They really are that bad

Krassi had an appointment with his orthotist today because he's having some issues with his current ankle-foot orthotics.

When Matt arrived with Krassi for the appointment, he was greeted by three other people sitting in the waiting room smiling at him. :)

Turns out they were all coming to observe Bob (who appears to be well known enough around the Cities here that when you talk about him in those kinds of circles, "Bob" is sufficient for people to know who you're talking about!) as he worked on K's feet. One lady works within the same company at a different location, and is the person who Bob will likely pass Krassi's care onto when he retires. The man was an established orthotist from Idaho who is spending some time here shadowing Bob to learn from him, and the younger woman was an intern who wll be doing her residency under the man in Idaho who is here to learn from Bob.

And that's how amazing our son's feet still really are. ;) (Here's where they started with us!) They're the kind of feet that draw a crowd...at least...a crowd of orthotists!!  They all took their turn manipulating his feet and trying on his orthotic and then making marks then disappearing into the "shop" to make adjustment and then bringing it back in and trying it on again. This went on for about an hour and a half.

When Bob made Krassi's first pair of AFO's he told Andrea that if she could get K's feet into and out of his orthotics, that she would be able to get anybody else's AFOs on or off.  It does take a little doing, but once we got used to it, we are able to get them on and off pretty quickly.  It was actually rather humorous at the appointment today to see some of the other trained professionals having trouble getting K's braces on or off.  I asked them if they wanted me to help, but they declined.  Then at the end of the appointment Bob did a little demonstration of how much you have to really twist and contort K's foot to get it into his brace and it was rather embarrassing how much easier it looked when Bob did it than when the other people tried to do it.

The good news is that after several weeks of Krassi having a lot of swelling and toes turning purple his braces seem to be working better since this afternoon's adjustments.  They had gotten bad enough that other than a few 20 minutes stints in the stander at school, he was not wearing his braces at all.  He used to wear them for probably up to 8 or 10 hours a day in several hour increments.  We finished his appointment at 4:30 and then went to church for dinner and service and then came home and took his braces off around 7 and his feet looked the best they have looked in a long time after sitting and/or having his braces on. We will be checking back in with Bob over the next several weeks to make additional adjustment as necessary and then ultimately after we are satisfied that we have them working the way we want them, they will use what they have learned to start making his next pair!

Big and tall

It's been a while since I've posted much of anything about Krassimir. Today as I carried him out into the living room to be where the rest of us where going to be (we still give him mostly free run of the floor when he's home. We'd like to move toward giving him more time in his wheelchair to encourage his mobility in it as well as giving him more time to practice sitting up "big and tall" but there's something about the freedom of the floor that still seems right for a little man who spent so many years cooped up...) I set him down sitting on Grandma's bottom stair on a new cushion we just got for him.

In a rare moment, Owen sat down in a friendly manner next to him, and it gave me a thrill to see my two eleven year old boys sitting up, straight and tall, next to each other!

From the waist up, Krassi's size is not *all* that different from Owen's. (Please recognize, though, that Owen's a good eight months younger than Krassi, and also is in the 15th percentile himself for height and weight!)

I love how this one looks like two big boys just hanging out.

Krassi is certain that the new blue cushion is a toy, and was trying desperately to pick it up...but he was having a really hard time getting it because *somebody* was sitting on it...and he couldn't apparently figure out who it was or what to do about it.

A little more about "T"

Somehow, using K's first initial to refer to him in those months before his name was public wasn't as awkward as it is with the girls. ;) We still refer to Krassi as "K-man" or just "K" in the same way we often call Owen, our first-born, "O." But "T" and "B" just doesn't quite work the same way...but it's the best we've got, so we'll run with it.

"T" is living in the same orphanage that Krassi grew up in. She first had a presence in our life almost a year ago when I printed off the photos of the children from Krassi's previous orphanage who were currently available for adoption. We kept these little print outs on the side of our refrigerator as a visual every-day reminder to be praying for them - asking God to bring them families.

I was NOT expecting Matt to talk to me one night in October letting me know that he was wondering if we might be T's family.

Um, nope. [was my internal response] Yes, we do special needs around here, but there are special needs, and then there are special needs. And besides - she appears to have epilepsy! Can we really care for two children who deal with seizures on a regular basis??? And "massive destruction of the brain matter" sounds scary, doesn't it? Yes, Krassi was/is delayed...seriously delayed...but he continues to amaze us with his ability to learn new things and understand concepts, and we have no reason to believe that continued forward progress, however slow, will be part of his life. I don't get that from reading the little bit of information we had about "T."

