Answered Prayers!!

Thank you all for your wonderful and supportive responses to our last update! You all were a big encouragement to us and it was good knowing so many people were praying for our family and our precious Mateo! God has answered our prayers!! It was so good to finally be at Seattle Children's Hospital and to actually be talking to the doctor who knows about Mateo's condition! We were so thankful for NEWS, any News! And as far as we are concerned this is great news!! So here is the scoop...( bare with us through the explanation so you can understand why this is good news)...

The first day: Mateo went in to get another MRI and a CT scan of his spine. The nurses were very nice and Mateo was being very brave...though we could tell he was nervous, the nurses were very impressed with his attitude. I guess it is pretty common for a lot of screaming and crying....our child? No...he was laughing and giggling (at some moments uncontrollably!) Thats our Mateo for you! Though we knew that he was doing this because of his nerves, we were still comforting him and being positive with him. He was scheduled to meet with the anesthesiologist first then get his MRI and then they would move him to the CT Scan and do that next. But...they decided that because he was a bright and compliant child, they would have him do the CT scan first before they put him under anesthesia. Two reasons...one they actually get a better picture if he is awake and can follow there orders of stretching arms..etc. and two...then he won't have to have as much anesthesia given him (twice as long). So we did it first and he did great!! Josh and I got to be in there with him and we were so proud of him. And as we walked back, all along the way there were people asking if it worked and our nurse said yes...and they were all impressed! (If it sounds like I am bragging a little...I am! I am so proud of my son and for all of your prayers! We knew God was with us (we had prayed this with Mateo) and that he was comforting and protecting Mateo! Then we went back to our room and he went under anesthesia for the MRI part. We were told that we could go get coffee and come back in 45 min. So we went up and got some food and when we got back he was done and in his room. He was still sleeping and slept maybe 20 mins more. He woke up, they took his IV out, gave him some juice and crackers (which he promptly downed and immediately asked for more- that's our son! :)) and then they sent us home.

The Second Day: We had to check in at 7:45am for our appt with Mateo's Neurosurgeon. We ended up waiting 45 mins...but we were ok with that, because we figured he might have been using that time to go over everything. Then Mateo said he needed to go potty...and so Josh took him (as they were leaving I told them to hurry incase the dr came) 20 seconds later the Dr. walked in :) Of course! So he asked me to tell him about everything leading up to this appt. while we waited for Mateo to come back and while he pulled up Mateo's MRI pictures and CT Scan. on the computer. It was amazing to finally get to see the Mateo's spine! The doctor was great at explaining things and showing us things on the pictures. He was also good at answering questions...not once did we feel rushed ( I have been very nervous about covering everything in a half hour appt!) So...Mateo's spinal cord is split, but there is no bone (as of now) in between the cords! There is just tissue. Which is amazing news! Mateo's cord is tethered, but it is tethered at the bottom, which is relatively simple to go in and snip it. If it had been tethered by the bone or cartilage in the area were it is split...the surgery would be much more difficult, complicated, and risky! When I say tethered, keep in mind a normal spinal cord is supposed to hang loose in the spinal column. So tethered means it is attached somewhere. This is a problem because as he grows and moves the cord will be stretched and cause pain and loss of neurological functions (walking, bladder and bowel function...) So Mateo is going to have this surgery at the beginning of January. Why do we think this is good news? Well, first of all, this type of spinal cord untethering surgery is fairly straightforward. And this Dr. does it 1-2 times a week (unlike the worst case scenario surgery to fix a split cord tethered by bone, 2 times a year). It is a small incision and Mateo will have to stay flat for 3 days and be in the hospital about 4 days total. After that he should be good for a while! As far as we know, no physical therapy, no special treatment afterward... For a little better basic explanation from the hospital click here.
So we are encouraged because after this surgery, there is a good chance that Mateo will be great! (of course he is already great!) We will just keep our eyes open for any major changes in his functions, and then he would get another MRI when and if that would happen. The Dr. also wants us to have a urodynamic test done on Mateo before the surgery to get a baseline of his bladder function (which we are so thankful for...from my research I felt it was very important to have this done and I couldn't get anyone up here to agree with me...so when he was trying to convince us that it was important...I was so relived! :)) We will do this the week before the surgery. There are still some unanswered questions about how all of this could effect him and what does this mean for him in the future, but they are questions that really no one knows, because it is such a rare condition and when it does happen each child "malforms" uniquely. So each child has unique challenges and so we will just have to wait and see. :) God knows! And He is taking care of Mateo and us as his family! We are thankful for Mateo's doctors and nurses! We are thankful that he can have it done soon! (Jan.) We are thankful for my sister Melissa and John, who live in Seattle and have let us stay with them and use their car as needed! We are thankful for my mom and sister Mindy who watched our house and dog Oliver, while we were gone. We are thankful for insurance and the Native hospital! We are thankful for my Uncle Rich who offered his $50 Companion fare so we could afford for Josh to fly down with us! We are thankful for Josh's family for their offer of upgrades (bummer we couldn't use) and any help we needed! We are thankful for all of your calls, email, and post showing your concern and love, for the offers of help, money, and meals! Thank you for loving our little ones, and taking such good care of us!

