Thankfulness, Early Intervention, and a Plea

Thankfulness:

Over the past year, I have become connected through the internet to a large network of people who are involved in the adoption process - those who are just beginning, those who are close to meeting their child(ren), and those who have already adopted.  In getting to know these people, I have heard many stories of adopting parents being on the receiving end of negative comments about their decision to adopt, not just from strangers or acquaintances, but from family, friends, church members, co-workers, etc.    This astounds me.  In the 13 months since we began the adoption process for Kellin, do you know how many negative comments we've received?  NONE.  I can't remember a single person saying or implying that we were making a poor decision when we decided to adopt Kellin.  Surprised, yes, we encountered a lot of surprised people.  Uninformed, yes, lots of people didn't really understand.  But no negativity.  From anyone.

I am so thankful.  Our families have embraced Kellin as one of our own.  Our friends have all been supportive.  And because I work in special education, I am surrounded by people who love special children and have been celebrating all of Kellin's accomplishments right along with us.  It's overwhelming.  Yesterday a group of co-workers threw a baby shower for us.  Kellin received so many wonderful new toys and clothes, and much-appreciated diapers.  Kellin was there, and while he handled it pretty well (for him), there was still some fussing and shutting down because of all the noise and new voices.  The support in that room was amazing and I am so blessed to work with such caring, accepting people.

Early Intervention:

As an early childhood special education teacher, I believe very strongly in early intervention services for children with special needs (meaning therapies and support for parents while a child is an infant, toddler, and preschooler).  Kellin is already benefiting from the excellent services our school district provides.  But I find myself thinking - what if he could have been receiving those services from the time he was a baby, age one, age two?  What difference could that have made in his life?  Certainly he would have many more skills than he does after spending those critical first years in a crib.

I want to show you a picture of a child who has recently been listed for adoption.  She is a baby girl, only a few months old, and she is blind.  It is a wonderful opportunity for her to be listed at such a young age and have the chance to come home to a loving family and benefit from early intervention services.  I don't know anything about her orphanage (and no, she is not in China, like Kellin), so I can't say for sure, but if not adopted, will her situation be similar to Kellin's?  Will she lay in a crib, for the most part ignored?  I desperately don't want that to happen.  She needs help NOW.

Gabriella
http://reecesrainbow.org/90944/gabriella

A Plea:

One more story of a child who desperately needs a family.  This little boy is six years old, turning seven in June.  He is blind and living in an excellent foster home.  But if a family is not found by his seventh birthday, he will be sent back to his orphanage, which does not have a school equipped to teach him.  This means he will not have the opportunity for an appropriate education, which of course significantly impacts his future.

Simon
http://reecesrainbow.org/86198/simon

In my next post, I'll share more about Kellin and his progress - but for today, please see these two precious children.  Pray for them, share about them, donate to their funds.  Do something crazy and decide to adopt one yourself.  I promise it can be done.

Four Months Home

Kellin has been home four months, so here's a look at how far he's come! I will say that his progress doesn't seem to have jumped ahead as much in the last couple weeks, but when you compare him to four months ago . . . wow!

Sleeping: When he first came home, Kellin was a HORRIBLE sleeper. He was up for several hours each night, and there really wasn't much we could do to help him because he didn't really want to be held or rocked, and then was tired and fussy all day. Now he sleeps through most nights (although not all - every week or two, he has a night where he has difficulty), and he has a pretty regular nap, although he misses that occasionally too. When he is up in the night, we can often bring him in bed with us and that helps him fall back asleep. This doesn't work every single time, but often enough that we can count on getting decent sleep most nights. Phew!

Eating: When he came home, Kellin ate only from bottles, refusing all spoons and solids. Now he eats yogurt and baby food from a spoon, and he chews puffs and yogurt bites. He will even lift the puffs to his mout himself - but he won't put them into his mouth, so we still have to help him with that. I am hopeful that now that he is chewing, he will be able to eat a better variety of foods. I think one of our biggest successes is that Kellin doesn't refuse to eat nearly as often as he used to. When I sit down to feed him, I can usually count on him being cooperative and eating a decent amount. Of course, we still use a lot of songs as distractors to keep him eating and happy. One of our main goals for the summer is to move him toward self-feeding. Right now, Kellin doesn't feed himself AT ALL, not even holding his own bottle, but we think he is capable of learning this and will be working hard on it over the summer.

