One Year Ya'll

It's hard to believe, but it's been one year since we picked the boys up in their separate province in China.  I have a photo progression of each boy.  You might notice we have more photos in these progressions of Finn.  There's two reason for this.  One, we just have more pictures of Finn than Jake.  His orphanage is home of a lovely American woman who is kind enough to send many pictures of waiting children to their parents.  We have very few pictures of Jake before we picked him up.  The second reason is that Jake remains largely the same, still as cute as ever.  Finn has gone through many significant physical changes since we brought him home.  It's really stunning enough that I want to document it.  As far as I'm aware, I've listed these photographs in chronological order since the day we picked them up.

One year of Jake

These are the only few photos we have of Jake from a short time before he was adopted.  We do have some young pictures of him from when he was in foster care with Love Without Boundaries, but they are too young to represent the last year or shortly before.  Though I did include one that was done by the group on a Throw Back Thursday.

Here's the referral picture we saw on a blog.  This is the first photograph of Jake we ever saw.  It was part of a blog post written by the young man above in the gray shirt.  

Here he is, in chronological order, for the last year!

One Year of Finn

Finn has many pictures from the orphanage.  I'd like to share them because he was a sick, sick boy when he came home.  And seeing them shows so much more the impact of the way he looks now.

Here's what we would refer to as his referral picture.  This is the first picture we saw of him on a Facebook group for waiting Chinese children, along with a note saying he was actively dying and the orphanage believed his time was running out.

They were right.  Here's a chronological journey of Finn, from a sick little boy, to a transfusion dependent kid whose life is mostly normal!

These kids are making a family every day!

So happy One Year Family Day, to two of my favorite gifts!

The Questions

Okay, I've been meaning to type up a post with questions I've been getting asked about our new adoption and the answers, so here it is.

1. ARE YOU JUST GOING TO KEEP ADOPTING FOREVER? ~~ I can't tell you how many people have asked us this. It's actually kind of funny to me, as we're a very small family by most adoptive family standards. But the answer is no. We don't intend to adopt again after this. We always planned to complete two adoptions, with however many children that might mean. So this is not a surprise. We feel that God is already telling us we're being called to a different mission after this adoption. We don't know what it is yet, but I'm sure it will become clear when the time comes. Of course, I know better than to put a period where God might have intended a comma, but we don't anticipate another adoption in the future.

2. DO YOU NEED TO FUNDRAISE THIS TIME, AND HOW CAN WE HELP? ~~ We are lucky enough not to need as much money this time, and our circumstances are different. We didn't have to start by fundraising from the beginning and our new daughter came with a fairly large grant. That being said, we do need to fundraise again. Just not as much. If you would like to help, prayers are always appreciated and we also have another YouCaring page set up. You can find it here. http://www.youcaring.com/the-anderson-family-358277 We really appreciate any help or prayers others can offer.

3. WILL YOU ADOPT 2 AGAIN? ~~ I'm also surprised how much we've been asked this question. The answer is, we don't know. Currently, we are only adopting one. We are HS approved for 2, so it isn't impossible, but we currently have not submitted LOI for another child.

4. TELL US ABOUT THE BABY! ~~ She turned two in November, near to Gillian's birthday. By the time we pick her up, she will be three. She lives somewhere in Inner Mongolia. I won't share where because that would be too much information, but I'm really interested in learning more about Inner Mongolia, and even just Mongolia. She has the same special need as Jake, Hemiplegic Cerebral Palsy and brain differences, but her case is classified as mild, whereas Jake's needs are moderate. Her weak side is her right and Jake's is his left. But it will be good to already know what we're getting into. We will probably name her Elizabeth Jane. Jane is after my great-great grandmother, Jane Fenix, who was the daughter of an Irish immigrant who came to America as an indentured servant and a Blackfoot indian trail guide. How did they meet? No one knows. But she defied so many expectations to forge her way to the life she wanted. Elizabeth is in honor of Elizabeth DeHority, whose was so pivotal in our journey to bring the boys home. Both women are examples of strength and courage, something I'd love to pass down to each of my children, not just the newest Anderson!

Amber

Seven Months!

It's been seven months!  The boys are doing really well.  I'll give a brief run down on both, if you're interested.

Emotional:

Finn's PTSD is improving.  When he first got home, if someone touched him in his sleep he would scream.  Now I can pick him up and move him while he's asleep and he doesn't even wake up!  He has severe nightmares almost every night, and night terrors as well, but while he's awake he seems to be doing much better.

