My oldest daughter

Kylie turned 5 about three weeks ago.


She is one of my precious angels.





After trying to have a child for about 2 years and enduring at least two miscarriages, she is what became of our infertility treatments.





I can't believe it has been 5 years. I have to be honest, I think she is one of the cutest little girls I have ever seen.





She is starting pre school in about two weeks and she CANNOT wait!!!!

The earrings were a gift from dad. She doesn't have her ears pierced but she thinks she is a big girl and needed to wear them in her pictures.

Que the angels and glorious light from Heaven!!!

Our fingerprint appointment is on 9-26-08 at 8:00 in the morning!!! Praise GOD!!!!!

We are getting SO CLOSE!!!!!

Noah will be home so soon!!!!

a second post in two days...

UUGGHH,

I am a special education teacher, and I love it! There is never a dull moment during my days and my days are never the same.

I spend my days working with kids that need more help than just general education and making sure they are getting what they need.

What is this post about? Kaycee and her educational needs.

Kaycee has bilateral microtia, her ears are not formed on the outside. She has a mild to moderate hearing loss. She hears clearly - when things are yelled, you hold her ear to your mouth and talk at a louder than normal level, or she has her hearing aid on.

The first 24 months of her life, she heard muffled sounds, including 18 months of nothing but Chinese.

Kaycee needs a little extra in her educational setting.

So what exactly is the problem? We are having a hard time getting her into where she needs to be.

We live in a very small town in rural Colorado. We don't have an audiologist, school nurse or anything else like that at our school. We have to share these specialists through our BOCES - Board of Cooperative Education Services.

We have three deaf and hard of hearing preschools within driving distance, one about 35 miles away, one about 50 miles away and one about 65 miles away.

Of course, the one that is 35 miles away is closed to out of district students, as is the one that is 50 miles away. The only one that is accepting students from out of district is the one that is 65 miles away.

UUGGHH - here is my 2 year old, soon to be 3 year old. She has about 60% of her language by using sign language. The rest of it is oral and pointing, asking and the worst part - frustrating...

So we wait for the big transition meeting for Kaycee. To decide what to do with her preschool.

No matter what, some part of this is going to go away from the table not happy.

Unfortunately, I am a part of all of the parts...I work with everyone that will be deciding Kaycee's fate.

I got some really good advice from one of the experts that I work with...

Loyalty is something that should be taken with a grain of salt. The school can rebound from whatever is decided. BOCES can rebound from whatever is decided. But Kaycee won't be able to rebound from whatever is decided. Whatever is decided will affect Kaycee for the rest of her life.

Talk about pressure!!!

Just think, next is the decision about surgery!!!

And just think, when Noah comes home, we get to do the same thing for him!

An update on the adoption front

We received an email from our agency yesterday. All of our paperwork has been sent to the USCIS! WOOHOO!!! This means that we have to wait about two weeks for an invitation to be fingerprinted, then after that it is another waiting game for our fingerprints to come back from immigration.

Then, we send all of our paperwork to the state to be certified.

Then, we send all of the certified paperwork to our agency and they send it to the Chinese consulate to be authenticated.

Then they receive it back, and SEND IT TO CHINA!!

Seems simple enough. Shouldn't take too long.

Did I mention that it could take up to 3 months to get our fingerprints back from immigration?

Then did I mention it would be another 2 weeks to get things certified?

Then did I fail to mention it would take up to another month to get things authenticated?

HHMM, another 4 1/2 months?

I pray this is the absolute worst case senario...