A Wish in the Making

[blessedmom4]

 

[4monkeys]

Hi just joining in. Catching up on ALL the threads. Better late than never.. right? Your family is so precious. Love the pictures and can't wait to hear about your trip. I wanted to mention about the concerns about Lhea. We live in Virginia Beach, and the public school system in our city has a whole preschool assessment program. We are in the process of having our son tested for fine motor problems. He just attended a 30 day preschool assessment (teachers, psychologist, PT/OT/SPeech). We are waiting to hear back for our meeting and possible IEP. I know you said you will wait for kindergarten, but if you start now, she can start with therapies for what, if anything she may need. Just a thought!

I think your MAW chapter is the same, and you may be working with Rachel. PM if you have any questions I might be able to help with!

Yesterday was parent teacher conference day. I was surprised when Lhea's teacher was concerned about her. I expected to go in and be told Lhea is doing well. Instead, the teacher said that she is concerned about her fine motor skills but even more concerned about her memory. The teacher said she teaches the kids a letter a week and then reviews the "old letters" daily. They are up to F but Lhea doesn't know any of them. She forgets them so easily. I'm not sure if any of this is related to her LCH. It is also a possibility that it is related to her birth mothers cocain use during pregnancy But either way they will keep working with her and will wait until she is in kindergarten before they do any official testing.

 

[HeatherSP]

Hi just joining in. Catching up on ALL the threads. Better late than never.. right? Your family is so precious. Love the pictures and can't wait to hear about your trip. I wanted to mention about the concerns about Lhea. We live in Virginia Beach, and the public school system in our city has a whole preschool assessment program. We are in the process of having our son tested for fine motor problems. He just attended a 30 day preschool assessment (teachers, psychologist, PT/OT/SPeech). We are waiting to hear back for our meeting and possible IEP. I know you said you will wait for kindergarten, but if you start now, she can start with therapies for what, if anything she may need. Just a thought!

I think your MAW chapter is the same, and you may be working with Rachel. PM if you have any questions I might be able to help with!

Thanks for the good info. Lhea is already in a "at risk" preschool class through the public schools. They are somewhat addressing her delays already. She isn't getting individual therapies but she used to get speech. I will talk to her teacher about getting her tested again sooner.
Our Make A Wish chapter is Richmond VA. I know there is also one in northern VA. Which one did you use? We haven't met a Rachel yet. I think Katie is our main coordinater.

 

[blessedmom4]

Thanks for the good info. Lhea is already in a "at risk" preschool class through the public schools. They are somewhat addressing her delays already. She isn't getting individual therapies but she used to get speech. I will talk to her teacher about getting her tested again sooner.
Our Make A Wish chapter is Richmond VA. I know there is also one in northern VA. Which one did you use? We haven't met a Rachel yet. I think Katie is our main coordinater.

It is hard to wait I know, especially when we know how our children could benefit from more...I hope your weekend is happy!

 

[HeatherSP]

I just wanted to post a quick update to let everyone know we are all doing well. We joined the YMCA at the beginning of this month so I decided to sign Lhea up for some swim lessons. She starts NEXT week Feb 28. I will take some pics of her learning to swim. Right now she swims with a life jacket but is scared to go in the water without it. Hopefully she will be swimming by herself at GKTW.

 

[blessedmom4]

I hope she enjoys the swim lessons!

 

[HeatherSP]

For those of you who aren't on facebook and haven't read this yet I thought I would share my journal about how Lhea got her name.


WHAT'S her name???

Many years ago I was reading a book by James Dobson. He was talking about how he and his wife had a code word. It was SHMILY. It stood for See How Much I Love You. They would write it on notes and around the house to remind each other of how much they loved each other. I thought it was an amazing idea. I really wanted something like that. But SHMILY was already taken. I wanted it to be a personal word. That had meaning to me and my husband.
For the next few weeks I just couldn’t get SHMILY out of my mind. I thought about how my husband and I would talk about our relationship being a fairy tale. Then it occurred to me …. How do all fairy tales end??? And They All Lived Happily Ever After! There it was. OUR word. ATALHEA. For years I wrote ATALHEA on every note I left for my husband. I wrote it through his bible. I signed it on his cards. I wrote it everywhere.
My husband and I talked about maybe having another child one day. I said if it were a girl we should name her Atalhea because she would be the end of our fairy tale. My husband loved it but thought it was a little long and may sound odd to kids at school. So to fix that I said we could always just call her Lhea (pronounced the same as Leah). I loved the name Leah too. So it was agreed. We would one day have a daughter and name her Atalhea. But God hadn’t quite shared the rest of the story with us.
It wasn’t long until we found ourselves fostering children. We had several boys come and go. Then God placed our first little girl with us. 5 months later we had another little girl. Just 10 days later we had our third little girl. About a year later our first foster daughter became available for adoption and we were so in love with her that she just had to be our forever daughter. We combined her first and middle names and gave her a new middle name. She became Annabelle Grace. Grace because grace is a gift from God and so was our new daughter. It was another year before our youngest 2 foster daughters became available for adoption. The older sister had a beautiful first name so we kept it and hubby picked her new middle name and she became Ciera Destiny.
But we had a hard time deciding on a name for our youngest. She had the same first name as my oldest biological daughter so we knew we had to change it. She was a histiocytosis survivor. Our faith and our prayers got us through the hard times so we knew that her name must be Faith. But God worked on our hearts. It seemed that 5 children really would complete our family. This child must be the end of our fairy tale. Our baby girl became Atalhea Faith.