However, I've also learned that when God is talking to Matt, it's in my best interest to be listening, too, because that's often one way He speaks to me. So we spent weeks in prayerful listening.

It's funny how something that can at first seem very scary can completely change as you become increasingly convinced that this is the path God has set before you. One Sunday afternoon in November as Matt and I were talking after church that morning, we realized that we both had heard things in the sermon that made us immediately think that, yes, we were to go ahead and move toward bringing T into our family, and as we talked together, we realized that the time to start was now and not "sometime."

The first step was slightly more convoluted than we had expected. We contacted our primary adoption agency from Krassi's adoption, and our contact there spent a few weeks looking to find T's file since it wasn't currently active (as far as I understand, they cycle through a few months of availability, and the the files revert back to the child's country), including one that looked really close, but wasn't *quite* close enough for us to be sure it was T. Then she found her, and with that we were given her full file - more (and updated) photos, and instead of just the paragraph about her that you may have read already here, we got two pages and a bit more of in depth information about tests that have been done, information about her birth, and other assessments. Recognizing that many things get lost in translation, and that international medical files are just...different...than the ones we're used to here, which means we take everything, good and bad, with a good dose of salt, we were very excited by many things we read in her file.

First of all, it is obvious that T is a little girl who will likely never progress beyond the level of a one or two month old infant. It's funny that now as I'm writing this, I *have* a one month old infant who requires a lot of care, but is also truly a delight to smother with kisses and to rock and bounce throughout the day. And night. (That's as good an excuse as any to share an updated photo of Gloria, right?)

Leah holding Gloria.

T reportedly spends much of her time sleeping, and has difficulty waking up. She does have an abnormal EEG, but it appears, from the description (which means something to us now that we have some understanding of epilepsy) that her seizure activity has a very different pattern than Reuben's. While Reuben is mostly steady for days at a time, and then has a really bad run of pretty intense seizures over the course of a day, T's appear to be more regularly present, but none of them develop into full generalized seizures; instead they appear to be "absense" type seizures. Yes, definitely still seizures, but seizures requiring a very different level of care than Reuben's do. We won't have to be concerned about falls for T (who does not stand, or even sit), and her seizures don't appear to be the type that involve cessation of breathing the same way Reuben's do.

T has a number of other health challenges, all of which I figure we'll figure out how to deal with as we go - a few we'll need to be able to hit the ground running with (she's currently fed with a NG tube, thanks to a family here in the States who is paying for special formula for her. I don't know how to use or maintain a NG tube!! But I will.)

One of the most exciting parts of the report to me was that T is reported to respond positively to somebody touching her and somebody talking to her!!! She will try to wake up, and will try to smile when someone interacts with her in a positive way.

Is that not incredible? Somewhere, buried inside that damaged body and damaged brain, is a  person who wants to be loved. And I think that's one thing that drives us toward this. Not a single one of us on this planet is a perfect specimen of the human race, but every single one of us has been created uniquely, individually, and purposefully by God. T is a person who deserves to know love, and T has a reason to be on this earth, because "...God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God." (1 Corinthians 1:27-29) I have the feeling that if we are listening, paying attention, T just might have as much (or more) to give us than we have to give her.

One small official detail

The adoption process is so much a conglomeration of tiny little steps - fill out this big application and this small form - pay $10 for these fingerprints and $900 for this home study - run to get these five forms notarized...now here's another one to get done...

Today we got confirmation of one of those little steps completed on the international side - the Ministry of Justice has approved our commitment documents for T and B (the ones we submitted on New Year's Eve), which truly is just a small thing - it only means that they will be "held" for us for a period of six months during which time we need to get our home study completed and submit that with our dossier back to the Minister of Justice to get our official invitation to go visit the girls.

But still, one small step is still one step, and right now, our girls are being officially "held" for us. Hooray!


(The home study is well underway, timing out beautifully with Gloria's birth. We are in the waiting stage with a variety of background checks - both the basic MN ones, but also ones from all of the states that Matt's mom has lived in since she turned 18. So since we're waiting on that, there's nothing that *we* have to be doing in these early weeks with Gloria!)

