Noah's 5th Anniversary

Five years ago today, we walked into the Civil Affairs Office in Changsha, Hunan, China...and saw this precious - and very anxious - face in person for the very first time.




You cried when she first handed you to me.





And you cried some more.






I cried too...but for different reasons.



We walked into that office as a family of three...and we would walk out as a family of four.



You now had a big sister, who would adore you...and dote on you...and try to mother you...for the rest of your life.





You now had a mama...



...and daddy...


of your very own.


A mama and a daddy who had already loved you for months.

A mama and a daddy who were very determined to get your precious little heart the help it so badly needed.




You weren't so sure about us when we first met in that Civil Affairs office...but back at the hotel a few short hours later - with a little help from Laoli - you started to see that we weren't so bad after all.





1st Anniversary of Noah's Adoption Day, 2006



2nd Anniversary of Noah's Adoption Day, 2007



3rd Anniversary of Noah's Adoption Day, 2008


4th Anniversary of Noah's Adoption Day, 2009


We took you to a Heart Doctor, a.k.a. Cardiologist, to get your precious little heart repaired. But eternally more important, we've taken you to the Great Physician, a.k.a. The God of the Universe, to get your precious little heart repaired (as each of us sinners needs to do)...and you now love Him like we do. I can't tell you the joy that brings mama and daddy.

We love you so much, Tong Tong, and we are so blessed that the LORD matched us up - half a world away - and allowed us to become your parents, 5 years ago today.

Fall Festival

These are the precious little characters that accompanied Daddy and I to our church's Fall Festival last weekend.

Oh, how I love this picture.

Oh, how I love these children!

No postage required

Lily Kay received the sweetest - and most ingenious - Get-well card yesterday!

You can see it here.

How adorable! How thoughful!

This neat idea belongs to my sweet friend, Jennifer. Our families met about 5 years ago when we traveled in China together - we were adding Noah to our family, they were adopting Reagan. Since then they've also adopted Robyn and Tessa from China.

Now...now they're just about ready to head to Eastern Europe to adopt....(drum roll, please) not one, but two boys!

Oh, boy, is life about to change at their house!

I'm so thankful that Jennifer and I have maintained contact over the years. She lives her faith out loud. An e-mail from Jennifer and/or perusing her blog never fails to bless my heart.

Thank you, Jennifer, for the card for our sweet Lily Kay! We are praying you to Eastern Europe and back as you bring home those precious boys!

Pics of Lily Kay - at hospital and back home

All the kiddos are down and I wanted to take some time to document Lily Kay's time at the hospital. I won't share all her private business about...well, about her private business - but I did want to post some cute pictures I captured of her while we were there.

Lily Kay let me hold her some while we were waiting to be called back...

...but she was mostly too busy playing at our awesome Children's Hospital.













The boys stayed behind with Laoli and Papa...but Elisabeth came with us. (After hanging with us all day, and staying long enough to see LK after she came out of surgery, Elisabeth got picked up and stayed the night with our wonderful friends who live in the same city as the hospital. Needless to say, she had a BIG time with Natalie and Neeleigh and their little bro, Aaron. Melissa even brought a wonderful supper for Jas and I to have at the hospital. We are so blessed!)

The Versed (a.k.a. "Sleepy Juice") that makes it easier for children to part from parents to be taken back for surgery didn't take too long to start working on LK!

LK said she was "too big" to ride in a boat like she did last time at the hospital...so she got to ride back on a stretcher:

And the wait during the last half of the almost 3 hour surgery that was supposed to take 1.5 hours? I'm pretty sure it took about 3 years off my life-span!

But our urologist finally came out and gave us all the details. With the most important detail being that the surgery went great!

And a little while (that felt like a long while) later...we finally got to lay eyes on our precious Lily Kay again.

She looked so peaceful when they wheeled her in...

drug-induced sleep will do that to you, I suppose.


But she didn't stay asleep and peaceful for long!

This is taken one hour after the previous picture!

I did not take any pictures of the next few hours that included several bouts of vomiting. Poor thing! She was "so, so fungry"...but couldn't keep anything down for a while.

LK woke up screaming/crying at about 5:20 a.m. the next morning...the caudal block had finally worn off!

