Happy Gotcha Day #2

Tomorrow, December 5th, is Gotcha Day for sweet Audrey Darina Reardon!  2 years already.  Hard to believe.  She lights up my life in ways I never could have imagined.  She challenges me, makes me laugh, fills my heart and is absolutely amazing.   Strong, independent, funny, pure love in a 30-lb jar!  Love you sweet Audrey!

It has been over a year since my last post.  Hard to believe. The great news is that Audrey has just totally settled in and life is good.  As with any new child, birth or adopted, it is hard to imagine life before them.  Audrey is beautiful and funny and independent and smart and sassy and amazing and pure love in my heart.  She turns 3 in January, can count to 10, learns more words every day, sleeps in a big girl bed, and is just simply fabulous!  I could wax on forever about the past year and our great memories but honestly - everyone really just wants to see pictures, right?  Hope everyone that is still in process keeps the faith. If you check out my timeline, Audrey was my 4th referral and I wouldn't change a thing!!  You will find your child, that child of your heart that you have dreamed about for so long - remain strong, hold on to your faith, and believe!

Audrey's first 4th of July as an American!

Congratulations to Audrey Darina Reardon on her first Independence Day as an American beauty!   She is just doing amazing - will be 18 months in a couple of weeks, has hit 24lbs, began walking around Memorial Day, loves to say "No!", can say please (listen for something that sounds more like beeeeezzz), eats blueberries and strawberries and grapes and watermelon like they are going out of style, has a super funny trick where she tries to snap her fingers and just basically lights up my life!  Here are some great pics of Audrey with big sister Clare!  Love these girls!  Happy 4th of July! 

16 months old today

It has been 5 months since Audrey and I got home.  Unbelievable.  Impossible to imagine life before her.   She turned 16 months today and is totally amazing!  She is starting to walk and it is just the best.  I love watching her do the Frankenstein across the floor to me.  So cute!  She has this great personality - very funny and really spirited.  She has found her voice and loves to use it.   We go back to the pediatric opthamologist in mid June for her left eye which will be a relief for me.  Other than that, we are all happy, healthy and full of love! We just had our first post placement report and all is just perfect.  Clare and Audrey continue to adore one another and I just love being their mommy!    Enjoy the pictures!

How do you not just fall in love with this angel?
Check out that mouth full of teeth!

Playing with their Easter eggs.  Silly girls!

Sisters sharing a popsicle!!

LOVE!

Almost the 3 month mark

Audrey has been home for almost 3 months now.  Time sure flies!  It is impossible to imagine life before her.  Just feels as if she has always been with us!  She is doing so well.  Now full-on crawling, pulling up to standing and eating regular foods.  She had small pieces of cheese, turkey and pasta with sauce for dinner last night.  The idea of the sippy cup is still coming along - slowly but surely!  Looking forward to that so we can exit the bottles!

From a medical perspective, it was an interesting February.  During Audrey's one-year check up, our pediatrician thankfully gave us 2 referrals - one for a pediatric opthamologist and one for a plastic surgeon for her skull.  Let's start with the skull.  Head circumference is just fine but it is quite long and narrow.  We wanted to get it checked out to make sure one of the growth plates hadn't fused prematurely.    That involved a CT-scan at the children's hospital.  Well, to have a CT scan on an infant, they need to be sedated to ensure they stay still.  We went in that morning and they were unable to sedate her.  She was recovering from RSV which is a respiratory infection and they were concerned about sedating her when her lungs weren't 100%.  The options were to wait 2 weeks, which wasn't appealing to my type-A, no patience personality - or to see if I could get her to fall asleep and then remain asleep while we strapped her down on the bed for the CT.  Well - miracle of all miracles - about 90 minutes later, Audrey fell asleep and after a couple of tries, she was on the CT bed, awake but groggy and eventually fell back to sleep so we could get the test done. We had a long week awaiting the results and the final consult with the doc but thankfully her growth plates are all open and her skull shape is probably just that way from too much time laying on her side in the crib at the babyhome. No skull surgery!  Hooray!!   If she was younger, he would have had a helmet molded to help reshape her head - but because of her age, he didn't think that would make much of a difference so Audrey's head will be perfectly imperfect.  Thank goodness for long hair!

