Sep 25, 2008

Chloe's Walking!

It's been an eventful couple of weeks! Chloe is officially walking! She has been close for a few weeks, but as of Sat. she is on the go. She can stand up without hanging onto anything and then takes about 5 steps. Now that she realizes she can do it, she's doing lots of practicing. Hurricane Ike reeked havoc in Ohio last week. We didn't get the rain here, but there were wind gusts up to 91mph recorded in our county. It blew for about 9 hours and a 20ft. tree branch nearly took out our front window. We were very fortunate to only lose our front gutters. Since we live in the woods, it was pretty intense. There was a lot of clean-up the next day and we didn't have electricity for almost 3 days. This was the view out our front window after the branch came down. We were sitting right there when in came crashing down. Needless to say, we moved away from the windows for the night.
Dad had an auction last week. There were a lot of extras to sell from combining two households since the wedding. We'll be renting the house, so that prep is next on the agenda.
Chloe continues to learn all kinds of new things. Her physical therapist was very surprised by the progress she'd made in just a few short weeks. She's constantly coming out with new words.
We were notified that Chloe may have been exposed to the tainted baby formula that's been happening in China. She was not drinking the contaminated brand when we got her, but we don't know what she may have had prior to our arrival. Long term exposure to the toxin can cause kidney failure and lots of babies in China have been affected. We had tested Chloe's kidney function when we first got home and everything looked good, so we're thankful that it doesn't appear to be an issue.
Chloe is still having difficulty sleeping and has been sleeping with either Greg or I for the past several weeks. This nighttime security has seemed to help her be more settled and happy during the day. When she stays with a babysitter, she seems to be insecure for a few days afterward, so we just need to be patient and wait for her timing. We don't know what all Chloe went through before we arrived, so all we can do is follow her lead and patiently wait until she is emotionally ready to move forward.