But after some IV Tordal, she was soon loving life again.

Doesn't everyone eat purple popsicles and cheerios at 6:04 a.m.???






After her foley catheter was removed and she had more freedom...Lily Kay had a lot of fun checking out all the fun things on our floor





One last quick bite of apple sauce before heading home!


It's seems so surreal that she really just had surgery two days ago...and came home from the hospital yesterday. It already seems like a distant memory.

Things were pretty much back to normal with our routine today. At Lily Kay's request, we did school. (Several times while we were in the hospital, Lily Kay would look at me with wide eyes and say "We forgot to do school!")

We are keeping her medicated, but tapering it down. She has handled this all so well, it just amazes me!

After lunch today, we went outside and played for 2 hours. While she can't ride her beloved bike (which she does not understand)...we have plenty of other riding toys she can use (we've been accused of our carport looking like we run a daycare...guilty!)

And right now? This is what she looks like:
Snuggled up in our bed for the second night...where we can keep an eye on her.

I do believe I'll go join her...

We're home!

She is doing amazingly, wonderfully well.

If I were in her shoes, I would be a crying, blathering mess. This little girl just continues to amaze me...

Thank you so much for your texts, e-mails, comments, FB messages, etc. And thank you so much for your prayers. The Lord has shown Himslef strong and mighty on our precious girls' behalf!


I hope to post some of the cute pics I took of Lily Kay at the hospital later.

Our family was split between three different locations last night...and no one got enough sleep. So "later" might mean "later tonight", or it might mean even "later" than that!

Glad to be on the other side of that

Short version: Everything went "great!" according to our urologist. We're praising the Lord!We're very thankful for our wonderful doctor. And we're praising the Lord for our very brave, very strong, very resilient girl!

Only slightly longer version: The surgery that was supposed to take 1 and 1/2 hours, took almost 3. Ask me how antsy I was by the time our doctor came out to talk with us???

Even though Lily Kay was "so, so fungry" she threw up several times after waking up, so she still wasn't able to eat anything for several hours after she woke up. But after some quick texting to some prayer-partners, and some wonderful anti-nausea medicine...our girl was able to eat a hot dog, green beans, some Apple & Spelt Berry salad, a few cheetos (shhh!), and a few bites of cookie. I told you she liked to eat!

For the first hour after she woke up, she was very drowsy and very quiet - which is highly unlike the normal LK. But after that she really woke up and started putting on a show for all her nurses...she's had us laughing. One nurse has already said "she is too much!"

We agree!

Time to head back to the room: Jas and I are going to share a window seat that is approximately 6 feet long x 2.5 feet wide. I'm good with math...but those numbers just don't work!

Thank you so much for your prayers - I can't tell you how much we appeciated them!

Confession

UPDATE:
We got the call this evening that LK's surgery is scheduled for 12:30 p.m.

Pro: We need to arrive at the hospital at 10:30 a.m., which means we'll leave the house at 8:30 a.m. (With the boys' surgeries, we've always had to leave the house at about 5 a.m.!)

Con: LK will not be allowed to eat anything before her surgery...so it is going to be a L O N G morning for this little girl. Bless her heart!

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I am a worrier.

I like to think of myself as a Recovering Worrier. But I regress often...way more often than I should.

Phillipians 4:6 was one of the first verses I memorized after becoming a believer at 26 years old. And, boy, did I need it: Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.


I also love 1 Peter 5:7: Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

Wow, that is good stuff.

And I do cast my cares and anxieties and worries on Him...the problem is that I keep taking them back.

The first sign that I'm "taking them back" from the Lord is...my sleep. I start having trouble sleeping. Staying asleep, actually. I wake up...and then canNOT go back to sleep.

The last few nights I've been doing that. I've been waking up one, two...sometimes 3 hours before my alarm is set to go off....and cannot. go. back. to. sleep.

One of my children having surgery? That would be a perfect example of a "care" that will start this cycle in me. When I wake up like that I try to just lay there and pray...but I continually find my mind wandering - and worrying - again.

I've talked with LK over the past week or so and tried to prepare her, in an age-appropriate way, for what is coming. But urological surgery, wow...this is simply not going to be fun for her. And I hate it for her.

And so...I worry. I'm anxious. I'm not sleeping good.

