Looks can be deceiving.

At first glance it looks like a sweet child sleeping in her car seat. While that is true, you must see how Lori and I see it. First, Norah never takes a nap at the house she goes 90 miles an hour all day, everyday until she just face plants it into the mattress at around 10 or 11 at night. So the fact that she falls asleep in her car seat is a cruel joke on Mom and Dad because we would like to have a nap too at home in a nice soft bed, not heading down the Highway doing 70.



Second, you must know what I had to pry from her hands to get this shot, that's right diet coke. It may not be the best thing for her but at least we are balancing it out with good old water. We have too or that is all Norah would drink.

You know you let your girls habit get out of control when Mom and Dad are sitting on the couch and their toddler comes down the hall in the morning with her eyes still closed and she signs soda-pop, like she wanted a little of the hair of the dog that bit her. Lord help us!

Christmas Decorations

I am trying new image size it seems to fit better so I think I will use it when I have time to post.

Preparing for her first Christmas.

We just got the boxes down to get ready to setup for this Christmas. Norah was happy to put her personal touch on the tree, we will post more photos when we are done. I am so excited that she is home this year last year at this time we had just gotten her referral and that was one of the best Christmas we had had in a long time this year seeing her reaction will be even better.

Happy Thanksgiving 2009

Norah helped prepare the deviled eggs this morning before we all headed over to Nana and Popies house. She did a fabulous job and the eggs tasted great.

Brandon is still hanging in there with the help of his pharmaceuticals from the dentist. The right side of his face is still pretty swollen but he is able to eat and drink without to much discomfort. He spent most of today snoring rather loudly on any one of the three available sofas.

We took an entire bag of crafts, movies and games over to Mom and Dad's house to try and keep Norah occupied. She is one busy girl. If her energy isn't directed into appropriate activities it gets used on things that maybe it shouldn't. We are all so thankful to have Norah here for her first of many Thanksgivings. There was an exceptionally long wait for Norah but she was worth every second. We are also so thankful for the way that our family has just accepted and loves Norah like she has been with us forever. We have so many things to be thankful for this year. Let's just say...we are truly blessed. It is as simple as that.

Norah could NOT wait to eat. Dad said that he turned around and she already had some ham on her plate cutting it up with her fork and knife. We just let her fix her plate and eat. She is just four after all, why should she have to wait on all these big people.

After lunch and some movies a huge assortment of flowers were brought out to prepare for my brother and his fiances upcoming wedding. We all (my Mother, Mildred (MIL to be), me (Lori), Bronwyn (fiance), Glen, and Eugene (my Brother) ) whipped them into shape and talked about what all else needed to be done.

Who has six, that's right six, wisdom teeth?

The boy that's who. Brandon had his wisdom teeth removed on Tuesday, all six of them. He said he read somewhere that only 3% of the population has six wisdom teeth. Lucky Brandon. He was a little nervous going in and VERY talkative when he came out due to the anesthesia. You couldn't understand anything he was saying but he was real talkative anyway. Here is his "before" picture. This is the after picture. His left side swelled a little bit more but really doesn't look to bad. We made sure that he had lots of yogurt and his favorite, flan to eat for that first day. He has done really well and has a follow up appointment next week.

The Connected Child author speaks.

Dr Karyn Purvis will be speaking at The Summit Church in North Little Rock tomorrow and thanks to the heads up from my FCC group, Lori and I will be going. This book has helped Lori and I, many of our friends in the adoption community, as well as others who have adopted to prepare for what was to come. I can remember sitting in China at a table full of parents, excited about finally meeting their children in the coming days. Norah was the second oldest child being adopted in our group. When one of the parents asked me how I thought Norah was going to act on adoption day, I said I wasn’t sure, she could come to us and give us a hug or she could come to us kicking and screaming and try to bite us. Some of the parents laughed and I said I’m serious. Well with Norah both happened on adoption day. Norah came to us laughed, giggled, fed me cheerios and played with Lori. Then when it was time to leave the kicking and screaming and trying to bite us began and lasted through the family photo and the long walk back to the hotel, finally ending at the water fountain outside our hotel. I hope anyone going to China or any other country to adopt an older child reads the Connected Child, and talks to different adoptive parents who have adopted older children. I know it helped us be prepared to help Norah and gave us some understanding as to what she was going through. It also gave us the tools we need to help her work towards a strong, healthy attachment to both her mom and I. She is doing so well with her mom and I. I will write a post about how far she has come soon. I Look forward to meeting Dr. Karyn Purvis tomorrow night

Yard work and up date from Fridays CI appointment

It was soon nice this Saturday we went out to do some yard work, it has rained so much lately that we were way over do for some cleanup. Brandon did the tree trimming this year because my back is still giving me fits, I go in for more work on it soon hopefully it will help.

