it's definitely love

I had the girls all to myself today - it was amazing! Rosie really opened up to me today. They both called me mom all day! At one point Maggie asked when daddy was coming home. It's insane how good it felt to hear them call us by those names. I thought it would take months. They must know how much we love them. Tonight's the last night we have to sleep in separate houses - thank God!

I took them to the park, to meet Aunt Ali, to see the pool, and showed Rosie the outside of her new school. They like it here. They like all the walking paths and lakes. Tomorrow I have to take Rosie to get some uniforms, shoes and a backpack. We had a wonderful day! Riley is such a good big sister. She helped paint their nails and blow bubbles. She and Rosie played Barbies for quite a while too. This is the life i've always dreamed of!!

Rosie showing a little personality while Maggie takes pics

Mags took this - its me and Kasheena, our case worker

They loved the park

Rosie on her scooter

My girls - minus Riley, she was at school.

time alone

We got to spend the day with the girls at our house yesterday. I had them alone for 2 hours, which was wonderful! When they walked in the door, Maggie ran to the backdoor to see the dogs and Rosie (who wants to change her name RIGHT NOW) looked around and said "I like it." We spent the first 30 mins outside with the dogs, then came in because they wanted to watch Spongebob, because they aren't allowed to with their foster parents. Me being the rebel that I am, allows Spongebob :) Maggie kept sitting in my lap and loving on me. Rosie is still feeling us out. With her being older, it's probably going to take some more time before she opens up, but we'll be here when she's ready. Riley was in heaven, she loves being a big sister! She helped them at dinner and played with Rosie a lot, which should help Rosie come around. I'm already madly in love with these little girls and can't wait for them to feel the same about us!

She fell in love with Bubba, but who doesn't ?

Maggie and her mouth full of gum. 

Maggie took a pic of her eye.

Watching Spongebob. Maggie wanted to put on some of her new pj's. Daisy is busy watching the chips on the table.

She loves to dress up!

Still watching  Spongebob!

My heart is in 3

We have 3 daughters!! We have been waiting for this day forever! We really only thought we would be adopting one child, so 2 is a huge surprise! These girls are amazing and it seems like they were born to us. We all clicked from the get go. When we first met, I was expecting them to be shy, maybe even a little resentful towards us, but it was nothing but smiles, hugs and jokes. They, of course, fell in love with Riley. They will definitely be looking up to her, which is great b/c she's a great girl to look up to! Rosie is 6 and she is a sweet, kind of shy, reserved little girl. She only eats pizza, macaroni and spaghetti. She hates all veggies and fruit. She's not going to be to happy when she sees how we eat :) Maggie is 4 and she is loud, hilarious, mischievous and loud! She too, only eats pizza, macaroni and spaghetti but throws in some cereal for breakfast. If food is our only challenge we'll be lucky. We are expecting some turmoil, it's only natural, but we are pretty prepared to handle it. We're just so happy to have these girls join our family. And I have to add that Evan is truly one of a kind. He has already handed his heart over to these girls. Very few men are willing to adopt 1 child, let alone 2 older kids. Now, let's see if I can get these girls to eat healthy!!

Maggie cheesin' for the camera - Rosie was playing on my phone

Maggie took this pic, you can see her thumb in the corner

Me showing Maggie how to take a "self portrait"

Maggie, me, Riley

Me and Rosie

Bad blogger...

I know I haven't updated, but things have been crazy. Riley had her scoping on Tues, which showed nothing. Nothing worse, but a tad better. We are waiting on the pathology reports to tell us more. On Wednesday I received a call from our adoption specialist asking me when I wanted to pick up my DAUGHTERS!!!!  That's right, 2 daughters. So, 2+1=3 - we have 3 daughters ages are 4, 6, 8.  We have visits with them Tues, Wed, Thurs and Friday they come home!!! I'm sure i'll be blowing up the blog then. I'm frantic, can't concentrate, am going from room to room - speaking of that - I had to clean out the play room, move that stuff to new spots, paint the room, de-allergize (i know I made that word up) the room and move all of Riley's stuff in their. Now i'm working on cleaning out Rosie and Maggie's room (I LOVE THEIR NAMES) . I have to get beds and a nightstand for them, and a MILLION other things but we are so freaking happy!!!