Praise God for listening and answering our prayers and for giving us such a support system!

Love
Maria, Josh, Mateo, and Noah
P.S.
My grandma is doing great after a triple heart bybass surgery (80 years old and counting :)!!) Praise God!
My Sister Melissa is recovering from her C-section and baby Jackson is doing great...he is almost 6 pounds now! It was a blessing to get to meet him and help them a little. :) I will try to get some pictures of the boys together! Their first cousin! Josh and I are now an Aunt and Uncle for the first time! :)
And we should be able to continue in our adoption! Yay!

Throwing in a few pics!

Here are some pictures from October...We do have more recent pictures but we have left our camera at Josh's parents house in Kenai. So this will have to due. :)

Mateo in his new "hoodie" Granny made for him! Cute, warm, and snuggley!

No, this is not his natural smile...but it seems to be hard to get one these days if you say "smile"...so now if I remember I use my sister Mindy's trick and have him say "monkey".

Our boys doing one of their favorite things! Isn't that just the funniest expression on Noah's face?

Our handsome boy in a kuspuk his Grandparents had made for him for his first birthday. This is us about to go to his Grandparents new church in Kenai and surprise them (they didn't know we were coming). :)

Some precious time with my grandparents...Mateo and Noah's Greatgrandparents! I love this picture!

Sleeping on the way home from Kenai. My two "michelin men".

Our handsom growing Mateo....he is almost 3.5 (at Christmas), which means he is almost 4! Which means he is almost 5! Which means he will be off to college soon!! Yikes! How does time pass so quickly?

I wish you all could hear Mateo's "belly laugh"! Maybe you could just imagine it from the next 2 pictures!

Noah feeding himself with a spoon for the first time. :) Not bad for the first time! (I am one of those parents who wait a little longer to let them start feeding themselves when they are actually capable of getting most of the food in their mouths...instead of everywhere else...but that is another topic...;)

Where Our Family Is Now

Well...our family has been through A LOT in the last 3 months! This is a post we have needed to write, but there are times when I think about writing it I am not sure how or what to say. I know that sounds a bit dramatic, but there has been some tough news and circumstances. One thing that hasn't changed is that we are trusting the Lord to help, guide, and comfort us through it. Also, God has blessed us with a loving supportive family, church, and group of friends (even Josh's colleagues), and we are so thankful for all of you!

Early this summer Mateo had had a couple of weeks where we saw something like seizures. So he was given an EEG and then referred to the only Pediatric Neurologist in the state. We have seen him 3 times this summer and each time he does not seem concerned with Mateo's brain. He did agree to do some standard testing to look for some things that might have caused the seizures including an MRI. During the first appt. with him he did a physical evaluation where I remembered to mention that he has had a slight curve of the spine that yearly we are supposed to be checking. He did see it and that reminded me that at Mateo’s 3 year wellness check up (coming up soon) I was going to ask Mateo’s pediatrician to x-ray it again. It had been X-rayed when we first got home with Mateo and was just a slight curve that we would watch yearly…not enough of a degree of curvature to officially call it “scoliosis”. So when I took him in for his 3 year appt. we had it x-rayed and we were told there was a slightly greater curve than before, and that we would be referred to an orthopedic dr/surgeon. I didn’t think too much about it, because I already believed he had scoliosis and figured this appt. would just make it “official”. In the three weeks between our 3 year check-up and the appt. with the Orthopedic Dr. we had Mateo’s MRI scheduled. For anyone who is not aware of this, to do an MRI on a little one they have to sedate them so they won’t move or be completely freaked out during the time they are in the big, loud tube. Well, Mateo did not do well on the sedation and he kept fighting it, so they kept giving him more. Though they say they never went over the amount they were suppose to give him…I was not happy with how much they gave him… and I could tell something was wrong. They eventually kicked me out of the MRI room, but then shortly after, the nurses were running around grabbing things, and I knew something was really wrong and they wouldn’t say. Shortly after that they were wheeling him out and it sounded like he couldn’t breath. It was a very scary moment for Josh and me!! And to make it worse they weren’t answering my questions…they were giving me answers but not to anything I was asking. Anyways…to try to wrap this up briefly…(I know it is too late for that) our first MRI try was not a positive experience not to mention unproductive. He was shortly fine, they rolled him on his side and had him on oxygen, and then they let him sleep off all of the drugs. Then, when he did wake up, we had about 1.5 hours of him screaming bloody murder…and if you know our little guy this was very uncharacteristic of him. He was so disoriented and nothing we could do would comfort him. It was a very hard time. They pretty much said he must have had too much flem and he couldn’t protect his airway when he was on the drugs and that next time we do this, if we were to decide that this was important enough to try it again, he would have to do general anesthesia and have his airways tubed. At that point, I was thinking… if it is up to me I don’t think that this is worth all of this!

