and we will be in the hospital for several days.

After that she will need several months for the lip to heal completely before they close her palate. I will be glad for the break from surgeries for a bit! While the next few weeks will be busy, at least we will have this part of our journey behind us soon. We would really appreciate your prayers during this time. For Lily, that her pain would not be too unbearable and that she would feel safe with us by her side during this scary time. For us that we would be wise in making decisions and not too nervous! Also that we would be patient during her recovery. And also for Matthew and Caroline, who will be very excited to be spending extra time with Baba, but will probably struggle with the extra attention that Lily will be getting.

I've started drinking coffee

I've started drinking coffee. This has become my new answer when people ask me how things are going with three kids. Yes, it's true, the girl who doesn't like coffee has started drinking it. There's just something about three kids 4 and under that just sucks the energy right out of you! That and the fact that my parents conveniently bought us a Keurig for Christmas. They bought it for the hot chocolate and tea, but it came with coffee so I figured why not?! If you know me, you know that I can nap pretty much any time any where and I'm a huge fan of sleep. But now that Matthew doesn't nap every day and my amount of free time has almost disappeared, I was desperate. So coffee it is. It's not so bad.

Ok, so you probably want the real answer to that question. How are things going? How is Lily adjusting? What about Matthew and Caroline? What's it like with 3? Here is my attempt to answer you as accurately and honestly as possible.

How are things going and what's it like with 3 kids?
Amazing, exhausting, exhilarating, tough, crazy, exhausting, fun, entertaining, and exhausting. Yes, I did mean to include exhausting three times. Did you not just read about Ms. I Hate Coffee turning to the dark side? After the first two weeks home when I was thrown right into the fire with all three kids by myself and Brian working lots of hours and Saturday to make up for when we were gone, things have greatly improved. Brian took off almost two weeks over Christmas and New Year's and we really started to get the hang of things. Every day gets better and better as we figure out how to juggle three. And now we usually have all three kids in shoes when we arrive places! Bonus!

How is Lily adjusting?
Remarkably well. She has really lit up and let her personality come out. Brian took over most of the bottle feeding and bedtime responsibility when he was home, and she has really bonded with him. Now when he comes home she lights up and walks as fast as she can to the door with her arms up. So adorable! She also has said Dada a few times. I mean, super cute, but seriously why do they always say Dada first? I'm the one you slept on for two weeks! So back to Lily. I know that she was in an orphanage for the first 16 months of her life, but I honestly don't see any delays aside from her speech. She has great social interaction with her siblings and other adults, walks everywhere, attempts to climb on everyone, mimics sounds and actions, plays with all her toys appropriately, and seriously loves the fetch game. I don't know a toddler who doesn't find throwing objects on the floor and having an adult retrieve them to be the most entertaining game ever. Too bad for her this is not my first rodeo and I give her two throws before the object goes away.

As for sleeping, I am happy to report that she is now sleeping in her own crib!!! Considering that only a few weeks ago she would only sleep on me, I find this to be pretty miraculous! It all started when she fell out of our bed. Brian had put her to sleep in our bed, and we were out in the kitchen when we heard her cry. We decided to wait for a second to see if she would stop before going in there and she did. Great! A few hours later we go in the bedroom to go to sleep and find her asleep on the floor. Apparently that crying we heard was after she tumbled, but it appeared that Cajun broke her fall because she was laying half on him. Me being the amazing Mom of the Year candidate that I am, said, why don't we just leave here there? She's happy and then we can actually sleep in the bed without getting kicked in the face repeatedly! Brian, the more rational and obviously more compassionate parent, suggests that instead of that why don't we move her into the pack and play.Yes! Genius! So begins the process of getting her out of our bed. For a few days we'd put her to sleep in our bed then move her to the pack and play when we went to bed. When she was waking up happily in there we decided to try putting her to bed in the pack and play. As long as we were laying on our bed next to her she was fine. A few days later she was waking up a lot and getting mad because she was rolling into the edge of her bed. So we decided to move her to her crib in the same way. It worked! And we all finally slept soundly all night! Until last Friday. Then she got sick and was up multiple times a night. I'll tell you about that in a minute. But the last two days we've been putting her to bed in her crib successfully!

