Firecracker

In going with the theme of the 4th of July this title is appropriate. You see... our sweet little precious girl, whom the orphanage told us was so kind, with no temper, and very loving of the other kids... well, let's just say they were a little off the mark. This girl is a FIRECRACKER. I've been hesitant about posting these past 2 weeks because it's just been pretty hard. And I didn't want to write in the middle of hard. I needed some perspective. Which because I'm now writing, you can see that I have some!
Charles and I have been struggling in the parenting role. Walking the line between "typical toddler behavior" or "acting out due to grieving orphan behavior". Lots of fits, lots of demanding, some hitting. If you have a toddler does this sound familiar? Nothing we hadn't seen before with our other 2 (well maybe a little?), but our main struggle was how to handle it?
You see, the first month or so we had her, God was truly in control of this thing. And it was unbelievably smooth. But as time ticked on, and summer chaos ensued, I slowly got lazy, lack of schedule, lack of time with the Lord. So last week, as I had a full on come apart, God quietly whispered "You don't have to do this by yourself. You don't have to make these discipline calls. It's not necessary. Listen to me, let me do the work and I can handle it." Ahhhhh. You mean it could be as easy as the first month if I would just let him handle the "hard" for me? Yes, of course. Looking back it's a no brainer. But when you are in the throws of hard (and lack of sleep), you sometimes forget it doesn't have to be that way. By the way, He also whispered "toddler behavior, and parent as such". And we rejoiced.
So I'm happy to report we just have another toddler in the house. One that surely makes her presence known. And my stress level? Exhaustion level? Back to a "mom of 3" norm. She's a firecracker no doubt, but she's our precious firecracker. With a fiery little temper on occasion and a whole lot of love, to keep us all on our toes.

 To say my kids dressed themselves for the 4th goes without saying. And, you may note Mamie's Chinese silks on the 4th of July? I promise she pulled that out of the closet herself.  

Charles joked that she was in revolt.

Thankfully we had a very appropriate hair clip for the occasion.

Mamie Milestones

It's been over 2 months. I can't believe it. Cliche but true, it's hard now to remember life without her. Some days are easy, some days are hard. But isn't that life with a toddler? (And a 3 year old? And an almost 6 year old?)  It amazes me that we continually learn new things about her on a weekly basis. Some days I forget we have only had her 2 months and I feel like I know her really well. Then bam... she will do something so off the wall, I can't believe it! Generally in a good way. So here are some Mamie Milestones:

• She is super verbal. They told us at the orphanage she was only saying 3-4 words but I find that hard to believe. She mimics our tones as well as many words. And she understands most everything we say. In only 2 months! She's got "night night", "more", "no", "bye bye" and a few others down pat.But we are still working on "please" and "thank you". Stubborn? Or just hard to say? Hard to tell! And she babbles all day long. Cantonese or baby talk? Not quite sure.
• She loves taking care of her baby dolls. Feeding, rocking, singing. It's precious.
• She loves to dance. We have many dance parties in the house, and she is certainly not shy.
• She loves having her nails painted. Oh how fun!
• She stomps her foot when she wants something or is mad. And squeals really loudly when her brother's make her mad. Which is quite often.
• She loves being chased. And playing outside. And swimming.
• She doesn't love reading or puzzles. What?! We've got to work on this reading thing. That's what our family does best.
• She still pulls the power play with Elliott. This is where their 19 month age difference is most obvious. Sharing Mom is not her favorite thing to do.
• She eats and eats and eats. And eats. Looking into a lock on the pantry?
• She is TOUGH. More bull in a China shop than China doll
• She got her first major haircut on Father's Day. Thanks to Elliott the barber, who snipped a few inches off the pigtail.
• She went to church for the first time on Father's Day too! (pre-haircut)
• Just this past week, she really came out of her shell and showed us all of these new facial expressions.

It's funny. We forget she doesn't look like us. And that she walks with a limp. Those things are so normal to us, that until we are somewhere crowded (say... the zoo), we even notice. We can't understand why people are staring. She walks/runs so fast it makes people nervous. And I have to explain, she has pretty awesome balance, but if she falls, she also knows how to fall correctly (or so far so good anyways!). Another plus? Having one family member with dark skin may be the highlight of my entire summer.

 An attempt at getting Mamie and my niece Claire together in their silks before they both outgrew them! Not a major success. But here they are, nonetheless.

Sleep, Where Are You?

We have had yet another confirmation that Mamie is truly meant for us. She doesn't sleep. Neither have my other 2. Ever. A full night's sleep in our house has always been a rare occasion. What does this mean? One exhausted mommy. Charles has had to travel a good bit this summer, and with that means taking the cries in the night, thirsty boys, the potty breaks, the stormy weather, the nightmares... all solo. So if you see me at Starbucks 3 times in one day. You know why. And if you hear a rumor that I paid a babysitter so I could take a nap? It's true. I confess. You have to do what you can right? But now Charles is home! Well for the most part. And I'm contemplating a 24 hour vacation solo in a hotel. But while I try to convince Charles of this...enjoy our pics of Mamie's first time at the zoo! Which was shared with a sleep deprived mom of a 4 week old :) We work really well together right now. And we don't expect much from each other in the way of conversation.

 Fun Friends

Trying to touch the giraffes

She looks brave, but the giraffes in her face really weren't her thing

She knew exactly what to do



Oh the irony

MIA

Well summer is in full swing and with the sporadic schedule comes sporadic blogging!
Normally we do a TON of traveling in the summer. But with Mamie being home less than 2 months, we thought it best to stay put for a bit. We will go to the beach in July but that's about it! So instead of multiple beach trips and some business trips I usually take with Charles, here is our summer at a glance.

