Surfin' USA

Steve and I love the beach and for years we would talk about how one day we would bring our family to the sand and waves. This past week we took a short trip to Ocean City and made this dream a reality.

Natalie LOVED the beach! As you can tell by the pictures, she wanted to jump in head first and also loved playing in the sand. This girl has no fear. We spent two days playing by the water and then jumping into the pool. She did great sleeping in her pack and play (thanks Aunt Rhonda) and did pretty well eating. Restaurants are too distracting so we tried to feed her before heading out to eat. She loved standing on the balcony with us and pointing to the water, the airplanes, the seagulls and the parasails.

The beginning of the week was filled with doctor appointments and tests. We spent the entire day Wednesday at Fairfax hospital having a test done on her kidney. Next week we have two more tests and then the following week is filled with followup appointments with a urologist and a nephrologist. So far we know that her left kidney is barely functioning at around 7% and that her right kidney is scarred as well. Living with one kidney is not unheard of but we must do everything we can to make sure the right kidney can do the job of two and stay healthy. Please continue to pray for her as she endures some pretty grueling tests this week and pray that God will touch and heal her little body.

Before heading to the beach, we met with our International Adoption Specialist. He took baseline measurements and evaluated her developmental milestones. Overall she is functioning between 15 and 17 months, with speech lagging behind. He wants us to get her hearing checked to see if there is any issue there that would add to her lack of verbal communication. I can tell she is trying to imitate our sounds and she is beginning to follow simple commands like "please get your pants and let's put them on". Hopefully with our constant conversation and repetition, she will begin to add more words to her repertoire.

After hearing and vision tests, the urologist and nephrologist, we will be headed to the cardiologist and neurologist. There can't be too many more "gists" left for us to see! I am incredibly thankful for the level of medical care in our area and blessed that we are able to get Natalie the kind of care she needs. She was scheduled for surgery in Russia if we did not adopt her and it looks like the procedure they had planned would not have been a long term solution to her kidney issue. I praise God that she is with us now and I pray that He will continue to give the doctors here wisdom in how to treat her.

We are overwhelmed and blessed by our precious Natalie. Thanks for letting us gush over her with you!
Love,
Karen