Emergency Room!

What Happened?

Mommy went to pull Shekina'a left arm away when Shekina, the Explorer was venturing too far... and I heard a click in her arm!! I was sooo scared...she cried and I calmed her, she seemed OK and put her down for her AM nap. When she woke, I noticed she could not push herself up (she is usually crying and standing in the crib waiting for me to come upstairs and get her..)
I tried a few things... she LOVES our crawling/ peek-a-boo races down the hall but to no avail... I tested to see if she would pick up something with her left arm and she would not. She usually crawls all over the place and just sat there... I was soo worried, Denny was at the hospital and after calling him umteen times telling him the results of the different things I was testing... I prayed, called our chiro, prayed, called our pediatrician, prayed some more, and then finally took her to the Emergency Room and to make a long story short, she had what is called....

"Nursemaid's elbow which is a common injury in a small child's elbow. Tiny ligaments normally help hold the elbow together. One of them slipped in between Shekina's upper and lower arm bones as they were pulled slightly apart. As the bones come back together, this ligament got stuck. This injury happens if you pull a child's hand with the arm in just the right position."

The Dr put some pressure on her elbow to get it back into the right position, that took about 20 seconds and in minutes she was back to her old self crawling and climbing all over the hospital bed!! What a relief for mom!!! :)
They did an X-Ray just to check and everything was perfecto!!!
Thank youy, Jesus!! :)


Even the fun game where both parents walk on either side of your child each parent holding their hand and lifting them off the ground for a few steps as you walk - is another way they can get nursemaid's elbow -so please ALWAYS pick up your child only under their arms, NEVER use their arms to pick them up even if they are in a weird position as I have seen people do this, now that I'm so acutely aware of it.
Nursemaid's elbow got it's term from Nursemaid's who use to walk with their charges and when they got to a curb, instead of lifting them up, they grabbed them by the arm and pulled them up onto the curb/sidewalk.

Here's Shekina after her bath that night donning her hospital tag!






She's back to her old self playing one of her favorite games of falling back on the bed, flopping down on her back with her legs in the air or doing her infamous splits!!!

Thank you Jesus that she's healed and back to her old self. The staff at South Austin Hospital were awesome! :)

There is Hope!! :) The Sleep Solution!!! Yeah!!!

Being very sleep deprived from Shekina's many wake-ups through out the night (where I would go in, comfort her and rock her back to sleep) not to mention jet lag, I was wiped.... so Denny had taken a few shifts up to 4 AM to give me a break as Shekina was up every hour for the first few nights home and then lessened to 3-4x/night with one episode sometimes lasting for 45 minutes.

THE BOOK
Mindy, our neighbour, lent us this book "Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems" written by Richard Ferber, MD - Director,Center for Pediatric Sleep Disorders Children's Hospital, Boston - we were uncertain when to start the technique as we didn;t want to interfere with the bonding process...but after consulting with our 2 social workers who did our Home study both in FL and here in TX, they assured us it was fine to go ahead and try it...

SLEEP ASSOCIATION
I usually walk the halls cuddling her with music in the background until she falls asleep in my arms, otherwise if I put her in her crib, she simply wails! So in a nutshell, this is what the book suggests....re "sleep association" where your child does not know how to go to sleep on her own but only knows how to sleep with what she had grown accustomed to (ie. with me walking the hall cuddling her with music in the background until she falls asleep in my arms.) Thus she didn;t know how to sleep on her own. Once I tried their technique WOW - I was now given back the priviledge of sleeping!!!! YEAH!! :)

THE TECHNIQUE
There is more detail in the book re creating a nightly ritual before bedtime, etc. but here is the jist... you put her in her crib to sleep and leave the room shutting the door. She wailed immediately. Set the timer for 5 minutes and IF she is still crying you go in and console her (not picking her up, just talking her to soothe her) and leave the room again. If still crying after 10 minutes you repeat, the third interval is 15 minutes and repeat every 15 minutes until she is asleep. You do the same thing if she wakes in the middle of the night - wait 5 minutes before you go in etc...The next day you start at 10 minutes and go to 15 and 20 minutes intervals.

IT WORKED WONDERS... :)
I couldn't believe it!!! I started with her AM nap and just before the first 15 minute interval was up, she had stopped crying and went to sleep! YEAH!! In the afternoon it improved..before the 10 minute interval she fell asleep; and at bedtime, I didn;t even need to go in as she fell asleep before the end of the 5 minute interval!! While she woke several times in the night, she fell asleep before the end of the first 5 minutes, so I didn;t even need to get up just listen and make sure she went to asleep. I WAS AMAZED AT HOW WELL THIS WORKED!!!
I was beginning to wonder if I'd ever be able to have a good night;s sleep again.

