Noah’s Open House

At Noah’s school, once a year they have an “Open House”. It is a time where the parents come to see the kids do their “jobs” (school work). The kids practice very hard on the job that they are showcasing and they have to make their own name placards. The kids have to introduce themselves and their jobs and then explain the step by step details of doing the job. They do this over and over again for each parent that sits down in front of them and they do it for one hour. Noah’s job this year was the preposition job. He did fantastic explaining his job. He counted how many times he had to explain his job and it was 23 times! His first “customer” was…Grandpa.

We were both so proud of Noah and all the kids. They all did a great job! It was a really fun night. My Dad thoroughly enjoyed himself to his own surprise I think. He was going for Noah, and so that I wouldn’t have to drive. But he had a wonderful time with Noah’s classmates…and I think he learned a thing or two! Great job Noah! 

Speech Therapy = Redemption & Restoration

Forgive me that I’m jumping posts right now, I have A LOT of catching up to do but I just had to blog about today. Let me start with…God is so FAITHFUL to his promises! God is so GOOD! God always blows my mind!

Joel 2:25 “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten—”

My friends I was blessed beyond what I could imagine today when I saw the beginning of this verse being fulfilled in my sweet Yaya’s life. It came in the most unexpected place, and the title of this blog gives it away. Yaya had her first speech therapy session today. We are working with an amazing organization called Hand in Hand, you can check them out if you are in the Birmingham, AL area by clicking on the link I made out of their name. They are doing all of Yaya’s PT, OT, and speech currently. Anyway, Melissa, is our speech girl and she is A-MAZING. She is in the same vein as our PT girl, Katie. Although Melissa does not yet have “Katie status” with Yaya, but it is coming.  We have seen Melissa 3 times now and all those times were with Katie. The goal there was to ease Yaya into being with a new person. Well it worked with Melissa. Yeah! Today we saw her by ourselves at the first official speech session.

My prayer for speech has been this… “Lord, just let Yaya cooperate with the process. Let her be participatory. Let her enjoy Melissa.” He honored that prayer today. We went with Melissa to the speech room and sat on the floor. Melissa pulled out a basket full of “toys” and immediately Yaya was “in”. She started with a Mr. Potato Head toy. I thought this would be a no-go, cuz when we bought her one for Christmas she freaked out when I took the eyes off the toy. Today however, the potato was devoid of accessories and the game was to stick stuff on. Not as traumatizing, clearly. Yaya ended up taking off a couple pieces to add additional arms. Her potato had an arm sticking out of the top of its head and in the place of the eyes, in addition to the normally place arms. Anyway…as Melissa progressed through the session and I got to sit back and watch (with Noah) and the weight of what I was seeing hit me like a ton of bricks. Here was this amazing little girl who in 10 months has learned so much and had so much happen to her and in her. She was lively and excited and engaged and performing beautifully. She was actually making the sounds asked of her…for the FIRST TIME.  I found myself silently crying as I was watching the Lord begin to restore his little girl. This was redemption in real time. She is learning to speak! Had the Lord left her in China, they would have eventually fixed her lip and likely her palate, but by the time that happened she would have been fairly old AND they wouldn't have sent her to speech therapy! From the little I understand of speech therapy, they actually have to teach you to think differently; i.e. form new neural pathways. It isn’t just listen and repeat, it is really hard work and can take years and years. She would have never really learned how to communicate, not well. And it would be one more thing against her in China.

