Nathanael's Big Success!

Then there was what happened today (Feb. 25, 2008).

Although he has been happier since transitioning out of casts and into his Mitchells, he has been very reluctant to do any walking. With every new set of casts, he would take about a day and would learn how to walk on them. But now, his feet hurt after three months in casts. There wasn't the cast there to be a support, and he was reluctant to put any pressure on them.

But the last week or so, we noticed he was in much less pain and we were starting to wonder if he would start walking soon. He was standing more on his feet and would walk some with our help, holding onto our fingers.

But today we had to go to Madison, to Lutheran Social Services, for a six month sharing meeting and we stopped at Stride Rite to buy him his first pair of real shoes, the shoes he can wear the four hours a day he is not in his Mitchells. We put the soft, extra-wide, shoes on his feet and he immediately got up and started walking, no assistance. He just smiled and off he went.

Here are the pics.

Operation Happy Feet, Stage 2

Pretty cool dude, eh?

Well, castings dragged on and on...into February. TEN castings! THREE solid months! Finally, February 8, he got out of casts and into his new shoes, his "Mitchells" (named after the man who invented them and customizes them to the feet he's helping to fix).

Still, as the photos attest, Nathanael kept his sense of humor. By the end of the time, his nerves were getting a little frazzled, but he's been a pretty happy guy since we got him out of casts.

Operation Happy Feet, Stage 1

Back in Guangzhou, when Nathanael underwent his "exit physical," one of the Chinese pediatricians asked us earnestly, "You do plan to address the problem of his feet?" Our answer was a heartfelt Yes. Of course, we will address that issue.

Jennifer had been researching the treatment of clubfeet and come to the conclusion that we would travel to Iowa City to the U of Iowa to visit Dr. Ignacio Ponseti, a pioneer in non-surgical clubfoot correction through casts. Dr. Ponseti is currently 93 years old and still sees 30 patients a week! Amazing.

On Nov. 2, the whole family jumped in the minivan (at 5:30am) and drove to our first meeting with Dr. Ponseti. By about 1pm that same day, Nathanael was in his first set of casts. We were told 4-6 casts and he'd be done.

Little did Dr. Ponseti know, however, how severely N's scar tissue from his surgery in China would affect his treatment. By mid-December it was obvious that 4-6 castings would not correct the position of his feet. It was also becoming obvious that one week between castings was not enough to continue to turn his feet. So we would have increased castings with increased time intervals between them.

Here are some of the pics from the casting period.

Six Months Later...

OK...OK...so we've been a little slow updating the blog!

Six months can really fly by, but that's where we are right now. Almost six months now since we adopted Nathanael. In the past six months, we have been teaching him English, straightening his feet, and generally loving him to death. That hasn't been hard to do. Not hard at all.

The most fun part of the past six months has been watching Matthew, Rebekah, and Emily dote on him. They have been outstanding as older siblings. Patient, caring,... We are so proud of them.

Today Nathanael hit a major milestone, but in order to understand the major milestone, you'll have to proceed to the next post.

Dan

For The Love Of All Our Children

Here was the scene in our home today, Nathanael's first day in his forever home.

Hooray For Lisa

Lisa Xi was our Holt staff person in Nanchang. She was tremendous and cannot be paid enough for all the wonderful work she did.

From what I could tell, she did it all. She took care of our adoption related paperwork, got us to our appointments in a timely fashion often first in the door, scheduled our Nanchang outings, helped us with our crying children, and was the most supportive, caring, and compassionate person I've had the opportunity to meet in a long time.

She loved our little Nathanael and said she was going to miss him. When we got off the bus at the hotel, only two hours before we got Nathanael, she commented how he looked like Jennifer. "Oh, your little boy, he's so cute. He runs and he jumps and he climbs." She always took the time to talk directly to him in Mandarin whenever she saw him. He loved her as much as she loved him.

People like Lisa make your trip a wonderful one.

Our Adoption Group

Here are pics of the some of the families and children we had the pleasure of traveling with.