Photos and stuff

Catherine wanted to give Teagan her bottle the other day.

Here are the girls on Thanksgiving Day. 

They are in matching boots in the above two photos - Catherine is wearing mine, and DouDou is wearing Cat's.

Some more fort building...

Some updates: Teagan started speech therapy last week.  She is working with a great speech therapist at the U. The technique is to bombard the child with sounds like B and P. Like really bombard. Like "B B B B B BARN! CAN YOU SAY BARN?! " Strangely (to me), it seemed to work.  Although, one of her first new words was "MO" as in "NO."

We go back to the ENT tomorrow. It appears as if her ear infection is back in that right ear and she ha the cough again. :( The antibiotics did work - for about a week. But, slowly that night cough is coming back and she is not sleeping. No one is! I am not sure what the options are here - I guess we will find out tomorrow.

This backpack is a source of fascination for Teagan. In fact, all bags are. She regularly moves all her sippy cups out of their cupboard and into whatever bag she can find  - including the trash!

SNOW!

First snowfall came on Saturday! About 8 inches where we live. Catherine was thrilled. Teagan seemed stunned. I am not sure how much contact she had with snow in Beijing. It snows there, but I am not sure they would have taken the kids outside. Shew would have been in the midst of her lip repair and she was only 8 months old last year at this time.

Yep- didn't have time to get the furniture off the deck, and we had just grilled...It was 68 2 days earlier! 

Teagan is back on  antibiotics - oral and ear. In her follow up ear appointment, her right ear is infected again. We also asked about her night cough. The hypothesis is that her adenoids are infected because she had a terrible night cough in China, that only stopped for 3 weeks after her surgery. It then returned. IT may be that the antibiotics she took around her surgery time cured the infection but it came back. The cough is getting better. We'll follow up in a couple of weeks.

A big box arrived, and the girls had a great time together!

If you look closely, you can see the "private keep out" written on the box.

Teagan is really saying "MORE" clearly these days and she said "Mama, hi" today clearly. Baby steps!

Last thing, so many of you have asked about Teagan's friend from AH. She is still hanging in there. The surgeon's believe she CAN survive a surgery, but a U.S. facility is needed and expertise.  Thanks to all of you, and there are a lot of you, who have written me privately about JiaYi.   Your family is out there JiaYi!

Hearing, Home visit, and Halloween

We visited Cleveland over MEA week-end. It was a great October week-end there, and Teagan met her great-grandmothers, aunts and uncles, and family friends.

My aunt Deidre and her husband Michael even came up from North Carolina to meet Teagan. We also reconnected with a family friends, including Dara and her daughter, Fiona, who is the same age as Teagan (6 weeks younger). Fiona was the name we had chosen for Teagan, but when we saw her middle name would be "Jia" we did not think "Fiona Jia" worked. :)  I'll intersperse photos of the visit with updates on hearing and speech.

In terms of hearing, we have some good news! After her post-op appointment, Teagan has totally normal hearing in her left ear. We had been told her hearing loss was mild-moderate in that ear when we received her referral in February. Wohoo! Ear tubes made all the difference.


Catherine, Fiona, and Teagan climbing trees and sitting on pumpkins:

Her right ear was too filled with fluid to tell what her hearing is in that ear.  It was untestable. This was the ear with moderate-severe hearing loss according to her files from China. We've treated the ear with drops and will return on Wednesday to see if that has helped and if not, what the next step is.

This green glowing ball was a huge hit:

We started speech therapy last Tuesday. It was an "interesting" experience as I and Jason both had the stomach flu. Because I could sit up and he could not, I took her. Teagan refused to utter one sound in front of the speech therapist. When she left the room, Teagan would start vocalizing.

Catherine and Ryan holding drawing of Ryan as a M.D. (he's in med school).

The therapist recommended weekly visits for speech at this point and then we can ease into twice a month. We are working on "B" "P" and "H" sounds for now and reinforcing what she can do already- mainly "M" sounds like "more" and "mama."

Teagan loves "Twinkle Twinkle" and we sing it about 30 times each day, mostly right when she wakes up and when putting her to bed. She has a sign language book with pictures of kids signing the song. She tries to sign and sign it and will sign "Twinkle Twinkle" book over and over, and "again" when she wants to hear it again.

I told her the other night, after I had been singing it for over 20 minutes, she had to sleep first and we could sing it in the morning again.  She closed her eyes shut really tightly, for about a minute. Then popped them open and signed "again!" LOL! I laughed out loud and she started laughing too.

Now for Halloween:

Catherine was Hermione and Teagan a lion for Halloween.

Catherine fully enjoyed Halloween complete with the "Halloween Trolley" experience in the afternoon. And trick or treating with neighborhood friends later.

Teagan was a little less enthusiastic about the experience, but I think still had a good time.

Kathleen and Teagan

You can see her rolling in our yard here:

Riding in Finn's car.

And walking to Charlie: