One Year Later

I can hardly believe a year ago we were in Thailand adopting our precious son.  So much has changed since those days.  It is almost hard to imagine how difficult those first few days were with him.  Trit seems to have adapted well to our family over the last year.  He is a happy, loving, adventurous little boy.  We now receive unsolicited hugs & kisses.  I had moments when we were in Thailand when I worried if he would ever love us.  I have no doubt now:) He mostly sleeps in his own bed (when he is not sneaking in to sleep with his sister).  He has  been healthy for the most part - no more surgeries or health scares! He adores all things Mickey Mouse, his big sister, & books.  We are so blessed to have such a beautiful son (& daughter)!  The time since we have had him home has had it's challenges, but it was how we built our family & I wouldn't have it any other way.

Much Needed Update

The past few months have been so busy.  I thought I should update our blog.  Trit is doing very well now.  He sleeps through the night & he is eating better.  Luckily, he has not had any real health issues the past few months too.  It is amazing to think we have only been home for 6 months & that I feel like Trit has been a part of our lives forever.  The only issue he still has is when I drop him off at daycare.  He is still pretty pitiful, but when I pick him up in the afternoon he seems to be having a good time.  He seems to be bonding very well with all of us now & even seems to really enjoy his time with Daniel.  Trit now loves to get into bed with his sister in the early hours of the morning.  The first couple of times he did this it scared Daniel & I until we realized he was in bed with her.  It is very sweet though & he does seem to idolize his big sister.
My Mom is also doing great now.  She did not need chemo for the lung cancer & healed quite well from her surgery. 
My twin sister had her little baby boy yesterday.  He is so precious.  Trit met him for the first time last night & I am not sure he knows what to think about him.  He loves his other cousin, so I am sure he will love the baby too. 
I have been concerned about the flooding in Thailand as I am sure many others are right now.  I checked in with Holt (our adoption agency) this week about some final paperwork & asked about the situation.  The flooding has impacted a lot of the foster families & I am sure Trit's foster family has been affected.  The home they live in is very close to the river.  We even saw on CNN that they were evacuating in Bangkok in some areas including Dusit Zoo which we visited in April.  My thoughts & prayers are with those families.    My prayers/thoughts go out to those in Thailand as well as the families here waiting to travel to get their little ones.  I can't imagine how emotional those families must be right now.

As always, I can say I am truly blessed.  This has been such an amazing year.  I am adding some pictures including some from Trit's 2nd birthday.  He LOVES Mickey Mouse!

Kisses Make It Better

To say our life over the past few months has been chaotic, I  feel like is an understatement.  Trit is truly such an amazing gift/blessing to our family, but his life since he has been with our family has not been an easy one.  Just to update everyone, he did finally see the Hematologist regarding his G6PD (www.G6PD.org).  While it did put our minds at ease to see this specialist, we know that we will always have to be vigilant over our son to ensure that while well meaning, someone does not feed him food or prescribe medicine that would cause him to go into hemolytic crisis.  We recently almost had an issue with this & with the medicines being almost 4 pages long it is so easy to see why.  I will ALWAYS double check any medicine prescribed/given to my son.  Trit also had the surgery back in early June to fix his teeth & for his circumcision.  He has recovered nicely from those.  The teeth were a necessity which is what made us go through with the other surgery, but I later was second guessing our decision.  Now, to bring you up to date within the past month or so.  Trit has been sick off/on for months now with congestion & fever.  This was warranting what seemed like weekly to bi-weekly trips to the doctor.  Our pediatrician had not been able to see into his ears though as they were so full of ear wax, but finally sent us to an ENT to get them cleaned.  Once they were cleaned, the ENT told us Trit had severe ear infections.  Trit has been on antibiotics off/on for all these weeks, but a stronger one was prescribed.  Still, the ears did not clear up.  A couple of weeks ago the ENT recommended surgery to place tubes in Trit's ears as well as to remove his adenoids so we proceeded with that surgery.  He did seem to improve with that surgery.  We are now dealing with yet another issue.  Trit started breaking out in bad hives this week.  Our pediatrician has been great as he has had to deal with me as this has made me overly anxious & terrified that Trit might go into anaphylactic shock.  He was so swollen the other night & looked absolutely horrible!  He is now developing bruised looking spots in the area of the hives.  So very bizarre & truly frustrating.  We think it is likely the antibiotic he is now on & last night after some research on the internet wondered if he might have serum sickness.  We are not sure & it could truly be anyone's guess as to what is  going on with him to cause this.  I worry about him so much & it has been difficult for me to sleep.

The other difficult thing is that through all of these past few months my Mother's lung issue has come to the surface.  (The lung issue came up when it was discovered she had uterine cancer a little over a year ago.)  So, in the same week that Trit had his surgery, my Mother had surgery as well which confirmed lung cancer.  She had her upper lobe of her lung removed & is now on the slow road to recovery.  We are hoping for no chemo & radiation, but are currently awaiting her pathology report.

Last night, I was checking on Trit & sweet Tenley went into his room with me.  She curled up to her baby brother as I was holding his little hand & gave him kisses on his forehead.  I began to cry because it was so sweet & we all know that kisses make it better.  I cried too because honestly I felt the weight of the world, but I also knew in that moment that love heals us & makes us better.

I've attached a picture of Trit on his 1st day of hives when his one little eye was almost swelled shut.  The other pictures of some of the past couple of days are not that pleasant so I will not post those.  I am also posting one of him having some summer fun with his cousins.  Life is not all bad:)

I can only hope that things will get better.  I continue to try to balance all of my personal life struggles with work & everyday commitments.  I have so many good things going on in my life too.  Tenley starts 2nd grade in about another week.  We found out recently that my twin sister is having a boy in November.  We also have a new baby in the Yates family.  Daniel's Peepaw seems to be recovering & doing a little better.

Summer Fun for Our Thai Surfer Boy!

I just realized today that it has been so long since I last posted an update.  Trit is doing much better these days.  Last week he actually slept in his own bed through the night for 4 nights!  This is a major triumph for us and we are hopeful that this will continue.  He still does not fall asleep until 9 pm or so & is awake by 5 am, but at least we feel he is getting a better night's sleep.  He also seems to be doing better at pre-school.  He only cries now when I drop him off, but now is not crying through the day much to my relief.  I already had so much guilt about having to go back to work & knowing he was so miserable at first was awful for me. 
He is such a precious little boy & we love him so much.  He is adventurous, fun-loving & can be quite the charmer.  I think our family is just as enamored with him as we are!  He also loves his big sister, but unfortunately he tries to give her "love bites"! 

Trit loves water & playing outside.  Too bad there are no beaches in TN., but he certainly loves any type of water & even tried to "surf" recently:)

Hugs & Kisses

It has been just over 2 months now since we first met our sweet son & he joined our family.  Each day is a lesson in patience for us.  He seems to have adjusted to us pretty well now & even seems to like Daddy a little better these days.  I had to go back to work a little over 2 weeks ago & things have not really gone that well.  I knew Trit would be upset when I dropped him off each day at pre-school/daycare, but I didn't anticipate that he would continue to have trouble throughout the day.  He does not do well with new people at all typically & there are just too many new faces all at once.  Then within 2 days of starting pre-school he became sick & missed some days.  He only went back 1 day last week & then had surgery last Friday for his teeth/urological.  We also weaned him off the bottle last week & we knew that if the bottle continued no matter how watered down it was that it would only lead to more issues.  The worst part too is that he still does not sleep through the night.  The worst yet so far was the other night where he woke every 30 minutes or so!  It felt like an episode of the Nanny as he would get out of the bed, we would put him back in, he would cry & then the cycle would start all over again.  I am grieving for him too because I can't imagine what he must be thinking & how difficult this must be for him.  He has been taken away from the only "Mommy" he has known his short life in Thailand, traveled to the other side of the world, & put into a new home with new parents.  Also,the language, landscape, weather & people are all new too.

The one thing that I can say truthfully though is that our family has fallen in love with this playful, sweet little boy and we could never imagine our life without him now.   Tonight, he smiled the most beautiful smile & put his little arms around me to give Mommy a much needed hug then a kiss.  No coaxing required:)  I can only hope with time that each day will continue to get better.

Wake Up Sister

We continue to be busy with settling in and adjusting.  Trit seems to be doing much better.  He still wakes up at least 2-3 times a night, but he is crying out less and less.  The past couple of nights he just seems to get up & try to find us.  Once he is assured that we are nearby then we can typically put him back in his bed & he will go back to sleep.  We are trying so hard to wean him off the night time bottle.  It is mainly water now with a bit of skim milk.  Last week we found out he has 4 cavities in his front teeth all due to still being on the bottle although we were not overly surprised.  He will need to go to Vandy to have the work done in the OR due to his G6PD & his age.  Poor little guy:(  He also will still need a visit to the Hematologist which is coming up soon.  He still is a very healthy & beautiful little boy. 

He is VERY active during the day & does not slow down for much of anything.  He truly is a little adventurer as they told us!  It is fun to watch him explore.  He loves being outside, anything related to water & enjoys music. 

I will have to go back to work in the next couple of weeks & I truly hope he will do well with his new preschool.  He seems to love other children & so I am hoping that he will enjoy school.  Since Tenley is in school all day the only person he has to play with right now is me.  He does seem to really like his big sister & loves to go in to try to wake her up each morning.  I know he is sad when she leaves each day. 

Busy Days, Busy Toddler

We have now been home over a week now & Trit does seem to be adjusting to our family.  Poor little guy though.  I can't imagine how things must appear to him.  We celebrated Easter with each of our families so he has visited so many places & everyone seems to be making a fuss over him.  He probably is thinking why do they keep dragging me to all these houses, why is everyone looking at me & snapping pictures & why do they keep handing me a bucket then telling me to go find hard plastic eggs???  He actually did okay though & seemed to love all the other "kid" family members that he met.
Today, he had his 1st doctor's appointment.  It went pretty well considering he had 5 shots & multiple vials drawn of blood.  We were glad to hear that for the most part he is a healthy little boy.  He still will need to see a specialist for his G6PD & hopefully, that will also better educate us about his condition.  Just praying that all of his blood test are normal & that all else is well with him.

I fall a little more in love with my precious son each day.  This afternoon I was sitting with him & we were just swinging along when he patted me then said "Mama" with a big grin on his face.  He has also been giving out "kisses" to me the past few days.  He is truly precious & I feel so blessed to have him in our lives.  Yes, I have not slept well in weeks & yes, I am constantly chasing after him & yes, there have been some very difficult times - but I really think it has all been worth it!  I know we have some difficult days ahead - we still have to wean him off the bottle, more doctor visits & eventually "Mama" will have to go back to work.  Right now though I am enjoying getting to know my son & trying my very best to take good care of him & hopefully, we will get through all of those stressful days ahead.