Jake is still working on emotional regulation, but we don't see nearly as many hysterical meltdowns as we did when he first got home.  He's learning that we try to be fair and he doesn't always have to fight.  This means a lot to him and he's relaxing.  He's a good kid most of the time, and tries hard to help.  Sadly, he's a big of a dyed in the wool misogynist, which is likely the product of years being raised in China.  He's pretty open about his disdain for girls, and we're hoping that goes away before he's old enough to date lol.  Americans just aren't as accepting of that in a person as the Chinese are.

Medical:

Finn is doing so much better, it's almost inconceivable that he's the same kid.  His spleen has shrunk to the point that it is almost nearing the normal range.  We aren't yet to the point that we can move transfusions to three weeks apart like most thalassemia children, but we're getting there hopefully.  Last month, he had 16 teeth removed, all baby teeth, that were rotted to the core.  We had hoped that would give him more sustainable hemoglobin levels, as he was riddled with infection, but so far, we aren't seeing that yet.  His iron levels in his liver are very, very high.  Honestly, they are at twice the level where doctors worry about permanent cirrhosis, and the meds we are using aren't doing the job as well as one might hope.  We can't raise his medication dose, because his kidneys are feeling the burden.  We're trying to get him on a second medication for iron chelation, as well as staying on the first medication, but the insurance company is making it very hard to get approval.  Overall, Finn's condition is so much better than it was, but it's still a long road to get him healthy.

Jake's condition has honestly been a non-entity in our lives.  I know it effects his self confidence, but the effect on the way he lives in negligible.  We couldn't get in here in New Mexico, so we drove up to Colorado Children's in Denver, where the neuro team was able to easily conclude that he doesn't have hydrocephalus, nor has he ever had it.  So he was shunted for no reason.  While this is technically good news, as he can't suffer the side effects of something like shunt failure, it's a problem to decide how to handle all the pointless hardware in his head.  Hardware can get infected and it's dangerous, but brain surgery when the situation is not emergent is also dangerous.  That's one we haven't decided yet.  We were told he was paralyzed on the left side.  That's turned out not to be true, as well.  He has hemiplegia cerebral palsy, which means his left side is weak, but not paralyzed.  He probably could have had normal function with proper physical therapy.  We're hoping therapy now will help to at least improve muscle tone in his left arm so he can use it to stabilize things in his other hand, hold open a door, etc.  Of course, he'll never have complete function with his left side, but we hope he can use it for a few things.

The Family:

We're all doing very well.  For a few months, I wasn't writing, but I am back to work, and those awaiting names in books to give to friends and family, please continue to have patience.  They're coming.  Mike's job is always the same, but he did just reach a new pay grade and with two new children, of course that's much appreciated.  Seth is about to start high school in the fall.  Evie and Jake both graduated from 5th grade the other day, so that means middle school for them.  I prefer to homeschool through middle school and I really wanted to help Jake become a better reader before letting him continue on with public school.  He desperately wants to go to school with his friends, and leaving he and Evie in a position to compete with each other probably isn't the best idea.  So he will be going to school per his request (every single day pretty much) and Evie will be homeschooled.  Finn graduated from kindergarten last week.  He actually has ten adult teeth, so in all likelihood, he's much older than 6, but we have no intention of aging him up.  He's very small and emotionally fragile, so we want him just where he is.  He'll be going on to first grade next year, and baby Gillian will be starting kindergarten.  Where does the time go?  Cue weeping mommy here.  We weren't planning to move forward with another adoption quite so quickly, but we found our daughter, so we are.  Sometime in early 2016, we expect to travel for our new daughter, who will be 3 by then, and whom we will probably name Elizabeth.

The Future:

We hope to spend some time meeting with Jake's friends from his orphanage during the summer.  It means a lot to him to remain in contact with his China "family" and we love to encourage that.  We thought we would be spending the summer in Texas, but that is not currently the plan.  Finn was approved for Make A Wish, and he wants to go to China again, but I'm not sure if that's a possibility.  We'll see what they say!

Thanks for dropping by and checking in!

Amber  

FOUR Months!

Where does the time go?  The boys have been home for FOUR MONTHS yesterday!  I post a lot on Facebook, but I don't blog nearly as much.  There's a couple of reasons for this.  My computer isn't great and blogging on my phone is a pain in the butt.  So, that's just laziness.  Number two, so many things about these boys seems to be private to their life and their stories and I'm never sure what I should be sharing and what I should keep in the family, because their journey is theirs, even when people want to share it.  The quandary of how much to share usually just stops me from sharing anything!