12 HOUR SLEEPS NOW!!! :)
I was shocked... where she had only been sleeping 9-10 hours/night and very interupted sleep, she now sleeps 12 hours!!! We are on our third night and it seems to be working great!!
It's definitely worth checking out the book and looking up the specifics for your own situation for the many sleep deprived mom's out there... along with your precious sweet babies who are also sleep deprived if they are not getting the required hours of sleep depending on their age....see the book for further details...

Sweet dreams..... :)

Happy Birthday Shekina! :)

Happy Birthday, Shekina!


Shekina's 1st birthday was celebrated in style in her brand new high chair that Daddy had stayed up til 4 AM trying to put it all together! :) Star fish, sea horses, etc... an underwater wonder! :)
































How do I blow this out?



















How are you doing that, mommy?

Shekina's first mail! Birthday cards from Auntie Anne, Auntie Kathy (Shirley's sisters) and Grandma! :)













Thanks so much Auntie Anne and Grandma for the special money gifts! There are LOTS of things I need! :) I'm a busy girl, Daddy says I'm like mommy - I love LOTs of variety and stimulation! :)










Mommy was thrilled when Mindy (our neighbour) made a sign with Shekina's name on it as it will be hard to get anything personalized for her unless it's made by hand and with lots of love! Thanks Mindy and Jevin! :)



















This cute dress and sweater from Canada!!! from Aunt Jessie and Uncle MC (Denny's friend and colleague from Singapore who now lives in Toronto!) is yummy with all the strawberries, and we love the pink doll! :)

Thank you soo much! :)









We are trying to be creative by holding the camera in front of us to get us all in the picture...talk to you more later!! :)

The Yeo clan! :)

We're home! Yeah!!! Hip Hip Hooray

Yeah!!! It feels soooo good to be home!! :) We were gone a month. We arrived home around midnight very early yesterday AM: Fri , Oct 14. It was a looong journey with 3 connections that were several hours each:
Guangzhou - Hong Kong;
HOng Kong - LA;
LA - Austin

Shekina wakened 6-7 times the first night partial night we were home and last night woke almost every hour. We are exhausted and getting very little sleep.
On Friday night, we went to the potluck dinner with families who have children from China, today ( Saturday), we ventured out grocery shopping but hard to get unpacked or get much done between making meals, feeding her (and trying to eat ourselves as everytime she sees us eating even though she has eaten she wants ours too! :) ) diaper changes, playing with her, dressing, dressing her again as we still haven't found diapers that don;t leak....baths, etc...hopefully we'll get unpacked one of these days! :)

So far tonight she has wakened twice in less than 2 hours crying and needs to be held and consoled.... critical at this bonding stage to know we are still here. She has been in 4 different cribs since we became her "forever family", so that along with jet lag and adjusting to being an American citizen (as she's whispered to me it would have been a slightly easier adjustment had it been Canada! :)
I am now a full fledged member of the auspicious Sleep Deprived Mother's Club! Believe me, it's not a pretty picture so it will not be posted! :)

Tomorrow is Shekina's first birthday...

On to our final phase! "Barbie" an adoptive mom!!! :)

We left our province on Oct 10, being in the city of Chongqing (pronounced ChongChing) for almost 2 weeks - with Shekina's Chinese passport in hand and flew to Guangzhou for our final phase of Amercian Consulate paperwork. Guangzhou was amazing - we all loved it!!
It is a shopping mecca for baby girls - the little town has store upon store of clothes for baby girls as this where all adoptive parents must travel through. We stayed at the infamous "White Swan" hotel where Mattel has sponsored a playroom and has all their toys in there...great marketing technique!! We also got a Mattel Barbie holding a little Chinese baby! delivered to our room ! :)
Wish we had more than a few days here - we had to get pictures done of Shekina, get her medical done and attend an "Oath Ceremony" at the American Consulate.
Shekina had a really bad cold and Shirley had just been recoverering from one she got in Singapore and got it again, even worse and lost her voice, Denny had caught it too...so we were never too far from the kleenex box for 2 weeks ! :) Shekina also developed an ear infection and we had to put her on antibiotics several days before we left the province

The medical is a hoot - really just a "rubber stamp". We had to take Shekina to 3 rooms:
1- height, weight and temp
2. Listened to heart and lungs and skin.
3. Ears, nose and throat
I waited to see if they noticed she had an ear infection and they said nothing. I then mentioned it and they said "which ear". She checked her again and adamantly said "no ear infection". :)













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As you can see, Shekina is not a happy camper at this time. She weighed in at 20 lbs (with a VERY wet diaper that we were going to change when they undressed her in the next room -so probably 1-2 lbs was lost 5 minutes later! :) ) and she is 28.75 " long.

Bonding with our baby girl - Daddy's little girl! :)

The bonding process is critical, as you can well imagine, and I had often heard how the baby bonds first to the mom and sometimes takes a long time until the dad can even hold her....

