Now that we are healthy we are trying surgery again.

Sarah will have surgery on the 17th. She will have tubes placed in her ears and her teeth worked on. Her teeth are awful. She has pitting cavities on most teeth. One tooth feel out in China and another is almost completely rotten. She doesn't complain much and loves cold things! I'm sure it hurts but she doesn't say anything and hasn't had food problems. One of her permanent teeth is having issues and another doesn't look promising. We are so glad we are here and can help her with these things. Thank you Lord. Also she starts speech therapy tomorrow and will go 2 days a week. Again we are thankful. She will be working on pressure sounds and be re-evaled in Oct to see if she will need her soft palate lengthened (most likely) and then surgery in Dec for that. It sounds like alot now that I type it but we are just thankful she is doing so well.

Not much else from us right now. Have a great week. -Becky

just another day.....

So we are just trying to recuperate from the flu and getting back to normal. Taylor is on spring break (preschool has spring break - smile) and he was excited about that. Taylor continues to grow in maturity. He is still whinny and reverts sometimes but he is starting to really act like a big brother. He's started helping Sarah with harder things and just looking out for her more. Thank you Lord!

They had a blast playing in the sink today. I was making dinner. Taylor started cleaning the sink (his job. He likes to do it) Sarah puts the dishes away for her "job" but there weren't any. She said "helper" with a sad face and looked at me. I gave them both a side of the sink to clean. A minute later they were laughing and had both sides half filled with water and bubbles up to the top. Taylor took his shirt off because he got it wet (imagine that) and Sarah pleaded with me to take hers off. They played for 30-45 minutes like that. Laughing, talking and playing together. It was so good to see.

Usually I have to take them to a room and tell Sarah to play with Taylor and she reluctantly does. As soon as I am out of the room she does much better. She would much rather be a "big sister" than a "mei mei" translated "little sister". I do tell her she is not a mama alot and she cries. She is really bossy if I am in the room and she looks at me and smiles every time she tells Taylor what to do. He tries not to let it bother him but his acting out moments later makes me think he is frustrated with her bossing him. Taylor can be ruff and she just wont have it; I understand where she is coming from. We are still trying to work with him to help him be gentle and not tackle her all the time. It's like he thinks she is going to like to play "tackle" and every time he comes wondering why she doesn't get it. Someday maybe????

Have a great week. -Becky

We have a visitor!

knock on the door.

who is it?

The flu

Sarah shut the door! No mama!

Sarah you are in for it!

Yep you guessed. Sarah has shared the Flu type A with us. Poor thing. She had 2 nights of 105 degree fevers and got the "cool bath" experience she wont forget. She now likes the Tylenol and Mortin she stuck her tongue out to before. I just checked her and for the first time in 6 days she does not have a fever.

Please pray that Taylor's lungs do well with it. He always get pneumonia with a cold so I can't imagine how it will hit him. He started the fevers 2 days ago.

We went to the Last Days of Jesus play tonight with the kids! Thad really wanted them to go. Atleast they were lethargic enough to go. I did have to explain about 10 times why Taylor couldn't take communion. He just kept saying mom I'm so hungry! It was a good conversation and I'm sure it's starting to sink into his heart. Sarah just looked at me with the can we go home look.

Taylor wasn't sure about why the disciple cut off the guards ear and why Jesus would tell him not to. Mom why would He put the ear back on! Again a good conversation for a 4 1/2 year old!

Have a great day. Please pray for Thad's cousin Jessie. She is having a horrible time with the flu and other struggles. Please pray for wisdom and grace for her. Thank you. She is like a sister to me.
-Becky

this is not how dental appointments usually go!

Hi there everyone.
I Just want to let you know about Sarah's appointment today. She went to the pediatric dentist in Hood River. We are not doing her tube surgery tomorrow but waiting until not this Thursday but next to do the tubes and dental surgery together. She will have at least one tooth pulled since it is "rotten" and eating at the permanent tooth. Then she will get her tubes. Great one less time "under the knife" by putting the surgeries together! I appreciate the Dr's working together since one works mostly out of The Dalles and the other is only in Hood River and they said they are not really doing this "team" stuff as much. So the surgery will be in Hood River. The pediatric dentist used to be apart of a cleft palate team: Praise the Lord! He was able to exam her and has done work like this quiet a bit; yeah!
So here is the thing that really shocked me today. The dentist asked "so how old is she?". I said 3yr 4months; why? So anyway he asked me "Who told us how old she was?" and long story short he said by looking at the x-rays of her teeth she is in her 4th year of life! He thinks she is 4yrs 4months old! It took me awhile to put it together. I did call our adoption agency and they did say they have seen it happen before with kids that are adopted after infancy. The agency asked several questions and they said, "Well, get her growth plates evaled at some point but it does sound that way (that she is older)". She does act like a 3yr old but that is actually more normal for a 4yr old that has been in an orphanage. She was evaled a couple of weeks ago and they scored her in the 3-4yr old range for skill development for kids here in the US so it makes more sense that she is 4 not 3. I was not expecting that today. (I had asked several people in China and some people when we got home if they had seen a 3yr old Chinese girl who was so tall - guess my assumption was right!)
What does it mean? not much. We will keep her birthday the same for now. It does mean that we will be looking at her bone grafting when she is "9" rather than 10. We will visit school age issues if they come up. We have some great people in our adoption group and there is a couple that has had the same age difference issues but theirs was more drastic (2yrs age difference) and we will chat with them to see if they have any advice. We are so grateful for the support we have here with the adoption group. We will chat on whether or not to get a second opinion.

