Bad Blogger Bad! This is going to be the longest post ever....

Okay, I know I have been completely horrible about blogging. I really don't know what happened. I guess I got lazy or busy or both. I started finding projects I wanted to complete around the house, like getting the 1600+ pictures from Viet Nam edited, in order and into albums! So I am going to try to recap the last almost 2 months. =) When I left of Norah still had those stupid tubes in her nose and was not a happy girl. She was starting to commando crawl around the floor but was constantly fussy and not sleeping well.


So then on 4/25 we went to the plastic surgeon to get the tubes out. Mind you, all they did was snip the tiny blue stitch holding them in and they basically just fell out of her nose. I so could have done that!! She was soooo happy to have them out. She took a deep breath immediately. I cleaned her nose really well and for the first time in 3 weeks she took a 2 hour nap when we got home.
The next night we went to friends Liz & Mikey's house for a BBQ. Norah met doggies, Truman & Cedar, and got tons of kisses. Truman kept trying to drink her drool, even from inside her mouth. She wasn't really sure what to make of it at first but she didn't want the dogs to go away.

A happy girl with Liz!
Come back doggies!!

Then on 5/2 we had another doctor's appt. where Norah got 4 more shots. That of course was no fun but at least her ear infections had not returned. The nurse told us that she weighed 16 lbs. 2 oz. which was only a 2 oz. gain since her last appt. 1 month prior. This was a little hard for me to believe considering she was eating a ton but since she had surgery and all I let it go.

Then on 5/5, Norah's 9 month b-day, we went to the park with Stacie & Micah! It was great to talk to another adoptive mom. At that point I was still feeling really run down. Norah and I were both having allergy issues and I wasn't sleeping well. But we had a blast at the park, Micah was a riot.

Micah and Norah swing together. This was definitely the way to go. Works much better than worrying the baby is going to flip out the whole time!

I even got a few smiles out of Norah this time around.


Stacie holding Norah, Micah was not thrilled with this.


Adorable boy!!!

The following week my parents arrived for a 2 week long visit. Norah had not met my dad yet and fell in love immediately. Every time he would walk into the room she would grin from ear to ear and get very excited. Here she is below with her Papa Ne Ne at Thai Kitchen.
We spent some time at another BBQ with Uncle Gil, Aunt Lauren and new cousin Ziggy.

And my parents were constantly disappearing with Norah. They would take her on VERY long walks to who knows where and come back with her half asleep. Below my mom is about to head out on one of the aforementioned walks.
Why is it that everyone thinks the baby is going to freeze to death all of the time. If it is warm enough for us to be in t-shirts and shorts why does she need 12 layers and a blanket?

Norah loves Landon Pigg's, Falling In Love at a Coffee shop video. She stops everything she is doing and stares at the TV the second it comes on which is usually daily since we have it saved on our TIVO. She also started pulling up to a sitting position on things at this point as her crawling began to improve. Then on the 18th she was sitting on the floor and holding my fingers and she just stood up. And she did it again and again and was sooo proud of herself. She wanted to show everyone and would smile every time she did it. The following day she finally began to just sit in the middle of the floor. She had been perfectly capable of sitting on her own since mid-March but would refuse to do it, unless on a rare occasion would forget she was doing it but now she was commando crawling all over to a sitting position and back down again.
On the 19th we had our second consult with the hand surgeon at Shriner's. At our first appt. surgery was supposed to be around the first week of June but now the doctor wanted to change everything around. The new plan is to do 2 separate surgeries 6 weeks apart. The first one is to be mid-July and it will separate all of her fingers on her left hand. He was just too concerned she would eat her bandages off if she could not use either hand for eating for playing for 2 weeks. I honestly would rather have just gotten it all over with as this posed a big problem for us since we will now have to take 2 weeks off for each operation and pull her out of day care each time (and yet still pay for it... argh!) I had also released the spot at her day care that we had been on the wait list for since late January so it was back to the day care hunt all over again.

Then on the 26th we had a final dinner with my parents at Jasmine Thai before they headed back to Florida. (We like Thai food, can you tell?) I just wish we had some Vietnamese restaurants close to us but I think the closest one is about 35 minutes away.
Norah looks at the sushi!
I am not sure what I am doing in this picture. I was holding Norah's hand and she moved at the last minute.
The next morning my parent's tried to pack Norah but they had to leave her behind because the suitcase was overweight.


The next night we went to cousin Aidens' pre-school graduation. I cannot believe how big he has gotten. He was almost Norah's age when we first met him and the time has flown by.

Norah was a little confused by the whole thing.
So with an early unplanned return to work we tried to make the most out of the week we had left. We played in the bath with Mr. Crab....
And Mr. Blowfishy...
Played in the Exersaucer....

