One month since Gotcha Day. (Mostly by Tim)

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One month ago we first met Jaden.  I had to pause as I typed that and consider it ... it seems hard to believe that it has already been a month, but it also seems so hard to believe that it has only been a month.  It is difficult to remember a time when we did not have our three children

One thing is for certain though:  each day has been a blessing, and each day we have been blessed with Jaden's amazing smile!

 

Our transition has gone smoother than any visions we had.  Tracy had done so much research and reading and had followed many adoption stories, so we had heard about the multitude of challenges / problems that other families had experienced.  We read, though, and talked a lot about how we would handle various issues which might come up during Gotcha and in the days following this and also issues that might come up once we got home.  So far things have gone much smoother than we could have ever hoped.  All along we have been incredibly blessed!



One issue that we are having to address is his dental status.  As we got pictures during the months of waiting, we were able to see dental problems developing including his two front teeth.  Well, when we got home our dentist took a look at him.  Jaden did great with that visit (kuddos to Dr. Yaerger and Jayme ... their office was great!), but our dentist recognized that it would take multiple visits to get his cavities all addressed and recommended that we take Jaden to a pediatric dentist.  He recommended someone in Tulsa, so we took Jaden there last week.  Jaden really likes to flirt with women, and the pediatric dentist is a young lady so that helped.  Their office was great, too, and Jaden did really well there.  In fact, they were surprised at how well he did, including letting them take x-rays without any problem.  He tends to get a little nervous in any type of medical settings (due to his two prior surgeries while he was still an orphan), and it was an extended exam.  They took lots of time with him, then did the exam, then the x-rays, then we reviewed the x-rays and talked about options, and then they had to deal with our insurance company.  Well,  after about 90 minutes in the room Jaden was ready to GO!  He was not being difficult, but it was clear that he was getting more and more nervous.  We finally set up the treatment plan and we were free to go ... Jaden did his happy dance when we left the office and danced all the way to the parking lot.  When we got to the car he kissed it.  He was very happy to be able to ride away from there!

The dental treatment plan includes six root canals (four full and two partial) plus two other cavities that will be filled.  This will all be addressed in one visit by having this done at St Francis Hospital in the surgery suite.  While we don't like the idea of going to surgery, I do not think that it is reasonable to expect him to sit through six root canals over the course of four visits.

One of the other things that the dentist recommended is that we floss Jaden's teeth to prevent further development of cavities in some at-risk areas .  What 3 year old wants to have his teeth flossed?  Jaden Sanford, that's who!  He loves it, and will even bring us the dental floss sometimes to get flossed!

Jaden is facing the daunting prospect of having to learn an entirely new language, but he seems to take learning new things in stride.  His pronunciation of English words continues to improve every week, and he is understanding even more than he is able to say.  At the same time, though, he is losing his Mandarin, which is sad to see but is a necessary part of his development; at times he gets stuck on a Mandarin word and will either repeat one word over and over or will pause.  He hasn't lost all of his Mandarin, though.  In fact, he recently he made a pun using English and Mandarin together.  We have been spending more and more time looking at books / reading, and the other night I used Google Translate to tell him that "later you and I will look at books together" which translates as "houlai wo he ni yiqi kan kan shu" ... "kan kan shu" means "look at book" ... the word for book is "shu" which is pronounced just like "shoe"... well, he grinned, pointed to my shoes, and said "kan kan" (look) and then started cracking up ... basically he was making a pun using two languages, saying he was looking at my shoes already :-)