ABOUT MINA:

Mina is a precious little girl recently rescued from an orphanage in Eastern Europe who is now finally home with her forever family! She had been without a mother or father to love her & care for her each day. No one to rock her, kiss her gently or tell her she's loved. She is blessed with an extra chromosome known as Down syndrome, which for her that meant a life of being viewed as worthless in the country she was born into & a life without hope. Because of this her parents gave her up at the age of 6 months when they found out the diagnosis & from there her life progressivly went down hill. We are the Gower family residing in OKC who recently adopted this little angel. She was extremely malnourished and unable to do just about anything when we first met her. She will be 2 in January & is the size of a 3-6 month old weighing 14lbs. She continues to amaze us at how quickly she is progressing with love and nutrition. She has learned to sit up, roll over, feed herself finger foods, hold her own bottle and loves to interact with toys and other children. Her life has changed so much in such a short period of time and will forever be changed! Thank you Lord for putting a burden on our hearts to rescue this little blessing and making her apart of our family!

Monday, November 1, 2010

Mina army crawl, standing, waving & kissing! Horray!!

Mina has been doing wonderful!! She seems to be loving life and living more and more. Each day that passes more light, life and spark seem to enter this precious childs body. She is so much happier... smiley and filled with laughter.

She is my best little eater. She will eat and eat and never is there a time she doesn't clean her plate :) And she is definitely not picky. She has been doing great with finger foods and loves to feed herself. We can definitely tell that she has been gaining a little weight. Praise the Lord!! Her little feet look like they've been growing also. Everytime it is meal time and we put her in the high chair she gets so excited and just gets the biggest smile.

She is babbling and baby talking much much more now. She is really good with b sounds like.... ba (for ball) and loves to say bye, and the past couple days she has been saying mama a ton :) Horray!!

Her biggest joy and accomplishment is waving and blowing kisses and she can melt your heart doing it. She always knows when someone is getting ready to leave and she will start making loud noises to get your attention as she blows kisses and waves extatically.
So yesterday and today have been such wonderful blessings and great joy for us!! Last night Mina was in the jumper and I kept telling her to stand up and she did it. She would stand up for about 10-15 seconds and did it probably close to 30 times. We are so proud of her! It was so exciting. She was so proud of herself and did it over and over again with a huge smile. Then today after she went potty on the toilet before her nap I laid her down to put her diaper on and she just quickly rolled over and started army crawling across her bedroom floor. She made it all the way to the other side pulling herself with her arms and pushing her legs behind her :) She isn't up on her hands and knees but she is doing so good and is now more mobile. Before she had been rolling to get to what she wanted and now she can actually pull herself and scoot to get what she wants. We had her do it several times back and forth and I finally caught it on video (although by this point she was a bit tired.) YAY Go Mina!!! She sure has made her mommy and daddy very proud of her! She is just learning so quickly! Amazing what 2 months of love and nourishment can do! This is the same little girl that just 2 months ago couldn't even sit up on her own or drink out of a bottle. WOW!! Blows my mind!

Here's several videos to share with you all the JOY we got to experience today!

Mina  showing you her newest accomplishment! Waving, Kissing, and Standing!!

So cute!! She is jumping jumping away!!!

Our little crawling machine!! Watch out world Mina is becoming mobile!  Woohoo!

Another video of her standing!

We finally are getting somewhere with her physical therapy getting started. Our doctor recommend we use Sooner Start for therapy. He said they were really wonderful and do a great job with total overall care and getting you with the therapist and people you need to best help the child develop and learn. So over a month ago we began the process where the doctor sent in the information for us to get started. Weeks went by and I called several times trying to get in contact with someone to set up the initial visit. Well finally after leaving my information and frustration (I might add) with the receptionist a few days later I received a call from a lady saying she was assigned as our resource coordinator and she scheduled an evaluation appt for Mina. We chose the earliest she had available which was a week out. The day arrives, my house is picked up in order and clean to the best of my ability, the girls are dressed and ready and we are sitting around the living room waiting for a nock on the door to meet our resource coordinator. Well 2 minutes before our 9:30 appointment I get a phone call from another lady stating that our coordinator won't be here. So all the preparing, cleaning, and waiting was for nothing. On the bright side my house was in order and my girls were all ready for the day. Then I'm told that I will receive a call from someone in a few days to re-schedule. I wait till the following week- no call. I call in... no answer. I wait some more. Finally another week gone by I get a hold of them and am told that I am assigned another resource coordinator because ours is no longer with them but our new resource coordinator has not yet started so I will have to wait till she gets in the office to receive a call for an appointment. I get a call the next day thankfully and do a 20 minute phone interview and get an appointment scheduled for the next week to finally have the evaluation. The day comes. Same routine of cleaning, preparing and no show. So here my girls are at 12:00 waiting for our company and by 12:30 I get ahold of someone in the office that gives me the # to the lady who was supposed to be at my home. Call her and leave a message. Call the office back and explain the situation and my frustration once again. The receptionist takes down my information and contacts our new resource coordinator and then called me back and apologized saying they are not sure what happened but somehow our appointment slot had disappeared. Not quite sure how that happens. Then she proceeded to tell me that they are no longer doing in home evaluations and I will have to drive my child in for the evaluation about 30 minutes away and it will take around an hour and a half to 2 hours. By this point I was pretty much in tears. Trying to take both the girls downtown, park in a parking garage, tote them to the building and then entertain them for 2 hrs during the evaluation and answer ?s just didn't seem like it would go over all that well... but we had no other choices so the appt was scheduled. About 15 minutes later and if I'm being honest... many tears later.... the lady calls me back and said that 2 ladies in the office that do evaluations overheard our conversation and felt really bad for me and agreed to come to my house the next afternoon. Praise the Lord!! So on Wednesday we met with them in our home. Basically it was just an evaluation to prove to them that Mina does indeed need therapy. Of course in every area and aspect of Mina's life they confirmed that she is extremely behind (as if we needed the confirmation :) So now we are just waiting on getting therapy scheduled at this point. So soon very soon I hope and pray her therapy will finally begin and she will be able to continue to quickly develop as she has been!


It is so crazy to think that Mina has now been home with us for almost 2 months and she has learned so much and changed so much. I took a walk down memory lane earlier today reminiscing and looking at pictures of when we first met Mina and Oh what a different child she was. She has learned so much and we are so proud of our little angel. She continues to amaze us and I look forward to seeing what great things God has in store for her life!!

2 comments:

Aspiring Foster Mama said...

I love the videos! Amazing how much she has changed. She is such a happy little girl! Good job mama!

Crystal said...

Beautiful. The videos are great.