It's like she's always been here!

I know a lot of adoptive parents make that statement and it is soooo true! It truly feels like Jaida has always been a part of our family and it is hard to remember what life was like before she was here! I bet you can probably guess that life has been a little busy since we got home from China. Life with four kids, one of those being Jaida, a busy two year old, definitely keeps me on my toes. I know many of you continue to follow along on our blog and I apologize for such few updates since we have gotten home and I promise to do better with that! I will be posting updated pictures today of Jaida and the kids.

We have learned so much about Jaida's personality in the past almost 4 months since we first held her in our arms. To give you an idea I will list all of the words that I can think of that describe her personality...Extrovert, independent, leader, talkative, loud, tough, funny, animated, intelligent, imaginative, imitative, affectionate, a friend to everyone, just plain cute!

Not sure where I left off in my last post and still trying to believe that 4 months has already passed by since then. Wow-where does the time go?! You may be wondering about Jaida and her Daddy...can you say "Daddy's little girl!" Yes, it only took a couple of weeks after we got home for Jaida to absolutely fall in love with her daddy and just totally adores him. She actually probably likes him more that mommy because he does all of that fun wrestling around with her and mommy is all about schedules, errands, and discipline...ha!

As far as an update on Jaida's cleft palate...of course, we were hoping to have this repaired shortly after we got home, but things didn't go quite as we had planned with our insurance and the cleft team here in Wichita so we are actually going to be taking Jaida to a cleft team in Kansas City and her first consultation will be at the end of August with surgery probably not until the end of the year as the plastic surgeon she will have is a very busy doctor and has a booked surgery schedule. I am hoping that once she has her consultation with him that maybe due to her advanced age for a palate repair, he might consider working him into his surgery schedule sooner rather than later. We will see what happens. On August 15th, she will be going in to have ear tubes placed and a bad tooth in her cleft line extracted. It will be nice to at least get these two procedures taken care of at the same time. She has had fluid behind her eardrums since we got her and thankfully it hasn't affected her hearing yet, but the ear tubes are definitely a must and will improve any little bit of hearing she may be lacking due to the fluid buildup.

Like I mentioned earlier, Jaida loves to talk and pretty much talks from the time she gets up until she goes to bed. She knows so much English and puts 3 and 4 words together to talk to us and get her point across. At times, of course, we don't understand what she is saying due to her cleft palate, but we just nod our heads and agree with her. Most of the time, however, we can understand her simply because we are around her all the time and the great thing about Jaida is that she is willing to repeat anything and will imitate everything we say, which really helps her to develop her speech. We have a speech pathologist that comes every two weeks from Rainbows to play with her and to continually evaluate her speech development and to give us things to work on with her. Of course, there isn't a whole lot Peggy can do until Jaida has her palate repaired because there are a lot of sounds that Jaida can not physically make due to her open palate. We are just amazed at how quickly Jaida has picked up on English and how many things she can say! It makes life much easier when we can understand her needs!

When Mikayla, Ty, and Josh head back to school in August, Jaida is going to go to preschool three mornings a week. I wasn't sure if we should do this since she is only 2.5 years old, but I truly think she is going to absolutely love it and she probably misses seeing children her own age on a daily basis, like she was used to at the orphanage. When I went to pick up the paperwork and we walked into the preschool, you should have seen her eyes light up when she saw all of those kids! She immediately went up to them and started shaking their hands and just wanted to hang out with them in their classrooms. This will be great for her and for Mommy as well. I went from total freedom before Jaida to no freedom after Jaida and it will be nice to have a few hours a week to start doing some medical transcription as an independent contractor. God has truly blessed us for the past 8 years and my ability to be a stay-at-home Mom!

I am sure all of you are having a busy summer just as we are.