Merry Christmas!

What a beautiful and wonderful Christmas this has been!  It has been a very dreary, rainy day outside, but inside the house is warmed with love and the laughter of our children!  I still wonder if this is all a dream and I will "wake up" from this dream, the dream that our daughter is finally home.  Before we brought Joy home, I would dream about her being home, even before we knew of her.  When I slow down and ponder the moment, reality shakes me and I find myself wondering, am I still dreaming...

Joy has enjoyed her first Christmas.  Before yesterday, she didn't know how to open a present, but she is a pro now! 

Joy applying her lipstick. For Christmas, Santa brought her a purse, complete with lipstick and keys!

Many times during the past month, I think back to last year and I remember decorating for Christmas and celebrating Christmas and the Christmas season with Joy in our hearts and minds and wishing her a Merry Christmas from across the world.  We wanted her to be home so bad and it was so hard to not have her to hold and tuck in at night and protect.  We are so very thankful for having Joy home this Christmas!  We are so thankful for Jesus, that he left his home and came to this broken world and made a Way for us to be at home with Him.  We are so thankful for our health and our family and friends who mean so much to us!

We are so thankful for the progress that Joy has made.  Last week we had a check up at the UAB International Adoption Clinic and found out that Joy is on a 24-30 month level cognitively!  What wonderful news that she has come SO FAR!  When we brought her home, she was on a 6 month level!  Physically, she is on a 12 month level.  So we are working hard on her speech and fine and gross motor skills.  We are confident that she will catch up!  She is working so hard on trying to make sounds, she watches our mouths and tries...she'll get there.  Her strong will can be an advantage!!

Merry Christmas!!!

Wow!  So much going on!  Since the last post, Joy had Bronchitis. At that Dr. visit, for the first time since coming home, Joy was "officially" diagnosed with Asthma.  She was pretty sick when we went to the Doctor and she received a breathing treatment at the Dr. office.

She is now using an inhaler regularly just to keep the asthma under control and she is doing much better.

Brian and Noah finished up football season with a bang!  Both of their teams grew so much over the course of the season and they both learned so much and had a really great time!  We all really enjoyed the season.  They both had great coaches.

We are seeing more and more that Joy is understanding so much of what we are saying.  Joy loves to empty the cabinet of plastic containers and this particular day I asked her to clean up the mess and she turned around and started picking up and putting away the containers back in the cabinet!  My jaw dropped and I turned and saw that Noah was witnessing this moment also and his jaw dropped also! 

Field Trip to Fort Toulouse!  Joy and I went to Ft. Toulouse with Noah and had a great time. 

Once we got home, we received news that Brian had broken his nose during P.E. at school!  Brian had surgery on his nose and is doing very well and healing nicely!

What a JOY she is! She is a beautiful girl! She wears a LOT of pink! :)

We decorated for Christmas today!  The picture above is Joy hanging her first Christmas ornament ever! We bought Joy her very own Christmas ornament in China and she hung it today on the tree. We were very excited to have Joy to decorate for Christmas with us for her first time, but for the most part, she was unhappy and throwing fits, as shown in the pic below.

We are so excited to have Joy home this year for Thanksgiving and Christmas and to celebrate the birth of our Savior with our new daughter!

Home for six months!

We've been home for six months and we are doing really good!  It feels great to finally be at the point where we can say that!  Joy seems to be more and more comfortable at home.  We are enjoying her so much.  She is so much fun and she is a sweet girl.  We have been staying VERY busy with Brian and Noah playing football, Brian in the band, school and homework, and Joy going to speech therapy three times a month.  We have the best speech therapist in the area!  The speech therapist recently expressed concern that Joy is not babbling or making any more sounds than she is making at this point.  Joy is still not talking and we have been working on a handful of sounds for the past few months, but all our work seems unsuccessful so far.  We just found out that Joy had fluid behind her eardrums and on Wednesday the ENT replaced the tubes in her ears.  The tubes had stopped up and their was infection in both ears.  We are praying and believing that with this new set of tubes, we will soon see alot of progress in Joy's speech and development.  Even though Joy is not communicating verbally yet, she is communicating with us.  She has learned several signs, her newest signs learned are "open" and "diaper change".  We've been so busy, we haven't taken many pics the last few weeks, but I've included a few.

