Stress is the New Black: November 2007

Sorry for the long time between posts but you will have to excuse me as we have 2 year old virtual twins in our home and they are exhausting us to say the least ;-)

Here is an update:

Ethan is settling in quite nicely to life in our crazy household. He is getting stronger every day and happier as well. He is a real love bug. He just eats up our attention and is such a loving little boy. He is quite challenging as well. He still is not eating anything much other than receiving his three bottles daily supplemented with cereal and Pediasure in the mixture. We have tried just about everything to entice him to eat and no go. We will be seeing a Sensory Integration Therapist this week for this problem and he has also qualified for the Early Steps program in our area. Due to his difficult start in life and his feeding issues and failure to thrive he is eligible for in home services with an infant and toddler development specialist as well as a speech therapist. They are rushing us through the system due the urgent nature of his feeding issues. I am proud to report that even with his poor eating that we have been able to put a half of pound on weight on his little body. The people that assessed Ethan felt that his issues were due to under stimulation and neglect and that he would improve very quickly with this type of assistance.

He also is quite sensitive, crying when he cannot continue to do something that he wants to do or something is removed from his grasp. I would guess that since he had virtually nothing before coming to us and has lost so much that he cannot bear to lose anything else. We try our best to be ease his pain. This has been a very challenging aspect to his personality as he cries much more than any child I have ever dealt with. You really have to have a sense of humor sometimes or you would cry as well. Thankfully we do have a sense of humor!! Upon experiencing Ethan’s constant crying in action for days on end Marc relayed the story of a girl that he knew when he was growing up by the name of Cindy Fishman. It seems that Cindy cried over everything and once when they were leaving elementary school at the end of the school day she started crying because she lost her mittens. The teacher made everyone stay after school until the mittens were found and all of his friends thought she was a huge crybaby. Of course now our pet name for Ethan is Fishman. Hey, like I said, you have to do what you need to in order to keep it light. Hopefully Fishman’s …oops I mean Ethan’s crying will ease up soon. Hey, don't flame me; I am just keeping it real ;0)

Ethan loves our Chihuahua, Gabby and just as Katie was, is always in hot pursuit of her. Hopefully he will not kill her with kindness. That brings us to the next subject with is the relationship between the dynamic duo also known as the gruesome twosome depending on the minute of the day that we are parenting them. The already love each other a great deal and at the same time are in fierce competition for everything and anything from one of us to any material item that the other one is even looking at. The green eyes monster has Katie acting in ways that she did not before Ethan. This is Very understandable as her world was rocked and she is sharing time and attention that was all hers before.

There is one front that we have made huge strides in and that is the sleep front. When we first got home Ethan would not go to sleep lying down. He would stand up until he fell asleep and then we could lay him down after. He woke up almost hourly with night terrors and Katie was waking up frequently as well due to the jet lag. We had them in with us for the first few days but that was not working as every time we comforted Ethan then Katie became very jealous and would need the same comforting. Marc put an air mattress in their room for a week or so and little by little they started to improve. Now 2.5 weeks later they go to sleep in their own cribs with no problem and stay asleep until the morning. Ethan now is quite happy to lay down immediately and get ready to go to sleep. They seem very comforted to have each other in the room and Marc is back in our room ;-)

The day before Thanksgiving we received very good news from Ethan's Pediatric Cardiologist He gave him a clean bill of heart health today. It seems that Ethan had an additional heart ailment to the one disclosed but the Doctors in China repaired all of his issues perfectly. The doctor said that the one of the holes in his heart had been enormous and was positioned right by the aorta which is very dangerous. He told me that he must be quite a fighter to have made it through all that he has been up against. This Dr. was absolutely amazing with us and took over an hour to examine, run tests and speak to us in detail about the issues involved. We go back in a year for a follow up but the Doctor felt confident that his heart issues are now non issues :)

We are very gratified to get this news from the Doctor and now we can focus our energies on Ethan’s eating issues and of course working on bringing him up to his chronological age developmentally.

Here are a few cute pics of our kiddos. I will post a few more in a couple of days. I also plan on redesigning the blog in a few days to reflect the changes in our family.