Jake is a good kid who generally wants to do the right thing.  Emotional regulation isn't the easiest for him, and he has some not great habits when he gets upset.  We're working on those.  He's growing A LOT in terms of bonding.  He was not particularly open to affection in the beginning, but he's really opening up to us, finally.  He's got a quirky personality, loves friends and sports, but does NOT love school lol, and enjoys seeing his grandparents.  Jake's favorite things are talking to his orphanage friends who have already been adopted, watching Power Rangers, and taking selfies.  This kid is the selfie king!  If I set the phone down, I'll come back to a dozen crazy pictures of Jake! Here's some of his favorite faces!


Jake's specialists have been hard to pin down and we're hoping to have more info on the nature of his brain injuries in March when we have an appointment at the Denver Children's Hospital, since getting into Nuero-sciences in New Mexico has proved to be pretty much impossible.  It's about a five hour drive, but it's worth it as UNMCH hasn't even processed his referral yet.  The earliest they could see him if they processed his referral this minute is late summer.  We're excited to see what information this helps provide for us.

Finn is doing very well medically.  He came to us in pretty rough shape, but he's bouncing back.  He's got a pretty rigid medical process to accommodate his potentially very dangerous special need.  We like to nip possible issues in the bud by offering treatment before they become an issue! 

This regimen includes blood transfusions every two weeks at this time.  In the future, the hope is that we will be able to drop back to every three weeks, or even once a month!

Here he is at his last transfusion getting a visit from daddy over lunch!  Finn came to us with some major medical PTSD, but he's slowly learning that China and America are not equal when it comes to medical care.  He also takes medication to remove the iron from his blood and organs, called chelation meds.  He takes these every night to prevent the very serious side effects that iron build up can cause.  The majority of children in China die from iron, so this is very important. 

He likes to take his Exjade, the chelation meds, in pink cups.  He loves everything pink!  If his HgB is allowed to drop too low, he really doesn't feel well. 

But we can still get a smile out of him most times. 

The boys are bonding pretty well to each other and with the other kids. 

 Just one of the girls?

 Pretend ice cream is best in winter.

 Scooters rock!

Super kids!

In case you're curious, Finn is eating a tomato straight in this super picture of he and Jake.  Because that's how super heroes roll.  

They are adorable and we just love having them here!  We can't thank the people who participated in our fundraisers and helped us to bring them home by donating or helping to spread the word.  They are loved!

Amber

We're Still Here

Sorry we've been MIA.  Those who are friends on Facebook will have been kept abreast, but I know there are people who read here who are not on FB or not my friends.  We're almost two months home now and we're all settling in.  I will try to do another post with lots of pictures later today.  For now, information!

Overall, the only real issue has been Finn's health.  Of course, we knew it was precarious when we adopted him, but we didn't quite realize how truly close he was to death.  We thought that he'd need to be admitted to the hospital the moment we stepped off the plane.  We were surprised to discover when we picked him up that he seemed much healthier than we'd been led to expect because the orphanage made it clear he was dying very quickly.  We were able to bring him home and spend two weeks bonding before his first appointment with the hematologist.  Towards the end of those two weeks we began to notice changes in his health and behavior, but we believed those were due to his need for a transfusion.  We were really glad to have that time when blood tests were done and it became clear all was not right inside, even if he seemed okay on the outside. 

All children with transfusion dependent Thalassemia have very high ferritin (or iron) levels when they are not being properly treated.  A normal person has a ferritin level of somewhere between 47 and 300.  Children with Thalassemia frequently come home with ferritin levels in the thousands.  Chelation medications can be used to draw iron stores from the body, but children in other countries are often not properly chelated, which was the case with Finn.  His ferritin levels were astronomical.  Some children come home from the orphanages and their levels show that they were still thriving even with ferritin levels of 10,000 or above.  This was not the case with Finn.  His organs were suffering severely and were on the brink of a massive shut down from his levels of iron.  He spent nearly two weeks in the hospital receiving heavy doses of IV chelation meds.  When we left the hospital his ferritin levels were still around 6000 but that was a big drop from where he'd been before.  At current, his ferritin levels are in the 4000s.  We take this as a great sign that his oral chelation meds are working.  He's been hospitalized a second time in the two months we've been home, but we are really hoping that inpatient care is behind us for awhile.   

