Journey's Surgery

I am so behind on blogging! Between all the life events and a technical problem with the way I upload my pictures, it got away from me.

I'll start with Journey's surgery a week and a half ago.She did great, as expected, she's such a trooper! I've seen her fingers twice since the surgery (once when she got her cast off 2 days after surgery, and again at her post op on friday) and they look pretty good. Actually they look like something from a horror movie but the skin grafts took and she's healing well so that's all a good thing.

Here is her before picture, this surgery was to separate her middle finger and her ring finger. The first surgeon did make a little bit of a gap there (not sure how they thought that it was good enough, but they were kind of an all around nightmare) but the gap wasn't enough and there was still too much skin attached to the ring finger, which was keeping it from growing normally. Actually if you compare her before and after pics from the first surgery, you almost wonder what they even did...

Anyway, this doctor is awesome and we love him, and he said he was going to make the gap between her middle and ring finger as deep as the gap between her ring and pinky-that's a huge difference!

In the waiting room after Journey and Sealy (and mommy and daddy) got their hospital bracelets!

Sealy's bracelet. They had to get an extender to make it fit!

Playing in pre-op. She was the only toddler, so everyone wanted to come play with her


The anesthesiology resident became her best friend by making her a glove balloon! She named the resident Ernie (His name was Corey...) and every time he walked by she tilted her head, batted her eyes, and said "Ernie!" How many people fall in love in pre-op? ;)

The surgeon came to mark her hand for surgery. She kept kissing her balloon friend!


In the car on the way home with Sealy, Bird, her glove balloon, and some bread since she hadn't eaten all day

Her new eating attire

She has been healing really well and has been in good spirits. The first few days she needed medicine every 4 hours, and the half hour before she was due she got a little cranky, but other than that she hasn't been slowed down at all :)

What are the odds?

I have to admit I had no idea there even was a big lottery until yesterday when everyone was posting about it on Facebook. As nice as it would be to win the lottery (do you know how many adoptions 1 million dollars would pay for, let alone 300 million??), we don't play the lottery. A lot of people were also posting about the odds of winning the lottery compared to the odds of other things, such as having a 1 in 280,000 chance of getting struck by lightning, or being 100 times more likely to be killed by flesh-eating bacteria than you are to win the lottery. Chances of winning last night's lottery were 1 in 176 million, so you're still pretty safe from that flesh eating bacteria.

But I have a happy odds story to share! I've shared part of it before but I'll recap:

When we were in Ethiopia last April, we took lots of pictures of Jeb and his friends. 1 of his best friends had a family from our agency who asked us to take pictures of their son, so we made sure to get lots of pictures of him. His other best friend loved getting his picture taken and kept tapping me and saying "photo!" and then posing with a cheesy grin. I took a ton of pictures of him, and he always wanted to look at each one after I took them, then post for another.

When we got home I emailed our agency and asked if he had a family yet. They responded that he did have a family, but through a different agency so they didn't have any more information to give us. This was a national agency with branches in many states, but I really wanted this family to see all the adorable pictures of their son, so I went to the website and clicked 'contact us'. I gave his name and age, and the name of the orphanage and said we had just been there and taken lots of pictures, and if they could pass our contact information to the family of this boy, that would be great. Months went by and I never heard anything back, but I figured it was a long shot and hadn't really been expecting anything.

Then one day this past fall I got an email from T's mother! We exchanged stories and pictures and realized we had a lot in common, including the fact that we are both Christian families with 2 younger kids who are adopting older boys. They only live a 6 hour drive from us, which is a doable distance, and meeting half way makes it even more doable.

We didn't understand why we were waiting so long to bring Jebriel home, until this past January when Eric got to go pick Jebriel up at the same time that the parents of both his best friends were there for court. The parents all got to meet in person, and the boys all got to see that we are friends and will see each other again.

When Jebriel left the orphanage, both other parents were there to see their boys' sadness at losing their friend, and here in America, our son asks about his friends all the time. I thought my longing would be over once our son was home, but knowing that his friends are still waiting and missing him, and their parents are still waiting and missing their sons, I still feel incomplete.

His best friend Tariku is finally coming home this weekend, which is a blessing in itself, BUT the cheapest flight for his parents to take coming home involves a 6 hour layover at our local airport! They get to see each other, face to face, after 3 months apart, not knowing what the other was doing or when they would meet again. After spending over a year together eating, sleeping, and playing in the same room, 3 months apart is a long time! The 3rd musketeer is still waiting, please pray for the little guy and everyone who touches his paperwork as it moves through the process. I can't wait to reunite the 3 of them!

What are the odds that 2 random American families in 2 neighboring states would use 2 separate agencies to adopt 2 little boys who were born in 2 different areas of Ethiopia, would get the opportunity to form a friendship, and then be brought together to meet on the other side of the world, and now to be given an entire day to spend together? I don't have a number for you, but I'm going to say the chances of this happening are pretty slim!

If you're happy and you know it

Journey's 2 year check up

Posting now before I forget, Journey had her 2 year well visit at the pediatrician this morning. She was a grump from the moment I told her we were going to see a doctor, thank you 'terrible twos', and was not her usual cooperative self. She still answered questions and did most of what they asked, but she did it while being very grumpy.

