Welcome Home, Elsie!

Yesterday my dear friend Lori threw us a "Welcome Home Elsie" party.  Fun, encouraging, delicious, and delightful are a few words I would use to describe this afternoon. 

such a beautiful spread!

gifts galore, but Elsie really just enjoyed chewing on her shoe and tags...oh and ripping the tissue paper!

writing out prayers for our girls

sweet friends of mine...so thankful to celebrate with all of these friends, old and new!

What a week

Wow, we got home last Thursday, which means that it's been a little over a week we've had Elsie in America.  It seems longer than that.  Wednesday and Thursday's doctor's appointments were a bit overwhelming.

Wednesday we met with Emma's neurologist.  It was the first meeting with him, we've had Elsie home less than a week.  We thought, "bring her along, he'll probably tell us he needs to review Emma's records with some other doctors.  Elsie will sleep because it'll be nap time, and it'll be no big deal."  And then sometimes our thoughts/expectations are not reality.  Elsie was crying and fussing the whole time and the doctor had a lot of important stuff to share with us.  He wants Emma to have surgery as soon as possible.  The complications in her spine will lead to incontinence and loss of function in her lower extremities if we don't do surgery.  She's doing so well now, which is really a miracle considering the state of her spine and spinal cord.  We don't want that to change.  So, surgery, ASAP.  October 8th to be exact.  It's a major surgery.  It'll take 6-8 hours and there will be an incision from her neck to her tailbone.  She'll be in the hospital about a week.

This is not an easy pill to swallow when you're trying to adjust to instant family of four.

And then the next morning...an EEG with an active little one.  Stick electrodes all over her head without sedation because that'll mess with the results.  Oh yeah, she screamed.  Does any 2 year old like to be restrained?  It was plain awful.  She finally cried herself to sleep, which was expected since they told me to bring her tired so I got her up at 4am.  These EEG technicians are just asking for a recipe for disaster.  After it was finished we went to see the doctor and he basically told us that the results are inconclusive and we need another test, an MRI, to see more.  We're trying to figure out if Elsie has epilepsy and needs to be on medication.

Please pray for us.  We're tired.  We're dealing with a lot.  We're overwhelmed.  We know Jesus tells us He won't give us more than we can handle and we're clinging to that promise.  We don't have to handle all of this, because He is.  It's all in His hands and we can trust.

An Update

You might be wondering how we’re doing…today, much better.  We all finally got a good night’s sleep last night and that makes all the difference.  Jet lag was rough this time, especially on Elsie.  But yesterday after no naps, when it was Mark’s first day back at the office, we had one frazzled Mommy and one little girl who finally slept through the night.  Phew…Lord, please let that continue.  (Of course I mean the sleeping through the night part, not the no naps part!)

Elsie’s adjusting pretty well.  She crawls around the house playing with her toys, but will stop to come over to us and get kisses and hugs and to be tossed around.  She easily laughs when we tickle her and throw her in the air and let her run while we hold her hands.  She’s walking more and more too, I think she just needs to decide it’ll be just as fast as her crawl.  For some reason she’s decided she doesn’t like her pack n play, so she’s crying when it’s time to sleep.  This is something she didn’t do while we were in China.  But usually, she’ll cry and then be asleep within five minutes.  She drinks her bottles just fine and she likes crunchy foods (Cheerios, puffs, freeze dried fruits), but most other things she just spits out.

The day after getting home with Elsie, we had quite a scare…she had a seizure.  We knew her file said that she has epilepsy but it gave no description of the extent or the care she’s received for it.  The orphanage workers told us she’d had 2 or 3 seizures her whole life and that the last one was about 6 months ago.  She’d been up since 2 am and it was 11 am and I was feeding her a bottle.   She was starting to fall asleep and then she tensed up, her eyes went up in her head and she turned purple—a state you never want to see your child in!  We were so scared and called 911.  She came out of it after about a minute and started to breathe again.  Instead of taking her to the ER, we decided to let her rest and called around for the soonest appointment with a specialist.  So, Thursday morning she’ll have an EEG and then see a doctor at the Florida Epilepsy Center for Kids.  She’s been fine since Friday. 

Emma too has a doctor’s appointment with a neurosurgeon on Wednesday afternoon.  We’ll bring all of the results from the testing she had in Ohio this summer and see what they say about surgery.  So, let the fun of doctor's appointments begin!

