Lily's Photo Shoot

So...which one's your favorite?? :)

Time For An Update!

First things first....

It's A Girl!!!!

Lily is going to have a baby sister :)

The last few weeks Lily has had a communication explosion. She has mastered signing "more" (FINALLY!) and uses it for everything. She will come to me when she wants something and sign "more"...sometimes I have no idea what she wants!! But still, this is a HUGE breakthrough for her: she knows that if she wants something, she can come to me (or Rob) and tell us. 

Last weekend we went to visit the Suttles family. They adopted Alanna from the same orphanage just a few months before we adopted Lily! We joke that Lily and Lanna are former roommates :)  While we were visiting, Cara (Lanna's mom) got a few great pics of Lily:

Love these!

Lily giving Lanna a hug :)

We took Lily to her ENT doctor last week and she is scheduled to have a full sedation on Dec. 7 so they can clean out wax, drain fluid, possibly place tubes if the fluid is really thick, and do an ABR (auditory brainstem response) hearing test. Her behavior-based hearing test in September indicated some mild hearing loss (which we suspected), so we are hoping it's just fluid/wax. I'm also hoping that this will help her speech/language development when she can hear properly.

My Friends Are Adopting!

I'm so excited to share this with all you Lily-fans out there...another family from our church is adopting internationally!!! We were the first family from our church to do this, so we are excited to maybe have started a trend :)

Please check out their blog: http://ohausblog.blogspot.com/  They are adopting a girl from Ethiopia and have a *lot* of funds to raise. If you can help them in any way, it would be SOOO appreciated.

Peek-A-BOO!!!

About a week ago, I got SUPER lucky enough to catch Lily playing peek-a-boo on video! This is also the first (and thus far, only) time she has smiled and laughed while playing peek-a-boo with the laundry basket. Playing peek-a-boo is a developmental achievement for Lily--we've been working on it with her ever since we got home 14 months ago!

Enjoy the video :)

Lily Has A Big Announcement...

Yup, I am PREGNANT! Due March 7, 2013 :)

Baby StClair at 12 weeks:

Some people have asked me if Lily knows she is going to be a big sister. Uhmm.....no, lol. She barely understands "No", she definitely has no clue about the baby. But she's very easy going, so we don't really anticipate any problems with jealousy, etc. The only problem I can foresee is if I'm holding the baby and she wants me to pick her up and I won't be able to. So I plan on using a baby carrier for new baby as much as I can, so that both hands are free for Lily :)

Preschool

A few people have asked what our plans are for preschool for Lily. She will be starting in two weeks (I CAN'T WAIT!!!), and will be going Mon-Thurs mornings. She will have a para (one-on-one aide) and also get all her school-based therapies there (physical, occupational, and speech therapy). It's going to be great! I have been looking forward to it ALL summer.

I have felt like this summer was hard, not having any therapies or school environment. I really don't think it's best for Lily to go all summer with nothing. So, next summer will probably be different :). I don't know exactly what I'll be able to work out, since summer school has been completely cut from the budget, but there's got to be SOMETHING, maybe some camps?? We'll see. Right now I'm hoping and praying that she makes a lot of gains this school year.

Still Here!

First of all, thank you for all your comments recently wondering if everything is ok with us and Lily. Everything is just fine :)  I've just been...out of blogging mode. I don't know why. But it was nice to keep getting comments and I feel I owe everyone at least a quick update.

Lily is doing great. She has been pretty healthy all summer, and has really taken off with walking. She prefers to walk over crawling now, and now that she has mastered standing up in the middle of the floor without holding onto anything, she walks whenever she wants to go somewhere. She still isn't great at standing, and her gait is pretty clumsy, but she's getting better. We've been hitting physical therapy really hard this summer, in hopes to get her walking really well before preschool starts.

The only problem we're having with walking is that, since she is still fascinated with textured surfaces, she often wants to plop down in the middle of the sidewalk or parking lot (or street--ack!) so she can touch it. Obviously that can be a safety issue, so we are exploring getting a handicap tag so that we can park closer to wherever we're going.

This summer we've also been working on teaching her to drink from a straw, and she's doing really well with that. No more sippy cups!

In June we took swim lessons and Lily loved them. She LOVES the water. We might take some lessons again in the fall, too.

I'll leave you with a recent picture--her hair is getting so long!