Dance Dance Dancing Machine! Watch Her Get Down!

Life Six Months In

On April 20th, we celebrated the six-month mark... by not doing much more than acknowledging the date. We appreciated the date, and we spent a little time expressing how grateful we were for how far we had come at that point. It can be seen in the little things. For example, when the family leaves just the two of us alone in the house, she now only cries for 30 of the 90 minutes, which is more than a 50% decrease over past experiences. Last night she even kissed me on the lips, and so what if I normally don't allow that?! Yay for progress! We've come a long way in a short amount of time.

As you can see from her picture, the eye continues to slowly-but-steadily improve with the daily doses of beta blocker. It has progressed to the point where the chief eye specialist deemed her fit for an eyeglass prescription. She will have new glasses in a couple of weeks. (Not to be outdone, Jacob will have his own pair of reading glasses around the same time... handpicked by himself.) The doctor was amazed at how easily Cass took to trying glasses on. Not to brag, but he hasn't been the first completely objective professional to remark about how highly intelligent she is. (Is it bragging when you really have absolutely nothing to do with it?)

With the assertion of genius status, it follows that you might wonder about her general development. Well, she isn't lagging behind in much these days. Speech is still an issue; she can say, "Mama," "Dada," "diaper," "go," and "baby" but almost never when you want her to. She's good at signing, but she still requires a little reminding. She tends to prefer to shake her head "no" to everything at first until she understands that you're talking about something that she likes at the moment. She can understand a great deal. She just prefers to squeak, grunt, and wail. Personally, I think she's just being modest with her overwhelming brain power. In five years, I imagine I'll be asking her for business advice.

While language has lagged a little, the other stuff she's learned is infinitely more important. She has learned to hug, to kiss, to high five, and to fist bump. She has learned to tell the dog to "GO!" and that a well-timed smile and giggle directed at Daddy will get her just about anything she wants- including the last little bit of sugary goodness in his possession. She has learned that her big sister is really cool... and a little rough. She can clumsily run when she initially could barely walk and hardly crawl. She has her own trademarked interpretation of a dog barking and pig oinking, both much better than the real deal. Above all else, she has learned what a family is, and she knows she is a irreplaceable, priceless part of ours. She knows that she is loved.

Sure, her emotions might still turn on a dime. No one goes from laughing to crying faster than her. No one goes from giggling to screaming faster than her. No one goes from total acceptance to complete rejection faster than her. What are you going to do? On top of being adopted into a strange family from a foreign country, she's two! We'll give her some grace on that... and some timeouts probably. (She doesn't like them.)

I think we've all pretty well adjusted to her and all that she entails. It's getting easier and easier to not take the 180-degree turns she throws at us. If she doesn't want to be held, it's okay now. No big deal. Okay, I confess that it's easier now than before. Why? Even when she rejects being held, she'll still take a kiss on the forehead. She'll almost always take the kiss. Sometimes she even comes looking for it.

That's progress.

Not for the Feint of Heart

Once upon a time, I inadvertently gave some people the impression that there was some noble cause element to our adopting from China. I had expressed exactly what happened- that a grief had been born out of the revelation of the plight of many Chinese women and my first-hand experiences there. Let me be crystal clear that sparing one Chinese girl that experience- especially the one that my beautiful daughter would have had having been institutionalized (orphanage) and deemed imperfect physically- was a side effect, a byproduct and nothing more. If philanthropy and noble causes were my intention, I simply cannot imagine this experience. I really don't know if I could make it if not for the fact that she's as much my child as the other three.

Parenting is the toughest thing I have ever done. Being father to Cassidy is the toughest of the tough. It's not that I struggle with making myself love her because I do. It's not that it just doesn't feel like I'd expect it to because I didn't know what to expect. It is that it's just so... "bizarre." I have never fancied that I would ever been equal to Shari in her eyes, but I never thought I would be reliving China experiences five months downstream. I never imagined that I would ever experience her crying for 20+ minutes straight again simply because I'm not Mommy. I never thought she would be able to so consistently flip the switch so completely and effortlessly in going from happy and inclusive to freaked out and completely exclusive. There have been times when her billboard-blatant ambivalence to me has crushed me more than anything any of my kids have ever done.

