2 years later and still in awe

Two years ago we walked up 4 flights of stairs to find this little one. She was 5 1/2 months old, tiny oh so tiny and scared yet she had this strength about her. She weighed about 13 lbs and truly was my little peanut. I will never forget the moment I laid eyes on her doing tummy time on the floor with the other babies.

And here is my little peanut 2 years later. She is more like my little string bean now as she is so very tall for her age. She is full of life. She loves to laugh. Is bossy, dramatic and just darn near perfect.







I look at her and still have to pinch myself. I am her mom. She is amazing. I have so much I want to share with the special woman that gave birth to the magical little girl. This year Kiya day and Mother's Day are the same. We met Kiya on May 8, 2009. I also spent my very first Mother's Day on a bus to Hossana where I was blessed enough to meet the woman that gave birth to Kiya. I got to talk with her, cry with her and share a hug that I still feel today. This woman's sadness and loss led to my joy and to me being a mom. Thank you just isn't enough.

I know the Kiya gets her strength from Zinash. I know she has her mom's eyes. I want so much for Zinash to see all that Kiya is now. I want for her to hear Kiya's infectious laugh and oh so sweet singing voice. I want her to meet her daughter. I dream that one day this just might happen.

I look back at these last 2 years and just how much being a mom has changed me. It is everything I hoped for and more. Sure some days can be frustrating and we have been thrown a couple of curve balls but most days are truly wonderful. Kiya lights up any room she is in and yet she can still be shy. She is a girl that knows what she wants and how she wants it. She is wise beyond her years and oh can she be stubborn. And yet she can come up behind you and give you a big hug when you least expect it.

Nothing slows her down and I love that about her. She just today and for the first time climbed up on the couch all by herself cast and all. Our couches are really tall and don't have removable cushions. She would always climb on her chair and then onto the couch. Today she said "Watch this. I climb on couch." And sure enough she did it.

I am truly blessed. I am in awe of my little girl and I love being her Mom.

What to say....

Two years ago I was preparing to board a plane that would take me 7000 miles away to Ethiopia. I was finally going to meet my daughter.

I can tell you when I legally became a mom, April 3, 2009. I can tell you when I held my sweet little girl for the first time, May 8, 2009. And yet I can't tell you when I actually felt like her mom. I knew I was her mom but it took some time to really just feel it.

Does that sound weird? We didn't share the same space for 9 months. We were jet lagged, over whelmed, fragile, and pumped up on adrenaline when we met Kiya. It was everything I hoped for and more yet it was strange too.

I wanted nothing more in my life than to be a mom and 2 years ago that journey began. I look back at where I was then and where I am now and I truly 100% feel like Kiya's mom. In the beginning I was doing all the mom things that you are supposed to do but that overwhelming don't mess with my kid instinct took some time to show up.

I can't tell you an exact date as to when I really became a mom. I know I felt it though. When I left her at daycare and she cried and screamed and I knew then that she needed me just as much as I needed her. I felt a tug. An instinct kick in that said I have to fix this. This is my kid and nothing and no one is going to mess with her.

The biggest compliment I ever got, came from a woman I now call a dear friend but at the time was someone I had just met. We were in the hospital waiting for Kiya's first cast and all the emotion that came with that day and she said to me later that day that you couldn't even tell that Kiya was adopted. That she looked at our family and saw true unconditional, parental love as we tried to be strong for our scared little girl. My friend has no idea how much those words meant to me.

I knew I was Kiya's mom through and through but for someone else to see it. To see that my adopted daughter was just as much of part of me as her son was a part of her. It was amazing.

I have had plenty of people ask if it is possible to love an adopted child as much as your own child. To that I say Kiya is my own child. I love her with all my heart and soul and will stop at nothing to make sure she is happy and healthy. She is my miracle. She is my dream. My love for her runs deep through me. I couldn't imagine loving her more than I already do.

So as I reflect on life and love, I take pause to be grateful for all the blessings I have in my life. I am truly one lucky Mom. I have this amazing daughter. I don't have the words to express how grateful I am to Zinash. Her sadness led to me being able to parent this wonderful little girl. I want so much to share all that Kiya has accomplished with Zinash. Someday I hope this dream will come true.

For now it is back to reality and life with a very active toddler.

Updates galore

So my blogging time is limited so this post is some updates as to what is going on with Kiya, scoliosis and our pending adoption.

