All Things Lily Kay

Gabriel got his own post.

Then Daniel got his own post.

Now, it is Miss Lily Kay's turn.

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LK is so excited to be a Kindergartener and to be "doing school" like her big brothers and sister. And she has been so antsy to start reading. Our curriculum doesn't have students even pick up a reader to try to start reading until week 10...and she was almost beside herself by that time!

She is doing great at reading, btw. She does good at sounding the little three-letter words out and then saying the word all together.

She reads one reader all week and at the end of the week she's always so excited to turn that book in and get the next one that she will start working on the next week.

She is working her way through the Math-U-See Primer level workbook, and doing very good at math also.

How in the world did we get fortunate enough to adopt the four smartest children in all of China??? I'm not biased or anything....

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Miss LK is the proud owner of a new medical bracelet:

While her first bracelet was so pretty...it fell off all the time! (The lobster clasp didn't work good, even after we sent it back to the company for repair.) I can't count the number of times we lost it, sometimes for days at a time - which is NOT good when she's supposed to have this on her at all times. So we ordered a new and differently made one from a different company:


It only says "See Other Side" on the top so that all of LK's personal info (name, condition, phone numbers) isn't displayed on the top for all the world to see!

Lily Kay picked out this cute purple & flowers band, and another pink & butterflies band that she can switch back and forth between anytime. (But this girlie-girl doesn't really care, so she hasn't switched yet!)

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I mentioned here about us working on getting LK switched from her quarterly shots to an annual subcutaneous implant.

Well, praise the Lord - it got approved by our insurance agency! Can I just say how excited Lily Kay is that she won't have to get shots anymore! And as much as our insurance agency aggravates me sometimes, I'm so thankful they've approved this implant. I'm almost choked when I found out the retail price of the implant is $18, 000!!!

We have an appointment scheduled to have the implant inserted five weeks from now - when her next shot would have been due.

It's considered a little outpatient procedure and while it doesn't sound fun to have something inserted under your skin, it won't even require stitches, so we'll see if this is less traumatic for LK than her quarterly shots were. At least it's only once a year...

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This week it was also time for another blood draw for Miss LK, getting ready for an appointment with her Endo in a few weeks.

We still have to go have these blood draws at the crack of dawn, before she takes her first dose of medicine in the morning...

...and we're still letting her pick a sibling to go on this adventure with her.



And on Tuesday she chose Mr. Daniel to go with her.

And while Daniel and LK had fun together...they didn't get the job done.

Miss Lily Kay simply has very tiny veins, and they like to "roll." This makes drawing blood very challenging. On Tuesday, after sticking her in both arms, they only got 1-2 ml of blood...enough for one vial, when we needed two for the tests the doc had ordered. But the good news was that LK didn't even cry during these sticks.

SO, we got to go back on Wednesday at the crack of dawn...

...but this time Elisabeth and Noah went with us.

This time, they were more aggressive about trying to get her blood. Ms. Christie stuck deeper and dug around when she didn't get any at first. She had to stick LK in three different places...


...and she now has multiple bruises on her precious little arms. She was NOT quiet about all of this either. She ended up screaming before it was all over...but THANKFULLY they finally found a good vein and got the blood they needed!

We had to rehash all this and talk about many times that day. LK said, "I scream weally loud cause someone hurt me."

Thankfully, we love this lab and the women who work there. They are all so sweet and good with the children. In fact, it bothered them so much how badly this had all gone with LK that I got a phone call from them Wednesday afternoon checking on her! So sweet!

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The community groups at our church take turns - a month at a time - working/helping in the children's ministry on Sunday evenings. It was our community group's turn in October. Jas and I were assigned to work in LK's class (the 3-5 year olds).

Something that we have long suspected was confirmed for us as we worked in that class and got to observe her: LK. is. crazy.

She has so much energy and doesn't know how to control it very well. I don't know if it just appears this way to me because she is our youngest and I'm just comparing her to say, our 8-year old. But I really don't think so, I really think that even at 5, our other children were better behaved in group situations.

I said this about Daniel recently, but I also think that if Lily Kay were in a public school Kindergarten class, her teacher might also think she needed to be on medicine!

I also wonder how much of it is due to her body chemistry. Because of her adrenal issue, we were told before she even came home that LK would be more aggressive and rough than most girls...and this is mostly certainly the case, around home and in her Sunday evening class. On Sunday evenings she is usually the only girl in a class of 6 or 7...but she can hold her own with any of those boys!

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LK usually has totally good intentions, but her over-abundance of energy sometimes gets her in trouble.

When she walked into a room that I was in recently, I raised my eye brows and I must have looked at her questioningly, because she said: "What? I'm not doing anything wrong! Not right now, anyway..."

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You never quite know what is going to come out of Lily Kay's mouth. She's (usually) not trying to be mean, she's just curious and observant and truthful...without the restrictions of social convention to stop her!

One recent example: When Ms. Deneen was in the process of trying to draw LK's blood on Tuesday, LK felt Ms. Deneen's arm and said, "Your arm is hairy...like my daddy!" (She was right...but that is just not something you actually say to someone, especially a woman!)

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Lily Kay is very coordinated and athletically-inclined. Everyone who watches her in action with a ball or in the pool for even a few minutes comments about this.

This physical talent apparently extends to even her lips. She has recently mastered whistling...which is something I still cannot even do at the tender age of 38.
AND, she can do "fish lips" really good also....another talent I can't quite master.

And she is very concerned for me that I can't do these things. She has mentioned - more than once - that "we need to practice" so that I can whistle and do fish lips like her!