High-Five struck today

I had to drop something off at work and had the girls with me; by the time I got home Penelope had fallen asleep. I was able to lay her on the couch and she kept sleeping so I quick ran back to work to get in as much time as possible. Todd called when she woke up and said she was doing fine, 45 MINUTES later he called and said she was starting to look a little panicky so I high-tailed it home and walked in the door to a big wrestle party. Not only that but they showed me Penelope’s new thing for the day… high-five, low-five, high-five, low-five again. Too much fun! That must have been the last of Todd’s energy because he went right to bed with a compress and an emus pan. Todd’s was at the peak, but we we’re doing better so hopefully he will only be down a day or two. Not so good after being gone from work for three weeks.

Back to the doctor for the other two girls in the household

The last two days Violet and I have been miserable. We caught a virus, so we’ve been real low key, sleeping on the couch watching Violet’s movies. Todd has continued to install more of the kitchen cabinets and Penelope went to Todd twice today, just walked up and held out her arms, she let him hold her for about a minute, another big step. Penelope has been our source of entertainment as we lay on the couch. This evening Todd started to not feel well, not a good sign.

Thanksgiving and we DO give thanks!

! She did so much better today with her eye patch, she is very low key during her patch hours. It seems we have two good kids as far as medicine, when I pull out the Amoxicillin, Penelope backs up against my leg and leans her head back ready to take her medicine, Violet has always been the same way and they usually taste awful. Penelope had a great time at Thanksgiving, we have a food grinder and she ate everything except the salad. We don’t know where she puts the food, I think her new nickname will be the girl with the wooden leg; she is continually hungry and eats more than all three of us combined. After dinner, we were once again relaxing in the same room around the fireplace, playing games and later watching a movie, she felt adventurous and wandered around. She was a very happy girl. Thank you Lord for all our blessings!

The happy ‘little squeaker’ and the not so happy ‘eye patch’

Today Penelope walked to Todd, he hunkered down and she plowed into him trying to push him over, he crashed over and she giggled. Talk about huge strides! She got off immediately and started walking to me but turned around as if to say, “Will you still be there?” Todd is so patient with her, it has to be so tough!
We started the patch today, she was NOT happy! After too much screaming and crying, I distracted her with a bribe of M & M’s, worked like a charm. Every article I’ve read says that the first three days are the big hump and after that her eye should improve just enough for her to not fight it as much. Later Violet helped distract her by picking up her foot and tapping the heal getting the squeaker to squeak. They are so beautiful together.

Today… the ophthalmologist

Today we learned that Penelope loves the little kitchen and Violet loves playing with her in it. She is content for a short while to play with her sister. Another step in the right direction! Violet still loves wearing matching outfits and if the couple we have are dirty she wants to wear matching colors, it is so endearing, she has been such a wonderful older sister and is so helpful and thoughtful, she is such a blessing!
Looking at the some of the photos we got before we picked up Penelope, we wondered if Penelope had a lazy eye, most times her eyes look just fine but then one would look slightly off. Most Asian children’s noses develop slowly so we kept hearing that it was most likely an optical illusion and once her nose developed it would be fine. We made an appointment with a pediatric ophthalmologist anyway just to be sure. Today we learned that “lazy eye” can be defined as two things: an eye turn or loss of vision, Penelope has both in her right eye. Her ophthalmologist set up a vigorous plan for the next year, patching her eye daily to start to get her eye muscles equal in strength, then glasses to get the vision equal and if those don’t work we will then discuss surgery. It sounds like the percentages of success from the surgery aren’t so great so even if we get to that point that may not be the right road for us. Looks like we will be seeing him regularly over the next year and we are back in his office again in three weeks. He and his assistant were somewhat positive and said they were impressed that we caught this early, most children come in around 4 or 5, when they start school and have failed a vision test at school, so that’s a positive sign, the earlier it is caught ‘usually’ the easier it is to retrain the brain.
Poor girl, lots of pokes and shots yesterday and eyes dilated today… tomorrow we start the eye patch.

The start of the medical appointments – today, the pediatrician

We started renovating our kitchen and were in the middle of putting in kitchen cabinets when we left for China. We hired a friend to put in concrete countertops and he came with his friend to install them today. As they were leaving his friend waved good bye and Penelope waved back. Needless to say we’ve been doing lots of waving. I had forgotten how exciting it is when a child learns each new thing. Today was Penelope’s first pediatrician visit… titers on vaccinations, blood work for a list of other tests, and the poop collection for parasites starts… YEAH!
The most important thing is to make sure she firmly adjusts to us. So we asked about how long we should wait to try and instill a sleep and nap pattern. Penelope will fall asleep in her crib but when she wakes up in the middle of the night and we try to put her back to sleep in her crib, it ends up a disaster. So, when she wakes up we’ve been putting her in bed with us, which allows us to all get almost a good nights rest. We’re still curious when we will get our bed back… Our other question, how long we should meet her needs immediately and hold her as continually as she wants and needs… his recommendation to both… give it a month, and then reevaluate. Here’s to a quick 30 days!

Family Sunday

Sleep is still and issue, we crash between 7-8 pm, Penelope wakes up at 3 am crying so we’ve been bringing her into our bed at that point so Violet can sleep but then I’m up an hour or two later. We’ve been trying to stay up a half hour later each night but it hasn’t been working. I don’t remember the jet lag being this bad last time. Todd took a couple more days of vacation since it’s Thanksgiving this week, so he’s home for another week, maybe later this week we’ll be back on schedule.
We’ve asked that no one pick Penelope up or feed her until she bonds better with both of us. We did the same with Violet for the first two months and it was the best thing we ever did. At Church this morning Penelope meet lots of new people and did really well with all the people, Violet sang in the Cherub Choir and Aunt Denise had a great time playing with Penelope in my lap. By the end of mass they were the best of friends.
Penelope swats and when it’s directed at your face it hurts. We’ve been trying to teach her to be gentle so when she does that we take her hand and gently stroke our face and say “gentle”. After the reprimand I always kiss her. This afternoon she leaned in and puts her mouth on mine after I correct her before I could kiss her. It was so endearing; like she was telling me “I know you love me”.
We had Family Sunday dinner at my parent’s house to celebrate all the November birthdays and Penelope got to meet Aunt Rachel and Uncle Ryan as well as some other family friends. She had a good time and while I was standing there played a game of “pass the object” with Todd.