Two quick bits of news 1) Laurel news:
I just got back from yet another doctor appt. This kid just hasn't
been feeling right since I don't know when (I'm thinking maybe
December?) - we've been through something like a cold, a sinus
infection, a couple more colds, and an ear infection - and she just
still seems snorky and draining and flat out miserable. We took her up
for therapy this weekend and it didn't seem like it went or stuck all
that well. We've been trying some allergy treatment but mostly just seem
to be making her seizures worse. Last night I noticed that she had
dragon's breath again so wondered if we could be looking at a sinus
infection, again or still. Doc agreed that her nose was stuffy and
throat red and thought it was worth a try, so three weeks of Augmentin
it is. I'm supposed to call if Laurel isn't better in a week or so. I so
hope she is! It seems like it's just been forever that we've had a happy
girl for more than a few minutes, and it's been so hard on top of
everything else. 
BTW, the nurse-practitioner-in-training (happens to be the nurse from the CP clinic) thought Laurel's ankle seemed pretty good...
2) Adoption news:
"Dear Robert and Rochelle :
Congratulations and welcome to the Harrah's AIM family! We have accepted
your application and are excited about assisting you with your adoption
from China.
Soon, you will be receiving a packet of information which includes
several forms that need to be signed and/or notarized. After receiving
your signed forms and payment, we will assign a dossier consultant. Your
dossier consultant will contact you about how to proceed with your
paperwork. We look forward to working with you and answering any
questions you may have throughout the entire process.
Best wishes,"
<snip>
WOO-HOO, we have a new babysitter!
We interviewed this gal last night and she was awesome. She was such a
natural with Laurel - Laurel's been cranky for all the interviews, but
this was the one who was able to calm Laurel and hold her for a long
time. It reminded us of the very first one we hired back in November
2003 (Laurel had been cranky for everyone but her that round too) - only
this one comes with another source of income and health insurance (i.e.
hubby 
). She
took care of another girl who had a different underlying problem but was
also non-verbal and tube-fed for 3 1/2 years, only leaving because the
girl passed on. We're really excited - hopefully this is IT, the last
babysitter! With her starting on Monday and my mom safely ensconced in
California, I'm sensing getting back to my regularly scheduled life
right around the corner here! I have a huge crunch at work now thanks to
all the time I've had to miss the last couple of weeks, but once I get
past that I can see painting Laurel's room, getting the house ready for
the homestudy, getting back to work on getting a bike for Laurel
(there's been a discussion on one of the brain injury groups about how
great those bikes are, getting me fired up about that again) - things
that will feel like moving forward instead of running in place! There IS
a light at the end of the tunnel that isn't an oncoming train, maybe?
Feeling limp with relief here.
Just got back from seeing the neuro's assistant. We are going to go ahead and finish taking Laurel off Topamax and move to Keppra (the one that *doesn't* cause life-threatening rashes). She'll continue on Depakene at her usual dose. Between the life-threatening rashes and the fact that it would take 3 months to even start to see an effect from Lamictal because Laurel would have to be transitioned so slowly, I'm baffled as to why that was originally higher on the assistant's list than Keppra, but she is willing to go along with our choice to try Keppra first. We'll start Laurel tonight and it will take 3 weeks to get to the minimum therapeutic dose. Laurel's seizures have been awful lately - they really seem to be tied into pain and illness - so I guess if they start getting better we won't be sure why until she gets sick again, but at this point I think I'd just take it and not ask questions! Feeling relieved that the discussion went well and we're taking action to try to help Laurel with them, anyway.
I just ripped Nissan Pavilion a new one -
Jimmy Buffett tickets went on sale this morning. Laurel is just too big for us to carry in like we used to, so I went through the link on the Ticketmaster website to order accessible seats, and asked for one wheelchair seat and two companion seats. Well, the tickets went on sale at 10:00, and at 12:15 I get a call from Ticketmaster, who tells me that the policy is that only one companion seat is allowed, and all the other seats are sold out. WHAT??!?!? Anyone else would be able to bring more than one person with them!! OK, I do understand that they probably want to accommodate as many people with disabilities as possible in the wheelchair row, but they could reserve some seats immediately to the front or back for additional companions. Anyway, although I was ordering the tickets as a birthday present to myself, I wouldn't dream of going without Bob, so we're not going. But I asked who to complain to (trying not to shoot the messenger any more than I could help), and they said Nissan Pavilion, so I just did. And I told Nissan Pavilion that I would let as many people as possible know that they discriminate against people with disabilities. So here I go. MAN am I pissed...I guess we'll never see another show at Nissan - even with advance knowledge of the policy so we could buy a separate regular ticket, it wouldn't be any fun for one of us to sit way off away from the others...