Emotionally, Finn is doing very well.  He does suffer from severe medical PTSD from his hospital experiences in China, but I think that can hardly be a surprise considering.  Some days are better and we can get tests done, some days he's just hysterical the entire time and we can't even get close to getting things done.  At home, he's a smiley, happy, clever, bit overemotional, boy who clearly has experienced severe trauma in his short life.  We have a lot of emotional work ahead of us, but we can see a healthy Finn at the end who is slowly working through baggage that most of us would never survive, let alone at six years old.  He's a very, very, very smart boy who continues to surprise us every day.  His English is coming along nicely.  Now that the IV line that was installed in his arm and went straight to his heart has been removed (and replaced with a surgically implanted port under his skin) he's able to attend school with the rest of his siblings and is thoroughly enjoying kindergarten.  

Jake is less interested in learning English, and that makes sense to me.  He's older and his cultural identity is a large part of his overall identity.  I know that he struggles with not belonging in our world and that grieves me, but we do have many Chinese speaking friends and we take him often to local businesses owned by Chinese families to give him a chance to interact.  We hope that in a few more months he'll be a little more willing to try out the English language.  He's doing well in school and emotionally he's doing well at home.  Of course, he does have his moments as all 11 year olds do, but overall he's a very good kid who takes pleasure in doing the right thing.  He loves having grandparents and seems very pleased whenever he has the opportunity to spend time with any of this three local grandparents. 

Jake was evaluated last week by the school with a Mandarin speaking interpreter, which we really appreciated.  We have friends whose school districts will deny their requests both for testing and for people to help them accomplish testing in their own language.  Our school came to us on the first day and told us that because he does have brain difference they wanted to test him for placement immediately and make sure he got any services he might be in need of.  It did take some time to get it all lined up, but they accomplished it last week.  We haven't received the results yet, but we're fine whether he needs a little extra help or not.  We did learn that he has great vision in his right eye, but his left eye does have some blindness.  That's not a total shock as the left side of his body does suffer from some paralysis.  So there will be some trendy glasses in Jake's future!  I don't think he's currently mature enough for a contact lens, but that's no doubt an option in the future.  Jake loves Saracha and puts it on everything, and I do mean everything.  Yesterday, he ate it on oranges, and the other day he treated himself to a peanut butter and Saracha sandwich :\ 

Overall, the boys are doing great and when we're not spending 24/7 at the hospital, we are all settling in quite well.  I will not vouch for the state of my house when those hospital stays come along, though...

Amber

ONE WEEK

Saturday marked one week home, and we decided to celebrate by going to the zoo.  To be honest, I wish I had more time to blog but I'm just extremely tired.  The boys are like babies, that are really big and much better at grabbing things they shouldn't have.  In the first couple of days they were home, Finn stuck a fork in the toaster, got a hold of a butcher knife he shouldn't have been able to reach and went gleefully running through the house with it, and found a handful of matches.  This last one is particularly perplexing to us, as we don't keep matches and haven't for almost 14 years.  So apparently Finn is so determined to remove himself from the gene pool that he's now pulling dangerous things from the ether lol.

The boys are fitting in pretty darn well.  I wouldn't call it a honeymoon, because they aren't shy about letting us know they aren't pleased, challenging our authority, or just plain being bratty, but they are also funny and charming and pretty naturally Andersons.

Having five kids isn't exponentially harder than having three.  The only very significant difference is how long it takes to get everyone in the car and out of the house.  Seth has been late to school every day for the last week! 

Saturday morning we packed everyone up and headed to the zoo to celebrate one week home.  We went with some family friends of ours and we got this group picture on a convenient bench.  The two girls in the pink belong to the Garcia family and are just adorable!  The rest are members of the Anderson clan!  On the bench, in order, Finn, Seth, Evie, and Jake, and Gillian is crouched on the ground.  I won't mention the names of the two girls, because I didn't ask their family for permission. 

It was super hot at the zoo even though it's cold a lot already, so kids immediately started getting lazy.  A wagon was definitely in order!

Finn and Gillian are sitting pretty in the zoo wagon, but the Garcias had a wagon too, and the littles weren't the only ones getting lazy!

Jake also enjoyed a little wagon down time.  Yes, his nails are painted red, and so are Finn's.  They saw me doing Evie and Gillian's nails and they definitely wanted to be a part of that lol.

We decided to take the time to watch the polar bears getting fed, which meant standing in front of the polar bear enclosure for nearly half an hour watching for the zoo keeper and his buckets of fish.  Here's how the kids felt about that.

Yes, they were less than impressed.  And yes, that's our nearly 14 year old being bored in a tiny wagon.  By the time the polar bears actually got fed, the kids seriously couldn't have cared less.  Here's the face most of them made.

When we finally left to get some ice cream, here's the face most of them made...

All in all, the most popular thing at the zoo was the wagons!!



~~Amber