They're Home!

Teddy and Blessing are home! They came home yesterday.

Blessing is very happy and smiley. She fits in really well. I think she is particularly suited to a large family. There is always someone to play with her, hug her, or walk her around. She laps it up :) Kari has been helping her walk. It is really nice. She is not really like a baby learning to walk; she is like a very weak person who knows how to walk, but needs someone to help them because not everything is working right. Like she could almost walk, but there are parts of her muscles that are just not co-operating all at the right times to make it work. Anyhow, they're happy.
Teddy is more reserved; there is a definate language barrier. We are not sure if all of his speech is English or not, apparently he is from the Gio tribe, and also speaks their language. He seems to understand us much better than we can understand him, though, and when he really wants to be heard, he seems to be able to make it work.
He is fairly reserved. He is also a very gentile, kind person. He is really good with the little ones, and watches out for them. He seems to be enjoying all the attention as well, he always seems to have at least one of the other kids with him, showing him things and playing with him.
Yesterday was sort of like Christmas; the kids ran all over the house showing Teddy and Blessing all of the toys, taking them all out and playing with everything for at least three minutes! I cleaned that morning, and by the time the doctor came, the house was turned upside down! The mess seems to have receeded some now.
Teddy seems to know what he is doing with a soccer ball, which he found in our yard. He was very happy about that find. I am wondering if I could find a soccer team or something for him to join. He also learned to ride a tricycle yesterday; I don't think he had ever done it before, as he seemed to be having difficulty figuring out how to pedal. He really likes the tricycle, too.
He does not seem to be very familiar with salt; perhaps he is used to having his food pre-salted? He has yet to try butter, too! Anyhow, yesterday he took the skin off his sweet potato and ate it plain. I offered him salt and butter, but he shook his head no. I guess maybe he is used to eating them that way.

The doctor came by; He said that Teddy is in very good health, considering what he has come out of. Our doctor is from South Africa, which is a real blessing, as he is familiar with all of the standard African problems; he is treating them for scabies, worms and giardia, and not making us do a million tests to prove it. He was certain Teddy has worms, and said that he has had scabies (he looked at his hand under a magnifying glass), but thinks the treatment he sent to Africa knocked them back. He says to treat again in a week.
The orphanage seems to have taken good care of him.

He thinks some of Blessing's trouble with weight gain is probably due to worms; much less serious than we had feared! So, when she is over the chicken pox, he has perscribed some medicine for that for her, too. As far as we can tell, while we were told she was retarded, we do not belive that this was an accurate diagnosis. She seems quite bright. We are fairly certain that she has some CP, though. Perhaps this is why they thought she was retarted. Sometimes when she is tired she gets a little spacy, but we think this is due to exhaustion. She seems to be looking out of her bad eye sometimes, but we have not patched the good one to see if she can see out of the bad one because of the chicken pox.

All in all, things are going well, and everyone is happy. :)

Hopefully Lily and Doug will settle on new first names soon! They plan to keep Blessing and Teddy as middle names.

Well, I guess I'd better go now - I need to go to storage to find Teddy some clothes - all the ones we bought were too big!

They're in America!!!

I know it has been awhile since we blogged; another lady we heard about lost her referal from Ethiopia because they were offended by her blog, so we decided to lay low.
But now, that is no longer neccisary!
Blessing and Teddy are in America, with U.S. passports!
The passport office even decided to issue them in the names of Blessing Bradley and Teddy Bradley!
They're official!!!
They should be flying home Sunday night, arriving in Dublin Monday morning.
Now I just need to contact Golden Rule travel and see if they can change the names on the tickets...if not, they will just have to show them the Liberian passports, the adoption decrees (on which the new last names appear), and the U.S. passports.

Please pray for Blessing, she is very, very thin. Dangerously thin. We *do not* believe that it is that the orphange was not feeding her; all the other babies she was with were fatter than she was, and the nannies really liked her, in fact, she was rather a favorite so far as we can tell so it was not for that reason (she smiles a lot, and is a very rewarding baby) . We think she may be having difficulty properly digesting her food or something like that, in medical terms they would probably refer to it as "failure to thrive". Her mother also said that she was always a tiny baby, and floppy. Please pray that she makes it home safe and sound, and that we can figure out what to do from there.

The poor little girl also has some sort of an abcess on her leg, which my parents are treating with neosporin for the moment, and seeing if that helps.

On the upside, my mother took her mostly-empty bottle from her to change her diaper, and she said "I'm a baby" (aka, I am a baby, so you should give me the bottle) and she also says Ma-Ma. We had been told that she did not talk! Such things can be harder to discipher in a group setting, so we had wondered if this could be the case.

Teddy does not fit any of the clothes we bought for him, except his fleece one-piece pajamas. I think they are going to try wal-mart today. Things seem to be going well with him, though he has had some tummy troubles.

Hopefully we will post soon with pictures.