Next we met with the Orthopedic Dr. and he told us, yes, there was scoliosis but that was not what he was concerned about. There were a couple of vertebrae that were malformed and that could be indicative of a few serious conditions, but of course he wouldn’t be able to know for sure until he could look at an MRI of Mateo’s entire spine. So….back to the MRI drawing board.

The second MRI went a lot smoother, though it was practically a whole day of it. Maria had just had surgery 2 days before (more on that later) so Josh and Josh’s dad took Mateo and spent the day at the hospital waiting. It was supposed to be a 2 hour MRI of the brain and the spine, but ended up being 4.5 hours not including the sedation part and the recovery- waking up part. Then it took us almost 3 weeks to get a follow up appt. to be told the results (our original orthopedic dr. hurt his knee and needed surgery himself so we were referred to another orthopedic dr.). During this month and a half Josh and I were trying to stay positive! It seemed like it could be serious or not too serious, and we didn’t have enough information to freak out one way or the other. Also, while we did the waiting game, we would both look at our Mateo and just be amazed at how wonderfully he was doing and think “how bad could it be?” So…needless to say we were not prepared for the results. We also had both boys with us and though we both felt like we had been kicked in the stomach, we felt the immense responsibility to react neutrally for Mateo’s sake. (He was already really jumpy at this appt. –the last time he was in the building was for the MRI). So our news: Mateo has a VERY RARE condition called Diastematomylia. In-uetero his vertebrae formed incorrectly and instead of curving around to create a spinal column to protectively house his loose spinal cord, they curved around and then continued to curve back around and split his spinal cord into two pieces. So kind of like for a part of his spine he has two small spinal columns housing a spinal cord split into two pieces. Now what does this mean for Mateo? Well, basically without treatment (which is at least one major, risky surgery) in a few years as he grows through growth spurts, he will be paralyzed and loose all functions at least from the waist down, and there is also great, chronic pain associated with this condition. The pain caused by the spinal cord being tethered (or attached to the spine in some way that will stretch when he is growing or being active) The spinal cord is supposed to be loose because as you grow the spine grows at a 40% faster rate than the cord eventually being much longer than the cord. There are still a lot of unknowns because each case of this condition is unique and we have to wait to see a specialist –a pediatric neurosurgeon- to tell us how bad Mateo’s case is and when they think surgery will be needed. From the little we can find online about this condition…there are two controversial differing thoughts on when to do the surgery (surgeries). Some think it should be done as soon as possible, before any loss of neurological function appears, and others prefer to wait until symptoms appear (I think with the caution if you do it too early there might be later surgeries that will need to happen and then you can end up with secondary problems and problematic conditions from more spinal surgeries). Deep Breath… The first 2-3 days were hard (for lack of a better work) but the one thought both Josh and I had that was comforting to us that first night was “this is new news to us, but not to God. He has known it all along, part of his plan, and he will be with us through it all.” We also, were/are so thankful for our Medical care/insurance, and SO GLAD Mateo is a part of our family!!

So it was a frustrating 3 week journey trying to find the right pediatric neurosurgeon to be referred to. But we finally know who we are seeing and when. Until then, we will not know much more than what I have just typed. Please pray for us the first week of December! Mateo will be spending another half day getting his MRI redone with an additional CT scan at Seattle Children’s Hospital. Then the next day we will meet with the Neurosurgeon. J It is good to have an appt. and look forward to a time when we will have more answers.