Played with all our toys....
And with daddy and his guitar...
In her room with blocks....
And in the laundry basket...
And with more new friends. Here is Norah with Max Power who stopped by with mommy Jess and daddy Tim on the way to KC on 6-5, Norah's 10 month b-day. They asked about her crawling and we said she was only commando crawling and then lo and behold she flat out crawled across the floor on her hands and knees.... go figure!!

Max kissing Norah...
Norah trying to kiss Max back... or eat his face off. One or the other.
Then on 6/6, this past Friday, we had to go to a 4 hour team consult with her plastic surgeon's post opp. team. We were basically put in a little room with a couple of chairs and toys (thank god for toys) and the doctors came in every now and then to talk to us... most often when she just fell asleep. It was NOT fun trying to hold her screaming squirming body through her normal nap time. She was seen by an audiologist, geneticist, psychologist, plastic surgeon, RN, pediatric dentist and speech therapist. She is advanced on her language skills despite the fact she still has some fluid in her left ear. No infections though and her hearing was good. Her plastic surgeon would like to operate again when she is 4 to fix her right nostril a bit more. He said the cartilage is just too soft right now. Yippie, more surgery. And she weighed in on their scale at 18 lbs, 10 oz which I why I think the doctor's scale was off in May ... she did not gain 2.5 lbs in 1 month. I just don't believe it. BUT .. they did weigh her fully clothed with a wet diaper that weighed 3 oz (yes, I weighed it when they left the room) so I think she is closer to 18 lbs.
A happy girl 15 minutes before we got to leave.

And finally, (whew, I am tired...) last night we went to another BBQ at Liz & Mikey's house. She was such a good girl through dinner. Then she ate her first meat. Well, kinda meat. Pureed chicken & sweet potatoes. She LIKED it. She also had Cherios for the first time yesterday and inhaled those. With all the new foods we have been starting her on she does not want her bottles much anymore. She will drink the first one of the day and shove the rest away. I don't know wether to fight her on this or let it be.

She was even wearing her G & R dress... 4 months later and still too big and it is a 3-6 month dress. =)
And then the moment came... she saw the dogs... crawled to them....
Got her hands licked on a whole bunch and started to pull up.... and up....

And she did it!!! And we saw it!!!
And she was oh so proud of herself.
And then she shrieked to let everyone know in case they missed it!!
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeekkkk!!!!

And tomorrow... the dreaded day.... I am returning to work and Norah starts daycare. We found a really really nice development center that I am very happy with. They promote organics, do baby yoga, teach sign language and keep binders of each baby's art and photos. She will be crib nighbors with the nephew of my co-worker. So everything will be good or at least that is what I keep telling myself. I really just want to say forget the deposit and screw work, I can't do this but I have to suck it up and at least give it a try. I am trying to be brave but everyday it is something new and I just don't want to miss it. I love my girl!!!

I hate those tubes

So Norah has pretty much been a cranky whiny little witch all week and that is saying it politely. She isn't sleeping as well with the tubes at night, I just don't think she can get comfortable on her stomach without being on her face and pushing on the tubes. We have one more week until they get removed. So all day long she has been very very clingy and won't let me put her down to even go to the bathroom. Tummy time has pretty much been unsuccessful as she will flip onto her back immediately and scream at me to pick her up, and again I am sitting right there next to her. She screams when I eat because she can't have any (mind you, I feed her first so her belly is full!). It has been a very trying week. My back is KILLING me. Oh, and did I mention the kicking? She has been kicking like a wild horse. I didn't think 8 month olds threw temper tantrums but that is what she does. And she kicks HARD. She will shake the floor or leave bruises on me when she really gets going. She also does it every now and then when she goes down for a nap and whacks the crib so violently that you can hear it anywhere in the house, thank god for crib bumpers. I don't know how she does not break her feet. She has such a big attitude. It must be the Leo side of her, just like mommy. ;-) I am really not sure how much of this is adoption related vs. personality related. My mom said my 8th month was really hard on her as well and I screamed anytime she was out of my sight. When we go out in public she usually behaves really well. I say usually because we had a bit of a incident at the grocery store this week when I put her Yo Baby in the cart. I knew she knew the containers as individual units but I had no idea she grasped them as a 6-pack. She flew around in the seat whining loudly and trying to get to them in the cart. Yeah, she likes Yo Baby that much. It is the only food she gets excited about, followed by cereal or whatever she sees us eating that she can't have. At least it wasn't a full on screaming & kicking fit. I should consider myself lucky.