Medical: In general, nothing to report! Kellin has had no red flags come up in any of his medical testing, other than a need for an iron supplement. He is now up-to-date on his immunizations, and up until this morning, we had never seen him sick. The other three kids have had colds and stomach bugs in the months since Kellin has been home, but he has never caught any of that. We've been amazed at how healthy he is! We don't know how much he weighs now, but we hope to get him weighed soon. He hasn't outgrown any of his diapers or clothes yet, but he looks a little fuller in his face and legs, so maybe he has gained a bit.

Motor Skills: In contrast to the limp baby that came home four months ago, Kellin is walking! It's not his favorite thing to do, but if we hold just one of his hands, he will walk to toys or to his bath. He can take a few steps all on his own but is usually hesitant to do so, possibly because of course he can't see what is in front of him. With his hands, we are working getting him to touch different textures (clay, oatmeal, different kinds of cloth, grass, etc.), which he is tolerating more and more, especially if we use songs. We are also working on getting him to use his fingers separately, rather than using his whole hand for everything. To help with this, I try to get him to hold his puffs with just his finger and thumb at meals, I try to get him to use only 1-2 fingers when pushing buttons on a toy or when moving his hands along the Braille in his books during story time, and I sing lots of counting songs with him (helping him to hold up the right number of fingers). I'd like to point out that even though I've mentioned Braille and counting, we are not really expecting him to learn to read and count right now - but it's a great way to combine fine motor skills that he is ready to work on with exposing him to those concepts he will need later.

Communication: I still can't report that Kellin is using any words, but he still uses his four signs (blankie, more, please, all done). He understands many words, and the list of songs that he knows is impressive (we can tell he knows them because he will do the actions as we sing and anticipates which actions are coming next). He also requests songs by showing us the actions. We are working on getting him to babble back-and-forth with us (not too much success yet) and we try to have him listen to songs that emphasize basic sounds (we were given a CD by Kellin's speech therapist). We are hoping to teach him a few more signs, such as signs for his favorite toys. Other than this, we just keep talking and singing, and hope that one day Kellin will figure out this talking thing.

Attachment/Bonding: We think things are going very well! Remember the child I first met that did not know how to be held and couldn't tolerate it for more than a few minutes at a time? Now, Kellin likes to be held and loves to cuddle. He will fall asleep while being held sometimes. He likes hugs and definitely understands the word "hug." He reaches for Daddy (not as much for me, but I think that's pretty normal and we are working on it) and sometimes for big sister. He lets me rock him before bed. He seems to know the difference between his family and strangers and is uncomfortable when he hears strangers' voices or when they touch him. Because he has no language and also no eye contact, sometimes it is hard to tell how exactly he feels about us, but in general we are feeling positive that his attachment to us is getting stronger by the day.

Kellin is now working with a whole team of people - teacher of the visually impaired, early childhood special education teacher, speech therapist, occupational therapist, and physical therapist - who have been coming into our home to give us materials and suggestions about activities that will help Kellin develop and make progress. It has been fantastic to have others coming in and giving us a different perspective and fresh ideas. For example, the physical therapist suggested having Kellin try crawling up a couple steps and also "knee standing" while he played with toys. Within a couple days of trying that . . .

Here's a couple pictures to show what is going on in our house today. I mentioned earlier that Kellin had been healthy up until today. Well, yesterday Pooh got a fever, and now today Kellin has one, too. Did I mention that we were planning to go camping this weekend? Now the plan is for Daddy to take Rabbit and Tigger camping starting this afternoon until Monday, and I will stay home with the two sick three-year-olds.

Happy Birthday!

Seven years ago today, we had the privilege of welcoming this precious bundle of joy into our family.

Over the past seven years, we have watched him grow from a baby

To a toddler

To a preschooler

And into a big boy.

Tigger, we love your energy, your creativity, your enthusiasm for life, and your slightly goofy side. And I LOVE being your Mommy!  Happy Birthday!

Eating is Not So Horrible After All

As you may have guessed from the title, we've had some breakthroughs this past week with Kellin's eating.  Kellin has suddenly decided that eating is not so bad after all!  He is eating yogurt and baby food at each meal, loves to drink juice from a cup, and is CHEWING puffs!  As with all of Kellin's eating progress, we have to play little games to keep him happily eating.  We give him juice to drink between bites of food, and he has quickly learned that if he wants another drink of juice, he needs to eat what's on the spoon.  This has been the best way to get him to eat foods other than yogurt.  As far as the puffs - as soon as the puff goes into his mouth, we start singing a song to distract him - but he's not really trying to get them out of his mouth anymore, and sometimes he SMILES.  For one meal this weekend, he ate 15 puffs (but who's counting, right?).  That's his best record so far.  He also set a new record for the most food he's eaten at a meal - he ate a whole container of yogurt AND an entire jar of baby food in one sitting.  We were so proud and excited!  Maybe we will finally start seeing some good weight gain!

