So Much to Be Thankful For

Wow! A lot has happened since Thanksgiving 2007. Last year if you had told me that by this Thanksgiving I would be a mother, I would have smiled politely and then gone home and cried over your insensitive comments. My prayers are with the other families out there who are still waiting to bring their children home. Our documents were LID (logged into China's system) on August 30, 2006. Currently CCAA has matched families with an LID through February 17, 2006. There are many families waiting to come together during this time and my prayers are with you all.

We returned home to Orlando on October 23rd and I can't believe that we've now been home for over a month! Isaac is doing very well and is learning English. (Well you know, he can't talk, but he can do what we ask him to. - He can put his toys away and he can give hugs and slobbery kisses.)

I never imagined that I would have a son. When we decided upon China as our adoption destination, I pretty much knew that I would have a daughter since 90% of the children adopted from China are girls. I still hoped that one day I might be able to adopt a boy, but in my heart I knew that he wouldn't be the big brother. Isaac is such a snuggle bug! He loves his Mommy, but if I'm not around he is content to hug other people. Today I took second place to Daddy which was good! :o)

We went to Mom & Dad's for Thanksgiving dinner. It was a small affair this year as my brother's daughter Zoe was in New York with her other Grandma. It was our family, Mom & Dad, Joseph, and our friend Lily. I'm used to huge dinners for Thanksgiving. When I was little we frequently had over 15 at our dinner and I was a permanent resident of the children's table. After dinner Isaac crawled into the kitchen to make sure that the dishwasher was loaded properly. He had fun playing with the silverware while Grandma loaded it.

On Monday I'll return to my students at Freedom Middle School. I'm going to do a presentation for them on our trip to China. I hope that it will be a nice way to ease back into working after being focused on Isaac for the past seven weeks. Isaac will stay home with Daddy for a while. Daddy is looking for a job after being laid off. Please pray that Craig will have favor as he sends out his resumes and that God will provide a job that meets our needs. Once Craig finds a job Isaac will stay with my best friend Wendy while we are at work. Isaac loves Wendy and her children so we can't wait until he gets to be at her house every day.

Time Flies When You're Having Fun!

I can't believe that we've been home with Isaac for one month already! He's gaining weight and growing like a weed! He has now outgrown some outfits that were a little big when we met him in mid-October. A pair of pants that hung from his hips and looked incredibly baggy now fits quite well and I imagine only has a few more weeks of wear left.

Dr. Ruiz scheduled Isaac's surgery for December 15th. I am so excited because now I'll only have to miss one more week of school because his recovery will coincide with Christmas vacation. Please keep us in prayer as we head into surgery. Isaac has been battling ear infections since we returned home and has had a cough from time to time. If he is sick I don't think that he'll be able to go in for surgery. As you can see in the picture our little man is a fan of thumb sucking and tends to do so as he drifts off to sleep and when he is stressed out. We are worried about how he will be able to soothe himself once he has had his surgery. A thumb or stray toy in the mouth could undo all of Dr. Ruiz's work so he'll probably be wearing "no-nos" for a while which will prevent him from putting his hands and toys into his mouth.

Yesterday we went to the Magic Kingdom with Grandma and my friend Anneke and her children. I had always said that I would not take my children to Disney until they were 10 years old, but I must say that we had an enjoyable day. Isaac slept through his first ride because the line for Dumbo went too slowly and we just didn't want to wake him. He enjoyed the up & down of Winnie the Pooh's Adventure and really liked looking at the children in Small World.

I've been busy!

Let's see, we've been pretty busy in the Stopyra household. I don't know how I'm ever going to adjust to working AND being a Mommy, but alas if we want to keep our house and continue to eat, Mommy will go back to school on December 1st. So here is a brief review of what we've been doing for the past week when we haven't been at the doctor's office...

On Friday Isaac got to see Daddy play softball. Can you see Daddy out in right field? He made an awesome play from out there!

On Saturday Isaac got to meet Nana & Big Gramps in De Land. Isaac charmed them with his sunny personality!

The weekend was busy and we got to meet Aunt Hubba and Uncle Tom when they came in to Orlando on Sunday! Who knew that so many people could love one little boy so much? We'll call this my first birthday celebration! Today I am 15 months old. Lots of people came over for lunch and then I got to go into the hot tub.

November is national adoption month so Mommy and Daddy told everyone how wonderful I was at the Discovery Adoption Network on Monday night. The whole family wore shirts to honor my time in China. There were several families there to celebrate the miracle of adoption. Some families were still waiting to bring their children home and other families had already returned home with their children. It was fun to be around so many people that know how wonderful adoption is!

On Wednesday we got to meet Dr. Ruiz who is going to do my cleft palat surgery. Dr. Ruiz said that my palat looked good and that things should go very well for my surgery. We may even be able to have it done as early December 15th. Please pray that God would show Mommy, Daddy, and Dr. Ruiz the best time for me to have the surgery. We don't want to rush if it isn't the best thing for me.

After meeting with Dr. Ruiz I learned how fun it can be to feed Pepper from my high chair.

Yeah!

Yeah! I don't have anything metal in my ear! However, I did have a large amount of dried blood in my left ear. It was a crazy experience at the doctor's office. They had to wrap the poor little guy up like a papoose and strap him to the table so that he didn't jerk around and cause more damage as they were looking into his ears.

The doctor had to irrigate his ears with warm water to clear up built up wax and a large amount of dried blood. He screamed and screamed and I felt so bad! After she irrigated his ear she used tweezers and pulled out a rather large piece of dried blood. It was probably the size of this lower case "o."

He has to go back in two weeks to double check to see if his ear drum ruptured and is draining. They are going to do an ear test and make sure his hearing is ok. I have to irrigate his ears twice a day to make sure that they continue to drain right so that he can heal properly.