We did have our follow up with the pediatrician who said her ears are clear for now. I was almost sure the ear infections were back with the way she was pulling on them. She weighed in at 16lbs, the same as her visit 2.5 weeks ago. Not being able to eat after surgery probably had a lot to do with that. She is eating a ton now and holding her own bottle. We had stopped her from trying to do that since we returned from Viet Nam but now that it has been 2 months I just gave up and let her do it.



Here is the face I have been getting all week.

Then after Barnabas gets home and I tell him about the fussy baby she gets deliriously happy.

So she goes to bed smiley!

And laughing.

We went to the park with her cousins. All she did was stare for an hour.
She did not like the swing and tried to grab me every time it came close. Her drool was blowing in the wind in 4 ft. long streams.
Then back to the bedtime delirious state again at bedtime.
Crazy baby.

1 week later

Norah is still healing from her surgery and doing pretty well considering. I swear I think this week has been harder on us than it has on her. It is rough cleaning her nose all the time and of course she hates it. We are having to re-learn how to feed her without being covered in baby food. She is breathing mostly through her mouth because of the nose tubes so if you feed her on an exhale watch out. It is like when they sneeze and food goes everywhere, except it can happen 10 times a meal. =) I think the hardest thing for me so far is missing her smile. She used to grin so big, from ear to ear and it just melted our hearts. She still has a beautiful smile, even all scabby, but it's so much smaller now and you don't see her dimples as much. I know these surgeries are in her best interest as she grows but we loved her so much just the way she was. Development wise, she still isn't crawling or making much of an effort at scooting either. She prefers standing to anything other than being held. She is working more on her M & R sounds and may have possibly said mama yesterday but I am sure it was not intentional. Oh, and on Tuesday she learned to lick her lips. As with any newly discovery she did it over and over again which make breakfast extremely difficult that morning but then it was old news by the end of the day and I have hardly seen her do it since. Anyway, gremlin has awoken so I better get to the pics.

Tuesday 4/8 (5 days after surgery) when the steri-strip fell off. I still couldn't clean the wound until the next day.

Such a poser.
"She will keep her hands out of her mouth after surgery because it will hurt her." ... Yeah, right!Her new smile. Still beautiful.Thursday 4/10 - 1 week since surgery

She was soooo good last night while we were eating dinner and played in her Exersaucer for 45 minutes. She is always happy when mommy and daddy are together and the sun is out. Because the sun makes a difference!!! Yep, seriously, she hates rainy days.Miss Pokey Dots (because that is what you do with them, poke them, you don't do the polka, that would be stupid) ready for bed. Oh, and standing of course.

Meeting Granny Janny

So in all the chaos of the surgery we didn't get to put any pics up from Norah's visit with Granny Janny from the weekend of the 29th. I know my mom's friends are reading this so here you go...

Who are you??
Gimmie that scarf.
The Granny went away for a few days and Norah watched for her out the window with daddy.

While we were waiting Norah and I went to my friend Cathy's baby shower. She was a very good girl while we were there. Then we came home and played with dad some more. I miss that smile so much!!
Then Granny came back and shoved a bink in her mouth. It was super cute. She would not take a bink at all in Viet Nam and now just likes to chew on it on occasion. I am interested to see if she will take it when her lip heals. The only reason I am even trying it now is because with her hand surgery coming up she will not be able to chew on her fingers like she does all day and all night long.

Then on Granny's last night here we went to Ruby Tuesday's for dinner.

Healing

Norah is quickly healing from surgery and we are all counting down the days until I can clean some of that crap off of her face. Her steri-strip is beginning to peel top down and I doubt it will stay on until Wednesday morning. Her lip stitches are dissolving quickly, hopefully not too quickly, as I cannot get her to keep her hands (or anything else in her reach) out of her mouth. We are decreasing the frequency of her Tylenol with codeine and giving her regular Tylenol instead and so far so good. I know she must be starving at this point as she just stares at us and ogles our food or looks longingly at her high chair. It must be hard not being able to understand all of these changes. She has been a trooper through all of this and is trying her best to laugh and smile even though I am sure it hurts her.

I think Friday was the worst day by far, feeling wise for everyone, and I did not take any more pics after we left the hospital. She was miserable, running a fever and her nose tubes were completely clogged so she couldn't breathe. She slept most of the day which was wonderful because I did the same. On Saturday she said "muh". It was not directed at me in anyway but it was the first time she made an M noise. I don't think she could have done it before with her lips. So I was pretty happy about that. Then we went to the pediatrician and big surprise, she had ear infections in both ears and is now on round 4 of antibiotics. Here is a pic of her stoned on Saturday afternoon. I had cleared away just enough of her tubes so that she could breathe but not parts by the stitches.

