Celebration

What a hard week but with an excellent ending.  It's been busy but that isn't unusual for our household anyways.  We had our first visit with the pediatrician this week.  I LOVE our pediatrician so much.  Dr. Camille Smith with Fort Wayne Pediatrics has been incredible for our family and I'm so thankful to have her. Our visit with her went well.  She and I talked a lot about Jordy and the mystery blood disorder and she has some very good guesses.  After reviewing his file and previous lab work, we came up with a game plan to get Jordy caught up on his vaccinations and do lab work.  Unfortunately, this game plan involved lots of needle pokes.  We started off with three vaccinations at the pediatricians office and then headed to the hospital for blood work which required another three pokes to accomplish.  Because Jordy is under 30 pounds, they were only able to do some of the fourteen ordered tests . . . yep 14!  We had to go back two days later to complete the remaining tests but on the plus side, it only required one poke to get it the second day.  I will say that while Jordy hated being poked and cried instantly when he saw the tubes and needles, he was so brave and didn't move even though he was in pain.  It's times like these I wish so much that I could speak to him and explain to him why all this stuff is important.  I HATE springing this sort of stuff on him.  It just doesn't seem fair.  It's necessary but completely unfair.  We will hear next week what the labs reveal.

We also headed back to the dentist for the remaining two fillings this week and I cannot even begin to tell you how proud I was of him.  There was no fear.  He sat down in the chair, let them put on his mask, and when the doctor walked in, he literally opened his mouth wide ready for the doctor to do his job without prompting from anyone.  It took less than 20 minutes and we were done.  Kudos to Summit Dental off of Engle Road for doing an excellent job!

Today, we get to end this week with the celebration of life of two of our children.  God has blessed us with the most incredible family and today we celebrated the birth of our Melina who turned three and Jordy who turned four yesterday.  There are so many emotions I feel today.  I'm so incredibly grateful for the prayers that God answered for us to spend Jordy's birthday with him!!!!  When it has come to the children in our lives, God has always answered my prayers.  My prayers to have children, my prayers to be a foster parent, my prayers to adopt, and my prayers to fulfill His will which led us to Jordy.

I'm also sad.  I'm sad that in a lot of ways, this whole birthday thing in our house today was sort of confusing and at times overwhelming, although he didn't seem to show anxiety per se.  Jordy has definitely celebrated his birthday in the past but I wonder what happened to the toys he got. When you live in a house with 30-40 other children, I can only imagine where his toys have gone.  Needless to say, I've been very protective of Jordy's stuff today.  It's his day, it's his stuff, so everyone back off.  I'm not usually materialistic because I know that relationships are more important than any single "thing" on Earth.  Relationship with God, family, and friends, those are what really count but today, it's different.  Jordy gets to take ownership of something and this stuff is just the beginning of him taking ownership of a lifetime of stuff, ideas, and relationships.

So, as I sit and watch Jordy and Melina play with their many treasures of the day, I feel joy.  I look forward to each and every future holiday with Jordy in our lives and I'm so very thankful for the blessing of having Melina for the past three joyful years.  Life is most certainly never dull in our house and even on the worse day, I couldn't imagine a life without a single one of my five children.  Okay, I'm starting to get a little sappy and the tears are starting to well up so I will leave it there.

I love my life and here are a few reasons why:

My bean snappers.  Thanks to friends for dropping off a harvest of beans for us to enjoy. 

Labor Day fun!

We are set up and ready to make a mess!

Balloons are always a big hit in our house.

Notice the crown.  One thing we learned about our little guy in China is that he associated crowns with birthdays.  We've seen many a picture of a Chinese birthday child with crown.  So of course, we had to make sure he had one.  When we put his crown on, I think he fully understood that we were celebrating him.

She totally has this smile for the picture thing all figured out.

What a big hit!  This kid loves to dress up in costumes.

Okay, so Jordy wasn't as excited that ALL the grandkids were together in one spot as we were.  We tried.  Maybe next time we will forge a blank stare as opposed to tears.