Tubie newbie

I haven't forgotten to blog!  What I did almost forget is how intense it is to transition a new family member home even when everything is going great.  And it is going great!  We got home on Friday after the LONGEST flight ever.  But that day is behind us now and all is well.  The main hiccup is that Baby Girl and I each caught a little cold.  We are both doing fine, but it wasn't exactly what we wanted for our first few days home.  Fortunately I already had a doctor appointment scheduled for her and the doc said her lungs sound fine.  Poor sweetie was just congested in her head.  She really was only super-miserable for one afternoon (coinciding with the doctor appointment).  She is doing great now.  Just a little left-over cough and slightly runny nose.  The past two nights she slept twelve hours each night!!!  Unfortunately that also meant that no naps were taken.  I think it will take us another week or two to figure out a workable schedule.  Just last night was my first decent night of sleep in weeks (excitement, adrenaline, millions of details, plus jet lag are not a very sleep-inducing combination).  I think we are all on the right track now, though.

The other tricky thing is that I am on the tube-feeding learning curve.  Baby Girl is currently fed via g-tube so I am having to learn all the ins and outs of that.  It is really not difficult, but is taking a fair amount of my mental energy.  Pretty soon I'll be an old pro at it, and hopefully not too long after that Baby Girl will be eating by mouth.  She actually is much further along towards that goal than I thought she was.  There really is no medical reason currently for her to be on a g-tube, but when you are an orphan with feeding problems who lives in a hospital in a first-world country with good medical care, you get a feeding tube (orphans in third world countries in the same situation often die or become extremely malnourished).  I am SO THANKFUL for her tube, but ready to get rid of it at the same time.  Super T had a g-tube until he was about 3 or so I have high hopes.  Super-T is now a champion eater.

So that is the bad and the ugly, but mostly it is all GOOD.  Seriously this girl is AMAZING!!!  I really think that word is over-used by so many people, but in this case it really applies!  We all are crazy about her.  In fact one of the no-nap days was because the big kids had been out seeing The Hobbit with Grandma (for the second time--both saw it on opening day:  Little Pud overseas with our relatives and The Philosopher with his friends and his Pa--yes, I am the only family member who will not be seeing this in the theater, but Baby Girl is oh-so-worth it...there is always DVD) and just had to go visit her when they got back.  She was not quite asleep and that was the end of that nap.

Well, I am starting to ramble.  I'd better go feed Baby Girl (one benefit of tube feeding: you can feed the kiddo while they are sound asleep) and then get to bed.  Morning comes early around here.


{Sorry no pictures today.  I won't be allowed to post any pictures of Baby Girl's smiling face until after her adoption is finalized (likely a year because of our slow court system in my county...ugh!).  I will take pictures that don't show her face, though, and post them, but not until life has settled down a bit.}