Six Months as a Family of Three

  Wow, it's been six months already.  While there were times when each day seemed to last forever, over all it has flown by.  On the other hand, it seems like it was yesterday that the judge granted our adoption.  Of all the things I've done in my life so far, I think being a mom is the thing I'm most proud of and the thing I'm happiest I've decided to do.  While D and I had a great life before we decided to try to adopt, in retrospect, it was pretty boring and that's something our lives will never be again.
  To wrap up our first six months:
-our first meeting with Sky went really well and our court hearing went really smoothly.  Then came the bad news: a doctor had diagnosed Sky with TB.  D and I went into "deal with it" mode.  We took her to doctors and to the hospital in Majuro and then heard from Kwaj that she couldn't come back here.  We decided to head back to our family in the states and to see doctors there.  I dealt with the travel arrangements and kept the Bates train on the tracks and since Sky had bonded so quickly to D, he took care her.
-we got back to D's wonderful family in Kansas and began seeing doctors- a pediatrician, then a pediatric infectious disease specialist, then a pediatric hematologist.  All of them agreed that if Sky had ever had TB, it was latent rather than active, but there was no real way to prove it and none of them were willing to go over the initial diagnosis.  So Sky began taking her TB medicine and we began hassling with Kwaj about when we could bring her home.  In the meantime, we spent a lot of time playing and eating and working through colds and visiting family.  We spent a lot of time just getting to know Sky and getting to know ourselves as Mommy and Daddy.  Sky began to attach to me after being in Kansas for about two weeks, which was so wonderful.
-after eight weeks of emails and phone calls, we were told we could come home to Kwaj once Sky had been on the TB medication for two months and we began making plans to come home.  We were very sad to leave our families but happy to get back to our island home. 
-D took three days off of work to help us get unpacked and settled and then it was just me and Sky during the day for five weeks.   Sky and I would spend the mornings playing together and spending time with other stay-at-home moms and their kids.  It was a good time and good for us.   I went back to work in the evenings for the last three weeks of that, which was really hard on us, but I'd already been gone for almost three months and needed to get back.  I would watch Sky until D got home from work around 2:30 and then I would go into work from 3 to 7pm.  It made for really long days for both of us and we were both very happy when Sky was able to go into pre-school and we could have our evenings again as a family.
-Sky loves pre-school and is doing really well there.  I miss having all the time with her but she is learning so much.  She has made a lot of friends there and is talking so much more now.  Her teachers have very good things to say about her and really enjoy having her there.  Our biggest stumbling block at school has been biting.  Sky went through a period of about two weeks where she was biting other children almost daily.  Part of it may have been teething and part of it may have been testing the social structure at school (the kids she was biting were the younger and more passive kids and her best friend).  Thankfully that seems to have passed.
-as far as adoption issues go, we haven't really had any to deal with.  Sky made the transition to D and I pretty well and we haven't had to deal with hardly any attachment issues so far.  Most of her acting out was directed at me but it would come and go and has been more rare now that she is in school (and not home with me all day) and is speaking more.  We are counting our blessings and know that we are very lucky for having had it so easy, but we are also keeping our eyes open in case there are any problems in the future.
-health-wise, Sky is doing beautifully.  She has gained about six pounds in six months and is wearing 18m clothes.  She is still thin but not skinny and is very tall.   She has had a cold pretty much every other week since she started at the pre-school but  she finished taking her TB medicine last week and we're hoping that not having that in her system might help.  Her last baby teeth are coming in now and we're looking forward to being past that stage.

   I can absolutely say that even in the hardest, darkest times that we've had, I have no regrets and am excited about spending the rest of our lives with her.  We look forward to watching her grow and learn and to become her full and complete self.

 The first picture we saw of Sky

Sky, last week

Comments

  1. What a beautiful dress! That kid has taste :)

    Michelle

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