We went over all of the specialists that the geneticist sent us too, most of them sent a copy of the results to the pediatrician too. I'm not sure I've made individual posts about all of them so I'll give you a quick list here:

Early-On evaluation for speech, OT, and PT-didn't qualify for anything at the time
Cardiology-EKG and echocardiogram-both normal
Retro-peritoneal ultrasound (kidneys, bladder, pancreas)-her kidneys are a little bigger than normal but not enough to be concerned
Skeletal survey (x-rays of her entire body)-nothing out of the ordinary other than what is visibly noticeable on the outside (missing fingers)
Audiology-mild hearing loss from the 400 hertz range and up. Wants to do an ear exam under anesthesia.
Chromosomal microarray (blood test to check her genes for extra or missing chromosomes)-nothing out of the ordinary
Ophthalmologist- very near sighted, possibly no sight in her left eye, prescribed glasses. Wants to do an eye exam under anesthesia, and fit her for a bone shaping lens for her left side

And, unrelated to the genetics, we saw another hand doctor who will be doing surgery on April 5th to separate 2 of her fingers even further so it doesn't impede the growth of one of her fingers.

You read that right, that's 3 separate anesthetic procedures they want to do this year. And of course, each one is with a different hospital and they can't practice at the other hospitals, so unless we start over and switch doctors so they are all in the same place, we can't combine them.

Even though Journey didn't qualify for Early On before Christmas, now that we know her speech is delayed partially due to hearing loss, the doctor believes she will now qualify for speech therapy.

She also wants us to go back to the ENT since her narrow nasal passages haven't gotten any better. There was a mention of adenoids possibly needing to come out, we'll see what he says. She's sending us back to the same guy who wants to check out her ears under anesthesia so we are waiting to schedule that until we see what he thinks about her nasal passages.

So, all kinds of fun for miss Journey! She was 34 inches tall, but I didn't catch her weight. She has a pre-op appointment tomorrow so I'll come back and post her weight then. 

Guess what Journey is working on?

Journey has been 'interested' in using the toilet for a long time because her brother and sister use it, but usually she would just sit on it for a couple of minutes and not do anything. But the last week or so, she's actually telling us she has to go, and then going! She has quite a cheering section, when she goes, the big kids jump up and down and yell "yay Journey!". She's pretty proud of herself, and thrilled that her big brother and sister are so proud of her too :)

Outside this weekend

We aren't getting quite as much done this weekend as I had hoped, since it rained all day yesterday, but we're enjoying our day outside today!

A little sibling teamwork, and the grass and trees have finally turned green!


Silly poses in front of the lilac bush, I can't wait for that to bloom this year, it is a huge bush, and it smelled so good last year but we weren't living here to really enjoy it every day!

Jeb's bike helmet

Our driveway needs a LOT of work so we keep our riding toys down the street with my parents where they have a long, smooth driveway. We have a hand-me-down bike that was given to Vivi but she's not quite tall enough for it, but Jebriel really wanted to ride it. One of his favorite books right now is about Mickey Mouse owning a bike shop. He tried riding a couple of times but struggled (his arm and leg strength isn't what it should be, I think mostly because the orphanage compound wasn't that big and he hadn't had much practice running or climbing) and ended up giving up, walking the bike around instead.

Yesterday before nap time, we read the Mickey's bike shop book, and he noticed the bikers wearing helmets, and asked what kind of hat it was. I explained that you wear a helmet when you ride a bike, and he said "I need a helmet!" I told him that first he needs to learn how to ride a bike, and then we'll get him a helmet. I know the thinking on that is a little backwards, but we weren't spending $20 on a helmet if he was just going to walk the bike around the driveway.

After naptime, we went for a walk through the subdivision across the street, and it happened to be right at the time that a school bus dropped off a bunch of elementary school kids, most of whom ran home and hopped on their bikes. Jebriel was enthralled again and kept pointing out every bike and helmet he saw, and telling me that he needs a bike and a helmet too. I kept telling him he needed to practice on the bike at Nana and Bapa's house and when he can ride by himself, we will get him a helmet. He insisted on going down to try right away, so we walked down and got the bike out while the girls played in the Cozy Coupes. He hopped on the bike, put his feet on the pedals, and after I gave him a little push, he took off riding! He struggled a little and almost gave up, trying to walk the bike instead, but then he asked for a helmet and I told him he needs to learn how to start, stop, and ride all by himself before he gets a helmet, and he hopped right back on.

After about 15 minutes of practicing, he had figured out how to start, stop, and ride all by himself. I let him ride the bike home so he could show Eric and ask him about the helmet. It took a while to get home, but he did it entirely by himself.

So, last night, we took him to the store and bought him a helmet. It has Lightning McQueen from the Cars movie on it, and it came with a bell. He carried it through the store so proudly!

 As soon as I cut the plastic off, he wanted to wear it:

Then he wanted to sleep in it:

Don't worry, safety police, we unhooked the strap. Which caused him to wake us up at 5am and 6am to tell us that the helmet had fallen off and to ask us to strap it on again. Then at 7am a pair of robins started dive bombing our windows, so I got very little sleep, but that's another story...

FINALLY it was morning time, and after breakfast, we got dressed to go outside. Except Jebriel, who wanted to wear his lion shirt so that he didn't have to take his helmet off to change. As you can see, it's somewhat of a girly bike, which he isn't aware of yet but none of his friends have seen it and I'm afraid they're going to burst his bubble when they see it. I'm hoping to check out some mom2mom sales to find a used one before Easter.


I let him set the pace, with the girls in the double stroller, and after walking down to the sub, up into the sub, and down and around a culdesac, I gave him the choice of turning left to go back home, or turning right to keep riding, and he chose right. We went down and around another culdesac and he wanted to keep turning right, but it was almost lunch time so we had to start heading back. He didn't seem to get tired at all, and he rode the whole time.


Since the ride home from this walk, he has been asking  constantly when Daddy will come home so we can eat dinner and go for another walk so he can show Daddy how he rides so fast, and only turn right, not left to go home Looks like we've found a new pasttime :)