We're back

the bags are in

Considering her track record on the China in-country flights, Elsie did extremely well on the international flight and the flight in America.  The thing with the international flight was that it took off at 9am China time.  So, she took a short nap on the plane and that was it.  She played well though.  On the flight from Seattle to Orlando, she slept the whole time.  Emma slept most of that flight too, but when she wasn't sleeping she screamed.  She was so tired and out of it.  We all are.  We're just hoping the kids sleep tonight...Elsie for the first time in her bed in her room.  :)

Sweet welcome goodies from our friends, including a sign outside and balloons tied to the chairs!

Tiring us out

Entertaining our little darlings in a hotel isn't exactly easy.  Taking them out to dinner every night is getting really old.  I cannot imagine how we'd be doing this without my mom's help.  (Seriously, Mom, I owe you big time for this!).  We're trying to get some pictures of our time here, but we're not doing a whole lot that's really exciting and it's hard to get good pictures of active kids!

However thiis little beauty is easily making her way into our hearts.  

She loves being thrown around and zoomed really fast in a stroller.  Her red, white and blue dress means that today was our consulate appointment and tomorrow evening we'll have the US visa that makes Elsie an American when she arrives in Seattle on Thursday.

Emma is now a "jie jie" (big sister) and thanks to Grandma is having a lot of fun on this trip.  Two to three times a day she runs from our hotel room door to the elevator saying "Emma push the button!"  It might be the highlight of her day.

Emma's laughing, not crying, in case you're wondering...and it's really hard to get Elsie to look at the camera.  We might show you some highlights from our blooper roll!

Enjoying our girls!

It's just fun to put them in matching clothes!  When they're older, will they say "Mom, why did you do that?"

The thirty minutes of sleep before Elsie's first flight.

Our family of four!

Rooms of beds

Yesterday we went to see the orphanage where Elsie spent the first two years and five months of her life.  What we saw was one hallway with rooms of beds.  In the orphanages we've been in previously there are separate rooms:  one room for sleeping and another to play and crawl around.  This place had no toys, no place for babies to crawl and run and play.

We had signs that this was Elsie's beginning.  At first she wouldn't let us hold her when we fed her.  Now she will.  She moves her fingers back and forth and watches them--self-stimulation.  She doesn't do that when she's out and about with us.  We know that a lot of developmental growth was lost in our sweet girl's first few years.  But we're seeing lots of good signs too.  She makes good eye contact.  She's willing to cuddle.  She giggles when we tickle her and bounce her.  She imitates occasionally.  She makes babbling noises.  

Oh how thankful I am that we have been given the privilege of rescuing one precious one from that kind of life.  But how heartbroken I am for all who remain.  While we were there, I walked around and looked into the eyes of those babies.  I smiled at them.  I rubbed their backs.  They lit up.  I prayed that God would give each one a mommy and a daddy to love on them.  While we were there, we smiled and thanked the caregivers and the director, who were kind people.  But last night, I cried and cried.  I will not forget and I will not stop praying.

At civil affairs

We've spent the past two mornings at the provincial civil affairs office.  Yesterday we went there to get her and of course we weren't prepared for the first meeting.  With both adoptions, we were never really told exactly how the "gotcha" moment would happen.  So this time we walked upstairs and into a room thinking we would wait for her, but instead she was already there.  I think we have some video and I'm pretty sure this pic was taken moments after we saw her:

Today was lots of paperwork to officially make her Elsie Grace Fertig!  Grandma did a great job keeping Emma occupied as two other families were also there.

Elsie had to leave her mark to show that she agrees too. :)

A family pic while we wait:

People from Elsie's orphanage, which we will be able to visit tomorrow afternoon.

It's official!  She's our daughter now!

We've got her!

We started the day like this:

And ended the day like this:

This is some of the middle:

Feeding time:  Mommy feeding Elsie and Emma feeding her "baby".  Elsie is really tiny and only on bottles.  She needs loving and good nutrition.

Elsie has not resisted Daddy at all.  She reaches out her arms to both of us and cuddles in.

We're here and ready, we think

Emma didn't sleep so well on this international flight, so all of us arrived quite tired!  After one night's sleep in Beijing and a day and night here in Taiyuan to get our bearings a bit, we think we're ready to go get our girl.  (I mean, how can you ever be fully prepared for this?)

We've just had our last meal as a family of three.  Ready or not, Elsie here we come!