We took Lily to the pediatrician the second week we were home. As I'm driving there I realize, she's afraid of men and this pediatrician is a man! This is going to be amazing! Thankfully she was fine. She loves being in her diaper, so within minutes of being there she was quite the happy camper. She just walked all around the room playing with all the toys I brought her and then chucking them. The doctor was great with her too, and didn't have any health concerns aside from her speech. She weighed 23 pounds 13 ounces, and had gained almost a pound in 3 weeks! Then she got a few shots, poor baby. The first one she just kind of looked at me, then when she got the second one she cried but stopped as soon as I picked her up. She's so tough!

The last little Lily update is that she is currently on antibiotics for an ear infection :o( Starting on Friday night she was sleeping terribly, waking up crying almost every hour. She was also super cranky and irritable during the day Saturday. I thought it was just because she was tired, but the terrible sleeping and crankiness continued into Saturday night and Sunday. I have only experienced one other ear infection with my kids - Matthew had one when he was a baby - but she was having the same symptoms he did minus the fever. She had been congested, so I knew it was possible and ear infections are one of the complications of a cleft palate. Then Sunday afternoon she got a fever and I knew that's what it was. The poor thing was burning up even with Tylenol. First thing Monday morning I called the doctor and took her in. Fluid in both ears! Not that I want her to be in pain, but I was so glad that there was a reason for the awful sleep and crankiness. I don't know how much longer I could have survived with her that way! I missed my smiley girl! Oh, and side note, she's gained another pound. A pound in 2 1/2 weeks this time! Soon she's going to be sharing clothes with Caroline!

How are Matthew and Caroline adjusting?
They treat Lily like any normal siblings treat each other. They love her and are so sweet to her, and then they shove her down and yell at her. We are working on that second part. It didn't help that we just had Christmas and they have new toys that they aren't too keen on sharing. Now they are in such a habit of saying "No Lily" that it's their first response when she comes close to them. Something else we are working on...

It's been really fun to watch Matthew and Caroline bond with their new sister. When we were in China it took Matthew a few days to warm up to her, but then when he realized he could make her laugh he realized she wasn't so bad. He does a great job of showing her how to play with toys or how to do different things. I love listening to him explain things to her and get excited when she does them. He could do without her crying in the car though - he says that it makes him feel tired. Me too buddy! Caroline is like Elmyra from Tiny Toons. She LOVES her sister, but maybe a little too much sometimes. She really wants to help her up when she falls and give her hugs, but Lily's not such a big fan of either of those. My favorite thing is when Lily is crying and Caroline goes and brings her a toy to help her feel better. She also talks just like I do and says "It's ok cutie, don't cry sweetie, here you go Lily-boo".

What's next medically?
We will be traveling up to Tampa to meet with our cleft palate team next Friday the 17th. We will be meeting with and having Lily examined by 8 different specialists! Speech and language pathology, audiology, developmental pediatrics, plastic/craniofacial surgery, pediatric dentistry, orthodontics, psychology, and social work. This is why we are so thankful that there is a team near us. Otherwise we would be visiting all of the different places separately. While Friday will be a very long day, it will totally be worth it!

And here's what I know you all read these posts for. Here are some pictures from the past few weeks:

First Week Home Highlights

After arriving home we finally managed to get everyone to bed (with the help of melatonin gummies) around 2am, and Brian headed off to work bright and early 5 hours later! I went from 3 kids and 3 adults to 3 kids and 1 adult. Gulp. Nothing like jumping right in. Thankfully the kids slept late. I woke up M and C at 11:30, L got up on her own around 10:45. It made for a rather short and easy morning! I could tell poor Lily was feeling a little scared and unsure. She went from a curious and independent explorer in China to the quiet, withdrawn, and clingy girl of our first few days with her. She also went back to sleeping on me, but apparently our bed is way more comfortable and my back didn't hurt so I didn't mind. She also backtracked a little with Brian and didn't really want much to do with him. We did manage to meet him for our traditional Monday lunch at Subway. The kids were a little confused since I was calling their sandwiches lunch but it was really their breakfast. I mean, if you can have breakfast for dinner why can't you have lunch for breakfast? Makes perfect sense! Now I must say that getting three kids out the door in a timely fashion is definitely going to be a goal that I will be working toward. However, for my first outing alone I managed to have clothes on all three kids, and 2/3 with shoes. But I did not manage to bring my phone. No big deal, except that our 12:15 lunch date was quickly turning into a 12:30 lunch date, and I was sitting by myself in Subway with all three kids and no way to call Brian to see if he was actually coming. Finally at 12:45 he walked in the door. Hi honey, I'm out! No, we actually did eat lunch together and then took our weekly walk down the sidewalk to throw rocks in what used to be a pond but is now a dried up mess of weeds. M and C don't seem to mind as long as they get to throw stuff. Typical. Lily started to come back out of her shell a bit, and decided to walk with us and then slightly ahead of us or behind us, depending on what was piquing her curiosity. We came back home and the kids had fun showing Lily the toys in her room and playing with their toys that they hadn't seen in two weeks. We obviously skipped naps, although I really could have used one!