This is a busy week! Tonight our church is hosting a National Adoption Month meeting and Craig and I will be talking about our adoption journey. I'm going to try to get someone to take a picture for us so that we can post it.

More updates to come.

When the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing...

Today we had to go back to visit Dr. Fields. Isaac had a rough night and kept waking up. I wasn't sure if he was having bad dreams or if his ears were still bothering him. He's now been on antibiotics for his ear infections for 7 days. He was pulling on his ears some and has developed a cough. So... back to the doctor we go!

All About Kids Pediatrics is WONDERFUL! I called to see if his problem was normal, after all what do I know as a first time Mommy? I told them that he's still pulling on his ears and that now he purrs like a kitten. I called at 9:45 and they got me in at 10:40.

When Dr. Fields looked into his ears to check them she noticed something very odd in his left ear. She saw something metallic!!!! She tried to get him in with an ENT today, but all of the pediatric ENTs closed at noon or were in surgery this afternoon so we will go to Nemours in Lake Mary Monday afternoon. She can't figure out how something metal ended up in his ear and wondered if perhaps China uses a metallic ear tube for some reason... Who knows? Anyways, we still have ear infections and have 3 more days of antibiotics. We'll finish up in time to go to the ENT and they can prescribe more medication if we need it.

Oh Joy! (Please note the sarcasm. We'll get on to this later in the story.)

On to the purring like a kitten...

No, it isn't good when your child purrs because after all they are human and not feline in nature. She listened to his lungs for a while. Then a nurse came in with an albuteral treatment with a nebulizer. Currently we are working on 4 hours waiting for our nebulizer to be delivered and can expect it (we hope this is a better window than the cable guy) within an hour & a half. We are to give him a breathing treatment every 4 hours! Poor little guy.

As if our day wasn't exciting enough we got to go to Arnold Palmer Hospital for Women & Children for a chest X-Ray. They were pretty good and we were in and out in just under one hour. I just heard back from the doctor's office and his lungs are clear and they say that it's a viral infection and not something that needs to be treated with antibiotics.

So, Isaac is now on Mommy's insurance plan and that is wonderful since we had to go back to the doctor AND to the hospital. BUT as we were pulling up to the hospital to park the pharmacist called and the prescription part of the insurance is not in effect yet. WHAT!?!?!?! So in between going to the doctor and hospital I have made countless phone calls to the insurance company, the prescription company, my employee relations insurance office (only to discover that their computers are down for upgrade until Monday morning!) only to end back up at the pharmacy where I had the joy of paying $62.99 for another prescription!

I don't understand why he's in my regular insurance, but for some reason the communication system broke down before he got added into the prescription area. So, for last weeks prescription I get to file a claim with the insurance company, (I'll probably get reimbursed in time to help him get a gallon of gas for his first car) and if the insurance companies clear things up Monday or Tuesday the pharmacy can get a refund for me. That would be wonderful because so far I've paid an extra $96 for his prescriptions not to mention the refund we're waiting on for the doctor's office.

With all of this Isaac is a real trouper. Please keep us in prayers because next week we have three doctor appointments. We'll meet with the ENT on Monday afternoon, the Cleft surgeon Wednesday morning, and a recheck with his pediatrician on Wednesday afternoon. Sometime we need to fit in his physical to make sure he's ok and get him tested and started on his immunizations to make sure he is up to date.

On a happy note we now have 3 new teeth! One top tooth and two molars! Now we just have to agree to allow Mommy to brush our teeth so that they don't get icky!

Two weeks already!?

I can't believe that we've been home for two weeks already! When Isaac first joined our family he could walk if we were holding his hands. After he'd been with us for 6 days he was walking along the edge of the bed in our hotel room. Now he's having a ball using the walker that Aunt Wendy gave him. Since he started practicing with the walker he has even tried a few steps all on his own a time or two. He usually gets to two steps and falls down, but he keeps on trying. He even tried to let go of one of our hands and try walking with one hand held, but tipped like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. He is quite a determined little guy and I'm sure we'll see our little man walking around the house on his own in no time!

On Friday before we tried to go Trick-or-Treating we had our first visit with Dr. Fields and discovered part of Isaac's discomfort was a double ear infection. He absolutely hates to take his medication, but Daddy & Mommy are learning to be creative and are getting the medicine into him! He must be feeling better because his appetite has returned and he is back on track to eating us out of house & home! I know we'll be in big trouble when he is a teenager at the rate he's eating now!

On Halloween we got dressed to go Trick-or-Treating, with our favorite cousin Zoe but decided it was too cold to go out with an ear infection. So instead we had fun prowling around the house as a very cute lion.

It is simply amazing how a child fills your day with love and excitement. In addition to our doctor visit we have had the opportunity to meet lots of new people. We've gone to the nursery twice at church, we went to Mommy & Me once, we have had Natalie come over to visit and we have gone to visit Anthony & Kyra, and Ethan & Olivia. We've been so busy meeting new people!

Yesterday Isaac threw his arms around my neck and gave me the biggest hug ever! Little kid hugs are always the greatest, but I think on a scale of 1 to 10 this one was a 25! It he smiled and flunng his little arms around my neck and squeezed tightly!

Isaac's vocabulary is growing. Of course due to his severe cleft palat he is not able to actually say the words, but he knows "Mommy", "Daddy", "eat", "Pepper", and most of the time he knows "no." He looks around for the person we are talking about and when I asked where Daddy was the other morning he got a big smile as soon as I said the word Daddy and started looking around to find him.

Below are some pictures from our picnic with Aunt Tina, Uncle Sean, Ethan, and Olivia at Holden Park.