But God in his mercy sent her here. He secured two critical surgeries for her that would enable her to talk, eat comfortably, and  fit in socially. Then he made sure there were people lined up who would capitalize on these surgeries to give her the best possible outcomes. MIND. BLOWING. You would think the surgeries would have had this effect on me, and they did in a minor way, but for me the goal was always speech. I don’t know why, perhaps it is because I am so language oriented. But for me it was all about enabling her to find her voice and use it…on so many levels. Not just the obvious physical use of a voice to make speech, but the more deeper meaning of being able to communicate all those things she has not been able to. To communicate her past and her present, her opinions, her fears, her joys, her hurt, her anger, her likes, her loves…her world. We have done well to give her an expressive language with sign language, but her mind is so sharp and I know she needs more signs than what I have taught her. She would have been much like Noah had she not had any cleft issues, in that she would have likely talked early I think. Her vocabulary would have been outrageous by this age is my guess. I think in part the reason why this was so emotional for me is that I am actually getting to witness a large milestone with her. I am getting to be here for her “first words”. What a gift! Something that I hadn’t really thought about. I mean we saw her “first crawl, roll over, walk etc.” but those were different somehow. I don’t know, I’m sorta babbling now trying to explain something that I think is fairly unexplainable.

All this to say. Speech was cool today. Melissa was very excited about what she saw and we are both very encouraged. Her exact words were, “She is going to be a delight!” Yaya always seems to blow past our expectations of her. She is an incredible little girl. What an honor and privilege to bear witness to how God is working to restore and redeem this little girl’s life. What an honor to call her my daughter.

Yaya Update

Okay here we go…sweet Yaya weathered the surgery beautifully as you already know. We will likely go back to have it checked sometime in the next week or so. The cold virus about took us all out. She has just now been able to go to sleep and breathe through the night (that started just 3 nights ago on March 14). HOWEVER, this nasty virus has lingering undesirable effects. Yaya is now suffering through what is called Transient Synovitis. No I didn’t sneeze…that’s a real thing. It is when your body gets a virus, or medications that cause your own antibodies to get confused and so they attack your joint linings. Its other name is postinfectious arthritis. In Yaya’s case she has what feels like arthritis in her left hip and possibly in her right. It is, praise the Lord, temporary, 1-3 week duration. We discovered this as we kept trying to gauge her mouth pain. We would ask her if anything hurt. She would always pat her left leg; and I mean always. We dismissed it at first thinking she was just mis-reporting or confused. But she never said her mouth hurt, just her leg. She has done this since right after she got that stinkin’ virus! When she began to limp and drag her left leg, which is her strong leg, we thought we should take her in. So I took her in last week thinking I was crazy or she was growing and it was growing pains. One quick exam had us running down to Children’s South for x-rays and a blood draw. What I thought was nothing became mildly serious. Because we have no history on her we had to rule out first: hip displasia. You know that thing that Labrador Retrievers get…yeah that. Then we had to rule out bone or joint infection. At 6:00 pm that same day our doctor called and said that her hips looked great. He thought the blood work would be fine and it was just the synovitis. Whew. But at 8:30 am the next morning I received a call from the doctor again who informed me that the blood work was not fine and that I need to high tail it down to Children’s downtown to see an Orthopedic doctor to rule out anything serious. And by high tail it, he meant it. Like drop my Eggo waffle and throw on some clothes and walk out the door. Which I did. It wasn’t pretty. No make up. Hair in all the wrong directions, which is saying something since I have spikey hair to begin with. Eric met me and the girls at Children’s with McDonalds and we fed the girls the food I brought from home. In about an hour we were leaving the hospital with the verified synovitis diagnosis. Nothing else sinister, praise be to God. So we just ride this out with Ibuprofen and it should go away soon.

