7 Months Home for Mila!

Mila has been home 7 months! Here is a little update on our superstar! 

Physical: Mila is 21.5 pounds! She has tripled her weight in 7 months! She doesn't even look anything like she did 7 months ago. She is able to sit on her own and starting to stand. She is figuring out how to get from her belly to sitting. She often stays awake in her crib practicing this skill! She often gets up on all fours and rocks and will also lift her body off the floor and push herself up on her hands and toes. Mila has her top two molars and her third tooth is coming in,which is a bottom molar. Very strange to get her molars first with no other teeth yet! Mila is typically not a fan of physical therapy because it's oh so hard for her! 

Social: Mila smiles a lot! She grunts to get our attention all the time! If she is in her jumper or high chair and one of us walks by she will get a big smile and either sign "more" or put her hands up for us to pick her up. She gets confused and thinks signing "more" works for anything she wants to communicate! She will let other people hold her but often reaches back for us. Mila LOVES Zoya and Zoya can almost always cheer Mila up when she is upset. She likes to play pat-a-cake and giggles when she is tickled. Mila also has a HUGE temper!! I suppose maybe that's how she survived so long. But do NOT walk away during meal time until her belly is FULL or you'll hear it! Even with her temper she has such a sweet demeanor. She likes being snuggled, held, and sung to. Her favorite song is still "Jesus Loves Me" which is the first song I sang to her at the orphanage. If I could hold her all day long, she'd be just fine with that!  She likes to try and make people laugh by making funny faces! She will watch a short Sesame Street video on the iPad and gets excited when she sees the iPad! She likes to play with any toys that make sound and have lights. She is starting to understand cause and effect with toys that have buttons. 

Medical: Mila has been very healthy! She has a cardiology checkup in a couple of months. Next month we go for hopefully her last airway appointment and swallow study. My hope is that the doctor will transfer her care to our local ENT since she hopefully won't need the help of an airway specialist after this last appointment (as long as all looks good). Mila will likely need glasses at her next eye appointment and possibly an eye surgery in the future :( Although, after open heart surgery and airway surgery, this doesn't sound so bad.

practicing her wave

Eating:  Mila is eating lots of table foods! She is a little piggy. We are having trouble finding a variety of foods for her, not for her lack of willingness to try, but because she is gluten free...which is not a big deal...the problem is that she also does not do well with rice. We recently tried to reintroduce rice, which is in MANY gluten free foods and it didn't go over well. I think the orphanage overdid it with rice too early on and her body just will not tolerate it! She was on rice milk in the orphanage and it was her only source of food. Hopefully she'll outgrow the rice thing so we have more options. For now she enjoys fruits and veggies, ground turkey, goat's milk with homemade bone broth as a base, pear juice, veggie sticks, coconut yogurt, sweet potato fries, mashed potatoes, grilled cheese (GF bread...now I need to find GF and rice free bread), corn pasta with red sauce, and many other foods. She is down to two 8-ounce bottles a day, one before each nap. She drinks pear juice from a straw cup. She will finger feed herself pieces of food like a champ! We are working on having her bring the fork to her mouth and figure that out! 

We call this her crazy face!

Here is one of the faces she does to try and make us laugh!

One of my favorite pictures!

Sleeping: Mila has come a long way in the sleep department, but try as we might, she will NOT sleep past 5:30/5:45 most days :( It doesn't matter what time we put her to bed, she is always up at the same time. I am SO NOT a morning person, so thankfully Daddy gets up with her most mornings until I can peel my eyes open and roll out of bed! She is taking two naps a day of about one hour each. This is far improved from the 20 minute naps we dealt with for so long!

And here is a video of Mila from sometime during our first month home I think...I had to keep watching it because I couldn't believe it was her! She was just a shadow of the child she is now!! Praise God!

And just the other day....

Looking at all her pictures, can you imagine this beautiful soul still living in an orphanage? She likely wouldn't still be alive, no, she definitely still wouldn't be alive....not because she was beyond help, but because she wouldn't have received the medical care that she needed to save her life and because nobody paid enough attention to her to figure out that she had underlying health issues that almost killed her.  Although she was being fed rice milk, there was no love behind the bottle, no love from the caregivers feeding her day after day. Her inability to gain weight was due, in part, to her health condition and poor nutrition, but also due to a lack of love and nurture. As you sit here and read this today, remember all the babies still living in such conditions, never knowing what love feels like, never being given a chance, never being snuggled and kissed and never being taken to specialists who can help them, never receiving therapy, never moving from their cribs and never ever experiencing a loving touch or sweet gaze from a mama or daddy. Never feeling valued or wanted.  WHAT.A.TRAGEDY. Looking at Mila (and Zoya) I can't help but remember what they came from and know how many other children are still in that same situation....children who haven't had a mama and daddy come for them yet....and who may NEVER have a mama and daddy.

On this 7 month anniversary, I praise God for Mila's life, her health, and for thinking us worthy enough to embark on such a journey with such a special little girl. But I'm also reminded of all the other orphans hanging on each day never knowing if life will get any better for them. For this little starfish we have made a difference, but what about all the other starfish waiting for their turn? They're DYING waiting for YOU to help!