Thursday in the Hospital

Today has been another long day at the hospital.  They wanted this day to give her more antibiotics to fight whatever infection she has.  I can’t remember if I wrote that they said it was not a urinary tract infection, but whatever the infection is,  it is minor enough to fight with the meds she is currently taking.

I have never come up with more creative ways to play with a four year old in my life, while cooped up in a hospital room.  I mean, there are only so many places you can hide for hide-and-seek.

One thing I am trying to do with her is work on her walking skills.  She reaches up to be held a lot!  I am trying to get her comfortable with her walking.  As I have mentioned before that she walks very much like Katy Pierce, my 17 month old.  It is very apparent that she has never been given the opportunity to be active, and build strength.  I kind of imagine her being put in a spot and told to stay there.

But she is “running” free now.  Scott and I can not get over how much her walking has improved in a week.  She still has a stiffness when she walks, but she is getting faster.  She can’t run or jump yet.  And tonight, we tried walking on our tippy toes, and she doesn’t quite have that down yet either.  She is also visibly knock-kneed, so that may have something to do with her walking a little stiff.

I played lots of games with her today where we would walk as fast as we could from one side of the room to the other.   We did some squats together, marches around the room, and danced.  In fact, there is this commercial on TV that comes on it seems like every 5 minutes, with some great music and there are kids dancing around.  No matter what we were doing at the moment, the commercial would come on, and we would join in the dancing.  She loves to dance!  🙂  But, I was just trying to engage her in as much physical activity as possible.

Today was a little rough on the behavior side.  It is really hard to find a balance right now of how to handle her when she misbehaves.  I have read all about some good strategies, but I just can’t recall it all.  Scott and I feel she was probably in a very strict environment in the orphanage where she lived in fear of messing up.  But when she got to us, she found this new freedom, and man she is trying to push all of the boundaries.  This is hard, because we have no structure right now with our schedule.  And, it is also hard, because we can not fully communicate.  However, I know she understands completely when I say no, and she continues whatever it is she was doing.  She is not throwing tantrums, as of yet.  She just keeps on doing whatever you ask her not to do.

 She did sort of tear up today when we had a battle over the potty.  She thinks it is funny to be picked up and put on the potty, even when she does not have to go.  But after about 5 times it just gets old.  So today after taking her five times, and she just laughs and plays…  I told her no, and I just held her down on the toilet.  She thought it was funny at first and she laughed.  But then she realized, Mommy was not playing, and she teared up a bit.  But guess what, she didn’t do it the rest of the day!  I am sure I did something wrong in that process, that was not Dr. Purvis approved…she is the writer of the Connected Child… but right now I am having a hard time of balancing loving her with the correct discipline, when I can’t communicate the discipline to her very well.  I am sure in time it will get easier and better.  Plus being shut up in a room all day is super boring for her and for me…so she was just pushing all the buttons today.  Regardless of the discipline issues, we can’t get enough of this cutie!

She is such a chatterbox.  She talks to us like we know exactly what she is saying, and she has this cute little voice.  She is high energy, and a people person.  Every time a doctor or sister (that’s what they call the nurses) came in the room, she just runs to them and hugs them.  And they eat it up!

She is funny too!  She is always making silly faces, and acting silly.  Tonight I found out she is a tattletale… She was eating her dinner, and I took a bite of it, and she went and told Scott on me.  So I took another bite, and she told on me again.  Then I quit eating her food, and she offered me a bite, and when I ate it, she would still go tell on me for eating her food.  This kid cracks me up.  All I can think about is how much she and her siblings are going to love being with each other.

I have mentioned before that everyone is fascinated with our adoption here.  Each day we have done some kind of interview about our adoption… How we chose India; How we chose our daughter; And how did we choose Star Hospital.  Dr. Gopi who is helping us with this procedure, has a foundation here in India much like  the  baby heart.com foundation that has helped us financially with our surgery.  I think most of the interviews are from people in his foundation.  But today, it was cameras and microphones.  We are making it big here in India.  🙂

We had three different doctors come by the room tonight and verify with us that we are having the procedure done Friday morning (tomorrow).  The funny thing is they all gave us three different times ranging from 7am to 11am, but they all did say she is “to do the fasting” after midnight.  🙂

Please be in prayer for little one.  We feel confident everything will be okay, but would love to bathe it in prayer!  Also, Baby Shlok…his Mom came by our room last night and visited for a bit.  They still are waiting to see how his we will recover from the heart surgery he had.  But Dr. Gopi told me he is doing much better.    She asked that I convey her gratitude to all of my friends praying for Shlok.  She says the prayers are working and she is thankful.  We are hoping that her baby will be moved to the PICU on Friday.  He is currently in a PICU, but it is a higher level than the one we have been going in.  She said she was told maybe Friday.  If that is the case, she and I will be in there together tomorrow, because Lyla will be in there after her surgery.

Getting her bath today

Eating food off the floor.  We are working on not doing this, but she does not like to waste food.

Playing with her Scentsy Buddy.

Love

This picture below is from dinner.  Her food came in a thermos with the metal canisters inside.   It just looks like something from back in time to me.  Also this man came in the room today and asked the spray the bathroom.  I am not sure what he is spraying for, but his metal canister looked like the oil can from the Tin Man in Wizard of Oz.  I just love the differences in our cultures.  They are entertaining to me….most of the time.  🙂