She is finally getting an appetite back. I fed her 8 containers of food today. She normally does anywhere from 9-12. I have decided that it is time to teach her to feed herself. She has decided that she doesn’t want to. But I will be forging ahead in that direction tomorrow regardless. I figure it is one step closer to getting her to actually eat food. Plus, it is really time consuming to feed her, not that I mind…but it gets old. We aren’t even going to discuss feeding therapy until April. We do however, begin PT again this week. She has lost a lot of ground with this surgery and now the synovitis. Her strength is gone. It feels a little like starting over but I know it will come back quickly. We also start speech this coming up week. We will only do 30 minute sessions once a week for now I believe. We had the meeting with the school (State early intervention) this past week and it went really well. She has to be evaluated by their teams with their tests all over again. It is weird because they have to call in a sign language interpreter! I’ve never been on this side of the fence before and it is unsettling! I’m all like, “Who are they gonna get?! Will I like them? Will I approve? Can’t I just call one of my friends to do it?” Since Yaya has no language delay due to her expressive sign language they need the interpreter and I can’t do it because of dual roles and conflict of interest. It just never occurred to me that we’d ever need to use an interpreter! Cool and weird at the same time. They will evaluate for Speech (that is the big one), PT and OT. But hopefully Yaya won’t need all those services by the time August rolls around, just speech. The state only provides services during the school year. So when Yaya turns three on June 30th we will have to pay for Yaya’s services in the gap between her birthday to the beginning of the state school year. But God is so faithful, it will only be a few weeks. And hopefully we will only need speech by then.

Yaya’s anxiety levels are going down and she is starting to level out again some. She did great when I went away for my conference for 2 nights. No long lasting repercussions there! Yay Yaya! All in all, she is doing really quite well. The surgery and subsequent virus was hard on her but she is bouncing back really quicker than I had expected. But that is what our little fighter does, she always exceeds our expectations.

A Teaser Post

Okay so a lot has been going on recently in the Williamson household and I want to mention several things so I am going to list titles to upcoming posts as a reminder to myself what to blog about.

• Noah’s Open House
• Noah’s State Gymnastics Meet
• Noah’s 9th Birthday
• Yaya Update
• Created for Care Conference
• Eden Is So Dadgum Cute

I realize it is a bit Noah heavy but for the love that kid gets only leftovers nowadays. The girls get all the attention. Yaya’s post will be long so she will be covered don’t worry, I’ll do her first since she is likely the one most people want an update on due to her recent surgery. So stay tuned for more!

Too bad to blog…

Okay friends and family…this week has been the pits. So bad I don’t even want to blog about it. What started off as amazing and incredible quickly turned to horrible and unbearable in 24 hours time. This cold virus/sinus infection Yaya has is taking its toll on the entire family. I swear, had she not had this, we would be sailing right through recovery. But alas, she does have it and it is stinkin’ miserable. She struggled with really high fever for several days. We think the fever is gone. But the “can’t breathe through her newly formed nasal passages” dilemma persists.  Because of this our poor little girl wakes herself up several times in an hour at night then every hour on the hour she is wide awake and angry. We keep pumping the pain meds in her and don’t know if it is helping. We are back to hydrocodone at night to help her sleep but it isn’t really helping, it certainly is no longer making her drowsy. So sleep is elusive as ever and it is wearing Eric and I out. We are trying to sleep in shifts, one person up stairs and the other down, but she wakes so frequently and requires me to be there that it isn’t helping much. If I stay down with her I can’t sleep through the noise she makes trying to breath and the several crying outs she has until she finally wakes totally up.

Then there is the attachment regression…I can’t even speak about this right now. I can only say, things are as bad as they have ever been. I am exhausted from her anger and rejection, as I am the one who has to manage it all the time. Our best episode yet was the one hour scream-a-thon that started at 1:30 a.m. Non.Stop.Screaming. Ahhhhh good times, good times.

Eden is falling apart  as well, everything that doesn’t go her way or anything we ask her to do, reduces her to tears and screaming and resistance. OH and we got a note home today about Noah with some issues in school. Banner day.

Fevers, Congestion, Coughing & Ear Infections

Okay so this title describes the medial conditions of my two little girls. Yaya is congested with fever. If she still has it tomorrow morning we head to the 9:15 am appointment I already have set up for her. If she wakes fever free…then we scrap the appointment and weather this cold. Our malady options if she still has fever are: nasty virus, pneumonia, sinus infection, and flu. I’m super excited about all those options…not. I pray that tonight somehow she can sleep even though she can’t breathe out of her nose. We all need sleep desperately. P.S. She is off her hydrocodone, just Tylenol and Motrin alternating.