Trip to Mobile

For Gene and Norma's (Greg's parents) 50th anniversary they took the family to Mobile and we had a really good time!

We appreciate so much their example of love and faithfulness!

Five months since coming home...

...and Joy is doing so good!  I am so impressed with how much she is understanding and communicating with us!  Joy said her first word, "mama" on August 15th!  So far that is her only audible word, but she is trying so hard to say something else.  She is starting to babble and move her mouth and tongue around experiencing with different sounds.  She is saying many words using signs.  She is so close to picking up "water" and "thank you" in signs.  She is pointing to communicate!  Up until now when we didn't go or do what she wanted she would arch her back and through her head back.  She has conked her head on the wall more than once!  Now she points and she gets a kick out of it when we are able to accomodate and she knows she just communicated with us! 

 Joy is walking!!  What a huge world has opened up to her now that she can go on her own!  Her personality seems to have changed just since she started walking.  She is much more content and happy and she wanders off to explore and play by herself now, giving mom a few minutes to do things here and there!  I was just noticing that she seems to find more pleasure in the little things now.  I often find her smiling and laughing at the little things.  When we first brought Joy home, she would laugh if we tickled her and then her facial expression would immediatly go back to serious.  Now, is something makes her laugh, she wants to do it again and again! 

Her constant drooling has slowed way down.  When we brought Joy home, she was drinking from a bottle with a hole cut into the nipple so that the formula and cereal could flow out without her sucking on it at all.  She never learned to suck, so we have been trying to teach her how to suck since her surgery.  For the first four months since coming home, Joy would soak through about five bibs and five shirts daily.  We also would always have a towel in hand drying drool off her chin and drying the floor and toys she was playing with.  Over the past four weeks, with the help of our speech therapist, Joy has become aware of the need to suck and swallow.  When she is drooling, we tell her to wipe her chin and she does!  We tell her to suck the spit back in and swallow and she wipes her chin!  She is now drinking from a bottle with no alterations to the nipple!!!  A miracle! 

This sweet baby is working so hard and learning so much.   



For a couple of months since Joy's surgery, she would cry and cry when Greg tried to put her to bed.  She is finally bonding with Greg and feeling more comfortable with her daddy putting her to bed!



Beautiful!

Brian and Noah have started school!

They were excited the first day!  Now the homework is overwelming and tiring!  We were all thankful for Labor Day break!

Brian and Noah are both playing football at school.  This is Noah at practice.

Brian and Joy taking turns rolling each other up in my excercise mat!  Fun!!  She adores her brothers and they adore her!  They can make her laugh like no one else!

Four months since coming home!

I can't believe it has been four months since we arrived home with our Joy!  Wow!  It is hard to believe that Joy has only been with us for four months now!  In some ways it seems like she's been with our family longer.  We seem to be reaching a point where we are getting past "survival mode" and we are adjusting to our new normal!  In the past couple of months we have seen great signs of Joy attaching and bonding to us and us to her.  She is eating much better and seems to be all around better feeling since her surgery. At our first visit at the UAB International Adoption Clinic, which was about a month after we came home from China, Joy was at a 6 month level in her thinking and communication skills and fine motor skills.  Last week we went for a checkup and found out that she is now at a 12-18 month level!  She seems to be learning and picking up new skills faster now also.  She now knows signs for --bottle, more, please, up, wash hands, yes, and cold.  We are just beginning to teach her the signs for --thank you, eat, and I'm sorry.  She has just begun to wave good bye and she is trying blow kisses.  She puts her hand up to her mouth, but hasn't begun actually throwing the kiss yet.
 Life here has been so frustrating for Joy because she has had a hard time communicating with us and us with her.  So, she has many, many tantrums and meltdowns.  For a couple of months we have been working on teaching her different emotions and how to handle them.  We use the song, "If you're happy and you know it" to teach her how your facial expression looks different and how you act different when your sad, mad and happy.  She just began participating when we sing the song by stomping her feet when we sing, "when you're mad and you know it, stomp your feet" and she claps when we sing, "when you're happy and you know it, clap your hands".  She is now pointing with one finger and it is so exciting when we ask her to point to the banana or the cat in the book and she does!!!  Finally, she is understanding what we are saying! 
Yesterday, when Joy woke up from nap, her hair was sticking straight out on one side.  Talk about a bad hair day!