Norah playing at a birthday party for a little girl she knows.



We meet with the Person from Cochlear to help get a new CI program for Norah and between her and Norah’s CI audiologist they gave her a new program. This gave Norah not only more sound but also her dynamic range went from 18 to 30, with 40 being the top of the dynamic range her CI can produce that is a good jump. Dynamic range has to do with range of sounds Norah is able to hear from the softest to the loudest.
Norah will be tested again in the hearing both in one month to see how she is doing with this new program. And the other good news is if she needs it the new program still has more room to go up if needed they will try to get her in the lowest program that will provide her good sound and only move up if needed. Doing the at home listing practices with Norah and Lori, I was doing the ling sounds, and also calling Norah’s name at a whisper she heard me every time it was wonderful to see her turn her head when she would hear me call her name at a whisper. We look forward to seeing what the hearing test results will be and see if there is an improvement form the last one of 60-50-40-50-60, I know I can see a difference at home she was playing at the kitchen sink and there was a bowel of water in the bottom and she told me to come look at it because she herd the water dripping into it.
Another thing she is starting to do is babble like she is talking to us, which is really good for development and use of her tong, mouth, and throat mussels. I don’t know for sure if Norah will ever be able to speak or comprend speech close to the way her mom and I do, but she is still willing to work at it and so are we. Sounds in Norah’s world are starting to have meaning to her as well now (a nock on the door, a car going by, the dryer buzzing when finished, the sound of her dad laughing at her antics) and she just got her CI activated 8 weeks ago and got it programmed up to a good hearing level last week so she is doing so good.

Norah edges upward in her hearing.

We were going to meet with a specialist with Cochlear two weeks ago to help map Norah's CI processor, but the person we were going to meet had H1N1 in their house so it got canceled. So me and Norah kept plugging along with listening practice at home and on this Wednesday we went into the booth at Children’s hospital knowing Norah was hearing better.
She did great, her hearing test went 60-50-40-50-60, with voice recognition at 35 DB . Considering a whisper is 30 DB that's pretty good, and she has never heard that well before and has never had voice recognition lower then 50 DB. So we are on the right track! We are going to meet with the specialist from Cochlear this Friday to help with a map to try to get her more sound and I am looking forward to what they have to say. Norah’s couple of words she now has are starting to take shape bye bye now sounds just like bye bye. That still is the only word she knows well and uses regularly. We are working on producing sounds with our mouth right now then we will turn those sounds into words that have meaning, same way we did bye bye. We are constantly adding new words to our signing and it is getting easier to sign, although I still find myself stuck when a word comes up that I don’t yet know, it gets better every week.

Norah's First Halloween

Norah really got inot the pumpkin carving. Her cute little pumpkin soon turned into something that would fit right into a Tim Burton movie. We just pluncked a candle down in it anyway and called it perfect. Luckily we got a picture before the massacre occured.

She loves doing Glen's hair. If we could only convince him to grow it out she might be able to get a ponytail holder in there.

On Halloween Day we made banana bread and a pumkin pie. Well Norah made them I just dumped ingredients in and put things in the stove.
Then we went Trunck or Treating at my parents church. It was great and Norah was super excited that people just handed over tons of candy when she smiled at them. There were also lots of games to play and prizes to collect. Once we got back home, where Jess and Brandon had been handing out candy, Norah got to listen for the knocks at the door and pass out candy to other children. She was extremely generous and made short work of the candy bowl. In between handing out candy she spread out her haul from the night and started chowing down. We can't wait for next year. She will have a better idea of what to expect and should REALLY get into it.