Rinnah's **and Leah's** world

 "So our girls know what a nice family we are."

We have a varied collection of magnets that are either the kids' faces, or full bodies printed on magnetic paper. What a delight to come into the kitchen one afternoon and find that Rinnah (age 4.5) had arranged everyone around our photos of B and T so they would know "what a nice family we are."

It is good to be part of a family.

[Leah just saw this post, and pointed out that she and Rinnah did this together - they're both looking forward to their sisters coming home!]

some more specifics

Of the 50% increase to the number of children in our family over the next year, we have confirmed that they are all girls!

This morning at 1:11 AM, we welcomed a beautiful baby girl into our family.  She was 8 lbs., 14 oz. and 21 inches long.  The other thing that all three of these girls have in common is that we don't know for sure what their names are going to be.  For T & B who we are hoping to bring home from Bulgaria before the end of this year, we know their current names, but we are unable to share them, and we are not sure if their current names will remain their names when they come home.  We will know more about that after we visit them the first time.  As far as our newborn, we decided we were going to wait to see who it was before trying to figure out names...and now that there are 6 other kids around the house, Andrea and I have not even had a chance to talk one on one, so it might be a few days before we have a name for this little girl.

I will let Andrea write the details of how it all happened when she is up to it, but in the meantime, I will share some photos and a few words.

This is the second home birth at which Leah has been a huge helper.

 

And as such, it is only appropriate that she get to be the second one to hold our newcomer.

Owen said this time he wanted to meet the baby before Baby was "hours" old, so within about 15 minutes as soon as Andrea was comfortable having Owen in the room, he was ready.

And soon enough it was his turn.

A view of the "celebration party" that took place in our living room.  Andrea, Matt, Baby, Owen, Leah, two midwives and their apprentice.

As morning rolled around, the next round of kids came down to meet their new sister.  Reuben took a quick peek at baby and then he was more interested in snuggling with Mom and playing his iPad.

Next was Rinnah with two older supervisors giving her pointers.

Then Evania and Krassi got their turn to say hello.  As well as Dad.

Last but not least, Grandma came down and got to give her 9th grandchild a good snuggle.

Evania warmed up a bit more as the day went on.

Rinnah having another turn.

And Owen pretty excited at how he could walk with her and gently bounce her and get her to calm down.

The post with too many titles

I've had many thoughts for what to title this post.

"Room for More"

"A 50% Increase"

"New Year's Resolutions"

And there were many others that aren't worth listing.


Matt's had thoughts, too, he says. Here's one of his.

"So, what are you going to do?"




I'll start by saying I've been joking a lot lately that I'm making a New Year's Resolution (which I never do) to lose 45 pounds. ;) The next two or three weeks should show the first fruits of that as we welcome our new little Glewwe, and it should just keep going from there if this is anything like my past pregnancies. But that's rather tongue-in-cheek and rather light, and doesn't really capture everything that's going on (besides the fact that there's nothing like a sense of humor to make life a more pleasant thing! Krassi is still very tuned into that, and will laugh readily when he hears anyone else doing so, even if he's not in the same room - apparently he's quite susceptible to the contagious nature of laughter!)

On a slightly more serious note, we have started walking down the road to do something that shouldn't seem all that crazy because we've done it twice before - and yet at the same time, is something that's only going to make sense when you consider that we're heading this way under the growing confidence over the last two months that this is exactly where God is directing us to go. If all goes as we foresee, we will once again have the opportunity to increase the number of children in our family by 50% over the course of a year.

We've done this twice before - first, when we went from two to three children when Reuben was born in 2009...then a few years later we did it again when we went from four to six with the arrival of Krassi and birth of Evania within a six month period. Well, on New Year's Eve we made a different sort of "resolution" as we sent in adoption commitment documents for two girls from Krassi's birth country, which including our new little one due any time now, will bring us from six to nine.

If I keep sitting on this post and trying to figure out the best way to write it, it may not get published before our littlest family member joins us! So for the meantime, now it's out there and either Matt or I will get back to filling in other details as the next few weeks come.

For now, we're very excited to introduce you to two precious girls that will hopefully become our daughters before 2016 is over!

The first is "T" (just like with Krassi, we can't share names before they are legally our children):

And the second is "B":

 We are so excited about the changes this year will bring for our family, and will hopefully get a chance to include a few more details soon.