Kiya

She is FANTASTIC. We enjoyed our week of squishy hugs and bubble baths. She is officially in pull ups during the day and diapers only at night. She is doing just awesome in the potty training department. She still sometimes wets in her pull ups and we are getting there with the whole poop thing. She did go poop on the potty twice yesterday but had started to poop in her pants. She told us though that she wanted to go to the potty so off we went and sure enough she finished pooping on the potty. She gets one star for pee and 2 for poop and when her reward board is full which it is she gets a prize. Her first prize is a playdough filled back pack with accessories that we are going to play with today.

Kiya still loves to sing and dance. She talks all the time. She has a tendency to be very bossy so we are working on using nice words and respect. Telling mommy to walk away tends to be a favorite. Or she will yell at the dogs to do something and poor Sebastian is pretty deaf so we have to remind her that his ears are broken.

She is now sporting a super cool blue cast. She for a week said she wanted a pink cast but they showed her the colors and she immediately said blue. We asked her if she was sure and she said "Yes mommy, blue cast." She bounced back VERY quickly. We thought we would get one night of her staying in bed all night and sure enough she got up once. The saddest part was the morning after when she said "bubble baths all gone" followed by "cut cast. cut cast off mommy". Broke my heart that she is old enough to understand all of that. We just told her that cast had to stay on and she seemed to get over it.

Scoliosis

Tuesday was surgery day. She did great. The doctor gave us a chart of her progress that showed her numbers out of cast and in cast. Her out of cast numbers started at 40 which was her initial measurement back in June of last year. She was 52 right before her first cast. She went up to about 64 after the 2 month break at the end of last year. Tuesday she was about 61/62 so we got a small amount of correction. Her cast numbers have always been awesome. She was held at about 15 in first cast, 16/17 in second cast and just under 15 in her 3rd cast. She is super flexible which is good. In talking with the doctor, he isn't worried yet. He said it often takes 2-3 casts for kids to show real progress and we really need to look at this as cast number 2 since she had such a long break after cast 1. It makes sense so we are sticking with it. We are so very grateful to have Shriner's hospital and Dr. H. to treat Kiya.

We also discovered that Kiya weighs 29lbs and is just under 36 inches tall. Yup my little string bean :)

Adoption

We are still waiting on our Adam Walsh clearance from California. All other paperwork is in and has been reviewed. Just one piece of paper holding us back from being officially waiting. Sigh.....

It will happen soon I hope but for now we just wait.

So I think that is a long enough post for today. Need to focus on our post placement report that is due next month.

Adoption update

Okay time to spill the beans on what we are up too.

First let me say that it is with a heavy heart that we have decided to leave to Ethiopia program. It was all becoming just too much. The corruption, the changing timelines, the lack of timelines....it was not settling well with us to just sit at the bottom of this long waiting list. We were waiting for an orphan to be made. We had no end in sight to how long that wait might be and given the current vibe of adoption from Ethiopia we couldn't be sure it would be in the next 2 years or so. That and all the talk of corruption and massive slow downs, etc. It just didn't feel right anymore.

It breaks my heart to leave behind a culture and country that gave me my beautiful daughter. We know we will visist but it does sadden me that my children will not share this beautiful heritage. I know a piece of my heart will always belong in Ethiopia.

And it will also now belong in South Korea.

We are officially making the switch. We have sent in all the updated paperwork to both our local agency and CHS. Why Korea? Well, there are orphans that need families. There are kids in the system waiting for a forever family. We searched our hearts and truly feel we can be a family for one of those little ones.

The other big change is that we are likely adopting a toddler. Given how the timelines work in Korea our child will likely be over 1 year and possibly even as old as two at homecoming. We are excited about our new journey.

Our Little Man may turn out to be a girl which we are fine with as well.

This was not an easy decision for us. We truly wanted to adopt from Ethiopia. We were excited by the two trip rule as that meant we could spend more time in this country that we love.  I am sure some will say we are jumping ship because Korea is faster. And to that I say mind your own business. We shed tears about this decision. We second guessed ourselves. Long before we settled in and found Korea we were looking at national domestic adoption agencies and other countries. Korea hadn't even been brought up but was mentioned to us as a possibility.

We did some research. We did some soul searching. We talked. We thought. We talked some more. It felt right. It made sense. We envisioned our future son or daughter. We couldn't stop talking about Korea. About learning about a new culture about traveling to Asia and Africa with our kids. It fit into our future.

So there you have it. There is the news. We should hopefully fingers crossed be officially in the Korea program before the end of April. We are waiting on Adam Walsh paperwork to come back from California and yet another fingerprint check.  And then we settle in to wait with the news of our future child. We don't know how long that will take. It could be a month, it could be 6 months, it could be 8 months. From there we could wait for as many as 11-12 more months before we would travel to Korea.  Either way our hearts our open and we are anxiously awaiting the arrival of our child.