I've been reassured by many other people that they have experienced seasons of their biological children choosing the other parent over them and smarting from it. Well, I've never had that, ever. All of my kids, from day one, have been pretty content with me. I have always been able to comfort them. I have always been the destination. Enter Cassidy, aka Little Miss Ambivalence. When I leave the house, she waves and smiles. When Shari leaves the house, she sobs and wails to just short of losing her breath. Eventually she calms down. Things are usually okay when she calms down. Within the last three weeks, there was one incident where she cried for at least 75 out of 90 minutes. When she finally peeled herself away from the gate, we were fine; she was all smiles from then on.

It's been disconcerting. I've had all kinds of thoughts. Is it the prescription beta blocker she's on? Is my eldest child undermining me? Is it my work hours? Did she misconstrue my roughhousing with the boys as something sinister? Can I not raise my voice at all in her presence?? Do I need to double up on deodorant or use less?? No clue. I have no answers for why she seemed to have regressed so far. Shari was experiencing sensory overload, and Cassidy wasn't much better towards me than she was when we first got her. The only difference was that it was clear that she knows who I am. At least, that's what it felt like.

Well on Friday, I just couldn't hack the way things had been any longer. I decided I was going to tackle this issue- even if it would make it worse. I would rather be proactively wrong than passively so. As she tried to circumvent me to get to Mommy, I snatched her up and headed for the basement- just the two of us. As when we first got her, you would have thought it was a kidnapping based on her reaction. If I hadn't already seen it so many times before, I would say it was the hardest she's ever cried. She was red-faced with veins popping out everywhere and her mouth gaped wide. Her screams sounded so strained that I thought her vocal cords might spring from her body. When I tried to lure her over to the kitchen set she's liked to play with in the past, she just remained where she was, hopping around and spinning in wide-eyed circles. Then she charged into my arms but only because she wanted me to pick her up and take her back upstairs.

This went on for at least 30 minutes. As much as I would like to claim some credit in things getting better, it didn't happen until Jake and Kaitlyn came downstairs. It really didn't get better until Katie broke out a puzzle for Cassidy and her to play with. The tears stopped. The screaming stopped. The laughter started. She loved helping with the puzzle even though her only part was pushing pieces into place once we properly aligned them. She loved it.

Ever since then, she's been a different girl. She hasn't been as clingy to Shari. She has been warmer to me. She even rushed to me to give me a hug in the church hallways this morning. She then grabbed my finger to go on a walk with Mommy and her... even though I was at my security post at the time. (I obliged her.) Once home, she was back to wanting to be on my shoulders again, which she hadn't wanted for weeks. She was back to randomly wanting to sit on my lap... even though I didn't have food or drink to offer.

The difference is remarkable. The experience is crazy. I'll take my next round of beatings should they come.

I love my Cassidy Elizabeth through it all.

Color Us Amazed!

After just five half-doses and a day-and-a-half, we have been amazed by the physical changes we've seen. Exhibit A is a picture from her birthday on January 18th. Her appearance in that picture is fairly consistent with how she looked normally. We'll call it "Before."

And prepare your eyes for Exhibit B. We'll call it "After." For the first time, we could see the whites of her eye to both the east and west of her retina. We're just amazed at the progress. Hopefully the doctor will be amazed tomorrow as well.

Medical Update

Most people with eyes who have fully exercised their Facebook curiosity muscle have noticed that my wife and I have a daughter who looks a little different from the others. Not only does this little girl have my darker complexion, narrower eyes, and keener fashion sense, but she has a little something extra going on around her eyes. It is undoubtedly because of these "masses" that she was abandoned by her birth parents and placed by the Chinese government on the special-needs list. The Chinese doctors diagnosed her as having hemangiomas, and she was given the treatment they could offer, which was minimal.

When we were presented with the opportunity to adopt her, her condition was described as one that typically goes away on its own over time. With that being said, we knew we were not dealing with something as simple as a "special-needs" label applied to someone with an unsightly birth mark. Whatever the case, it didn't really matter because we saw our daughter when we looked at the pictures. We appreciate that biological parents are never guaranteed healthy children, and we would treat her as our own. Getting her well is our priority.

