Sarah's update

Sarah here:

Steve has been doing the blog posting so far.  I have not had a few minutes to sit and type.  Or when I did have a few minutes, I was instantly asleep.  But it is 5:30 in the morning here, dirty laundry is soaking in the bathtub, Rachel is wandering around getting a snack and now is laying back down.  Everyone else is asleep. (I hope, Jonathan and Caleb are in another room, so I am hoping they are both asleep.) 

Things have been going pretty well here.  The first couple of days Lydia has been quiet and sad.  She was in an orphanage with relatively very few kids, so I think she was very loved and cared for.  I think she is greatly missing her old family and totally does not understand why she is forced to be with these weird looking people who don't even know how to speak correctly.  She has alternated preferring me or Steve.  The first day she would not look at Steve.  Yesterday she cried every time I walked close to her.  I fed her dinner though, and held her as she went to sleep. 

I was really praying that we would begin to see the real girl, that she would begin to be herself.  Well last night I was doing something like washing dishes and I heard her laughing in the other room.  Jonathan was playing with her and she was just cracking up!  All evening she was happy and acting like a two year old (like pushing the dvd player screen down when the others were trying to watch it).  She still tried to hide behind Jonathan when I got close, but we are getting there! 

She eats like a champ, pretty much anything.  She has been well fed!  She is rounder than Caleb or Rachel. 

As for physical problems, I am still worried about hydrocephalus, not because of anything I am seeing except a large head, I am just going to worry until we get home and have a ct scan.  She is walking very well.  However, Her eyes are not tracking correctly.  We had seen this in some pics, but did not really have any info about this except that "it is not a problem."  So, it is not a problem, she sees and functions, but something is definetly going on.  They do not track together all of the time, most of the time.  Sometimes they look like they are working together.  A little I have learned about this is that I think it is treatable and it might be worse when she is tired, so I presume also when she is stressed.  So maybe it will improve a little as she is less stressed being with us, but we will just have to find the right dr to help figure this out.  A new specialty that we haven't visited with yet to add to the list of specialists we know now.  

We are not doing as good a job taking pics this time.  Each one of us has a kid in our hands or arms all the time so it has made pic taking more difficult.  I am still glad we brought the little ones even though it is hard.  It would be so hard worried about them at home without us.  This trip was never meant to be a vacation........

More pics to come.  Thanks for praying for us and following along.