It's only been almost ten months since adding Faith to our lives. It's been a long strange trip where she has learned as much about us as we have learned about her. God continues to guide this long strange trip but I find myself putting my trust in Him less and less each day and that isn't good. I need to lean on His strength like I did in the beginning, like I did as I took my seat on that plane to China!
We have found out that she is deaf due to a genetic anomaly so she has indeed been deaf from birth. She had a checkup recently and her Dr. said that she is indeed progressing as far as walking but not there yet. There is also a possibility of autism. If she were autistic she would be considered highly functional but it's something we will deal with when we know for sure. It's tough to just watch her and analyze all this since she was unable to communicate without just yelling and hitting until she was four and Allison began to teach her sign language.
Faith is learning a LOT of words. She still won't look at us long enough for sentences but that's slowly progressing as well. Allison is done choir so she sits with us at Mass know and signs things to Faith when she can get her attention. We aren't sure the exact number of words but she knows but it's over 100! When we go on walks with her she will sign rabbit when she sees one. She tells us to sit down all the time. Potty was one she learned in China, she can tell us when she's taking a dump now as well so we don't have to smell for it (TMI???). She can sign play, bath, stop, now and many others. She understands a lot more of what we sign to her than she can sign back. I still need to teach her "get daddy a beer".
The town has installed our signs as well around the house. They actually put three of them up! One at the front of the house lot and two as you approach the house from each street. Not sure it's helping as cars still fly past here. I should tell the Raynham P.D. that they can park in my driveway and have a ticketing field day, they could nab speeders as well as folks who don't stop at the two way stop sign at the end of the roads.
Faith still loves our trips we take to either the beach or the canal for a bike ride on Monday nights. The beach is a bit much for me however, she's a tough one to chase around and you can't yell at her to stop when she is running off on you so I prefer canal bike rides where I can lock her in the seat behind me and know where she is. We had to take a break from them a couple of Monday's due to the crazy hot weather we had in July, the hottest on record, hope August is at least reasonable!
Today we are off to see some relatives from Allison's dad's side of the family. Adrionna is going to be rededicated for her relatives in Tiverton RI so we have to head down there at 9am. Faith will get to meet some more new relatives!
Well that's enough ramblings for early morning, last day of July 2010.....KG
