surgery

JD had surgery again.  Thankfully it was only ear tubes and nose cautery but still not fun.  His ears are just a hot mess and hopefully will get better soon.  He has fluid and some hearing loss and I think they are waiting to see if this second set of tubes will help do the trick or if we need to go into further treatment.  He also gets nosebleeds and so they thought as long as they are in they would cauterize in  his nose.  Our ENT said he started with the left side and it was bloody and got it taken care of and then moved to the right side...yikes!  I guess that side was bad and he basically had to chase the bleed way back and do lots of cauterizing to get it to stop and hopefully find the end of it.  He is thinking it's a congenital thing and that JD probably has really thin membranes that makes his nose bleed easily. 

While he was under anesthesia he also had a pretty lenghty MRI of the brain and full spine.  It's more of a comparison to one he had last year and make sure that there are no significant changes and the normal stenosis a person with dwarfism has is withink "normal" range.  We meet with the neurosurgeon next week to discuss those results. 

I've discovered that JD comes out of anesthesia quite agitated and angry (totally unlike him) and we just have to go with the flow until it's out of his system.  They lost one of his socks in the process and that threw him for a loop and I had to keep assuring him that he has plenty of socks and will be okay! 

this is JD beofre surgery

and after

Happy National adoption month!!!

November is national adoption month and a great time to talk adoptions.  I'm going to start with how we got "into" adoption.

July 2004 we heard thru my cousin about a girl who just found out she was pregnant with a little girl and due within the week and wasn't prepared to be a mom or raise a child .  I jokingly ( well, half jokingly) said we'll adopt her!!!  Well, after talking to Steve and my cousin talking her her gal it was determined....we were adopting a baby!  Life got very hectic very fast.   Let me say this started on a Saturday night and by that Monday we were in talks with a lawyer and an adoption agency and totally out of our element.  On that following Wednesday my cousin called and we needed to head to Duluth (about 2 hours away) because the mom was in labor.  We got there and witnessed the birth and then reality set in.  I had 2 days to get home, get baby stuff together, have the lawyer work on the paperwork and start our home study with the social worker.  Friday we headed back to Duluth as a family of 4 and came home a family of 5.  I quit my job as we had a newborn to care for now and there was no way to work.  CRAZZZZYYYY.  We had such great support from family and friends and our wonderful neighbors brought gifts and were excited to welcome her to the 'hood.

The mom was calling a few times and her and her totally wacko mom (who never even came to the hospital to bring her distraught daughter home) came to see the baby as what I assumed was a goodbye.   Well, a month into having the baby the birth mom called and said she was taking her back.  WTF?!?!?!  are you kidding me?!?!!?  We were now a family of 4 again.  devastation hit and we knew we couldn't go through that again.  I couldn't figure out why it happened when it seemed so perfect. 

Fast forward to December 2005 and after talking about my empty hole in my heart Steve and I decided to pursue adoption again....in China.  We couldn't take a chance on losing another child.  We got logged in to China 5/24/06 and the wait was on for a non-special needs baby girl as young as possible.  When we started the process it was about 6 - 7 months wait for a baby and as we were doing our paperwork it increased.  When we got logged in they predicted it would be about 18 months.  Welll.....that continued to increase and really it turned out it would have been over 2 years if we stayed in the non-special needs route.  We started looking at the special needs list (our agency called them children of promise) and thought....lets' see what happens.  July of 2007 we asked to be match with a heart baby who was 11 months old at the time.... DENIED.   Then the next list we asked to be matched with 1 of 2 heart babies that were each about 2 years old.  I was waiting for the DENIED call to come again when much to my surprise they said you've been matched!!!   Zhou, Yidi was just over 2 years old and ours!!   We waited just over 4 months and we traveled to get her....FOREVER!!!

.

We traveled to China to get her January of 2008

Family was complete.

Or so we thought....

Another fast forward to September 2009.  I was still looking on the chat room of our old agency and Karen posted the cutest picture of a 7 year old boy with dwarfism and I was intrigued but knew we weren't adopting again so went on with life. 

Well, the following June (2010) out of the blue I started panicking over this boy with dwarfism in China and really had a sense of urgency to know if he had a family yet.  I was really hoping he did but yet again...hoping not as I just felt he was to be in our family.  After about 20 emails (or more) I finally tracked down the agency and found out.....no family has come forward to adopt him.  I just started crying and praying and knew I needed to talk to Steve (who has always said...NO MORE CHILDREN).  I prayed if he was to be in our family Steve would say yes and if not....I would deal with a very sad sad heart.  Steve took a few days and I finally asked AGAIN and he said we could go for it but if for some reason it didn't work out....we were not looking for another child to adopt.  We brought it up to our kids and Jake (the oldest) said no to adoption.  I said but it's a boy....not a girl and he again said no.  I said but he's older than Zoe so no baby and again...NO.  I finally said he has dwarfism and with missing a beat he said yes!!!!  Not that Jake was our deciding factor but it was a good reply.  Guo, Qing Qing would be our son. 

May of 2011 we traveled to China to bring JD home, at age 9, to his forever family.

Now our family is complete!

Adoption is wonderful, scary, frustrating, a blessing, and has so many highs and lows but the best part about it is is you are family and blessed beyond measure with watching all 4 of our children interact with one another and fight like normal siblings!!!