We have had quite a bit of snow now. Megan has mixed feelings about the snow. She knows that it is very cold. Jenna and Matt have taken her sledding in our back yard. It has a slight slope. Megan loves it. She screams all the way down. The first time she screamed, I thought she was unhappy, but she reassured us that she was having a blast. We drove around last night and looked at Christmas lights. That was a lot of fun! We sang Christmas songs in the van. She knew many of the words to the songs. We had a great time! It is hard to believe that Christmas is only a few days away. We hope that everyone will be healthy. Jenna is currently suffering from a bad sore throat. We hope that will resolve quickly and not spread to anyone. We hope that everyone is enjoying this time of year as we remember the great gift God gave us, Jesus.

Well, this week and next are very busy with visiting different doctors. We had an appointment with the dentist on Monday which went horribly. We are trying to locate a good pediatric dentist which takes our insurance. Megan had a huge fear of the dentist chair. I (Janet) sat in the chair and she sat on my lap but she was very very unhappy. We go to the Neurologist tomorrow and then the disease infectious doctor and cardiologist next week. We don't anticipate any issues to pop up however this will provide a base line on Megan. This way if anything comes up later, we have a decent idea what shape she is in. Pray that she will handle these doctor visits well. She is not a big fan of doctors.
Megan is doing well. She is busy doing school with the other kids now. She enjoys coloring, playing with playdoh and she is starting to write a few letters. She is learning to enjoy listening to stories. She can also count well. She can count to a hundred with a little bit of help. Megan is also doing well in her sunday school class. It will be interesting to see what Christmas day will be like for her. She loves the Christmas lights!

We had a nice Thanksgiving. Megan did well during the holiday. We spent part of the day with one side of the family (37 people) then the other side of the family (9 people). It was great to be with all the family. Megan enjoyed seeing everyone and meeting some family for the first time. She especially enjoyed her first time on a trampoline. Hope everyone's day went well.
Over the weekend, we put up our Christmas decorations. Megan loved the tree and all the lights. It was so much fun with her.

Well, tomorrow is Thanksgiving. We have so much to be thankful. Last year on Thanksgiving Day at Kevin's sister Donna's home we announced that we were going to adopt a child from China. We had no idea it was going to Megan at that time. We thought that God was directing us to a baby in China. Wow, God had other plans. Megan has been such a blessing to our family. Megan is doing so well. She is learning quickly! We are busy attending many different doctors at this time. It is like a "tune up". We are going to many specialists just to get a base line on her in case anything were to come up later. As I have mentioned, we have seen the ophthamologist and will be back in February. Instead of seeing pictures about 4 inches from Megan's eyes, she can see about 2 1/2 - 3 feet. We are encouraged. We have been to the orthopedic doctor for her arms. She doesn't have full rotation of her hand. It is something that she is born with and there is not much that can be done. This is just fine because Megan can do many, many things, just not everything. Our next visit will be the neurologist. This is in December to make sure there was no brain damage with the nystagmus. It is extremely unlikely that there is a problem but it is worth checking out. Later we will have a visit with the cardiologist and the disease infectious doctor. After those appointments, then hopefully the "tune up" will be complete. It takes a lot of time to do all of this but we are so grateful that we live in a country that has great medical care. We are grateful that we live close to Chicago because some of these doctors are at Children's Memorial Hospital. There is so much to be thankful. Everyone in my family is healthy and is doing well. We will be headed off to Kevin's sister Donna's home tomorrow for Thanksgiving and will be able to share it with 37 people there and then go to Janet's brother Ted's home for dessert where there will be 9 people. Isn't it funny how family sizes can be so different. Happy Thanksgiving.

Well today was an interesting day! Megan went in for her physical. She did o.k. but has such a fear of doctors. She made it through the appointment with quite a bit of crying. The doctor is going to order for some blood to be withdrawn so we can see how she is doing. We hope that will be next week sometime. We are going to the orthopedic doctor on Thursday. She seems to be having some issues with her forearms so we want the doc to check that out. The exciting news for the day was that Megan received her glasses. She was so excited. When she looked into the mirror, she was beaming from one ear to the other ear. Anyone who came into our home today was greeted by Megan with her finger pointing to her new glasses. She is very excited. She has been very good about keeping them on so far. She seems to be seeing a little bit better. We have a long way to go with her eyes but this is a great start. We are encouraged that there was some improvement.

Well we had a busy day with Megan today. Kevin was able to attend the eye doctor appointment too. We were very pleased with the doctor and the office. Everyone was very nice and encouraging. We ordered glasses for Megan today. It won't be her last prescription, but we need to start somewhere. We will be going back for another visit in February. We will then evaluate the condition of her lazy eye more closely. Hopefully some work can be done, however we are coming to the end of that window of time to help that lazy eye. Megan did very well at the doctor's office today. She did not want to cooperate with the eye drops. Hence it took three times to get her eyes somewhat dilated. She did o.k. with the machinery for her eyes but didn't really like it. You can tell based on her response that she has had this before but I question how lovingly and gentle the physicians were in China. The doctor gave her these plastic, roll up sun glasses so she could handle the light with her dilated eyes. She loved these! She wore them all the way home and couldn't wait to show her siblings. She thought that she looked pretty cool in them. It was funny! Megan's glasses will arrive next Friday so we can't wait to get her started on this journey! We hope that she will keep her glasses on and not play with them or continually take them off.

PRAY!!!! We are going to the eye specialist on Thursday for Megan. We are grateful that we were able to move it up one month from the original appointment. We are anxious to see how it goes and of course hoping for the best! Megan is doing well. She is learning the ABCs and 123s and colors. Her vocabulary is expanding quite a bit. She says many words but we are not sure how much she understands. She seems to be a clever girl so we think she knows more than she is letting on. We have checked out some nursery rhyme cds from the library and she loves them. She also enjoys Matt and Jenna's suzuki music. She listens to the suzuki music and plays an air violin. Very cute. She is a big auditory learner. She is meeting new people all the time and she handles that very well. We have attended church one time since we have been back and she did very well! She sits patiently for about 1 hour and 15 minutes for the service. We will see how that goes as time goes on. We are so glad that she doesn't grieve anymore. She hasn't grieved in over a week. She is feeling more at home all the time!