HOME ONE YEAR AGO YESTERDAY

It's so hard to believe that we have been home one year with Sophie. It has been quite the year. Lots of adjustments to make for all of us. Sophie has done really well since she has been home. She has gone from a very sick little baby and many medical tests, to thriving and being a very happy little girl.A complete joy to having her in our lives. She really is a funny little girl. The changes in Sophie are amazing from the first day that we got that scared little baby layered in four layers of clothes. Since Sophie has been home she has had a few problems, one of them was constant blood in her stools. She was referred to a GI Dr down at Mass. General for Children. He is an amazing Dr. He was very persistent trying to find out why she kept having blood in her stool. After a sygmoid(sp?) oscopy, a Meckel's scan, many tests for her stool along the way and finally, in December 2012, she was going to go for a colonoscopy back down in Boston. While we were there they asked when the last time I saw blood in her stool and I told them that it was just before Thanksgiving. I told the Dr that she had a black stool one day and blood the next. He said that was a whole different ball game. Black means that it is coming for the stomach not the lower GI. They decided to do an endoscopy on her while they were going to do the colonoscopy. Thank goodness they did. He came out to us after they had finished with Sophie and said that they found out what was wrong with her, but don't worry it could be fixed. She ended up having 8, yes 8 ulcers in her stomach.It was caused by a bacteria called H-pylori. She needed to be treated aggressively. The ulcers could have bleed out at anytime. They proceeded to put her on a course of 4 meds. Two of which were antibiotics. She had to be on them for 14 days and the other med. for the whole month of Jan. She immediately started to feel better with in the first week of being on the meds. She started to eat more and was just over all a happier baby(if she could be any happier. This poor little thing was in pain that whole time we have had her. I could not imagine the pain the little girl had probably been in most of her little life. The Dr's said that they have never seen anything like this before and that it is very rare in the US to see this in children. The pictures of her stomach were amazing. It's no wonder that she is so tiny. Sophie came to us at 24 months weighing 16.5 pounds and was 29 inches. She has been slow with her growing since she has been hoe and is being watched.In one year she has only gained a little over 4 and a half pounds and has grown 3 inches. She is now 32 inches and weighs a little over 21 pounds. She is a peanut. She is barely getting into 12 months size clothes. Sophie came to us with giardia, scabies, she wouldn't eat anything but rice, cold water, a little yogurt and some congee. We now know why she wouldn't eat. We had early intervention coming weekly to work with her on eating and trying different textures. She definitely had some sensory issues going on with food. She was diagnosed with failure to thrive, she was severely malnourished. We can only imagine if she stayed in China. The Dr's said the same thing. She probably wouldn't have made it. She is definitely a little survivor. She will be getting re-scoped April 5th to see if the ulcers are all gone. On top of everything else, she has had a hard time fully bonding with me. It was very hard at first, but I needed to understand what she needed and what was comfortable for her. Erik was the only one that could put her to bed, get her in the middle of the night and get her out of her crib in the morning. She wanted nothing to do with me that centered around bedtime. She would have terrible night terrors. They have lessened with time and she will only get an occasional one now if she is over stimulated or tired. She is getting better with me and lets me put her down now and will sometimes let me get her in the night if she wakes up. She is totally a daddies girl. She has come a long way in one year. To see the changes in her are amazing. To see how such a little baby could survive all this, is beyond me. I am so proud of her. She is such a sweet little girl and has been through so much in her three little years of life. Emma loves her little sister most of the time and they do play together well when they both agree. She is protective of her when we are out of the house. It's so cute to see.They are both very strong willed little girls. I love seeing them together. There is so much more I can write and I will try to start catching up on my blog. It's long over due. We love her to the moon and back and couldn't imagine our life with out her in it. We are so very lucky to have her.

HOME TWO MONTHS TODAY

I can't believe that we have been home two months today. It has been a whirlwind. It has been an amazing two months. Where has the time gone? Sophie has come a long way and still has a long way to go. When we got home with her she had scabies, Giardia, was breaking out in rashes and hives all over her body. She was sick and had fluid in both ears. She was malnourished and had failure to thrive. She was only a little over 16 pounds at two years one month old. She is wearing anywhere from 3-6 month size clothes and is starting to get into some 6-12 and 9 months clothes now. She is such a little peanut. The poor things was a mess and would not eat. She is still not eating very well. She would only take water and rice or congee and some drinkable yogurt. She would gag on almost everything else. I now have her on pediasure with some whole milk in it, but she doesn't even get through 8oz a day. She is eating better now but still has a long way to go. She had terrible night terrors, some of which are still happening. The first two weeks she would wake up at night and I would bring her in bed with us and she would sleep on my chest. That didn't last to long. She would wake up at night kicking, screaming, hitting me and crying. That's when we found out that they were night terrors and to just let her work through them. Eventually she wouldn't let me put her to bed or get her in the middle of the night. Erik is the only one that can do that. She wouldn't even want me to get her out of the crib. It has gotten a little easier, but she still wants Erik. I know in time it will change. On top of all that she is a very happy, sweet, funny and fun to play with child. We fell very lucky to have her. She is a very active child and gets into everything. You have to stay on top of her all of the time. We enjoy her so much even though she is exhausting. Here are a few pictures from the first day until today. She really has changed. She is a little survivor.

WE ARE HOME!