We were very fortunate not to experience much jet lag. Lily and Matthew switched their schedules right away, and Caroline was the only one who was waking up at 2am for the first 3 nights. Although I must say, she did that before China on occasion. And I'm not sure if it was the jet lag or just the fact that she was used to sleeping the same room with my mom and Matthew the whole time and didn't want to be alone. Overall, everyone was sleeping at the right times. I just felt like I needed a whole lot more sleep than I was getting! I definitely missed out on a lot when we were in China. This resulted in many incoherent sentences, misplaced objects, and I'm pretty sure I lost some brain cells permanently.

One of the reasons I really wanted to travel over Thanksgiving was because Matthew would only miss 2 weeks of school total. If we traveled before or after or close to Christmas, he'd be off for those holidays plus 2 more weeks. Yes, I realize that he is in preschool and that him missing school is not going to be detrimental to his academics or education. That's not why I was concerned. Last year he liked school until about November when he missed several weeks due to illness, then cried every day and the rest of the year was a struggle. Needless to say I did not want to repeat that. So, praise God, we were able to travel over Thanksgiving and he only missed 2 weeks total. We talked about going back, he was excited to go back and see his friends, he practically skipped down the hallway, and then when he entered his classroom and all his friends were talking to him and looking at him and excited to see him, he started crying and didn't want to go. Lovely. Here we go again. Thankfully he has a wonderful teacher who took care of him, even though she had to hold him back from following me to the car, and he was fine a few hours later. Turns out he just got shy with everyone staring at him. Now he's fine. Lily seemed to have no problem with people looking at her and welcoming her and giving her attention. She just smiled at them all and hit herself on the head. You know, her standard greeting. Thank you again Matthew.

Another reason I really was hopeful for Thanksgiving travel was so that we'd be back in time to see Matthew and Caroline's Christmas program at school. Yes, I know that makes me a crazy mom. I don't care! Thursday night our family all joined us for the show. Now if you'll remember, getting three kids ready and arriving on time is still a challenge. I managed to get Caroline into her sweater dress (which we strategically call a shirt because she hates dresses) and leggings. It only resulted in a 15 minute screaming fit this time. Matthew was wearing a costume so I didn't worry about changing his clothes from school. We were still late. I walked Matthew up and his class was already heading out the door to the sanctuary. Then I realized that even though they were wearing costumes, that was only for part of the show. They were wearing their clothes for the last song. All the kids were wearing button down shirts or sweater vests and pants or dresses. Matthew was wearing his motorcycle shirt, athletic shorts, and blue crocs. Oh, and he was also wearing his medal from climbing the Great Wall that he had just gotten back from Baba. Awesome. Yes, I was that mom. So the show starts and when Matthew's class comes out they are all dressed as angels or shepherds. They were adorable. And then out walks Matthew with his medal over his costume. It was priceless and by far my favorite thing. Caroline's class came out to sing Jingle Bells and Away in a Manger (or what she calls the Jesus Sweet Head song). Even though she knows every word by heart and sings it all the time, she didn't utter a word up there. Actually none of the kids did. I think they were preoccupied with everyone staring at them. She did have fun shaking her jingle bells though! Lily was great the whole time. She really seems to enjoy music and happily ate her Cheerios and stood at my feet. The only sounds she made were happy sounds and giggles. After the program we enjoyed some cookies and juice. Lily took off walking all over the room. I think she was just making sure that no one took her cookie from her. Brian followed after her, and for the first time she let my dad play with her and hold her too! Of course it only lasted until she saw me, so they kept her up in the front of the sanctuary for a bit. It's so much fun to see her personality coming out again!

