It has now been more than 6 months since we opened the cleft house. It was a good idea in the beginning to call it the cleft house, but it did not stay like that for very long. The very next month we added a whole lot of heart babies and the month after that more heart and cleft babies.
I just held Antonia, the oldest of the babies downstairs. It is amazing how much progress she has made. From an 11 month old who could not roll over or sit up, she is now walking. Tim, Bryan, Nadia, Nick, Clara and Stella are pulling themselves upright and are also crawling. Nadia is a two method girl. When she wants to move fast she does the army crawl and if does not have a dress in the way she will crawl on all fours. The house is busy with little rug rats and you have to be careful where you walk.
I looked at Noa who looked so sick when I took the Easter pictures and she is now as round as a ball. I love knowing just how different they look with all the love and the attention they all get. I love the unique hairstyle that Sadie has and the round cheeks she has. Six of the children have had their first birth day parties. Nobody thinks Clara is Chinese because she looks like a Mexican senorita.
Thank you to everyone who has helped, especially all the volunteers and the nannies who spend so much time with the babies. We have also done five cleft lip surgeries and there will be a lot of cleft repairs in October and one of my favorite cleft palate lip surgeons will be in China in November to do the double cleft lip babies. So Tim, Tina, James and Sophia (from the 5th floor) will be getting their double cleft repaired by Dr Lisa Buckmiller. We will be travelling en masse to Beijing for that one. Thomas is doing well and we are waiting to hear if his heart surgery successfully healed the specific part of his heart to prepare it for the second heart surgery. The other babies all have ASD's and VSD's and Dr Li, the thoracic heart surgeon suggested that we wait until all the babies are about a year old before we do the surgeries.
The piece of good news is that 13 babiesare ready for the next part of their adoption dossier. We will wait to get the adoption medicals done and then they will be off to Beijing. The next group is another eight and they are all from the first floor apartment. After that there is another big group from both the fifth and the first floor whose finding ads are in the newspaper right now.
Life, Love and Laughter,
Amanda
Starfish Children's Services
US Tax Number: 20-4682916
Xian China
At Starfish, we have taken care of 94 children to date, arranged more than 55 surgeries and had 21 international adoptions, so our little starfishes live all over the globe: the US, Netherlands, Norway and Spain and our latest adoption to France. We currently have 49 babies under the age of 3 at two foster homes.
www.thestarfishfosterhome.org
http://chinesestarfish.blogspot.com
http://chinesestarfishcleft.blogspot.com
chinese.starfishthrower@gmail.com
Cell: 86.1348.812.4847
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1 comment:
Oh, how absolutely wonderful..... I just sit here in awe of all the Lord has done and so thankful for all you do.
The babies are so precious and how exciting they are so close to being united with their families.
God bless you
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