 

[Mom2Miracles]

I love how you came about her name it and it perfect for her. She IS your happily ever after.

 

[brookerene]

How wonderful... Names are important and so are their meanings.... We picked out all of our children's names with special meanings...each living up to their names in various ways... I like your story!

 

[EEs*Mommy]

Just subbing again I had a name change. Still me Callie

 

[mommy2mrb]

I want to say, you family is beautiful! what you and your husband have done in taking in so many foster children and adopting your sweet girls is such a wonderful thing!!

To open your home and your hearts is truly a gift of unselfish love!

look forward to hearing more about Lhea's wish trip! we will be missing you by 6 days, we head home on 4/9...

Blessings to you all!!!

 

[jessica52877]

Coming along for the ride. What a beautiful family you have! Since the kids will miss Chirstmas at GKTW, they'll just get to celebrate a bit earlier with the big give! Love the princess and the frog picture!! How sweet!

 

[HeatherSP]

I hope she enjoys the swim lessons! [/QUOTE
Thanks! I will update and let you all know how she does.

I love how you came about her name it and it perfect for her. She IS your happily ever after.

Yes she is! Thank you

How wonderful... Names are important and so are their meanings.... We picked out all of our children's names with special meanings...each living up to their names in various ways... I like your story!

That's awsome!

Just subbing again I had a name change. Still me Callie

OK Callie but I have a horrible memory so you might have to remind me a few times

I want to say, you family is beautiful! what you and your husband have done in taking in so many foster children and adopting your sweet girls is such a wonderful thing!!

To open your home and your hearts is truly a gift of unselfish love!

look forward to hearing more about Lhea's wish trip! we will be missing you by 6 days, we head home on 4/9...

Blessings to you all!!!

Thanks! Our kids have been such a blessing to us. We are so lucky to have them.
Wow we really will be just missing you. I can't wait to hear all about your trip.

Coming along for the ride. What a beautiful family you have! Since the kids will miss Chirstmas at GKTW, they'll just get to celebrate a bit earlier with the big give! Love the princess and the frog picture!! How sweet!

Thanks! The kids are going to be so surprised!
I love the picture of Lhea sleeping with her frog. It's one of my favorites too.

 

[tinytreasures]

Love her name story.

 

[blessedmom4]

I love how you came up with her name! Please feel free to PM me again if you need anything!

This made me think of your beautiful family!

 

[HeatherSP]

Love her name story.

Thanks!

I love how you came up with her name! Please feel free to PM me again if you need anything!

This made me think of your beautiful family!

You are so sweet! Thank you so much. I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE that graphic!

 

[blessedmom4]

You are so sweet! Thank you so much. I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE that graphic!

I know, it is great, isn't it? I wish I was crafty, I would blow it up and put Lhea's name on it!

 

[HeatherSP]

We thought it would be a good idea for Lhea to learn to swim before going to GKTW. So we signed her up for swim lessons at the Y. She was so excited and talked about it all week. She picked out her favorite swim suit and off to the pool we went. When we got there she was so excited and happy.

Now before I go on I think I must give you a little background information.

I have mentioned before that we adopted Lhea from foster care. Lhea was born to drug addicted parents. Actually her birth mother grew up in the foster care system and was bounced from home to home until she finally aged out. I believe her mother never learned to bond with anyone which of course led to her not bonding with her children. Lhea spent the first 16 months living in a drug filled home with LOTS of domestic violence and was severely neglected. All of this on top of being very sick. When ever Lhea was hospitalized her birth parents would just leave and not return for days. She was removed from the home once before and then returned shortly after and her birth parents were given in home services in hope of keeping the family together. Needless to say ultimately this didn't work and when Lhea's life was in danger the hospital social worker had her removed again. That is when she came to us. The night I picked Lhea up the social worker carried her in screaming, absolutely filthy, wearing boys clothes that were way too big and had the worst case of lice I had ever seen. Not to mention that the bottle that was given to the social worker for her was filled with curdled milk. So when I went to pick Lhea up to hold her she refused. She screamed. She pushed me away and would have nothing to do with anyone. She was terrified of being held. I don't think she had ever really been held. But it only took me about a day of "holding her against her will" for her to decide that she really did like to be held. Actually she began to make me hold her ALL of the time. But it was a great bonding experience for her.

I tell you all of this because it explains her SEVERE seperation anxiety. Whenever Lhea is in a new situation she totally clings to me. First she wouldn't let me put her down. Then she wouldn't let go of my leg. I tried to sit with her at the edge of the pool to help her feel more comfortable. Nothing helped. Finally I just handed her over to Miss Katie to see how she would do

Well she cried, just about the whole time. They wound up having to place her in the lowest level class because she refused to do anything and just cried. I am so torn now. I don't know what to do. Do I try again on Wednesday or just pull her out of the class?

 

[tinytreasures]

First off I am soooo happy she is bonded with you.
I would just keep trying lessons, unless this keeps up after a few more tries.
Could she be any cuter

 

[jessica52877]

I say pull her out, but maybe try taking her again and see what happens. I do assume if she kept at it she would eventually love it and accept it but at her age unless there a good reason why she needed to know how to swim now I wouldn't worry about it. I remember going when I was a kid and screaming. My mom never took me back I just learned on my own in 6th grade. I loved to swim before that, just never really knew how to really swim, but could doggy paddle and what not. With time that will come.

Has she ever been exposed to a pool before? I think she would still have a great time at GKTW playing in the water with you. Is it safer if a kid knows how to swim, of course, but I am one that doesn't think it is the end of the world if they don't.