Advocating Post

Meet Suzanna

 

 

 

This U*rainian beauty is already 15 years old and she desperately wants a family.  Her best friend was adopted a year ago by my classmates sister.  They are still in contact with her.  She only has until May 7th for a family to step forward with a homestudy and application for her adoption.  Since she has not been in the "system" for a year yet, she will not be eligible for adoption until September BUT the application for her adoption must be filed before May 7th.  I know this sounds confusing and risky but would you put your 16 year old daughter out on the streets?  In her country, when children turn 16, they are released onto the streets.  Suzanna is in trade school right now but does not want to be left where she is, she wants a family.  Please help find her a home. 

 

If you know anyone that might be interested in Suzanna, please get them in contact with me. There may be financial help available! 

Bounce It Out

Today was a fun filled day with friends.  Jason, Claudia and i got to meet the Braithwaite family who are adopting "Edik" from Eastern Europe, follow their blog here: http://lightingoursteps.blogspot.com/ They are such a wonderful family and would love your support in helping bring their son home.  They had a lovely bake sale and a Zumbathon!  It was so much fun even if we did not Zumba.  While there. we met up with Natalie and Sara Keller and Natalie's mom. 



This is Edik, you can donate to the Braithwaite family here: http://reecesrainbow.org/51441/sponsorbraithwaite





After the Zumbathon Natalie, her mom, Sara, Jason, Claudia and I all went to Bounce It Out.  It is a place for children that has several giant inflatable toys for the kids to play on.  We were not aware of all of the requirements before we went there and were sad to learn that parents cannot go on the inflatables with the children, so there was not a lot we could do with Claudia since she is still not walking.  None-the-less, there was a toddler inflatable that parents could go in, so we spent most of our time in there.  Claudia absolutely LOVED it!  She is fearless though and not aware of how she could possibly get hurt.  She threw herself from places high enough to hurt her if they were not inflatable.  Hopefully she does not try this at home now. We will definitely go back there when she is older, and when it is less crowded.  Sadly, I did not get any pictures of the girls together as they did not get to play much together.  Here are some pics and a video from today:

 

Fuzzy but I had to add this one in here, part of a series.  Here Claudia notices her Daddy through the mesh...

Claudia climbing to go see her Daddy...

Claudia reaching for her Daddy!

 

 

 

 

VIDEO :)

 

On a side note if anyone has any suggestions on how to get Claudia to stop pulling other children's hair, please let me know, it is very frustrating. She does not do it to be mean, but as soon as she sees a child's hair, boy or girl, she grabs a hold of it.

We adore Claudia and she is learning things at a very rapid rate right now, we are excited for her progress!

Happy World Down syndrome Awareness Day 2013!

Happy World Down syndrome Awareness Day 2013!

Down syndrome is not a curse, it is a true blessing.  Children with Down syndrome bring great joy to their families and friends. 

Whenever we take Claudia somewhere, to friends houses or to her various appointments everyone loves her.  People are amazed at her abilities.  She may only be functioning at the level of a 12-15 month old in many categories. but she is one smart cookie! 

Yesterday Claudia had her evaluation for the school district.  She qualifies for many services and will benefit greatly from them.  We look forward to getting her therapies started.The therapists were amazed yesterday that Claudia could put her socks on all by herself.  She has come such a long way since we met her on January 11th!  I am excited to see how fast she progresses with therapy.

The last few weeks have been such a blessing for me as I have not had school.  I have been able to stay at home and bond more with Claudia.  I am seeing progress made every day.  Claudia actually likes to walk to people now and will initiate it.  It used to be that she did not like nay exercise at all, she would only walk if we made her and even then it did not last long.  Now every time I try to take a picture of her standing up, she walks to me lol.  She is learning how to play by herself for short periods of time without any negative stimulating behaviors.  This is nice as it allows me to get small things done around the house without worrying about her in her room for a little while.  She still loves her elephant that blows balls from his nose.  She still throws everything and in ways it is getting worse as she won't hold her sippy cup without throwing it as soon as she takes a drink...  but she is learning to play ith her toys a little more.  For example, here is a video, taken today of her first time actually interacting with this toy in an appropriate manner by herself.  Go Claudia go!!!

Claudia is a HAM!  She is always making me laugh.  I love her so much!  I really don't want to go back to school next week.  But I will graduate in less than 2 months!!!

Happy St. Patricks Day

Happy St. Patricks Day!

 

 

Random pics

Enjoy!

So proud that she put it on all by herself...

Her infamous walk

FOOD!  I love Cheerios :)

One month

Claudia has now been home for a full month!  It does not seem like it has been that long, yet it seems like she has been here all along.