(Day 3 after surgery)

Then yesterday she was feeling much better and we popped over to the park with our neighbors. Several people have asked so here is a pic of the back of her head where her "lump" was removed. You may have to enlarge the pic to really see it through the hair since they did not shave anything.

Daddy loves his baby komodo dragon. So sweet. (Day 4 after surgery)

Home from the Hospital

Well, we are home from surgery after a really long and painful night for all involved. Things started off better than we expected. Norah woke up Thursday morning at 5:55, a good hour earlier than she usually wakes up and right under the pedialyte cut off of 6:10 am. I had no faith that she was going to drink a pedialyte bottle but she did take down about 3 ozs and then was very patient until shortly after we arrived at the hospital.

Here we are in the waiting room. Then we went to an exam room and they took her temp (only slightly elevated) and we waited for the doctors. Norah knows all about the doctors office and what happens there.

She was very on to us. Then the doctors came in to discuss the surgery and somehow there was a mistake and they did not have the ear tubes listed on the paperwork. I don't know what the deal was there because I had told about 10 people about it by that point but they said there was no ENT on staff and they would have to schedule a SEPARATE procedure at another time. I was PISSSSSSED. My baby cannot go through any more. Below she mirrors my feelings about that news.

We kept her calm in the exam room for a good hour and a half and she was doing okay until the anesthesiologist came to take her away. The last thing we saw was her screaming and reaching for me. Bad bad times.

Then when she was in surgery (for an ETERNITY) cousins Aiden and Liam and Aunt Jess stopped by to check on us. It was a welcome distraction that helped pass the time.

The boys were all smiles... love my boys!

WARNING GRAPHIC PICS BELOW.

Then they came and got us both to go to recovery. My poor baby

She was a very unhappy girl after it was over and who can blame her. They did not give her morphine like they told us she would get, they did Tylenol with codeine instead. I really think at many points yesterday and through the night she needed something stronger. She was conscious throughout almost all of yesterday where we had assumed she would be in a drugged up stupor to keep her calm and still. Not the case. She was bleeding quite a bit and putting her hands in her mouth and pulling on her stitches. We were told that she would do it once and realize it hurts and then would not do it again. Not our girl. She only wanted to mess with her face. Also, they did not want her to lay on her stomach so I had to stay up all night and keep flipping her over (she is a tummy sleeper). At one point I lost it and the nurse had to tell me to go get some fresh air. It was so so hard watching her cry and knowing how much she hurt but not being able to do anything to help her. She was tied to several machines monitoring vitals & IVs and holding her was hard when she was awake and squirming around. At one point before bed she was unplugged from the IV but they left the input in and her arm splinted so she was beating me with it and smacking herself in the face whenever she tried to rub her eyes or suck her thumb. She could not get comfortable. I could not get comfortable either, this was right up there with the trip home from Viet Nam. A hot room, babies screaming, nurses (stewardesses, turbulence) waking her every 30 minutes, Barnabas snoring, a very very uncomfortable chair, sweatshirt wrapped around my head and like 1 hour of sleep. The only problem was we did not arrive in an exciting city with a happy baby. No rewards yet.

Oh and the scar on the back of her head was removed and she has A LOT of stitches back there so laying on her back is not much fun either. It looks like she was hit in the head with a bat to be honest.

Then this morning we had 12 more people come in to examine her for discharge. Again not a happy baby and again we were told she would not do things that hurt her and she could not mess up the surgery so we will see. In the car on the way home she was shoving her plastic keys in her mouth. We have to leave the steri-strip on for 6 days and cannot wash her face during that time. That means she cannot eat food only bottles. Also because of the back of her head she cannot have her hair washed for a week. She has to leave the nose tubes in for 3 weeks and then they will remove the stiches holding them in place. That is going to seem like an eternity for her as they are really annoying and clog with blood and snot. All we can do is lightly dab and she hates it. So, wish us luck, we have some hard times ahead in the next few days. I hope she starts feeling better soon. She just looks miserable.

LET ME GO HOME!!!

Surgery tomorrow

I just wanted to let everyone know that Norah's surgery was moved up to tomorrow from Friday. Barnabas and I are both very nervous tonight and dreading the morning, especially the car ride to the hospital. She cannot have any formula or food after mid-night tonight and denying her it in the morning will only amount to a very loud traumatic hour long car ride to the hospital. To top it all off she was not feeling 100% today and we are hoping that we do not go through all of that just to be turned away because she has a fever. I have a sneaking suspicion her ear infection is back but the thermometer gives me different readings every 2 minutes. Everyone cross your fingers that all goes well.