almost 6 months home

I can hardly believe it's been almost a month since I last posted! We haven't been up to much - just getting ready for the big surgery. I found out about a doctor in Minneapolis who has invented a procedure that could possibly stretch Wesley's native esophagus from his neck to his stomach. This would prevent the use of some part of his large intestine. We would prefer that Wes didn't have to recover from two large incisions, and the future complications that go along with that. Both types of surgery have positive and negative aspects to them, so it's tough to figure out.

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Please pray for us as we wade through the information and determine the best course of action. At this point though, the surgery is still on for April 17th.

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On a lighter note, the weather here in Ohio has been beautiful! I was at home yesterday, so I took Wes to the park to swing. He enjoyed it, but the wind got to him after a bit. While the weather was in the 60s, the wind was quite strong. I'm not sure if it's an orphanage thing or not, but Wes does not enjoy strong wind in his face. Well - no one really does, but it seems to bother him more than I would think. He is more comfortable with it than we we first got home, so maybe it's just not something he had experienced before.

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Since we've been home almost six months, it is hard to believe Wesley's progress!! He has grown over 4" in height and put on 13 pounds (he's now up to 30 pounds)! The little boy who was in the 1st and 2nd percentiles for height and weight is now in the 35th percentile for height and the 60th percentile for weight!! I just realized looking at his hands yesterday that they are starting to look more like adult hands. His fingers are longer and thinning out, which is good because for a while they were about as fat as they were long!

Wesley is also talking up a storm - not bad for a kid who only said one or two words six months ago. For quite a while he's been babbling nonstop, but now I can usually make out some of what he's saying. Sometimes it still doesn't make sense, but he laughs, so I think he's trying to be silly. I just laugh, so then he does it again. Wesley is using his new found speech skills to point things out to me constantly like "Mommy, dog" or "Mommy, meow" but the favorite is "Mommy, ball." The kid can notice any sort of sports ball from a mile away!! Looks like we might have an athlete on our hands.

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Damon and I have been taking Dave Ramsey's "Financial Peace University" class at a local church. What a great class!! We've have traditionally spent and saved our money wisely, but I was looking to take the class to encourage us to be more intentional about how we spend and save. So far it has been great. We are about to pay off my master's degree loans, then our home is the only debt we have. I have been so encouraged to hear of others in the class paying off thousands of dollars in credit card debt in the few weeks we've had class so far! I encourage everyone to check it out - according to the website, the average family pays off $5300 in debt while saving $2700 in the course of the class (13 weeks). That is over $615 a week. http://www.daveramsey.com/fpu/home I'll let you know how we did at the end of the class, but so far, so good.

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I promise to post pictures and videos this weekend. I've been trying to cut the birthday video enough to fit here, but no luck so far. It will probably have to be three separate videos you watch in sequence, but we'll see what I can do.

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It's finally Friday - have a great weekend!!

Staci