Of course because we are unsure if Mateo will need surgery right away or it is a few years off for him, we have had to put our adoption on hold. So after this appt. in Seattle the first week of December we will not only know more of what life will look like for Mateo but also what the next year will look like for our family. We still as a family pray for our little one in Ethiopia, and know God has a plan for our family! Now, just for the patience to wait and see how it will all work out! J

During this time I (Maria) have been having health problems. I have had a bad gallbladder for almost a year and I have been doing everything in my power to keep it (was scared of surgery). But right about the time of Mateo’s MRI’s it seemed to flare up along with new worsening symptoms. So I ended up having my gallbladder out. Praise God it went well, and for my husband, family and church for helping our family out during a very stressful week! I couldn’t pick up Noah for 1-2 weeks and so I needed lots of help taking care of my little ones! Since the surgery I have had quite a few of my symptoms return, which is so discouraging! I have to pray almost daily to fight against the fear of the “unknown” or “unknown symptoms” going on with me! We are still narrowing down all of what is going on with me. I am working with my naturopathic doctor and my primary care provider on it. We are checking some food allergies including but not limited to gluten, wheat, and dairy! So, please pray that we would figure out what is going on so I can spend more of my focus on Mateo’s doctor trip coming up and Noah! I would love to feel healthy again!

Sweet, Noah, he is doing well! We have also, had some health issues with him! He stopped gaining weight at 9 months and then slowly lost it. He also, has seemed like his stomach was always bloated, yet he was always hungry!!! Poor little guy started to seem more miserable than good! Though, after just figuring out some of his food allergies, and trying to get his iron up, he is starting to be a much happier and content baby/toddler! We are so thrilled to see him doing better! He has just started walking on his own (more than 2 or 3 steps) and it is so fun to watch! Mateo and Noah are great buddies and miss each other when they are not together! Noah even takes better naps when Mateo is around!

And my husband Josh! Thank God he has been blessed with good health during all of this! What a precious husband and daddy he is!! He has held our family together in support, prayer, and understanding. Please pray for him! Please pray that the stress our family has been through in the last few months and maybe about to continue through, would not crush him under the heavy weight of responsibility!

Also, during this time, my mother had shoulder surgery, my older sister just had her first baby a month early, with about 2 weeks of complications until they induced her and she labored for 28 hours and then they did a c-section, and my grandma is about to go in tomorrow for open heart/bypass surgery. Please pray for my Grandma! We love her so much…and selfishly would love to have more time with her! Though, I know she is going to a much better place! Praise God Mom’s shoulder is recovering! Praise God I have a new (small) yet healthy nephew- Jackson Cole! Praise God that Melissa is recovering and enjoying being a new mother! (though it hasn’t been updated with pictures yet you can read their blog on the left under “twitchell zoo”.) Praise God that John (Melissa’s husband) was offered his dream job the day after Jackson was born! (He has been laid off since a month after they knew they were expecting their first child) God’s timing is perfect!

Well, I need to go now! This has been a very long post. Please pray for us and our family, and please feel free to contact us…I will try to respond J Also, so many people have asked me to let them know how things go…I am worried I have forgotten already everyone whom I said I would. So please, feel free to call or email and ask…and I will try my hardest to make time to update this when we have more information.

Love

Maria

Where we are in our adoption...

Well...this is a post that has been long coming...more details about our adoption. I am sorry it has taken so long...I wouldn't even know where to start to share with you how busy and crazy our last month and a half have been!!

So... We are adopting from Ethiopia through Holt International. (some time when I have more time I might get a chance to explain why we chose them). Our total process should be around a year from the start (last month) but may go faster or may go slower...the nature of International Adoption. We do not know who our child is yet. (This will differ from our adoption from Guatemala- in Guatemala you would be "referred" a child toward the beginning of your process, but in Ethiopia it will be later in the process) Though we do know who our child is, they will likely be younger than Noah to try to keep the birth order (for now :)).

The process looks basically like this. Homestudy, Immigration Approval, and preparation of Dossier (formal packet of information for Ethiopian government) are the first things that happen after you have picked an agency. We are right in the middle of all of these (paperwork galore, but the children- our child is worth it!) and my tentative goal is to have all of these put together and ready to send to our agency by mid October. Then after our agency has checked everything and it looks good to go, they will send it to a place in Washington DC to get a special stamp, then it will go to Ethiopia to be translated and filed. Also, once they have approved it, they will put us on their waiting list for a referral (adoption language for your child). As of when we were interviewing Holt they were saying the wait is 6-9 months for a referral once you are placed on the waiting list. But since then, I have seen their client's wait to be more like 2-4 months! Which could make this all go quite faster than we originally thought. But things could change again before we get to that point in the process...so we'll see! :) Once they call us and give us our referral (probably pictures of a child with medical reports) we are given a couple of weeks to decide if we will accept this child as the one we will adopt. (During these couple of weeks we are encouraged to take this medical information to a international adoption specialist doctor and have them review it with us. We would have to have a very good reason for not wanting to adopt this child to be able to say no...it can't be for superficial reasons). Once we officially accept this child we would then have to wait on average 4 months before we can go pick them up from Ethiopia and bring them home. During this time there is a court appointment in Ethiopia where a judge reviews this child's case and all the paperwork about our family and then passes us or asks for more information...(so there is a chance that we wouldn't pass the first time and then we would be scheduled for another court date). After we pass, the child is officially ours, but Holts staff is still very busy over in Ethiopia getting new birth certificates, medicals, visas and forms ready for our Embassy appointment which will happen when Josh and I are there picking up our child. Then we travel over there to meet our child and bring them home. The trip will probably be close to 2 weeks by the time you add the 2 days of travel time on both ends of the trip. We will bring our child home officially a part of our family, but we will have to "readopt" here in the US to get all the citizenship stuff in order.

