Update April 22

Shiyan has been fighting a cold this week. She is doing better now but has not been eating well this week. She has overcome her fear of grass and has enjoyed being in the yard this weekend. She takes every opportunity to be out side now.

Laura is turning into a great big sister.

Shiyan is learning new words every day but communicating is still tough at times. The other big challenge is that Shiyan hates to go to bed at night and fights sleep for hours.

We will try to provide another update next week.

Doctor Update

Well today we went to meet the cardiologist for the first time. The staff at the hospital and the doctor were absolutely great. The doctor was so good with Shiyan that she fell asleep during her echo cardiogram.

To quote the doctor "her condition is very complicated but her body has compensated" She does have Dextocardia (Heart reversed and on right side), one ventricle is smaller than the other but it is there so that is a major answer to prayer. She is getting good oxygen and overall is doing very well. There was a hole in her heart at one point but it is healed, we are very thankful for that too.

The current plan is to do another checkup in 1 month and then later this year to come back and do a heart cath on her to get more data from the heart.

We give thanks to God for the fact that she is doing so well and the fact that we are not facing procedures in the immediate future. We will post some new pictures on the site in the next few days.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter everyone. We had a great day. Shiyan is doing so well, she seems like she has always been here with us. Our first doctors appointment went well and everything looked good. We go to the cardiologist this week and will learn more at that time.

This morning our Sunday School class had a welcome home Shiyan party for Easter. Our friends showered her with welcome home gifts. Shiyan was great in church today, she moved around a bit but overall was great.

She learned about hunting Easter Eggs today. She does not like walking in the grass so had to be carried a lot.

We got back the first 450 photos to start building our photo albums from the trip. The photos turned out great now to the task of putting the books together.

We will update the site later this week after the cardiologist appointment.

Thanks for checking in.

We are home

Well we made it home pretty much on schedule. We had a slight delay on the final leg but that was fine.

Aaron managed to get hand screened again in Tokyo, can't believe he was selected both times at that airport. The girls did very good with the exception of Laura's melt down on the final leg. She got into a deep sleep and did not want to get up so had a bit of a tantrum at the airport.

We all slept good last night and Shiyan seems to be right at home here. She went to her room and started playing with toys.

Thank you to everyone that met us at the airport and that has helped in any way. Elizabeth, dinner was great, Kellye and Joe, thanks for everything, breakfast is in the oven. All our friends have been great to help in so many ways.

We will update later this week with more information from the doctors and a post trip summary.

Thanks for following along.