Now, on to the pediatric opthamologist.  The primary concern was her left eye which has a tendency to veer outward.  She has what is called exotropia which is basically a weak eye muscle.  We are monitoring it until June to see if it strengthens on its own and if not, probably a relatively standard surgery on that eye muscle.  The bigger concern is the potential for Audrey to have congenital glaucoma.  I am sure you have all noticed those big brown eyes of hers.  Well, apparently eyes that are that large are an early indicator of congenital glaucoma.  For infants, they can only do the glaucoma pressure test when they are under general anesthesia and then if the test is positive, they immediately do surgery as well.  Because they don't just willy-nilly put infants under general anesthesia (thankfully), we are in a holding pattern.  If she ends up having surgery for the exotropia based on our June visit, then we will handle the glaucoma test (and potentially surgery) then as well.  If she doesn't need the eye muscle surgery, not sure what happens then.   Not sure if they think it will be serious enough to put her under to do the glaucoma test or not since we really don't know if she has glaucoma or not at this point, other than the huge brown eyes - no cloudiness and really no excessive tearing.  So - we wait until June... thinking positive thoughts that her big, brown eyes are just naturally big, beautiful, and most importantly healthy eyes.

Other than that, things are just perfect here.  Audrey and Clare are the best of friends and I love being a mom of two.  They light up my life and just fill my heart.  I am so lucky to be their mommy.  What fun we are having as a family of 3!!

As usual - I am bad about pictures right now.  Here are a couple at the very least...

Kathy

My Picasso in training at her school this week.
Finger painting turned quickly into body painting!

Just hanging around on a Saturday morning.

Happy 1st Birthday Audrey

So, I am about a week late but Audrey celebrated her 1st birthday on January 20th.  We have been having a great time getting to know each other.  We have been home 7 weeks together and things are going so well.  Audrey weighs 19bs and is 29 inches long.  She is catching up on her vaccinations and her TB test was negative.  She is doing the army crawl, has started experimenting with self-feeding, loves to clap her hands, and make funny sounds so mommy will laugh.  She and her big sister Clare are adoring each other and we just couldn't  be happier!  Just a couple of quick pics from the last few weeks - mostly from Audrey demolishing her chocolate birthday cupcake.  Too much fun!

How wonderful to see this sweet girl finally smile!

Doctor Clare checking Audrey's vitals

New Years!

We have been home 3 weeks now and everything is going just great.  We had our doctor's appointment and are awaiting results of the bloodwork but all seems to be good.  Audrey is just about 17lbs and almost 29 inches.  She continues to army crawl and can sit well when placed there - still not strong enough to get into sitting on her own but that will come.  She is starting to really smile and laugh more.  This girl loves to have her clothes off and have her feet tickle under her chin.  Belly laughs!  So fun.  As for eating, until Christmas, we were still on lips-lockdown and she wouldn't eat anything but her bottle.  I mean serious Fort Knox if a spoon came anywhere close to her.... And then - a Christmas miracle.  Christmas night, I was attempting to feed Audrey some pureed bananas - with no luck of course.  Then, out of the blue, Sweet Monkey Clare asked "Mommy, can I try?"  I thought - sure - what the heck!  Guess what, Clare picked up that spoon like it was a golden key and Audrey opened wide for her, ate a whole thing of bananas for her big sister and has been eating like a champ ever since - for me!  Can you even believe it?  I was in awe.  Clare asked - ?Mommy, am I your hero?"  My response - "Uh Yeah! Totally!!"    So, as you can imagine, Clare and Audrey are already becoming the best of friends and I love watching it.

I am just so happy!  It has been a great holiday and I am so looking forward to 2012.  My life is blessed beyond words.  I have definite 2nd child syndrome with poor Audrey so not a ton of pictures.  Oops!  I will try to do better.  We are going to Wisconsin for Audrey's baptism on the 14th so that will be a good time to get lots of good shots.

At the Honda dealership, trading in our CR-V (which I loved)
for a largerHonda Pilot (which I also love)

Clare helping feed Audrey her bottle on one of our first nights home.

Christmas Eve - Me, my mom, Clare,
my brother David, and sweet Audrey

Big sister Clare helping Audrey open one of her gifts.  Too sweet!