Wow I just realized that I haven't taken any time to give an update on HaiYang. Here is a brief update along with some recent photos. We completed all of the necessary "coming home" medicals, all blood tests came back fine, and both tests done on her heart looked good, no restrictions on activities and no need to go back until she is 7! We will begin speech therapy soon, there is a possibility of a palate surgery if her speech doesn't improve in that time. When it comes to cl/cp there is no standard of what to expect for surgery, every case is different and things change as children grow. For now there is the possibility of the palate surgery in 6months, she will have another around the age of 9 to correct the gaps in her upper gum - this involves taking bone from the hip to fill in the missing bone - then maybe some cosmetic surgery when she is a little older, they do not like to do anything cosmetic until they are done growing. So nothing too scary in the near future, thank goodness because she was less than cooperative with the entire cl/cp team, it was a long visit and Haiyang does not like going to any doctor.
Her language is really coming along. She may not be able to make all of the necessary sounds but she has learned an amazing number of words in such a short time. She is putting sentences together and is mostly speaking English, we can understand maybe 80% of what she is saying. As before, when we don't understand her she will usually do some signs to get her point across. It is really cute some of the things she comes up with, we were going to my niece's basketball game over the weekend, when we were getting ready to go she said, AhhKalala (Olivia) and something I couldn't understand, then she motioned dribbling, so cute! I said, "Oh yes, we are going to watch Olivia play basketball", she is so relieved when I figure it out. Sadly she says very little in Chinese these days, I do wish there was a way we could have held onto her language for her but in those 1st few months it was more about learning how to live together and communicate than anything else.
HaiYang still has a very strong opinion about almost everything. Getting dressed to go out is torture!!! She has dozens of cute outfits to pick from but will only wear a small selection of about 4 tops and 3 skirts, she basically wears the same 4 outfits over and over, sometimes the same outfit for days at a time - it drives me crazy!!!!! And she changes her clothes all day long, usually she'll stop once she settles on a pair of orange shorts and a tank top. I can't figure out if it is a case of too much to choose from or maybe she just can't get comfortable??? Who knows, I only hope she outgrows it.
Haiyang is a very active little girl, she has far more energy than her sisters had at that age. She enjoyed the snow in small doses, there were lots of issues with glove falling off, snow in the boots all the usual snow playing hazards and of course we had so much snow that there were days she couldn't even walk in it, so that took some of the fun out of playing in the snow. Oh and she also has a taste for snow, yuck. I must have told her 100 times not to eat the snow but every time I looked at her she was licking snow off of something, we have 3 dogs so not such a good idea on our property. She is really a little pistol, a few days ago after eating a blow pop, she said, "where gum go".. hmmm where did it go? I assumed she swallowed it, well after a bit of back and forth she finally admitted it was in her nose... yep she jammed her nose full of gum!!! Gross!!!! That was a first, I am not sure how I avoided anyone doing such a thing until now. She really gets into everything and anything she can, keeping me on my toes.