She has come so far in the 9 weeks we have known her and continues to progress regularly.  We are excited to get her into therapies so that she can do even better.  We really need to work on strengthening her legs.  She gets soo tired when we make her walk.  She does not like to do it much so we try to make a game out of it.  We make up a lot of games to play.  Claudia still does not quite get how to play with toys.  There are a few she will interact with but mostly she just wants to thrown them.  Including the heavy, hard plastic ones.

Here are some tid-bits on Claudia:

She LOVES eggs, and potatoes (in any form but especially french fries and chips ugh!)  When she eats these she is ravenous!  She also really enjoys rice and grilled cheese.  She will eat almost anything in soup.  We are working on how to use a spoon but there are still many messes to be had in that area (pictures later).  I think her favorite part of the day is meal times.  She loves food.

Claudia thinks our dog Bazooka is a ride-on toy.  She enjoys climbing over him, again and again and again...  He is such a gentle giant and likes to just hang out with her, even if she does occasionally pull on his ears or tail.  We are still working on "be gentle."  We have a long ways to go before she really gets it I think (ideas welcome).  Claudia also likes to pretend to give the dogs food.  I don't think they get it yet that she really does not have anything! 

When we first got her, we had trouble getting Claudia to sleep.  Then she got better and it was little trouble at all.  Now we are somewhere in between.  Some nights she goes down easily and others it takes a while and some effort on our part.  She trys to make herself stay awake by playing with her hands or talking to herself.  Many times I will play with her hair to help her settle down, yesterday she started grabbing my hand and putting it on her head lol!  She can be demanding :)  Her PJ's say it best "Still hanging on."

Don't mind the snotty nose, she still has a little cold.

Here is our messy eater with tomato soup... you would think I enjoy torturing myself...

 

 

Overall Claudia is doing great.  We can't wait to see what the next month holds for her!

A special post

Claudia and I have been a bit under the weather since yesterday.  I will admit it is pretty funny watching Jason deal with yucky boogers though!  In all honesty, Jason has been such a blessing the last couple of days.  He has let me sleep in and has gotten up with Claudia and gotten her ready for the day.  I am so blessed to have him and that he has a job that will let him go in at whatever time he wants... to an extent.  Thankfully Claudia is not very sick, just has a little cold with some gross boogers :-p  She is still as active as ever.

 

Today I had a chance to start going through and translating some of the documents that we got from her foster family.  It sounds like they all loved her very much.  Claudia was with them from the time she was 6 months old up until we got her.  I am so glad that she was in foster care and that she stayed with one family the entire time.  I cannot imaging how she would be if this had not been the case.  Anyway, I wanted to share with you all Claudia's baby pictures.  These are the youngest pictures that we have of our little girl.  At the time the pictures were taken she was very tiny and weak according to her records.

 

I think she still looks much the same, she still has her chubby cheeks too!  My oh my do I love this girl!

 

Next week we have our first post-adoption home visit with our social worker and we also have our evaluation for the school district.  Hopefully this will allow Claudia to enter preschool in April and get the therapies she needs.  Please pray that we will both be super healthy next week :)

Look familiar?

See this dress... does it look familiar to anyone? (don't mind the poor quality photos, Claudia was having fun trying to walk toward/head dive onto me while I was trying to take pictures, and as you can see, she thought it was hilarious!)

 

How about now?

Yep, she came with it!  It is definitely shorter on her now and her belly does not make for a nice seam anymore :)

Day at the Zoo!

This really was a very busy week. 

On Thursday, Claudia had to get blood drawn for some lab work.  Everyone there absolutely adored her.  It took 3 of us to get the blood though, my poor girl had to be poked in both arms :(  The bandaids they used were super stiff and one ended up cutting into her arm in a matter of hours.  Also, one site bruised pretty badly.  Claudia did NOT like having the blood taken and kept tensing up and fighting it.  I do not want to take her again for that any time soon!

On Friday she spent the morning at Jason's moms house and the afternoon shopping/errand running with me.

Today's we had a nice outing with some friends of ours at the zoo and then at Chuck e Cheese.  Claudia was interested in some of the animals and had a good time although she did not pay much attention to most of them.  I think she had a difficult time seeing a lot of the animals unless they moved.  She liked watching the raccoons, wolves and the rhinos though! 

It's not as cold out as it looks, the snow is deceiving!

Just lounging around

Noah and Claudia, on a safari

I think s/he was making fun of us

After the zoo we went to Chuck e Cheese for lunch.  It is not anything like I remember.  There was not a lot for the little ones to do but Claudia did enjoy the rides.

All done!

Whack-a-mole for tots

She was riding a roller coaster simulation thing...

A fun filled day but there were far too many people at both the zoo and Chuck e Cheese, that's what we get for going out on such a beautiful day.  Overall Claudia did very well.  She is progressing every day.  Love my little girl!