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Wednesday, December 3, 2008
HOME FOR THREE WEEKS

It’s hard to believe we’ve been home almost a month. It has been a busy few weeks, with a lot of firsts for Maili. Her first visit to church, her first doctor visits, and best of all her first Thanksgiving. We have so much to be thankful for this year. Maili’s adjustment into our family has gone amazingly well.

She sleeps through the night in her own bed and takes a two hour nap every day. She continues to eat exceedingly well and has gained several pounds since coming home (she needed those pounds!) She has learned the meaning of the word no and actually listens when we use it. Her receptive vocabulary has grown immensely and she understands most of what we say to her. A visit to the doctor shortly after coming home revealed a double ear infection with lots of fluid and since being on antibiotics her expressive language has increased dramatically. She was diagnosed with some hearing loss due to the fluid but it is not expected to be permanent and she will most likely have surgery in the near future to place tubes in her ears to drain the fluid. The doctors suspect that this has been an ongoing problem which was undiagnosed in the past and her language development should really pick up once the problem is corrected. Even with the hearing loss she has picked up about a dozen words in English that she uses consistently and her vocabulary grows more each day.

In other health news, Maili’s visit to the cardiologist today revealed no sign of the congenital heart defect which was listed as her special need. Evidently at some point she may have had a heart murmur or small hole in her heart which corrected itself, so we were very pleased to find out that whatever it was is no longer of concern at all. This is also a blessing because she had to be cleared by a cardiologist in order to be considered a candidate for the ear tubes.

As you can see from the photos Maili has finally accepted Lola as a member of our family and is no longer terrified of her, thank goodness. Maili attended her first church service a couple of weeks ago and last week I was able to leave her in her class for about 20 minutes at the end of the service and she did great. We will probably try leaving her through the whole service in a few more weeks if she continues to do well.

Another first for her was Thanksgiving. We had debated about whether or not to travel to South GA to visit family like we ordinarily do but finally decided that Maili was doing so well at home we would give it a try. We were glad we did, since she had a blast with all her cousins and meeting PaPa and Grandma for the first time. I think her favorite part of Thanksgiving was the food; she loved sampling a little of everything and we found out she loves cornbread dressing and cranberry salad. She was still eating long after everyone else finished! And of course she had to try out her new word.. “yummy yummy yummy”

Upon returning home from Thanksgiving we proceeded to do the annual photo shoot for the perfect Christmas card photo. Maili was very cooperative and we managed to get some pretty decent shots of her and Holt in front of the fireplace. Ordinarily we do the photo shoot outdoors at MeMe and Pa’s the day after Thanksgiving but this year it rained all weekend so we did it at home. Of course, it helped that Jamie was there to make her giggle. She continues to be a Daddy’s girl and has even re-named him BABA DADDY-O

She had alternated between calling him Baba and Daddy for awhile but one day she put it together and it was so cute that we all laughed so of course now she does it all the time.

Maili’s adjustment has gone more smoothly than we ever imagined it would and we are so blessed to have this little girl in our lives. She brings joy and laughter to our family in new ways every day and we can’t imagine life without her.

Look who finally made peace with Lola

Ready to go to church for the first time

We're off

At Papa and Grandma's on Thanksgiving

Sharing a laugh with mom

Trying to get the perfect photo for a Christmas card

This girl loves her GeGe

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