THE Birthday Party!

Today was The Party.  The party to celebrate Dashlyn’s 3rd birthday.  Also Madelyn’s 15th birthday and Dashlyn’s first EVER birthday party.  There were balloons and presents and cake and ice cream!  Most importantly, there were family and special friends to celebrate the life of a special little girl with Down syndrome.  I could post a whole album of pictures, but I’ll try to whittle it down to just a few:

My 2 beautiful daughters:

Presents:

Family and Friends:

Cake!

There’s so much more to write about.  Like how the family members who haven’t seen Dasha since Christmas were so impressed by how well she’s doing.  And how I got all teary when everyone was singing “Happy Birthday”.  And the way she looked when I put her into bed; so tired and sleepy and happy.  It was a super awesome party and tonight I am one tired and happy mommy.

The Cutest Toes EVER!

Having a little girl in the house again has been super fun.  You know how I love those hair bows!  Another fun thing we found is Dasha’s toes :).  We put some pretty pink nail polish on them the other day.  Her Daddy asked me if I had to use a 2 bristle brush to paint them since the toes are so tiny!  (No silly, just the regular polish brush!)  Check ‘em out:

Awesome Video

Please watch the video with sound on.  It shows the beauty of our sweet kids with Down syndrome.  I bet you’ll see a few familiar faces too!

Sending lots of love to our Down syndrome family!  I honestly don’t know what I would do without you all!

I’ve Been Having a Bad Week

Andrew and Madelyn are gone on their orchestra trip so I miss them of course but they are having a fun and wonderful experience with school friends so that is just a teeny part of my sadness this week.

This is a big part.  My friend Stephanie posted about Carrington.  She was in Dasha’s orphanage.  I just don’t have the words.  My heart breaks for her and her new mommy and daddy.  Stephanie has also set up a chip-in for anyone who would like to help support the family financially while Carrington is in the hospital.  Click here to see info on that.  Summer and Jill have written beautiful posts about sweet Carrington too.

This is the other big part.  A family had their court date this week to bring home their sweet boy from EE.  The judge said no.  I don’t think I could breathe for several minutes when I read that.  NO.  A little, harsh, heartbreaking word.  Our court date was the most anticipated, terrifying day of my life; but we were granted permission to make our little girl ours!  What if we weren’t?  Another adoptive mom, Julia, has written their story and explained far better than I could.  Please read and pray for them too.

Bad Blogger

I have a couple of posts I'm ready to publish except for the pics. I mean, what's the point of a post without pics, right? And Windows 7 has freaked out on me and won't let me just download the recent pics from my memory card. It wants to download the whole thing. Which really isn't a big deal except it's a 4gb and pretty much full and almost everything is already on here. So I can let it download everything (which will take awhile) and delete all the previous files, or wait 'til someone can help me figure it out. Wish I was better at this computer stuff.

Meanwhile, the little girl is doing great. We had her eye appt and turn out she does not have an eye turning in - it's pseudostrabismus. And her vision is great. We need to re-do some bloodwork but I'm not anticipating anything scary there. We had her IEP and yes, Dasha will be staying home for a bit longer (kids usually go to pre-school starting on their 3rd birthday here - I hate that). Since we have good reason to want her home, she still get her therapies (PT and OT at school and ST and DT at home) but no school 'til fall. We will put her in a once-a-week intro to school class, for 2 hours. I will stay the first day. It's not just that she will have trouble separating (she won't) or that I will (I will). But I'm not sure she really understands that we (her family) are permanent. Supposedly dropping her off and picking her up will help.

Have I mentioned she's not the most girly-girl?? She's not. Even with cute outfits, hair bows, and pink toenails, she's not one bit gentle or dainty. She still throws everything. She pulls up but violently. I should post a video so you know what I mean about that. She's very rough and tumble. Sometimes I wish for dainty because I'm tired of having my hair pulled. But Jack and Ty seem to like her this way so I'll try to be patient while we keep trying to teach "gentle".

PS

Of course I wouldn't let anyone get hit by a bus, good grief. I was just using a bus as an expression.

It’s the 3rd!

So that means Miss Dashlyn Belle Smith has been home THREE months!  And we only met her one month before that!  So hard to believe since she just fits here.  It feels like she’s been here forever.  Really.  I was thinking of changing some of the photos on the walls last weekend and thought about putting a baby pic of each up, you know at the same age like 6 mos or something.  After I had already decided what a good idea that was, I remembered we don’t have any photos of D at 6 mos!  She didn’t live here then!  Plan B – I’ll be getting her picture taken :).

Seems like all of us are used to her too.  The 3 big kids have adjusted to her more easily (I think) than they did Jack.  Not sure what to think about that but he was a baby and she’s more interesting and less breakable right off the bat, so I’m not dwelling.  Jack for the most part LOVES having a play-mate his size!  As I type they are crawling around under the kitchen table.  There’s an adventure happening, I’m sure.  Allan loves kids anyway so he has a new play-mate too.  And I love her.  I’m having fun dressing a girl and finding bows to match her clothes.  We have a lot of fun together when all the other kids are in school.  Bonding is going well but we still aren’t where I’d like to be.  I know beyond a shadow of doubt I’d leap in front of a bus for the other kids but I wonder if I would for her.  I’m getting there.  

So for a brief update on what’s changed from the time we met ‘til now:

-She is starting to walk holding one hand.  Still wobbly, but she’s doing it.

-She can pick up cheerios or other small-ish pieces of food.  She had NO pincer grasp when we got her.

-She smells so much better!  Real baths and teeth brushing cannot be overrated.

-She is learning to play with toys & is an awesome mimic (so we think she’ll be learning to talk soon).

-She’s learning to express her wants, needs, sadness, and frustrations.  She smiles when we brush teeth, change a diaper, get her out of bed.  I think she’s getting used to seeing us (and only us) on a daily basis.

And finally, what she looks like today (after many, many photos but only a few that her eyes aren’t shut!):

How’s Miss D doing?

Pretty awesome.  I finally remembered to take some pics during therapy.  This therapist (OT) is one that Jack had and we looooover her!  She decided Dasha needed to play in pudding at our last visit and yay, Jack was home at that time time and got to play too.  She wasn’t too sure at first.

Nope, not liking this!

Well, maybe it’s not too bad.

Are you kidding?  It’s great – taste it!

Then they got to play in bubbles, blowing and popping!

Jack doesn’t usually get to participate in Dashlyn’s therapies, but since Miss C used to work with him, and there was play with PUDDING, we couldn’t tell him no!

By the end of the week maybe I’ll have speech and PT pics too.