Another test today

Early this morning we headed over to St. Josephs to get a CT-Scan of Elizabeth's temporal bones. This could help a little in terms of the diagnosis of her hearing loss. It may or may not tell us anything--but it is important nonetheless. I may have mentioned before that there are syndromes that are associated with hearing loss and we want to rule those out. It may also help us in determining whether her loss is congenital or not.

I called the doctor from the hospital and his nurse said they won't have the results for a few days and we won't get in to see him until next Thursday--which means we may have to wait more than a week for results. Oh course I intend to spend a good part of today and tomorrow hounding the doctor's office to get them sooner. I am pretty sure he will have the results this Wed. and I assume that if we were high on his radar screen we might even know by tomorrow. What we need is a doctor in the family...and while you are at it make that one in every specialty!

The procedure itself went pretty well, save the fact thst she had to have anesthesia. And, she did spend part of her time at the hospital screaming for mercy and pounding on the glass door that kept us locked in the exam room. You had to feel for the poor thing. Once they gave her some sedative she decided things weren't so bad.

The CT-Scan lasted only 5 minutes and she recovered fast and managed to amuse the recovery rooms nurses with her chant "all done".

She is still a tad wobbly, but as the picture below tells you, she is making the most of her day by watching Barney reruns and eating some veggie cheese puffs and drinking Jamba Juice. Oh, she did manage to amuse hospital staff when she started screaming, "I want Jamba Juice" as we walked through the hospital.

Miss Chris

As usual I haven't updated the blog to reflect all the changes that have done on around here in the last month or so. And one of the changes is that Elizabeth has a new speech therapist...Miss Chris. As you can see from the photos that get along famously and Chris and we are lucky to have found her as she is the best specialist around, especially for children with hearing loss.

Elizabeth sees Chris twice a week and she is really helping her to catch up in the language department. As Chris explained, one the most important things we need to teach Elizabeth is "how to listen". When you have gone through your entire life without really hearing much around you, I suppose you just start to tune out most of the "noise" since it really doesn't make much sense.

Our main goal is to have Elizabeth at grade level in terms of language once she reaches kindergarten. I may be deluding myself (oh, yeah I have surprised myself recently with my ability to do that) but I think she will be fairly well caught up in a year or so. We shall see.

Pretend City

A couple of weeks ago I took Elizabeth over to Pretend City
(a.k.a. Kiddie Nirvana). Check out their website if you want to learn more-- pretendcity.org

Needless to say, she loved it. We got there at 10 a.m. and I had to drag her out at 12:30 owing to my own exhaustion. And you will gather from watching the video that the "amibient" noise was sort of a mixture between a rock concert and being a foot away from a building being demolished. For a girl who wears hearing aids, you'd think she would be a little uncomfortable. It seems, however, her ear buds are working pretty well since she didn't seem at all bothered by the noise. I, on the other hand, will wear ear plugs next time.


The ATM was her favorite spot at Pretend City--hey who could blame her? It seemed she had access to an account that had a fair amount of cash. You will also see that she is a tad upset when some of the money gets stuck in the ATM.



And here she found "her" stage. And she didn't want to get off of it. She just hopped up and stage and started singing and dancing with whomever and however. In this clip she seems to have hooked up with a "less than enthused" Backstreet Boy who decided that it wasn't good for his image to be seen with a 2.9 year old.



Just after the ATM, the gas station was her favorite place. She loved pumping gas. I didn't explain to her that it was unlikely she would all the cash she seems to like if she made that her profession. Oh well, as long as she is happy.

We got our girl two years ago today

Can it really be two years since we first laid eyes on Elizabeth?

Every day I am aware of the all the forces in the universe that had to come together in order for her to be placed in our arms on November 5th 2007. Here we were, three people, over 7,000 miles away from one another and somehow, suddenly, we were, almost magically, bound together for all of our days on this earth.

I often think of Lewis Thomas' words in his book "Lives of a Cell" and in his chapter, "On Probability and Possibility" he says, " Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise. We are alive against stupendous odds of genetics, infinitely outnumbered by all the alternatives who might, except for luck, be in our places."

Thomas also talks about the miracle of life and how we should all be shouting from the rooftops about it. That is true. And that is really how I feel about the miracle of our getting Elizabeth. If you hear anyone shouting from the rooftop today--it's me.

Happy Anniversary Day Dearest Elizabeth. We do love you!!!

AND HERE IS OUR POST FROM NOVEMBER 5th 2007

Lucky parents! We got our girl!

We are so thrilled and feel so lucky that Elizabeth became ours today! She is everything we could have hoped for and more!!!

The Girls at Halloween

So, yes, this year was a wonderful Halloween for Elizabeth...and it was just as much fun for us to watch "the little princess".

And how great was it that she got to spend Halloween Eve with three of her favorite buddies, Kaila, Megan and Mei Mei. We missed Emma who was home sick, but the girls managed to have a great time. I only wish I had a picture of Megan's mom Norma, who dressed up as Winnie the Pooh.

I love these photos of the girls...

Halloween at The District

Elizabeth and Kaila headed over to The District in Tustin to take advantage of some trick or treating. The only problem was that I got the time wrong...the trick or treating was scheduled between 3 and 6 P.M. and the girls were running into the shops and restaurants at 11 a.m. screaming, "trick or treat!". It worked to their advantage, however, since most stores hadn't even opened their candy stash so the girls got the pick of the litter.

It did take us a while to figure out that we were WAY too early. And we should have caught on when we saw that the girls were the only trick or treaters in the entire mall.

It was however a wonderfully fun morning and Kaila and Elizabeth were just happy to be together.

And, this wasn't their only Halloween escapade. On Halloween Eve, Elizabeth, Kaila, Mei Mei, and Megan all met up for a Costume Contest at the University Center. I have some photos of that but they are on my other camera and I haven't been able to download them yet--hopefully I will get to that tomorrow.

What a fun Halloween for the girls.


At one point Elizabeth and Kaila decided to stop and count their loot.



Here is Elizabeth making her way through the restaurant after we had to wake up the manager so that he could go into the back and get the girls some candy. As you can see from the empty tables--they weren't exactly expecting us.

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Dancing Girl