Ryan has quite the following on Facebook, and I'm so sorry to those of you who joined recently who might not know who the heck we are or who Ryan is or what the deal is with this tiny pocket sized dude. I'll try to introduce our family really quickly!
My name is Priscilla (everyone calls me Cilla) and my husband is David. We've been married for 10 years, and we have 4 kids. Two biological, two adopted.
McKenzie was adopted from Russia in 2012, she will be 7 next month. She has Down syndrome and a congenital heart defect. She had a full repair in 2013 but will need pulmonary valve replacements every 5-10 years for the rest of her life.
Our bio boys are Dylan and Jack. Dylan will be 13 next month (he shares a birthday with Kenzi) and Jack just turned 6.
Ryan is our latest addition. He came home in November 2015 and is 7 years old. He will be 8 in June and he has a host of special needs including: cerebral palsy, failure to thrive, global delay, institutional dwarfism, microcephaly and the list goes on. He weighs in at around 12 pounds, and is 27 1/2 inches long.
So there you have it! That's our crazy blended family! The most common question we get is why we chose to adopt kids with significant medical needs. The answer is pretty simple for us...we just decided that if we were going to adopt we were going to choose kids who are often overlooked. Older kids, kids with special needs, etc. We wanted to give a family to someone who might otherwise never have one. That's it! :)
Now, to catch you all up on your favorite tiny dude! He is starting to sleep a little bit better at night. He still wakes up a couple times, and he still HATES bed time/being put down in general. I think I've spoiled him rotten...and I'm ok with that haha! Tomorrow he is going to Nashville for three doctor's appointments. The first is with his surgeon to see if his g-tube placement is healing properly. If he gets cleared from surgery, I'll be able to set up his therapy appointments. He will need physical, occupational, and speech/feeding therapy. He has an appointment with GI where we will once again try to figure out a game plan for his vomiting issues. Then he will have an appointment with his complex care physician to see where he's at, how he's progressing, what the next steps for his care will be. We'll also need to make him an appointment with the STEP clinic for CP. Lots, and lots of work to do to get him to where he needs to be, to try and overcome the damage that was done to him in the orphanage.
While I love adoption, and would love to adopt all the orphans...that just isn't realistic for our family. We are getting older (well my husband is...I will never admit to aging!), we have a lot of kids, and Ryan is very expensive with all his medical needs. We will most likely not be in a position to adopt again, but we still want to help other kids find forever families. I would really, really appreciate it if you guys who are reading this could help me out with this!
I have an etsy store that you can find HERE and during the month of February I'll be donating my profit to Mallory.
The only way I'm going to be able to raise money for her is to have lots of people spread the word. I sell mostly hair accessories, and I know that I have a pretty limited target market and not everyone is going to be able to buy something, but if you guys could share the link, I would be so grateful. I'm going to make a post about Mallory with the etsy shop link in Ryan's group on Facebook, all you need to do is hit share! You never know who's sitting at home watching Seinfeld rerun's thinking "wow I really wish I could buy a hair bow right now..." haha! Not everyone can adopt, or donate, or whatever...but we all can do a little something to help these babies come home!
Thank you for stopping by and for loving this tiny dude. Another update that I forgot to mention...his Certificate of Citizenship came last week! He is officially an American! Whoops! To celebrate, I will share with the the picture that is on his certificate, because it is beyond hilarious. Enjoy!
