Two weeks gone by already?

It’s much harder to get online than I anticipated.
We have a very busy house right now.
I do think that it will get significantly less busy and chaotic as we all settle in to our new routines, officially catch up on everything, and have all of the initial evaluations and paperwork for Olive done.
Maybe I’m delusional - but that’s what I’m hoping for!

As you can see from above, Olive really enjoys her splashing time! It’s a tight squeeze to get three toddlers in a bath - but they all seem to really enjoy it! Olive’s goal is to get as much water out of the tub as possible. lol. But she REALLY hates having her hair washed and rinsed.... she’ll get use to it sooner or later though ;)

Olive has had 5 evaluations since she left the hospital a couple weeks ago - and everyone seems to agree she is functioning roughly around the age of a 9-10 month old. She has what’s called an even profile, meaning that she’s functioning around the same level in all areas of development. She is gaining skills very quickly though - and I think with in a month - she will be functioning around 12/13 months... because right now she’s gaining about 2 weeks for every 1 weeks times. Praise God! She has also gained right around 5 lbs since she left the hospital too! She is about 21 lbs now! We were very excited about that.

Karl and I were asked to speak in front of our church last Sunday about our adoption and the fundraiser we were doing for FOP’s Sam & Ellie Fund.
We hesitantly said yes, because I am NOT comfortable with speaking in front of an audience... but Karl agreed to talk for me, which took a load off of my shoulders.

Until he became very sick the day before!
I had about 3 hours to prepare to speak - which was definitely not enough time to mentally prepare anything for me! We tried to call around to see if anyone else could take over for us, because he was too sick, and I was just plain too nervous - but apparently God wanted me up there. Because we couldn’t reach anyone.

So, I ended up speaking at all three services, and I was so nervous that each and every one came out completely different.

During the Saturday night service (which is a little more laid back) we tried to bring the kids up with us, and it ended up being quite comical (or disastrous, however you want to look at it). Olive kept signing for the pastor to pick her up, and Evelyn (who was on my lap) kept saying “I want down”, and Ethan refused to leave his seat in the pews. Then once we were up there... started yelling “dad...DAAAD. Dad. DAaaaad...” and on and on... which stressed me out, and I totally fumbled everything I wanted to say.
The Sunday services weren’t half as bad, but I still kept leaving parts out due to being nervous and feeling pressed for time....
But apparently it wasn’t as awful as I imagined it to be, because we did get a lot of encouragement after every service, and God must have used us in some way - because donations were coming in for our flower fundraiser!
Someone even pledged $5,000! How amazing!
God is good!

This next week we have her hearing test, and her last PT evaluation for the public schools. We have ped appointments for the other two buggars, and we’re going to be applying for Olive’s social security number. We’re volunteering for our church’s flower fundraiser again this weekend, and I’m hoping to put my house back together (as we rearranged this past week) too. Looks like it’s going be another busy one!

Oh, and we got an EXCELLENT deal on a used car, so we have two cars now, Olive has been put on medicaid, and her parasite tests for her yucky diapers came back ok :) God is good!