Second round of adoption paperwork & a big ol' chunk of money
have been mailed off. The biggest glitch was that we can't use the home
study agency we were planning to use. It's a one-woman operation, and
when I called her, she told me that she was no longer doing China
adoptions, because they had added more hoops to jump through since the
home study she did for our friends, and she just didn't feel she could
do it all herself. That unfortunately left us without a viable option
here - we're going to have to commute to Richmond for the three office
visits. But at least I found one that didn't also require us to drive
down there to attend workshops (the home study agency from Richmond that
our other friends used requires five workshops [which our friends said
weren't very useful]). And I really liked the person I talked to, their
head of adoption services. It'll be about $500 more than I'd hoped,
though. I'll just have to keep reminding myself that as one of our China
adoption friends said, a study showed that it costs $13,000 to take care
of a baby in its first year, so (since the babies average about a year
old and the net adoption cost is about $6,000) think of China adoption
as actually saving money! It's just hard to remember that when you're
writing the check for $2,200. 
Now, as soon as Harrah's approves our choice of home study agencies, we have a nice long application to fill out for the home study agency (worse than for the adoption agency), including giving them three references. They said it would probably take about two months for the home study (another reason I liked them over the other Richmond agency, our friends said it took four for them). Onward!
Some (fairly quick, I swear!) Laurel updates...
It took a while, but the antibiotics seem to be doing their job. She's definitely less snorky and has overall been in a better mood, although sometimes the gas pains and diarrhea from the antibiotics hit her pretty bad despite the two doses of acidophilus we give her a day. She is still waking up about once a night too, although she is putting herself back to sleep OK (sometimes it's a bit more of a challenge for her mom!).
The seizure med transition is proving a bit bumpy - I guess the Topamax was doing more than we thought it was, because she has been twitchier (we're going down on that faster than we're going up on the Keppra). Maybe we need to slow down a bit.
The new sitter is working out fine so far! She picked everything up
very quickly. The previous one called me this morning to thank me for
the card and check we'd sent her (something to help them through).
Things are getting better for them; her boyfriend's boss actually found
a little desk work for him to do, but she's spending a lot of time
driving him back and forth to PT. She's hoping to come visit on Sunday.
She says her daughter keeps asking when they're going to go back to work
and see Laurel. 
Laurel has been laughing a lot more lately! Maybe several times a week. When we laugh, she laughs harder. Sometimes we all laugh together for a long time!
And don't make too much of this, because it's still very hard
for Laurel to vocalize and far more often than not when you ask her to
say something, she tries and nothing comes out. But last night, Bob
asked her to say "nap" and she said "na". Twice.
That's the Laurel news!
The Lesson of the Day is...
Do not carry an open bag of styrofoam peanuts out to the car on a windy day. Unless you want to spend 15 minutes on an Easter egg hunt for styrofoam peanuts. I highly recommend it while wandering through the woods wearing nylons and pumps.
Got this in the mail today -
"Dear Mr. and Mrs. Garwood, We have received your application and $100.00 application fee. We will begin your home study as soon as possible. If you have any questions, please feel free to call me."
WHEW! I was really nervous about that home study application. There was a long essay at the end about "Describe the type of person you think you are," including events and people that influenced you, etc. Bob got really hung up on it and didn't get his done till Thursday night, but his was pretty normal as these things go. I did mine the Saturday before but I laid it out there about my teenage years, which were spent alternately trying to figure out what was causing my intestinal cramps and diarrhea (turned out to be food allergies) and giving me head trips over it. I talked about antidepressants and counseling and my struggle to recover my footing after Laurel was born. I figured it was all going to come out in the home study anyway, so I might as well put it out there before we paid them the full fee. But I was nervous as heck over it.
The letter feels a little anticlimactic (and yeah, I have a question - now what? I'm assuming the social worker is going to call or something?), but at least I haven't sent them screaming in the other direction. We have meanwhile gotten our 42-page dossier guide and two-page dossier checklist and are making inroads - I've applied for my passport and sent for copies of our birth certificates, our marriage license, and Bob's divorce decree, and Bob's gotten his employment status letter from his work (I'm nervous about getting mine - not really feeling ready to tell work about this yet).
In other news, we're nearly done painting Laurel's room - we would
have been done last night but I was supposed to do the second coat of
trim so I could do the touch-ups and I came down with the cold Laurel
had last week. It's really, really nasty - I didn't go to work today and
showering felt like a major achievement. But I think I'm starting to
feel a little better. Looking forward to Bob getting home from West
Virginia in a couple of hours, though! 
Two quick updates:
1) Nissan Pavilion called today and we are
going to see Jimmy Buffett! Ticketmaster was supposed to have given us a
number to call at Nissan - Nissan makes exceptions on an individual
basis and she said that they would have made one in ours. They were out
of the wheelchair accessible seats that had originally sold at the lawn
price, but sold us accessible seats in the 200s for the lawn price. 
2) I called the home study agency. "As soon as possible" means
that our social worker will be calling us early next week to schedule an
appt.
Oh, and while I'm here, happy anniversary to us! We've been married 16
years today. We won't be able to do anything special tonight though -
our babysitter called in sick so I've been home this afternoon and have
to go in to work this evening.
We'll have to try to work in something over the weekend, around putting
Laurel's room back together!