We got our Christmas tree this week! Not sure it was the smartest move, since Lily just likes to undecorate it constantly. But the kids did have fun finding the ornaments that weren't breakable to put on the tree. I just have to plan on having at least 5 ornaments on the ground at all times. Matthew and Caroline were so cute decorating it. They like to put the ornaments on the very tips of the branches, and definitely do not limit each branch to one ornament. The bottom branches are already losing lots of needles due to the frequency of ornaments being put on and taken off. Check out all the ornaments Matthew put on one branch below. And photo credits are shared with Matthew here, Brian wasn't home! He's a pretty good photographer!

So here's the adoption/Lily update. At the beginning of the week it was pretty rough. I felt like I had absolutely no time to do anything, just like it was the first few days in China. I had to go to bed when she did, which basically meant that I didn't really get to see Brian at all. Plus he was working longer hours to make up for the 2 weeks he missed. He'd basically come home, we'd eat dinner, give the kids a bath, have a little play time, then I'd put Lily to bed and that would be it for the night. The people that brought us dinner that week were such lifesavers. I have no idea how I would have cooked anything. During the toughest moments I couldn't help but think how much easier it was just having 2 kids, and I prayed that God would give me an overflow of love to give to my kids. As the week went on, Lily felt more and more like my daughter and just fit right into our family. My love for her progressed from loving her through my actions to loving her with my emotions as well. She opened up to Brian again and allowed him to put her to bed at night which freed me up to take care of things in the evening. I started to feel like a real human again! She started to feel safe and comfortable in our house and would sit and play or wander around the rooms. She still preferred me and would get upset if I was holding Matthew or Caroline, but she was returning to her curious independent self. Friday was a big milestone day for us. I took all three kids to Walmart by myself! Then by Friday night I actually left all the kids with Brian and ran a 5K! We have really come far in a week.

Thank You!

The 2 weeks we've been home have definitely been a whirlwind! I will update later, but first an overdue thank you post!

We are truly blessed with THE MOST AMAZING friends and family. I cannot thank you all enough for the support you have given us throughout this entire process. You have prayed for us, cried with us, been excited alongside us, and longed to bring our daughter home too. We could not have done this without you. Truly.

We came home to a clean house, meals in the freezer, groceries in the refrigerator and pantry, a completed crib in the nursery, a pack and play in the bedroom, and some festive decorations. Thank you for that Scott, Catie, Alice, and our awesome life group. You are greatly appreciated :o)

We also had an awesome welcoming party at the airport, complete with signs and a decorated car. Thank you to everyone who came out. What a great sight after completing 15 hours of plane rides!

A big thank you to everyone who has provided dinner for us since we have been home, and thank you Kristin for setting up our meal train. It has been such a blessing not to have to cook in the evening. I guess I'll have to figure that out soon enough!

I have been completely overwhelmed by the amount of people that actually read this blog and followed our journey. And who want me to write more posts! I will try to update soon, I promise ;o) Thank you all for caring about our family and being a part of our journey.

Finally, thank you all for loving us and loving Lily. And thank you for giving us grace as we adjust to being a family of 5. We love you all!

Forbidden City and Tian'anmen Square - Sunday, December 8th

We woke up on our last day in China! We are definitely all ready to get home. We were doing really well until the late night travel to Beijing and now we're all tired and cold and want to go home. We slept in a bit this morning and headed down to breakfast around 9:00. There's a little play room right off the dining area and when we were done eating all three kids went in there and played together. For the first time in 16 days the three adults were able to have a conversation without kids! It is so encouraging to see Lily playing with her brother and sister and just fitting right into our family. Just two weeks ago she wouldn't leave my side and definitely didn't want me to put her down.

Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden City were on our agenda for our last half day, and they were supposedly within walking distance. We headed out into the cold (the kids had on two shirts today so they were much warmer) to find them. Two blocks from our hotel is a famous pedestrian shopping street, so we enjoyed walking down that. We kept seeing large tour groups so we used them to determine that we were still going in the right direction. Then all of a sudden they were all gone! We asked a shopkeeper where to go, and she told us to go up and turn right. We turned under this archway that looked promising and ended up in this crazy food market! For the first time I really felt like I was in China. There were food vendors lining the street on both sides selling everything you can think of on skewers. My favorite were the scorpions and seahorses. Ech! The smells were out of control too. Every few feet we were hit with the smell of whatever was cooking at that vendor. Poor Matthew kept saying "It smells yucky. Why does it smell so bad?" Lily was asleep on my back in the Ergo and Brian was carrying Caroline through the crowd so that someone didn't try to steal her from us. It was quite a cool experience! When we made it through to the other side, we discovered that we were no closer to finding our destination. We asked another person who vaguely pointed in front of us so we kept walking. Still nothing. Then we asked a military guard who told us where to go in Chinese and also pointed. Finally we made it to a huge main road with street signs and figured out where to go.

We went into the Forbidden city and walked around the courtyard. There was really nothing that exciting about it, except for all the people staring at us. You can buy tickets to actually go inside the museum, but with 3 kids we decided against that. It was getting close to lunch time so we thought we'd walk across the street to see Tian'anmen Square and then head back. On our way out all of sudden all these street vendors started sprinting past us with their stuff in garbage bags. Apparently they use plain clothes policemen to crack down on the street vendors, and one had tackled a vendor to the ground and they were shouting at each other in Chinese. Just a little bit of excitement! We were glad that for once the attention was diverted elsewhere around us. We crossed under the street to the other side, but didn't want to wait in the long security line so we just looked at the Square from the other side of the barricades. We wanted to catch a taxi back because it was almost 1:00 and we had to be out of our rooms by 2:00, but the barricades lining the street never ended! We kept walking and walking looking for an opening and never found one. Soon we were back at the shopping street and decided to cut our losses and just walk the rest at that point. We did stop into McDonald's to grab some lunch to take back while I packed. Matthew really wanted a chocolate milkshake to give him energy after our walk, so the little cutie froze his hands carrying his ice cream back. Then I once again did a whirlwind packing job, and we made it down to the lobby to meet our driver and head to the airport. I scarfed my rather cold food down in the van. Yum.

The airport was thankfully rather uneventful. We were able to check in and let the kids run around for a bit before getting on the plane. This flight was only 12 hours compared to the 13 on the way over. Woohoo! Followed by a short 3 hour plane flight. Funny that 3 hour flights are now short! Caroline watched a bit of The Lorax, her favorite movie, then fell asleep and literally slept the entire flight! Matthew did great watching movies and slept for a few hours. He thought he was pretty cool and told me that he stayed up all night long. Lily did really well too. She fell asleep for the beginning of the flight and I was able to watch a movie, then woke up for the dinner service. She played with Brian and I, slept some more, and only had 2 crying episodes the entire time. If I could have found a way to get comfortable, I could have slept too. Oh well! After the flight from Guangzhou to Beijing I was really worried about the long flight, but it really wasn't so bad. Thank you for praying for us, we felt it!

We landed in Detroit and made it smoothly through customs and immigration. We did have to go to the non-US-citizens side since Lily had a Chinese passport, but we had our own lane and didn't have to wait in the long line. I waited with Lily to open the infamous sealed brown envelope, and the customs officer very undramatically stamped her passport, took our papers, and sent us on our way. We got our bags, rechecked them for our flight to Tampa, and then spent some time waiting at our gate. I found an outlet and was able to blog about our trip to the Great Wall. While I was blogging Brian came over and told me that Mitt Romney sat down across from them! I finished up my post and headed over. Of course I sneaked a picture of him :o)

We boarded our last flight, and we pretty much all slept the entire time. When we landed in Tampa it seemed to take forever for everyone to get off the plane in front of us! We finally made it out into the terminal and were greeted by an amazing welcome party! Matthew and Caroline ran straight to Daideo and didn't let go of him for a good 15 minutes, and we were able to introduce Lily to our friends. It felt so good to be home!!!! Thank you to everyone who stayed up late (and brought their kids!) to come and see us. It really meant a lot. We love you! We finally made it home around 1am, and found even more surprises at home! We have the best friends! Then we took some melatonin and put everyone in bed around 2:00. Home sweet home!