Let's see... Maxwell is on the swim team this summer and has his first meet tomorrow night. So cute! He is LOVING it. Elliott thinks he is on swim team. With floaties. And Mamie... well we are just thankful she loves the pool! But with her unbelievable strength she will probably out swim both boys by the end of summer. Sorry no pics at the pool though. It's enough just to make sure 3 kids don't drown. Much less take that super cute photo. Pictures of the slip 'n slide will have to do.

Let's see what else. Lots of time at playgrounds, bike riding, working in the vegetable garden with Charles and various and random other outdoor (and indoor if necessary) activities. Oh and my birthday. The big 3-5! Ummm... mid-30's. Not too exciting. But Charles and I did go out on our first date since Mamie came home! We put her to bed, ran out the door yelling directions at my parents of what to do in case she woke up, scarfed down our food, and came home in record time. But we were by ourselves!

And that's all so far. Folks, it's kind of nice not to have much to say. Taking it easy at it's finest. (And note, this is our summer by Instagram. I haven't pulled out our real camera since school was out!)

VERY cautious at first

Getting the hang of it

Full on fun

Birthday Date Dinner!

Shopping is an outdoor activity right?

A little too much summer fun left this girl fast asleep in the middle of lunch.

Those teeth finally came out!

Elliott's zucchini. Took us 2 nights to eat it all. All 5 of us.

Healing

Oops, one should never commit to blogging on a certain day. Sure thing something will come up... like a 3 hour doctor appointment! So grab a cup of coffee, because this is a long one...

A little history on our girl...
When we received her referral in October, we knew she had PFFD. Proximal Femural Focal Deficiency. Yeah, I hadn't heard of it either. It means a short femur and with that comes loads of other issues in the bones of affected leg. Bad hip, knee, fibula, ankle and foot. To sum it up, we were prepared for them to amputate her leg from the knee down and fit her for a prosthetic. If you want to know more about this, read my earlier post here. But this photo below is all we had to go on. No measurements, nothing. So the doctors estimated a several inch discrepancy between the 2 legs? But they honestly weren't sure. Could have been 6 inches, could have been 3.

When we got an updated picture in December, she was clearly in much better shape than we thought. She was standing with no assistance and we were also told she was walking on her own. We believed that she was being healed. That things were beginning to look better than we had originally thought. But we were also told to be careful not to get our hopes up. The updates will often "stretch" the truth to make her sound better off than she really was.

Then we got to China and it was all true! She was walking independently, and in fact, her left leg was only 2.5 inches shorter than her right. Not the 5-6 inches the doctors originally thought it could have been.

SO THEN we had our orthopedic appointment last week (with a follow up yesterday, which is why I waited to write this post). And the results my friends are below:

Hip: Good shape, needs some reconstruction at some point, but not immediate- and not out of socket! PRAISE!

Knee: Excellent shape: PRAISE!

Fibula: Present, which means she doesn't have Fibular Hemimelia (very common with PFFD): PRAISE!

Ankle: In great shape: PRAISE!

Foot: Has all bones, in great shape: PRAISE!

And even physical therapist said all muscles are being used properly, even with the 2.5 inch difference, and didn't give us anything to really do! PRAISE!

Although she does have PFFD, it's very mild, she just has a short femur and that is it! They think we will be looking at a possible hip reconstruction within the next year (we will x-ray again in 6 months to see if her hip has matured and grown more into correct position) then 2-3 leg lengthening surgeries during her life. The first between ages 4-5, the second between 9-10 and then a possible 3rd when she is through growing. We will see at that point, where her legs are. For right now, we will just put about a 1 inch lift on her shoe to help with the discrepancy and build a shin muscle (which isn't formed well because she doesn't walk heel toe) and they may increase the lift over the next several months to even her out if she needs it.

All that being said, Charles and I are firm believers in healing. I mean, God is The Healer. Not just "pray her surgery goes well and pray we can all handle it", but we have been praying since October 3 that God would HEAL her leg. That the femur would physically grow out. That all of the bones would be in proper working order. That her left foot (which was almost guaranteed to be much smaller) would be of equal size. That while she was in China, her nannies would get to witness this healing first hand and know that it could only come from God. Matthew 9:22 says "Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, "Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well." And instantly the woman was made well." And healing didn't just occur when Jesus was on Earth!  In Acts 3 it says "Then Peter said, "Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk." Taking him by the right hand, he helped him up, and instantly the man's feet and ankles became strong. He jumped to his feet and began to walk. Then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping, and praising God. When all the people saw him walking and praising God, they recognized him as the same man who used to sit begging at the temple gate called Beautiful, and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him." Of course I love this verse because it talks about the lame walking. But also the gate called Beautiful. Part of Mamie's Chinese name, "Mei" means Beautiful. How about that? That's gonna be our girl, jumping to her feet and praising God for her healing!

And the first step? When we left China, Mamie's left foot was a 4 and her right foot was a 6. We know because we had to buy shoes over there because we lost one on the plan. Several pairs of shoes, considering we had to buy 2 of each pair we bought. We went last week to purchase her stylin' New Balance shoes for her lift... and her feet? I hadn't even noticed! But since we had gotten home, her left foot has grown from a size 4 to a 5.5. I'm not kidding. Her right foot? Hasn't grown a smidge. I am certain her left foot will fully catch up shortly, along with her femur. We are believing no surgeries for us and all we will have to remind us of PFFD will be her photos. Which God can use for some amazing Glory! Just to confirm this, I asked her doctor yesterday if "growing of the foot" was normal? Something they see often. And he laughed and said "um, no. I suggest you keep praying." Ha! So pray we will.