Getting closer....

I HATE this elimination diet. I'm going to be very upset if the scoping (on Jan 24th) doesn't show any progress. I think about food/recipes/cross contamination/ what's going on inside her throat 24 hours a day. It keeps me up at night. Is her cough a cough or are Eosinophils growing? Is she going to have to do the steroid treatment?  Mechanical dilation? Are the burrows shrinking? What's up with the scar tissue? I'm trying really hard to hold myself together right now but this has been an exhausting few months. She went through a couple weeks where she would choke on food because it "got stuck". Was that b/c she wasn't chewing good or scar tissue? The hardest part about this is not being able to see her esophagus anytime I want to....She is still taking the Nexium, which I really don't like giving her since once you start a proton pump inhibitor it's hard to get off it. She's been such a trooper, hasn't really complained. She did get upset about not being able to eat pizza a week ago, but she quickly bounced back. I'm afraid this is one of those "life challenges" that's forcing her to grow up faster than she should. She handles these responsibilities like a pro.  

So, the scoping is coming up....we're going to ask THAT DAY if we can add milk back in her diet. Her appointment w/ the clinic where she sees all the Dr's  (allergist, GI and Dietitian) isn't until Feb 8th, so they might tell me no, but i'm definitely asking. If it's a yes i'll be making her  pizza as soon as we get home! But that's where my biggest fears start - what if she has an allergic reaction? Will it just be hives or anaphylaxis?  We have the epi-pen but I really don't want to have to use it (but God knows I will jab that sucker into her if need be). 

So i've been obsessing over how we'll do this. First of all, Evan will have to be home - he remains calm in crisis, I tend to panic. We'll give her a bite of said food - stand over her, me with Benadryl, Evan with Epi-Pen, and watch......if 15 mins go by and nothing happens she can have a bigger bite, so on and so on. If the Dr's have a different approach they'll have to come to our house and participate in the first few bites with us. 

So i'm done with my panic attack - thanks for listening 

I'm a bad blogger...

I'm really bad at this. I'm going to try harder, it should get easier for me b/c Riley has a scoping coming up at the end of this month so I will have news in that area. And we're FINALLY getting some action in the adoption area. Can't go into details yet, but hopefully soon. Here's some Christmas pics.

From Riley - he's worn it quite a few times

Santa's loot

Her box full of Webkinz

me checking out our gifts from my mom

from Riley's school field trip

When we go grocery shopping, I always let Riley get a piece of meat from her deli bag. When she was a baby that's how I would make it through the trip. We would start out in the deli section, she would eat some cold cuts, move on to grapes, then finish it off with a donut. Well, Sunday she was w/ me and she grabbed a piece of meat - her million $ filler free, chemical free, allergen free meat. Within minutes she was complaining of being dizzy, then BOOM her chest broke out. While I was shoving Benadryl down her throat Evan was at the deli asking to see the meat to read the ingred list. It was ham, water and 3 chemicals, the only one I can recall is sodium phosphate. We've thought from the beginning that chemicals have more to do with her EE than anything and this just adds more evidence to our case. She had some GI problems later that night, not sure if the 2 are related or not, but it went in my "to be discussed w/ Dr" notebook". 

What i'm finding out in the cooking area is I can make her just about anything she wants (thanks for teaching me to cook Mom) but I suck at writing down recipes. I've made a chicken pot pie which she loves and has requested multiple times. I made a tortilla for a burrito, it was pretty good. It took a few tries, needs improvement, but did the job. The Nutritionalist we work with asked me to keep up w/ the recipes we have success with, b/c they don't have much to give to patients that require this Elimination Diet. Hopefully after Christmas is over i'll be better at this. Here's a few pics to satisfy you: