Seattle Children's & Father's Day

Seattle Children’s

June 17, 2012

Tomorrow is our first appointment with the Craniofacial center at Seattle Children’s Hospital. We check in at 11:00 am, and we’ll meet with six different doctors or specialists, finishing up around 2:00 pm.

We have never experienced Children’s Hospital, but we have heard many wonderful things about it. Two friends work on the nursing staff there, so we have some inside perspectives about how amazing it is. And even though it’s a little nerve racking to take a child fresh of the plane from China and begin the cleft lip and palate repair, it’s also a blessing to get going on the journey of repair, which moves Matthew closer to full health and development, especially with his speech.

I spent some time on the Children’s website today, looking up each of the physicians or specialists we’ll be seeing. And by the time I was done, I found myself in tears. Each face that came up on my screen seemed so kind to me, so wise, so caring. We’ll literally be putting Matthew into the hands of a team of people who will support him through two major surgeries (with more to follow in the future, likely) and all the healing, development, and new learning he’ll have to do.

Every doctor had such a child-centered philosophy of care—I felt grateful for the opportunity to work with this group of people, and I haven’t even met them yet.

We will continue to use this blog site as a place to update our friends and family on our adoption progress, including Matthew’s surgeries and healing. My friend Kaitlin will no longer be managing things, as I’m back in the U.S. and can do it myself. That also means we won’t be sending out any emails letting people know there is a new blog post up. But I will try to write a couple times each week, so if you are enjoying following our journey, I’d encourage you to continue stopping by when you think about it.

Also, if you have a blog reader program or have a Google account or some other way to read or keep up on blogs, please feel free to snag our blog address or sign up to “subscribe” to our blog.

We enjoyed a simple, sweet day together celebrating Aaron and my dad Bruce for Father’s Day. True to what you’d expect from the Pacific Northwest, our picnic plans turned to rain, so we huddled under a shelter to eat our sandwiches—but we had a blast. Just being outside was a delight.

Sweet Maya at the park

Matthew is playing and moving around so much these days

Sam comes out of the slide

Matthew's 2nd time on a swing--he loves it!

My two big kids!

Matthew's first Father's Day with a daddy to celebrate!

Waiting out the rain under the picnic shelter.

Maya, Sam, Bapa and Marmnie.