Just want to let everyone know that we are home. YEAH! I am so sorry that it was so difficult to post while in China. I felt a lot of stress not keeping up with the blog. I am planning on doing the whole trip on catch up posts. So please stay tuned. It was a long trip. We left Guangzhou 8:00am China time Thurs. morning ( which was 8:00 Wed. night USA time) and got home here 11:45 pm Thurs night. I am still up because the girls thing it is still China time Fri. afternoon at 4:00 pm (which is 4:00 am Fri. a here) To say the least, it has been a long two days and I have had no sleep. The flight was kind of hard with Sophie. She did great in one way, but I had to stay awake to make sure that she didn't fall off the seat. She is quite the mover in her sleep. Well, I am going to try and go to bed before the sun rises. I have to be up because Katie and Ed close on their house tomorrow. I am so excited for them. I will keep you posted.

LAST DAY IN NANCHANG

Today is our last day in Nanchang and I am sitting here writing this while everyone is sleeping Hopefully long enough so that I can write this. We have done so much since arriving in China.I am going to start off from when we left home. We woke on Thurs. morning at 3:00 am a week ago. We got to the airport just in time.They even told us sternly, that we should have been here an hour early for an international flight. OUCH! We got our hands smacked. We ran to catch our flight. We made it and got to Dulles safely . We had a five hour layover which was going to be terrible, but our friend Jim took care of us once again (thanks Jim) We were able to wait the whole time in the United executive club We could have breakfast and just hang out there until it was time for our flight to leave. It was finally time for us to board our plane. I couldn't believe that we were going to China for a second time. Most people don't even get the opportunity to get there once on a life time and I was lucky enough to be going again. While we were waiting, a couple came up to us and asked if we were going to China for an adoption. We said yes. They were to and they just so happened to be with our agency. They were one of our travel mates. It turns out that they are from Miami. We did spend time in Beijing with them. They flew to Guangzhou and we flew to Nanchang. We finally got on the plane and found our seats. we were greeted by the flight attendants and then the captain, They wanted to congratulate us on our adoption. They knew about us because of Jim. We were hoping that we would get bumped to business class. we waited in our seats and fond out that the flight was delayed due to the new computer system for United. Well, the wait went into 2 hours. We were still hoping that we would get moved, but it started looking less and less likely and the plane was going to take off soon. At the last minute Erik saw the flight attendant heading our way waving at him, She came up to us and said that she could move us. I could not tell you how excited we were. It was really tight in the back and I couldn't imagine flying the whole flight back there. Even though we did it before. We moved up and Erik stopped in business class and the flight attendant kept going. She moved us to first class. OMG! we couldn't believe it with Emma. Holy cow! what a treat that was (THANKS AGAIN JIM!) How can we ever thank him enough. What a great flight it was. They really do take care of you in first class. It was great, because when I got Emma ready for bed, we could lay her bed down and let her sleep. I got her ready around 8:30 and I think she feel asleep around 9:00 and slept the rest of the flight. I had to wake her up a little before we landed. It was a long flight, but made very comfortable, Our whole journey ended up being over 31 hours before we arrive at our hotel in Beijing. We got to the hotel and got settled in our room and tried to go to sleep. We had to be up and going first thing in the morning. I woke at 3:00am China time, which is a 13 hour difference our time. Plenty of time to get ready for The Great Wall! So, our first day was touring The Great Wall and the Olympic Village. I was so excited because we were going to a different spot on the Great Wall this time. There was so much more that you could climb and walk on this side. It is such an amazing site to see. Erik, Emma and I proceeded to climb and walk for over two miles and not one complaint out of Emma. She was just amazing.. I am so proud of her. The views from this side were breath taking. You could see for ever. It was very cold and extremely windy, at some point I had to hold onto Emma, because I thought she was going to blow away. You did have to hold on sometimes. We climbed the wall with the couple that we meet in the airport. It was a really nice time. When we were done, we got on the bus and went to a local restaurant for lunch It was really good. Down stairs from the restaurant was a jade store. It was like a really nice jewelry store that we have here. I didn't buy anything knowing that we could get it cheaper else where. After lunch we were headed for the Olympic village. It was really nice walking around there knowing that almost four years ago it was a bustling, very crowed place. You could only imagine how crowed it was. It is a very big place. We went back to the hotel and settled in for the night. The next day was a very busy day. We were going to Tienanmen Square, The Forbidden City and then we were going to Hutong for lunch in a locals home, followed by a rickshaw ride. Houtong is probably one of my favorite places to see in Beijing. Lunch was amazing in the locals home. It was a very tiny home in the village. Just two very tiny rooms. One was where they cooked and the other was there sitting room. Up stairs (we didn't get to see) had two bedrooms. The amazing thing is, they are so very proud of their homes. They lived in one of the bigger homes and it has been in their family for over 150 years. We could not imagine or even think of living this way. But, as I said, they are very proud people. From there we went on the rickshaw tour of Hutong. I just love seeing how they all live and appreciating what we have herein the states. Learning about the history of Hutong is just so interesting. From there, we were off to the airport to head for Nanchang. We arrived in Nanchang late that night. When the plane landed, a whole wave of emotions came over me. It was very unexpected. You would think that these emotions were for Sophie, but, they were feelings that I felt when the plane landed in the same place we flew for Emma. We were bringing her back home. It was very emotional to know when we arrived in this airport a little over 3 1/2 years ago that we would be back getting another child from the same province. To be continued....