Has it really been a month?

I realized late last night that it has been 4 weeks since Kylie was placed in my arms for the first time.  We have seen definitely progress since then.

I believe Kylie defnitely is bonding with us.  She is still reaching for random friends and family, but if given to them, she immediately reaches back for us.  Sometimes she doesn't reach for them at all.

She is eating like a champ.  She eats anything and everything and has just started to show her dislike for some foods.  She loves to eat whatever we are eating.

She has like 3 new teeth with 2 of them being quite visible on the bottom next to the two she already had and one near the top tooth she has.

We got several of the blood test results back already and everything was as it should be.  We had a test for a common parasite, giardia, which I know several children from her orphanage tested positive for.  We are still waiting on that result, but since she was in foster care, we are hoping she didn't have it.  However, we figure she probably does.  That can be easily treated with medication.

We have an ENT appointment scheduled for next Tuesday.  We don't anticipate any hearing loss, but some cleft kids do experience that due to repeat ear infections.  The international adoption pediatrician said her ears looked clear, so she might not even need tubes.  We'll know more next week.

She sleeps most nights only crying out 1-2 times and usually can be patted back to sleep in seconds.  Eventually, we'll move the pack n play to her room and then hopefully transition her to the crib.  Be we are taking baby steps so as not to regress.

I took her to church again this past Sunday.  She did very well, but overall, Sunday was a really unpleasant day.  She was whiny and clingy all day and then going to sleep was horrendous.  But then Monday was great!  She was happy all. day. long.  And it was just a good day. 

Kylie hates going to sleep.  She fights it and screams and cries both at bed and nap time.  My only guess is that she is grieving.  Unfortunately, there's not much that we've found that can help with that.  We just pray it gets better with time.

Today, we loaded up and drove into downtown Nashville to do a walking tour with Jenna's class at school.  The day ended up being overcast and cooler than we thought, but we did it and it wasn't too bad.  This made me proud because it's like we accomplished some milestone.  We didn't let the fact that we have a new baby in the house hinder us from doing something that was meaningful to Jenna.

And if you read this far, I'll leave you with a few photos from the last few days...

Lest you think she's always happy...