Our sweet Eden still has a stinkin’ ear infection! She has had some sort of fever/cold/cough for almost 4 weeks now. Her phlegmy rattily cough caused enough alarm today that I took her to the doctor and found out about said ear infection. Praise the Lord her lungs are crystal clear. So even though she sounds like she has walking pneumonia, it is drainage from the bad ear. So we had to get a very painful big antibiotic shot and then we are starting a new course of oral antibiotics for her. Yay. Not.

Both girls want to happy but it is hard for them. Eden is pretty doggone cute recently but sweet Yaya is just miserable. She is regressing with attachment, which we expected, but wow it is draining for Mama to pull her out of her anxiety. She began dropping eye contact today with everyone and was insistent about being ON Daddy. She would refuse me for most things in the afternoon. By early evening it was time for intervention and we spent an hour locked in her room together with her screaming and crying non-stop. My mere breathing irritated her. So imagine how she loved me talking and reading books allowed. She finally gave up control and fell into my arms after an hour. She would make eye contact and respond to my questions. She asked to see her brother. So I took her to Noah and she started crying and then made the sign for sad. It was so cute and heartbreaking to me that she wanted to go tell Buh-buh she was feeling sad. She was doing well when I left the house to go to Noah’s parents night at his school and seemed well upon my return. Eric let me know that he and my Mom attempted bedtime with disastrous results. Yaya was too anxious to let Eric put her down and Eden didn’t want him going down with Yaya and wouldn’t stay with my Mom. The girls then decided I was the one to put them both down. Yaya went down pretty easy. Eden…not so much. But it is here nor there. 

We need rest in this family for all of us, both the infirmed and their caregivers! Keep us in your prayers friends!

Post-Op Day 2

Well last night was not as great as we had hoped. Eric and I decided to wake her to keep her on her pain meds and in hindsight…not the best decision. We should have let her sleep. She had a hard time breathing through her nose and is sounded much like congestion from a cold. That phlegmy rattling breathing in the throat and nose. You could tell it bothered her. When we woke her at 1 am she was to console and put back down. We finally got her to rest in our bed with us and there she slept the rest of the night. We abandoned the 4 am meds. She woke up with her head at the foot of the bed and Eric was holding her leg to make sure she didn’t slip off. When we she roused herself crying at 6 am, we discovered she had a horrible fever. It registered a 101.2 but her ear canals are all weird and she was squirming, if you had felt her you’d know the fever was much higher. She got a dose of pain meds that had fever reducer in it and at best it held the fever at bay until we could get her Ibuprofen at 9 am. She was very miserable until that time, hard to console and wanted to be held while standing…friends she weighs 30 pounds and when she is sick she doesn’t hang on to you to “help” you.

We called the doctor at 6:30 am and his opinion was that the fever was in no way related to the surgeries. It was likely a cold, the flu or sometimes kids get a post-op fever. But he told me not to worry much as long as she eats and drinks. At 9 am she got the Ibu and then she slept for about an hour on Mama. When she woke up she was much better. She has been fairly perky during the day but you can tell she is wearing down. Plus, while she has drank quite a bit today she hasn’t eaten much food. We aren’t sure if the fever is gone as we are giving her meds every 3 hours that would control it. I think she has run hot most of the day. We are deciding NOT to wake her tonight for meds. If she wakes with pain we will medicate her but she doesn’t seem to really be phased by her mouth. It was the fever that upset her today. We extended her wait by one hour for her most recent pain med dosing and she didn’t seem to notice. I just gave her the hydrocodone and some Benadryl (she is itching from the hydro).  So hopefully that combo will help her sleep tonight, through the night. She is in bath time with sister right now and for the most part all is well. We are very pleased and are so thankful to our Savior who set up this surgery for her before he even created her. His provision is great and we are thankful for it this day!

Here is a cute picture of Eden…just for fun!