Well...in our situation...she seemed to take to both of us initially for the first 2 days and then really only wanted her daddy which was very hard for me. Shekina cried whenever Denny was out of sight or not holding her. We were on a bus trip one day, and basically I only saw the back of her head as she only wanted Daddy and would hardly give me the time of the day. I certainly had my time of crying and adjusting too as it was very hard. However, 4 of the other families in our group had the same situation...so we shared ideas of things that we needed to do, for example, I would be the only one that fed her and Denny would be out of site when I fed her allowing her to focus and created some mother-daughter bonding, the 6-7 times she wakes at night, I was the one to get up and comfort her..maximizing our "skin to skin" contact; we tried to have me carry her most of the time, and have more time when I was just with her alone, etc.
Things began to shift but it took lots of perseverence and prayer! :)

I am thrilled she is so excited to be with Daddy and whenever she sees his face, she just beams!! When Shekina cried constantly when she was bathed, hair washed and blow dried, Daddy made it fun by dancing and pretending he was drying his hair , then mommy's hair, and then Shekina's hair! That solved the hair drying crying !! Thanks Daddy! :)
Denny is soo good with her and I am so impressed with him as a Daddy - he is amazing! :) I'd marry him again anyday!! :)

Shekina does not like hoods or hats on her head - so Daddy is trying it on to see if he will inspire her! What a cutie!! :)

x0x0 I love you, my wonderful husband!! :)

Long time in our Province

We had to stay an extended time in our Province for Shekina's Chinese Passport to be processed due to National holidays - it is normally 5 business days and we were there for almost 2 weeks. We were there with 8 other families and so it was a great time to spend time together, sharing and adjusting together. We visited some parks, did some shopping, etc. Here are some pics..enjoy! :)
Enjoying bubbles in the park! :)













Typically, between 6AM -10 AM you'll find groups of people doing taichi in the park...Shirley excitedly joins in! :) That was one of the things she wanted to do in China! :)














Since most of the 8 baby girls in our group were born all around the same time, our guide had a birthday party for all the girls that included a crawling race...here is Daddy cheering her on waving an incentive...CHEERIOS!!! :) GO SHEKINA...GO!!! :)
















At the zoo, notice the infamous Chinese Panda (between us in the background) - China's unique national treasure!! :)
















Shekina's first opera! She thoroughly enjoyed it! :)

Trip to the Orphanage

HI there, Here I am again.... we tried to update this yesterday and spent 1 1/2 hours updating the blog and the internet connection was lost and we lost everything...so here goes again.

We were very fortuntate to be able to visit Shekina's orphanage as many orphanages do not allow families to visit unless they are returning to China with their daughter. There are 8 families who have adopted from the same orphanage and we travelled 2 1/2 hours by bus to to Dian Jiang Orphanage and were fortunate enought to be permitted a 1 1/2 hour visit....we were thrilled! Dian Jiang is a social welfare Institute and the building also houses the elderly. The abandoned girls range from 2 days old to 3 years old. On "Gotcha Day" ( Sept 28 - the day we received Shekina and we became her "forever family") we found out that Shekina had been in the orphanage since Oct 16, 2004 (when she was found outside the orhphanage gates in a carton wrapped in a quilt) until June 2005 when she went to live with a foster family until we came. Unfortuntately, we are not permitted to have any information on her foster family. :( However, we did sent over a disposal camera asking that pictures would be taken of her between our referral date at the end of July when we first found out who are precious sweet baby girl was until we picked her up. We did get the camera and film returned to us as can't wait to see if the pictures show anything of her foster family or if they were taken in the orpahanage! Stay tuned!!! :)

Here are the gates to orphanage where Shekina Joy was found almost one year ago:



We were excited to see brightly painted walls as we climbed to the stairs to the 5th floor where the Orphanage is situated The children are divided by into rooms by age 0 - 2 months, 3-4 months, 5-6 months, etc. The 5-6 month room is the last room Shekina was in. The children share a crib and her cribmate was Carli whose adopted parents live only one hour from us in San Antonio... so it will be fun to be able visit together often! :)



















The view from the 5th floor.....


















Here is the Director of the orphanage and she put Shekina and Carli into the exact crib that they had been in prior to leaving the orphanage at around 6 months, as you can they are not too thrilled!






































Here are some pictures of some of the abandoned girls waiting to see if they will be adopted out to a forever family. The older they get, the harder it is to be adopted.

Notice the "split" pants on the the little girl on the right (below). This is the typical style for chinese children's clothes and it makes it convenient "to go" when out and about! :)

Here are pics where the children are bathed,

the playroom...

....and their "swiiming pool"! :) Notice the "donut" lifesaver that is put around their neck in this narrow "swimming" tube! :)

We were thrilled to be able to visit Dian Jiang and to be able to see where Shekina spent her first six months of her life and to be able to share that with her one day.

Pics of Shekina Joy! :)