Adopting from Ethiopia is not as expensive as some International Adoptions, and though we have quite a big chunk saved/designated for this (Praise God!), we will still need to fundraise about a third of the costs. People keep asking us what some of our other plans are for fundraising other than the garage sales. Good question! We are still brainstorming this...we have a couple of ideas like a raffle event with dessert (Yes it would be Josh's gourmet desserts again!) and a really neat fundraiser involving coffee that will help us adopt from Ethiopia but also go to help an orphanage in Ethiopia. We are very encouraged that our friends, family, and church people are asking about ways to help! So thank you all! And thank you all who donated stuff for us to sell at our garage sale! It was amazing to see that at the end of the garage sale we had pretty much the exact amount we needed 2 days later for filing our Immigration approval! And since then we have sold some of the left over big items on craigslist and now we have the exact amount needed for the second payment of our homestudy! Isn't God amazing! He is providing to bring this special child home! Please let us know if you all have any other great ideas! We are open to suggestions, or if anyone wants to help with anything we already brainstormed, we would love the help!

Well that is all for now. I would just ask for your prayers for our family! Not just for our adoption process, but for our unknown child in Ethiopia and their birthfamily, for Mateo and Maria's health right now as we and the doctors are trying to figure out what is going on with both of them, and for our extended family!

Love
The Cross Family

Hodge Podge...(more Noah Birthday to come when I get more pics)

Noah's Birthday Family Party...definitely more to come...Aunt Mindy took most of the pictures and life has been so crazy recently I haven't had a chance to pick them up from her yet...so here is a preview. (Trying for a black bear theme...this is all I could find decorative wise that kind of matched.)

Playing at the park one sunny evening with Grandma and Grandpa (Cross). What fun!

A long weekend trip to Valdez to visit Papaw and Granny and to fish with Great Grandma and Great Grandpa. It was a wild and crazy weekend completely different than planned due to a family emergency. But Praise God everyone is safe and recovering! And we still got to sneak in a little time with loved ones.

Daddy caught the one and only fish (of the two hour quick trip out to fish) and this is the best picture I could take because I was driving the boat and it was pretty busy out there. If you look very closely the splashing in the water is Josh's fish playing hard to get.

Great Grandpa unhooking it from the net.

Mateo and Mommy on the ride back...the rocking kept lulling Mateo to sleep.

Back at Granny and Papaw's Apartment we barrowed Papaw's clippers and gave Noah is first full hair cut (before this he had just gotten a few trims around his ears)

Talk about squirmy! It took 5 or 6 shots to get them all holding still together to get this shot!!

And FINALLY...with a little tackle help from Daddy we managed to get the clear picture!

Noah trying to stand without help...and having a blast with his hat (that he tried to put on himself-so we helped him)

Our Noah is such a character!!! :) He is so much fun (when he isn't teething :) and he is feeling good)

Daddy and Mateo building with the blocks...can you tell who is the handsome engineer in the picture and who is the handsome engineer-to-be?

The last of our garden this year...

Here are some pictures I stole off of my sister's blog of our time together this summer. Melissa and John came up from Washington to be in Sterling for my Grandma's 80th birthday party. They are expecting their first child, so we through them a shower too, while they were up here. It was a good time and fun to all be together again for a little bit.

This is our mom and all three girls, Mary, Melissa, Maria, and Mindy!

Melissa and John


Aunt Mindy and all of us at the Wild Life Refuge!

One of my all time favorite photos!! This picture speaks a thousand words! And just incase you don't hear them :) It is so fun and such a warm fuzzy blessing to see my Grandpa and Mateo be such great buds! Mateo adores him and they are always heading off somewhere to feed the chickens or some other cool country thing!

Grandma and I in a Chicken Croquet Duel...and of course Grandma won!

My handsome and funny boys!