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that Kellin was starting to take steps on his own.  We haven't really progressed in that area, because he doesn't really want to walk - he prefers to stay in one place or be carried around.  So I have started working on getting him to walk to me.  The last couple days he has really hated that game - but today I figured out that if I have him standing just a couple feet away and I put one finger on his back (not giving him any support at all, but just so he has that cue), he will walk to me, and then I immediately give him a hug and start singing a song I know he likes.  It works!  He is practicing his walking without too much fussing.  We also practiced walking outside on the grass today, both with shoes on and bare feet.  He can do this as long as I hold one hand, which is totally fine with me because the grass is a little more uneven than the floor inside so he needs that support for balance.

Kellin is making more babbling noises and has imitated A FEW sounds he has heard, but progress toward talking is still moving very slowly.  In a way, he doesn't even seem to understand the concept of communication ("I say something, you say something" or "I say something and then something happens"), but he is using his four signs pretty consistently and appropriately (all done, please, more, blankie), so it is coming.  We know he understands so much, and maybe one of these days he will surprise us and words will come pouring out!

And a few pictures - but I realized that once again, I have no pictures of Tigger!  He just moves too fast to get a good shot, I guess.  I will make a point of getting some pictures of him for the next post.

Rabbit and Kellin were singing songs together - can you see the love?

My big helper - Pooh loves to set the table!

Pooh fell asleep listening to music

Pooh with his new water toy

And this happy boy with a musical book!

Learning to Eat

It's time for an update, and I thought I would start with the two areas that have been most challenging:

Eating: For those who have been following our blog for a while, you probably remember that when I met Kellin, he had only ever eaten from bottles.  He did not understand food coming in any other way.  This has been a long, slow process, but I am happy to say that we are making progress!  Kellin eats from a spoon - his favorite food is yogurt, but he will sometimes eat other pureed foods.  His willingness to eat varies based on his mood, but we can usually count on him eating solids at least twice a day, sometimes three times.  He likes juice and we discovered he can drink from an open cup!  Not perfectly, of course, because he doesn't really know how far to tip it up, so sometimes he can't get the juice and sometimes it spills all down his front.  But I discovered that if I let him hold the cup of juice, I can pull it away just a couple inches from his mouth and slip the spoon in - and if I feed him this way, he'll eat foods like pureed meats and veggies that aren't his favorites.  And the most exciting news - I have found a way to get him to eat tiny pieces of those baby puffs!  First I put one in his hand and we sing the "Baby Bumblebee" song, which he loves.  Then I break it into 2-3 tiny pieces and put one in his mouth - and then I quickly grab his hands to sing the song again so he can't get the piece out of his mouth.  I have started seeing him try to chew it, and then he swallows!  Sometimes he still gags, but it's getting better.  And he is starting to chew on rubbery toys.  So there have been no miracles here - but definitely some measurable progress.

Kellin with his cup, drinking all by himself!

Kellin with his "chewy" toy - figuring out what his teeth are for!

Communication: At his adoption, Kellin did not appear to understand any words in Chinese or English, and he did not use any words.  He had some babbling sounds that he used, but not often.  One of the things that has been hardest for us is that he really hasn't started saying any words.  It seems like I see all these blogs and Facebook posts about children who learn to speak English words within their first few days or weeks with their parents, and sometimes it is discouraging that Kellin has not followed this pattern.  BUT - Kellin now understands a ton of words.  He knows the names of several of his toys, he knows words for the different routines of his day (eat, bottle, night-night, diaper, bath, etc.), he knows words like "no" and "up," and he knows the names and actions to several of his favorite songs.  He signs "all done," "more," "please," and "blankie," although only in the specific situations we have taught him, so he hasn't really generalized it.

He is getting much more tolerant of touching different things.  I have been playing with clay with him - having him hold it while we sing one of his favorite songs, and then we squish it and wrap it around his fingers, and he doesn't mind too much.  He is getting much better about touching the grass too!

See those little hands in the grass?

Squatting in the grass and staring at the sun

Kellin loves to swing!

Gotta love that grin!