Adoption News!

We officially have a log in date of April 16th for Zoe! That means that we now wait for the CCCWA in China to review our dossier and send us our letter of acceptance. They have to review our paperwork and agree to let us adopt Zoe. Erik dropped of the last of our paperwork for Harper's adoption today. All of the paperwork in her dossier needs to be authenticated and sealed before it can be sent to China. This takes about two weeks and then we will officially be DTC (dossier to China) for Harper. It took about three weeks for our paperwork to get to China and get logged into the CCCWA's system. We should have our log in date in about five weeks! YEAH!!!!!!!!! We are one step closer to bringing our girls home!!!!! Please pray that we get our LOA quickly. Zoe needs her heart surgery before she turns two in September. Harper will start kindergarten with Sophia at the end of August. We want her to have time to be home with her family before we send her off to school! We can't post pictures of our beautiful girls until we have each letter of acceptance!

Piper's First Day of Preschool!

Today was Piper's first day of preschool! She qualified for special education preschool now that she turned three. She was suppose to begin preschool right after she turned three, but we wanted to wait until after her surgery so she didn't get sick. Since her surgery has been postponed, I asked her cardiologist if she could start preschool now. Piper will receive speech therapy, occupational therapy, and physical therapy while she is in preschool. She goes to school in the morning from 8:30 to 11:15 four days a week. She has the same teacher as Parker except Parker goes in the afternoon!!! Piper will start going to and from school on the bus on Monday! I can't believe my baby is off to preschool already! She went very easily with Miss Pam! She gave me a kiss and off she went! I think it was harder on Mommy than on Piper!!!!

Piper's Surgery is Postponed!

I got a call today at noon from the hospital. Unfortunately, they have to cancel Piper's heart surgery tomorrow because there were two emergency surgeries this weekend and there is no bed on the cardiac floor for Piper. Her surgery will be rescheduled for June after we get back from our Disney vacation. The new date they wanted to do the surgery wasn't good for us. It was too close to our Disney trip to be sure Piper could travel and it was the same week Erik is scheduled to be at an out of town meeting. I spoke with Dr. Thacker this afternoon and she said it won't cause any long term effects on Piper's heart to wait until after our family vacation!

Developmental Pediatrician Visits!

This week we met with two developmental pediatricians. Sophia and Piper saw a new doctor at Dupont! Our other developmental pediatrician is on maternity leave! Dr. Walter was wonderful! Sophia was so comfortable with her and she had never met her before. Sophia willingly did all of the tasks the doctor asked her to do. I was so proud of her. She did really well! Dr. Walter wants Sophia to go for an OT evaluation. She said she won't qualify for OT services, but she would like a baseline report on Sophia.

Piper wasn't quite as easy to work with since she is three! Dr. Walter wants us to focus on Piper's surgery and her recovery first. We will go back in three months for a follow up visit. She wants me to take her for a speech and language evaluation as well as OT and PT evaluations. We want to be sure we get her everything she needs. She currently qualifies for all of those services through the early intervention program in our county. We haven't started her in her special education preschool classroom because we wanted to keep her healty before her surgery. Once she recovers from her surgery and we get back from Disney, we can decide if she is ready for preschool.

Parker went to Kennedy Krieger in Baltimore to see a developmental pediatrician. I felt we needed a more in depth evaluation for Parker since I have had concerns about his language processing. I wanted to be sure we were not missing anything with Parker. I want to be sure we provide him the best services to help him be the best he can be!! I was very impressed with Dr. Davoli. She was very nice and did an excellent job explaining what she was doing with Parker. We were thrilled to hear that Parker's intelligence is in the normal range! My instinct was right regarding Parker's language processing. He was diagnosed with mixed expressive/receptive language disorder. This puts him at high risk for learning disabilities. Learning is not going to come easy for our little man! It is a good thing I am up for the challenge and that I spent many years teaching young children before becoming a stay at home mom! I will also be taking Parker for a speech and language evaluation. Dr. Davoli is good friends with Dr. Walter. Parker will be followed up by Dr. Walter since it is much closer for us to go to Dupont. We want to be sure we provide Parker with the best services to provide the necessary support he needs.

We have been given a lot of information regarding our three angels this week. We are so lucky to have such wonderful hospitals so close to our home who can provide us with the appropriate support we need to help our children!

Now, we look forward to Piper's heart surgery next week. It is going to be a long week, but it will be so worth it! We are still not sure exactly what they are going to do to fix her heart. There is a chance she will have a one ventricle heart. The best case scenario would be if they could make her heart have both ventricles, but we are preparing for her heart to work with one ventricle.

Piper's MRI and Pre-op Testing!

What a long day! Piper, Oliver and I left the house at 8:00 AM this morning. We were scheduled to arrive at the hospital at 9:00 AM for all the paperwork and questions that need to be answered before her MRI. Piper's MRI was scheduled for 11:00 AM. Piper went back at 11:30 AM. She was asleep before Oliver and I left her. They did her MRSA test and bloodwork for her surgery while she was sleeping. Everything looked great! They will have all the blood they need ready for her surgery next Tuesday! Oliver and I grabbed lunch while we were waiting for Piper's MRI to be finished. The test took two hours!

We met Piper back up on the cardiac floor in the stepdown room around
1:30 PM! Piper woke up and the nurse monitored her oxygen satuation levels, her blood pressure, and her breathing rate. She occasionally needed oxygen to bring her levels up to her normal range. Her normal range is the upper 80's to lower 90's due to her complex heart condition. The oxygen saturation level should be 100%.

Around 3:00 PM we went down to the outpatient cardiac center for Piper's ECHO and EKG. The technician took over 100 pictures of Piper's heart. This test took about an hour and twenty minutes. The EKG only took a few minutes! Next, we headed to medical imaging for Piper's chest x-ray! Finally, around 5:00 PM we were back upstairs on the cardiac floor. We received our discharge instructions just before 6:00 PM.

All of these tests were done to help the cardiac surgeon determine how Piper's heart will be fixed on Tuesday. We won't know exactly how Piper's heart will be corrected until we talk with Dr. Pizzaro before Piper's surgery!

Please say a little prayer for our precious Piper! We can't wait for Piper's heart to be fixed!

Piper playing with the ipad while she waited for her MRI!

Yes, she is that cute!

Piper giving Foofa some oxygen!

Piper getting oxygen after her MRI!

Piper waiting to have her ECHO to be done!

Our happy little man!

Tea Party with Daddy!

Friday Fun at our House!

I found Parker and Piper hiding and playing in my closet yesterday morning. They played together all morning until it was time to pick up Sophia and Graham from school.

Sophia and Graham were building angry bird stuctures to knock down after dinner last night.

Precious Piper!