Pictures of the Big Day :)

The plan for the day was for Kiya to get a great night's sleep, eat well, take a short nap and then off to the Children's Museum for some fun before cast cut off. The reality was Kiya was up at 6:30am, ate okay, refused to take a nap and was pretty grumpy for the first 30 minutes we were at the museum. She warmed up to it all and had a pretty good time. She loved the art room and of course the water room.

Some of the kids were kind of mean to the little kids. They refused to share and were teasing them. I was annoyed and as you can kind of see in the first picture, so was Kiya. 

Overall I think she had fun. It would have been nice had she not been so grumpy but such is the life of an almost 2 1/2 year old.

We headed home to cut off the cast. We thought we had the right kind of tin snips but we so didn't. Kiya started screaming and the snips didn't work at all. So off to the store Dave went in search of a better pair. Meanwhile Kiya and I watched Tv and she kept saying "wanna belly free. Wanna my belly free. no cast." It was cute and kind of sad too. But that cast had to go. It was GROSS and super tight on her poor belly.

Here is a picture of her back post bubble bath which she LOVED and asked for all morning.



 And here is the nasty pink cast. Once we had the right tool it was actually pretty easy and took less than 10 minutes and the best part was Kiya was so calm. I kept thinking back to last time when the doctors had to cut it off because of the sore. It took me and 2 nurses to hold her down and she screamed the entire time. This is definitely the way to go.

So we are enjoying our hugs and realizing just how skinny Miss Kiya is. Wow. She is a string bean. She was a little clumsy at first but better now. She slept great. No snoring which was nice. Now we just need to keep her healthy so we can get cast 3 next week. I asked her this morning what color she wanted her cast to be and I quote: "Mommy, pink. I wanna pink cast. Yeah pink." Yup that's my girlie  girl.

In other news....we got our first pee pee dance.  Yup we got home from dinner last night and Kiya was bouncing and kind of grabbing at her diaper. Sure enough we took her to the potty and she went. And her diaper was dry and had been dry for a couple of hours. Woohoo.

Tomorrow is a BIG day around here

Our 12 weeks in cast number 2 are coming to an end. We are cutting off the cast tomorrow. I am eager for my squishy hugs but hate that they will last for about a week and then we start again.

I am trying to stay hopeful that Kiya's numbers are better. I would take just a little better. Just please not worse.

To celebrate we are going to take Kiya to the children's museum and get wet, dirty whatever. Then we will come home and cut the cast off. Today we bought her some very special Dora bubble bath so off to a tub full of bubbles.

We head to Shriner's for cast number 3 on the 26th. I am hoping to enjoy the week of hugs and freedom. I know that I will be over analyzing what her back looks like...sigh....it's just not possible for me to look at her out of cast and not worry.

Pictures tomorrow of cast cut off and fun at the museum.

I know my last post hinted at some news....we are getting closer to sharing but not just yet.

Where have I been?

Well that is a good question. This whole working 40 plus hours a week and then coming home to full time job number 2 is tough. I have little to no time to do anything and it doesn't help that our laptop is well broken. We can't charge it. You see the power cord was and is a favorite toy of Kiya's. She loves to unplug it and then plug it back in.

I have so much I want to share but am just not ready yet. Trust me I will when the time is right...and it gives me something to write about later :)

That said we are going our best to keep up with Kiya. She is like the energizer bunny. She just won't stop moving.

We are working on potty training and we have good days and bad. Some days she uses the potty multiple times and then there is today when she tells me she has to go potty only to find out that she already went in her pull ups :( We will get there. I think she is starting to kind of get it.

We are about two weeks away from getting to cut off cast number 2. I can hardly believe it has been 10 weeks already. She will get cast number 3 on April 26th. We are fortunate to share our cast date with wonderful friends again which makes the tough day just a little easier.

It is time to update all of our homestudy and adoption paperwork AGAIN. We are waiting to hear if we have to be fingerprinted locally again as that would be the toughest part with both of us working full time. So getting paperwork together is also keeping me busy.

Oh and our 2 year post placement report is coming due. I can hardly believe it. 2 years ago today a judge in Ethiopia made all of my dreams come true by making me officially Kiya's mom. And next month is our 2 years as a family. Not sure what we are going to do for Kiya day but something outdoors and fun. I have to start thinking about how to summarize this last year with this amazing little girl. That is going to be tough. I want her Ethiopian Mom to see those pictures and read that report and not be worried about Kiya. She is doing GREAT. The cast doesn't slow her down at all.

Tomorrow Dave and I head to opening day at Miller Park. We were hoping to tailgate but the weather just isn't going to cooperate. Oh well, it will still be fun. GO BREWERS!

I will check back in again soon.