God is so GOOD!!!

I apologize that it has been so long since I last updated. Between homeschooling, church, laundry, doctor's appointments, and plain out life with three little ones there is little time left for blogging. We have been home almost 7 months now, and things are starting to fall into a routine, and hopefully I can find some time to keep up with the blog. As a quick update things are going wonderfully. We could not have asked for a better transition for Molly. She is such a blessing to have in our life! Paul thinks she is the greatest thing in the world. Zach is not so sure. He still really enjoys being the baby, and is not certain about being kicked out of that position. His behavior regressed a little right after we got home, but for the most part he has gotten back to his pre-Molly self and is adjusting to life as a middle child. Fortunately, for him, Mommy is a middle child so I can sympathize with his plight!

Now a more specific update on Molly, and her hand. First, a short recap -- One year ago next month we were given Molly's file to review. We prayed about it talked to our pediatrician and one week later we knew that this was to be our daughter. After we accepted the referral we waited for China to tell us we could come get her. In our research as we waited we knew that we might get to China and find a baby that was sicker then the paperwork said. There were many syndromes associated with radial club hand (what we now know is the term commonly used for Molly's condition) Fast forward 4 months. We met Molly, a very healthy and happy 11 month old for the first time in March of this year. We were and are continually amazed by her. Fast forward again to June. We went to a hand surgeon to get an opinion on Molly's hand, and what type of corrective surgery we should pursue. We discussed our options as far as that was concerned but he also told us that we would need to see a geneticist to make sure Molly did not have any syndromes commonly associated with radial club hand. I had researched some of the syndromes and felt pretty comfortable that she was not in danger of having many of the more complex syndromes. She is a healthy child, and most of the problems would have shown up by now. Fast forward again to today--finally our appointment with the geneticist (by the way this is apparently the field to get in to, because they are drastically short of genetics docs and we had to wait 4 months to get an appointment). The geneticist did a physical exam of Molly and gave us a list of things that our pediatrician will need to get done. We talked with the geneticist for quite some time. She looked Molly over pretty good. She told us that in her 25 years of experience she has only seen 1 or 2 patients with radial club hand that don't have much more severe things to worry about that would have been very evident by now. We left there feeling so blessed that Molly is so healthy. We took a leap of faith in knowing that she was our daughter, and God protected her! Yes, we do have to have a few things tested to make sure there aren't any underlying issues, but overall she is healthy. We jumped in to this adoption knowing that God would give us the child that we were supposed to have (He did with Paul and Zach and we knew He would take care of us on this adoption as well). We had no idea when we accepted Molly's referral that there could be a plethora of other problems very commonly associated with her wrist and hand abnormalities. We are so blessed to have a healthy baby girl! For that matter, we are so blessed to have three wonderful, amazing, healthy children! God is so GOOD!!!

We do need to have one test completed before Molly can have surgery, so please pray that we can get that test done quickly, her surgery is currently scheduled for November 7.

I will try and post some updated pics in the next couple of days.

Michelle