Long Time No See!

As usual, I have fallen off of the journal/blog track.  Yet, I still hung by a fingernail long enough to climb back on!  Hopefully, I can get a bit better about blogging.  Thanks to those of you who have stuck in there and are still reading.

We often get asked - So how ARE those little girls doing?  Excellent question.  Let me get to answering that.

Katie update (Age 3):

Katie started preschool in September and is doing fabulous.  Due to life circumstances, we were led to reconsider our preschool options, and are we SO glad that we did!  She is now attending a preschool three times a week that understands kids with special needs and works to meet their needs.

The first few days of preschool were tough on Katie AND Mommy.  Katie clung to me and cried.  I held it together long enough to get out  the door and then cried myself!  However, after a few weeks, both of us realize how great preschool is!   She loves her teacher and the aids.  They treat her so kindly.  I have dropped her off on many days after she has been up all night.  They know exactly how to handle her on those days.  She also gets all of her therapy work there, so we no longer have 7 therapists coming to our house!  She is now playing better with other kids, developing quite a vocabulary, and seems genuinly happy there.

Katie was also accepted into the Children's Institute Occupational Therapy Program.  She starts in a couple of weeks, and we are so excited to have her get extra help for her sensory needs.  She still loves to collide and crash excessively.  We often get really scared that she is going to get seriously hurt because she just flies off of high objects and crashes to the ground without a second thought.  Hopefully, that will decrease as she gets older and has her needs met.

Some big positives - Katie is eating really well.  She IS a toddler, so the picky eating is starting to come out, but she eats well and no longer hoards her food.  She is also (knock on wood) sleeping better right now.  We have started rocking and singing to her for 15-20+ minutes every night in the rocking chair.  We realized how much that helped when we didn't do it last night and she had a lot of difficulty falling asleep. 

How is she relating with Rosa? Well...let's start off with the positive.  She is always making sure her sister's needs are met.  If Katie gets a water sippy - Rosa gets a sippy.  If Katie gets a snack - Rosa gets a snack.  If Katie gets her teeth brushed - Rosa has to get her teeth brushed.  It is really cute to see her take such a positive interest in her sister.

We do struggle with her physical interactions with Rosa.  She constantly runs purposefully into Rosa and falls into her.  She pushes her and hits her.  We realize that most of this is because those interactions feel physically good to Katie, but Rosa isn't appreciating it so much.  We are struggling to find ways to decrease this activity, but not many things have worked yet!

Rosa Updates (Age 20 months):

Rosa is walking!  She took her first step on July 4th but really started walking in late August/September.  Now she scoots around and is having a blast discovering all of the new drawers she can get into and the new technology she can touch.  We are now working on going up and down steps.  It is almost comical to watch such a tiny little girl navigating her way up steps, but she is making a lot of progress!

Rosa, according to her therapists, has developmentally caught up to other 20 month olds around her.  In fact, just last week she officially graduated from OT!  We absolutely loved her OT who was a fellow adoptive mom, so we were sad that she won't be at our house every week, but it is a positive thing that she doesn't need anymore OT. 

Rosa is struggling with birthing more teeth.  We have felt her pain during the birth of every single tooth.  Hopefully, after this set, everyone gets a bit of a break.  I don't see anymore spaces in her mouth for a tooth to fit!

Rosa wants nothing more than to be her sister.  It is really adorable.  One of the cute things she does is she says "Katie" whenever she wants something because Katie always says her own name when she wants something.  She has also claimed her own Baby doll.  She carries it everywhere.  Unfortunately, she has a bad habit of throwing Baby out of the car before her car door closes.  She has almost lost Baby several times now.  I have trained myself to throw Baby in the car just as the door is about to close so that we don't lose her precious doll.

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As you can see, the girls are really progressing.  Together, they are learning so many things.  They are both working on their ABCs and numbers.  Between the two of them, I think they know almost the entire ABC song, minus a few letters here and there! 

Mami and Daddy are progessing as parents, too.  We definitely had our learning curve, and the learning continues.  We are feeling more confident as parents, and our love for these girls continues to grow everyday.  Just when I don't think I could love these girls anymore, I find a way to!

Thanks, everyone, for your support as we have adapted to our new family of 4 over the past 9 months.  We have felt so loved, and the girls are so blessed to have such a great support network.  We have discovered that family isn't just flesh and blood but all of those folks who are there no matter what.  They are the people who hug us when we are struggling, the people who WANT to hear about the ups and downs of our family, the people who want to spend time with the girls, the people who are there to laugh with us and smile with us during the triumphs.  Thank you all for being our family.