Holiday Celebrations and Surgery Date Set

This past week and a half was filled with lots of fun celebrations of Jesus' birthday and time spent with family. It has been very encouraging to see how well Chun Le seems to be doing with bonding even in the midst of our sometimes crazy schedule and crowds this past week. We spent Christmas Eve at my parents house and both of my sisters and their families were there this year. It was wonderful to have all of us together and that included 9 grandkids ages 3 months to 10 years! Of those 9 grandkids, 6 of them are boys so you can imagine the noise and high energy level that was present for the entire celebration. :) Chun Le did really well and was not nearly as clingy to Phil and I as she had been the first time we were all over at my parents house for dinner a week earlier. She will often join in with the cousins and run around with her high pitched excited "yell" as she chases them or is being chased by them. Chun Le learned to give high fives and knuckle bumps after about a week home so her cousins enjoy having her do this with them repeatedly when we are together. It gives Chun Le a big smile to be able to "connect" in this way. We enjoyed a very low key Christmas day that began with a worship service at church and then the rest of the day was spent just hanging out at home and Phil grilled out some really delicious Korean BBQ chicken for dinner.

On December 28th, we drove to Phil's brother's home for a Stowers family Christmas celebration. It was fun to introduce Chun Le to her relatives on the Stowers side of the family. Her cousin Cooper is 2 months younger than her, but is about one and a half times her size. :) New Year's Eve we were home and went out for some yummy Papa's pizza with my parents and Susan and her family. We all came back to our house for a little bit and Aunt Susan did some funky hair styles for the kids that you can see in the pics below. :)

Since our last blog post we had the visit with Dr. Reddy, a pediatric ENT specialist. The visit came with good timing--the previous night Chun Le was waking up in the night crying and holding her ears and we suspected an ear infection. Sure enough she did have one! We were able to get antibiotics for her at the visit and also discussed with the doctor the reason for and procedure involved in inserting ear tubes. It is very common for cleft kids to have frequent ear infections and fluid build up that can lead to hearing loss so they will put ear tubes in at her lip revision surgery and we can expect that she will continue to have them replaced as they fall out or she outgrows them for the next several years. A benefit with this is that she will have an ENT visit and an audiologist check her every six months while she has the tubes. At this first ENT/audiologist visit we found that her hearing is below the normal range but very likely it is due to the ear infection/fluid build up she had. We will get a chance to test that again during a post op visit in Februrary/March sometime. Her lip revision surgery and insertion of ear tubes is scheduled for February 15th and it will be an early morning procedure. They currently have us scheduled to have it done at a daytime surgery center with no overnight stay. We thought that when we spoke to the cosmetic surgeon at the cleft clinic it was going to be one overnight stay so we need to call this week to be sure the scheduler we spoke with has the details correct. The lip revision should be one of the "easier" recovery times in comparison to what her palate surgery will be like this summer. But definitely there will be pain and discomfort and fear involved for our little one who won't really be able to understand what is going on. Orignally there was a chance the surgery would be on January 18th, so we think having a bit more time before that next "trauma" will be good for all of us.

One other aspect that we have been amazed by with Chun Le is how quickly she is learning to communicate with us even without words. At this point the only words we can clearly understand from her are "uh oh" and "bye". We think there are times she is trying to say other things like maybe "mama" and "dada" and "Isaac" (haven't heard her attempt Rachel's name yet) but it is a bit of a stretch to figure out if that is really what she is saying or not. Her very wide cleft is defintely having a big affect on what she can and can't say. So we are teaching her a few basic signs that she has pretty well mastered already and it is neat to see her use them--most often in relation to food. Chun Le will sign "more", "please", "thank you" regularly and in the correct context so that is neat to see. Although she cannot speak much with us, she is very quickly understanding more and more of what we say. Chun Le will get her shoes when we ask her to on our way out the door; if we give simple instructions about something for her to clean up she can do that; she will sometimes walk up the stairs at bedtime and put her finger to her front teeth in a back and forth motion telling us that she wants to brush teeth; once she brought her bib to us to let us know that she was hungry and wanted a bottle; in this past week when we ask her to give an extended family member a hug she will go up to them and reach out her arms for a hug. She is also doing soooooo much better with feeding. Chun Le will try most anything that we offer her for the first time. A week ago, she would shake her head no to most of the unfamiliar food items we offered. Now she is willing to try just about anything and is enjoying a much broader range of foods. She has even eaten things like bites of chicken, cheese (wouldn't even touch that last week---an unfamiliar taste in China), graham crackers, and in the past couple days will take warmed up 2% milk in her bottle instead of just formula. Amazing the strides she is making in so many areas so quickly! We still have a long way to go and at certain times each day she will still get fussy and want to just have me or Phil hold her and nothing else will calm her (usually happens while we are trying to cook dinner of course!) But overall, her adjustment is going better than we had expected. Our big kids are having a more difficult time with the transition than Chun Le is and we were not expecting that to be as dramatic an issue as it is. We had read so much literature and had attended excellent classes/conferences on adoption education to prepare us for what is was going to

be like to welcome Chun Le into our family, but not too much is out there to predict and prepare for the reaction of the older kids to this change in our family situation. Please do not read this and worry that the situation with the big kids is dire, but it has been more difficult on them than what we had thought...or difficult in different ways that we had expected. Continued prayers for us in knowing how best to come alongside all of our kids during this adjustment would be great. We appreciate so much the family and friends who have been there for us on numerous occasions to give them a special time away from home and one on one attention!