IAC Round 2

We had our second scheduled IAC appointment to check on Hope’s labs, attachment and development. I am thrilled to report her labs are perfect. Not thrilled to report we have to do the dreaded poop samples again to verify that the Giardia is gone. Her immunizations from China are all good, woo-hoo!!! That has saved this little girl 9 shots! We will be beginning with her 12 month shots likely next week. Dr. Chambers wants her to be immunized to certain things that she could actually come into contact when she goes in for surgery at the hospital. While the picture above makes her look rather slim…she is weighing in at 27 pounds! A chunky monkey!! We love it! Her attachment is pretty much on par, standard, typical or whatever word you’d like to choose for…”we haven’t been home long enough to really evaluate her true attachment.” But it over all is pretty good. I got an article to read about being rejected by your toddler. Since Hope was always abandoned by women she has a practical inclination to Eric…as he is a man. So when Hope gets upset or feels insecure and regresses it is Eric who she wants and trusts more, because he is a man. During those times, is when she needs me to pull her close the most, and we have just been letting her go to Eric because she seems more content with him. But now we know that I have to tag in and work harder to let her know that I am her Mommy and I am NOT going to let her go, I am here to stay.

The big news is in her development. We were told that typically at this stage in the game they are expecting a child like Hope to chart out as a 13-month old in development across several areas but specifically; cognitive, communication, fine motor skills and gross motor skills. I am thrilled and proud to the point of tears to say that she is charting at her actual age!!! 24-months!!! Yay!!!!! She had only one area of delay and it is at an 18-month level and that is her gross motor skills. But even that is a victory if you remember what she was like when we first got her. Her cognition and communication are solid 24-months. She is one smart cookie. Before the appointment I typed up all the words she can produce in sign language and it was 55!!! While we were there at the office she added one more word! 56 words and I’m sure I forgot some. Plus, she can use 3 of them in a sentence; i.e. Mommy more milk. Mommy read book. We are so thankful to Jesus that he allowed her to catch up so quickly. There is a strange comfort to me in knowing that the 2-year old I am parenting is an actual 2-year old.

We have some things we have to do to work on the gross motor skills and are very excited about doing them. Especially since gross motor is tied to eating! Which I must say is now going really well again. Better than before. Yesterday, in fact, she signed the word “eat”. I verified with her that she did indeed sign “eat” and not “flower”. So we took her to the table and I thought it was a fluke but I got out all the food and she ate a quite a bit for her! I was floored that she actually asked to eat. Our OT person suggested making rice cereal for Hope and adding some baby food for slight flavoring and see how that goes. Today I tried that for breakfast and lunch and she went to town on the foods! Especially if it was thicker. It is too hard for her to control the almost liquid consistency of Stage 1 baby foods, they just run out her mouth and nose. Note to self: Buy more Stage 3. She ate way more food today plus bottles and it occurs to me that she has likely never felt “full” before or like she has “eaten too much.” So we will see how the eating continues. We hope to pull back to 3 bottles a day and build to 6 containers of baby food a day. We are so glad to see Hope eating purees, it will really help her when she has surgery. So glory to God in the highest for taking such good care of our little girl.

We are so thankful for everyone at the Birmingham International Adoption Clinic. It was a a great day.