So hope you have had a good day and we'll chat again soon, Becky

Easter comes early in Oregon

Today we went to Thad's grandparents. We had a great meal and Sarah got to meet many more family members. It was fun to see her so warm to everyone right away but that is just her. She even went to "uncle Rob" and pulled at his Santa beard. She's not used to facial hair since she is from China. She also had a hard time waiting for cousin Abby to wake-up but when she did Sarah ran right to the couch got up and put her arms out to hold her. Abby is 1 1/2yrs old but has a disorder that affects her muscle tone and ability to make "energy". Abby weighs 20lbs and Sarah weighs 28lbs so it was funny to watch her hold Abby. She truly loved it.

The kids had an Easter egg hunt put on by non other than Thad. Saturday while I was at work he and the kids died Easter eggs. Taylor was still asking tonight why it's "not really" Easter yet. We talked about what Easter means to us and that we will be going to the Easter story performance here in The Dalles.

Sarah was happy to get dressed up and Taylor asked why he couldn't wear his ratty shoes!

Sarah has a pediatric dental appointment tomorrow. We will see how that goes. Thank you Lord that she has been so good with people poking at her so far! Tuesday she will have tubes placed in her ears. Currently she has water that is not draining out and the tubes should help with that. Currently she hears like she is under water. No wonder when she talks her words sound like she is under water too. So we will start speech therapy soon. I am so thankful for the services we have here.

Have a great Easter (in 2 weeks) hope you are able to spend sometime pondering the amazing grace of Jesus and the miracle of His resurrection! Have a great week; sure hope we do!

-the Routsons

Quick Post

I forgot to mention the great day we had at the AWANA car race a couple weeks ago. Taylor won 2nd place in the race and 1st place for design. Sarah got 3rd place for the race and 4th place for design. The best part was as Sarah was getting her last trophy I noticed that another kid was not going to get a trophy. (Long story short they judge design before the race so who knows who will get what trophy) I looked at Sarah and pointed to the girl next to her and asked her to give it to her. She gave it without hesitation. I don't think she understood it all but I was glad to see her share a trophy. Then Thad saw a boy that didn't get a trophy next to Taylor. Taylor was already beaming at 2 trophys! Thad called out to him and had a little chat with him. Taylor (by himself) gave the little boy his trophy. We talked all day about giving to people who don't have what we have and the joy from giving what you have received to someone else. He asked us about it all day and sometimes got sad but in the end those race cars helped him (and Sarah I hope) to learn something more valuable than winning a race. -Becky

Surgery/Speech/Audio Eval Day!

So we had Sarah's appointment with the cranio-facial team at OHSU today. What a long day. First intake, then audio, surgeon, nurse practitioner, social service, then speech eval. It was great and lots of info. The team at OHSU is wonderful! Sarah will be evaled for ear tubes tomorrow due to fluid in her ears and have them placed here in The Dalles where we live. Taylor had them too so we have done it before: fun fun. She will start speech 2 times a week and then get evaled in 6months. At the eval in 6 months they will do a scope up the nose and down the throat to see if her palate can close. If not she'll have surgery in Dec for that. She'll have an anterior palate repair after her permanent teeth come in about age 10. She will wear a retainer to expand her mouth for about 6months before that surgery. She'll have bone marrow taken from her hip and put in the area above her 4 front teeth that is missing bone. We pretty much expected to hear just that. The surgeon said they did a wonderful job on her lip and she may not need revision but we will see when she is about 12 or so. She'll see the pediatric dentist next Monday in Hood River. Dentistry is where most of her repair will come since several of her teeth are black and horrible. One fell out due to decay already.

She did so great with everything today and everyone commented on how great she was doing with the exams. She barley moved (even though I could tell it hurt) when they looked with a scope in her ears. She has fluid in them. The speech lady said she was a wonderful patient and wanted to take her home with her.

Have a great week and thanks for all your prayers. We are so thankful to live in a country with such great access to the help Sarah needs. After being in China we see how blessed we are here.
-Becky

Cool thing today. At OHSU we saw 2 other Chinese adopted girls. One family sat by us and we only had about 2 minutes to talk. We found out they were in China the same time we were (they got their a few days earlier than us)! Their little girl is about 2 and had a palate repair also. I wish I would have gotten their number. It was nice to see them and chat. Thanks Lord for little things like that.