And so...I've NOT been a very Patient and/or Together Mommy the past few days.

Hence, this note that my sweet Elisabeth wrote me this morning (don't miss the smiley face under the exclamation points):

What?!??! You mean she could tell that I'm a little, ahem, not right, these past few days?!?!? Unfortunately, I know they can all tell...

We would appreciate you joining with us in praying for our precious Lily Kay tomorrow. We will find out later today exactly what time the surgery will be...I'll update this post with that info.

We're supposed to be in the hospital for one night. And I should be able to post an update on how our girl is doing while we're there...so I will do that if I can (while she's asleep some time).

Surgery...almost for certain

We do not have all of the results from LK's blood work yet.

We will not have them until tomorrow.

One day before her scheduled surgery.

That is too close for my liking. And I even had Jas take LK for the blood draw a day earlier than the Endocrinologist office told us to!

So, realizing how down to the wire this timing was...I called the Endo office to see how concerned we should be that the results could halt the surgery. How likely was it that we'd need to call it off because of the results?

I'm so glad I called. She put my mind more at ease. We've gotten LK's numbers to a good place and they've been stable...so the nurse said unless I, say, had stopped giving her her medicine for the last month, we should not have a problem with her results.

Needless to say, I have not stopped giving her medicine three times a day for the last month. (In fact, everyone - including our friends - know exactly what the little songs mean when the alarm goes off on my cell phone.)

So, we should be good to go.

But this OCD mama is still going to feel better when I go pick up the results in person tomorrow and then hand-carry them to the hospital on Wednesday morning.

Sunday Snapshot: Parade

After living in 6 different states growing up - always in big cities - I can now speak from experience when I say there are many wonderful things about living in a small town.


Parades? Definitely on that list.


Twice a year, our small town has parades.

I mean Parading-Right-Down-Main-Street Parades.

We went to one this week.


Complete with our local high school's marching band:

Complete with our local high school's football team (and all the rec league football teams also):


Complete with all the lovely girls that are on the high school's homecoming court:

Is it obvious what the children are doing in the picture above? and the picture below?

Parades in our little town mean: CANDY!



This was Lily Kay's first parade. It was hard to explain beforehand exactly what she should expect.

They're going to throw candy at you! WHAT?!?!? Sounds very strange...

But this bright girl caught on very quickly.

The haul? Lots of sugar!

Enough that serious review was required once we got back home.

And serious trading.



And more serious trading.

And more serious trading.

The children are allowed to have one piece every day after their nap/rest time...which means that this haul will run out...


just in time for the Christmas Parade!

Our Ansley

We had a very fun visitor Monday - "our" Ansley was home from college for a short fall break and she got to come and eat lunch and play with us!

Now "our" Ansley has the distinction of being the only babysitter my children have ever had.

Ansley did a great job breaking this new mom in 6 years ago. I distinctly remember writing her notes the first time she watched Elisabeth, something along the lines of: "Heat her milk for exactly 13 seconds, at 7:04 p.m. give her a bath..."

Ansley was on our "welcoming committe" when we arrived home with Elisabeth

She would take lots of cute pictures during her time with my children and look at them with me when we got back home...or even send them to us on Jas' phone while we were on our date! And then when we got home she and I would sit together and she would give me a blow-by-blow of their evening...things this mom definitely needed then. (I've chilled considerably since those early days of parenthood!)

July 2007

Now that Ansley is in college, we don't get to see her as often, but my kiddos practically mow her down in the hallway at church when she is home visiting. AND, we love it when she gets to come play and visit with us when she's home.

July 2008

This precious girl has such a heart for God. She's been on mission trips to Brazil and most recently to post-earthquake Haiti. Ansley plans to be a Speech Therapist (which she will be so good at!). She wants to glorify the Lord with her work and and right now is looking to travel on a medical missions team after she's done with school.

May 2010

And this precious girl has such a heart for orphans. She took it upon herself to "suggest" our Love The Least Conference facebook page to all her friends...and earned us a bunch more "likes" in the process! AND she is getting together a bus of people from her college to come to the conference!
















We love you, Ansley! We're so blessed to have you in our lives...and we can't wait to see how the Lord is going to use you in the future! Keep on living for Him!