Busy couple of days

Along with warmer weather comes the end of certain things and the start of new. Today Miss Julia graduated from kindergarten. Very bittersweet moment for me. As most of you know, I've been working extra to pay for our new minivan (which the kids have already trashed--but what else is new?). Along with that, I've been able to spend a bit more time chatting with my coworkers, many who don't know my history with adoption and what led up to it. So, alot have been watching the video of the Channel 3 broadcast and I've been reliving Julia's adoption. I keep thinking of what brought us to each other and how my life has changed in the past 5 years. Now I have the class of 2020, 2021 and 2022 living in my home. I told Ted today we should add one more and make it the class of 2023. Yeah--didn't go over so good. No--we are done. No more money, no more room in our house. Depending on how things go in our school district--we might have to move to accomplish the class of 2020 goal--in a decent high school. That really puts the brakes on any more adoptions.

So, after Julia's little ceremony, we finally took the baby gifts from Julia's birthday party to AFCH child life. Julia was excited. Then it was off to a speech evaluation for her. While I love my work in craniofacial--speech is something I am lousy at and working hard at getting better--but I honestly don't think my talents lie there. So, I asked the speech therapist, whom I think quite highly of (and they are all excellent) to evaluate Julia. I think I keeping hearing hypernasal speech--but I'm around her all the time. Well, low and behold, Shannon valiadated what I have been hearing. Basically, it means Julia's palate is too short and when most of us talk, the palate moves to make the air go out our mouth instead of our nose. Her air is going out the nose. So, she's going to start speech therapy offically next week. I hope to avoid surgery because depending on what needs to be done--there is a risk of her developing sleep apnea. This is the problem with me loving craniofacial so much and having 3 cleft-affected children--I know too much and it makes me nervous. So, we'll be busting our butts with speech therapy and everyone please say a prayer that the speech therapy works to resolve this hypernasality.

Alihan is growing too. Thank goodness for the warm weather because if his legs start growing--we literally live in shorts and swim trunks here. I won't have to worry about the high water pants issue for a while. I think Bubba might be growing too.

Here's a few pictures. I know, alot of Julia but she's been a busy girl. Julia is with her best school friend Anja. Of course, Levi is the best friend forever--but elementary school girls!!! One of Chewie on the slide with another girlfriend. Her brother plays soccer with the kids. Of course, we have to show off his new haircut too. And one of Bubba at soccer. Boy is he going to be a heartbreaker. Heaven help me!