So, we decided to play with her hair to see if it is long enough to put in some pigtails.

Last weekend, some very precious friends hosted a Welcome Home Joy shower and we had a great time as you can see in Joy's expression below!  Everything was beautiful and perfect!

The beautiful and yummy cake was made by Kristie, Cyan, Kai and Mya Carroll.



Picture painted for Joy by Cyan Carroll for the shower.



Pure Joy!

We put together a Welcome Home Joy video using our favorite photos of Joy from the first three months and below is a link to the Youtube video.  It is just under four minutes.  If you have the time, enjoy!  She is so special and a joy to us!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxAIa-9Eec4



Three weeks since surgery

Joy had her checkup with the palate surgeon this week.  Dr. Ray said her palate has healed good and he says that this surgery was definately a "win".  After the surgery we noticed open crevices in Joy's palate along the tooth line.  When she ate solid food, parts of the food would get pushed up into those crevices and get stuck.  But now those crevices have filled in; the tissue grew together in just three weeks.  Dr. Ray said now we will wait for her to start talking.  When she starts talking, we may find that some adjustments need to be made in the palate if her speech is abnormal in any way.  We also saw an audiologist and did another hearing test.  Her hearing is within normal range! :)  This is a huge praise!!  We were prepared for the possibility of her having some hearing loss since she has had fluid on her ears most of her two years.  The audi. said she is not sure the tubes are doing their job though.  There is still fluid on her ears.  We are giving another round of eardrops and will check up with the ENT in two months.



Daddy and Joy swingin' to pass the time waiting on doc.





Feeding baby bird.



 Joy LOVES puffs!  We hide them, but she found them!  This month, Joy has learned the sign for "more" and yesterday she started attempting the sign for "please".  We have taught her both signs using her love for food!  We have been working on both signs for a month.  We have also been working on the word "up" for a month and she hasn't said "up" yet, but I think she is trying.  When she wants me to pick her up, I usually ask her several times to say "up" and she usually just moans with her mouth closed.  I probably say "up" a hundred times a day.  Yesterday when Joy wanted me to pick her up, she opened her mouth and uttered a very frustrated, "uuuuhhhhhh!!!!"  I was so excited to hear that and see her mouth opened in the correct way.  


Joy is captivated by the cover of Dr. Suess' book, There's A Wocket in my Pocket!  I can't figure out what it is, but she just stares at it!  Interesting!

I hope it will be one of her favorites.  It is one of my favorite children's books.

Also, in the last couple of weeks, we took Joy for her first haircut!  Well, it wasn't much of a cut, more of a trim.  Myra trimmed the few long strands that were in Joy's eyes, over her ears and in the back. 

Plan A: Joy sit on a booster seat for the trim.

What a big girl!

Just as Myra got the scissors in place for the first cut, Joy threw her head back in complaint.  Thankfully, no one was harmed!

Plan B: Joy sit on Mama's lap for the trim.

Still unhappy, but manageable!

Yeah!!!  All done!

And Joy's hair looks great!

Wow!  It takes a lot of practice to be able to work with a moving target, and do this good of a job, AND not hurt the sqirming child with the scissors in the process!