It began with a pediatric visit who was quick to refer us to the FACES Clinic at Cardinal Glennon, which specializes in international adoptions. Their team of doctors expressed - without officially diagnosing - that it probably wasn't hemangioma and that her right eye probably has some degree of trauma as a result of the mass impinging on that eyeball. They referred us to an imaging doctor at a different hospital who is apparently the only doctor who could produce the images necessary to make the right diagnosis and determine the best method(s) of treatment. The consultation there resulted in an MRI with no subsequent specialized imaging. During that appointment, options of outpatient alcohol injection treatments and surgical removal were discussed with another medical consult on the horizon.

That brings us to yesterday. There we sat in a 8' X 10' room with a full-sized examination table, an extra chair, and sink area. In walked four doctors and two residents. While I had held out hope that the surgery would not be the preferred option, one of the first things out of his mouth was that they think surgery is necessary for th removal. The good news is that they think what she has is hemangioma. I had figured a surgery was going to be necessary cosmetically, so I was able to get over the surgery revelation surprisingly quickly. But to say that surgery is the solution is nothing more than the tip of this iceberg.

Before we get to the surgery stage, they have prescribed a beta blocker drug in the hopes that the masses will shrink in size. Ideally, the masses could shrink almost completely, making the surgery much more manageable. No matter how it is sliced, to see this through to completion, some degree of surgical removal will be necessary, no matter how small the masses get. In three weeks, the dermatologist will assess the progress of the prescription. In three days, another specialist will try to assess the realities we face in terms of her vision and ocular function.

You see (because I didn't), right now has nothing to do with aesthetics and cosmetics. We are not at the stage of worrying about and addressing what she looks like and how people will look at her. The doctors are single-mindedly focused on her vision and the functionality of her eye. It is a real possibility that if this condition persists as is that she could be blind in the eye. It is a real possibility that the mass has compromised the muscles in the eye lid, the muscles surrounding the eye itself, and/or the bone around the orbit. Reconstructive surgery in the future will not just be about cosmetics but potentially about reconstructing functionality to her eye. Worst-case scenarios involve resetting her eye should it shift out of position once the mass is gone and dealing with an eyelid that does not properly close or open. The prospect is multiple surgeries taking place five and 10 years down the road.

That is what we are looking at. Whether it ends up being a minor surgery to remove masses that are 99.9% gone and a relatively minor cosmetic surgery to further beautify our little cutie or ten surgeries to restore bone, muscle, vision, and cosmetics compromised by resistant masses, we are going to go the distance with it, time be damned, cost be damned.

On the one hand, we are absolutely 100% honored to do this and endure the process. On the other hand, we love our baby, and we are only doing what any other loving parent does for their own.Thanks for your prayers and well wishes.

Canary in the Coal Mine

Cassidy provided an unexpected benefit recently. I had been feeling back a couple weeks ago, and then Shari, Zach, and Katie got sick. Their symptoms seemed pretty varied, so it was tough to diagnose anything across the board. On Monday, Shari told me she was going to take Cassidy to the doctor because she breaking out in a horrible rash. Her chest and back looked sunburnt, and it was on her face, behind her ears, and around her hair line. The second the pediatrician saw her, he diagnosed her without running a single test or taking a single sample: "Strep."

He then took a look in Zach's and Katie's mouths, and he proclaimed: "Strep."

He was then nice enough to prescribe antibiotics for all four kids.

Cassidy is still pretty snotty, but she's handling it okay. Her appetite is fine, and I don't think she's been any more persnicketty than normal. The good news is that she is now just under 22 pounds in weight, which means she has gained four pounds since we've had her. (On her tiny frame, that's a LOT...)

Someone Turned Two on the 18th!

Cassidy really enjoyed her first birthday at home! She made out like a bandit and really enjoyed having visitors. After she opened her presents, she quickly became possessive of everything she got. She kept everyone on a short leash but was nice enough to let me put her new baby stroller together. She is definitely all girl.