He continues to surprise us every day

Are you ready to read some miraculous events that have occurred with our little Samuel in the past couple of weeks? Well, get ready. He's continued to surprise us every day!

First, a quick medical update. Since the last blog, Samuel has been to the ENT (ear, nose and throat specialist) the dentist a couple of times, and has had the appliance to stretch his palate for almost 2 weeks now.

The ENT gave us good news, saying that Samuel can definitely hear, although it may be muffled due to some fluid behind one eardrum and a hole in the other. The doc is going to put a tube in one ear, to help with drainage, and may have to surgically repair the hole in the other a few years down the road. He also pulled out the biggest "Shrek" ball of earwax I've ever seen!! YUCK!! We're pretty sure Samuel had to have heard better just after getting that removed. And so the first of our miracles in the last couple of weeks... Not one ear infection since our appointment there!! The doc was prepared to keep us supplied with ear drops, anticipating the ear infections to be a pretty constant occurrence. We are so thankful, and I'm sure Samuel is thankful for less pain in his ears. We also think he is hearing much better as he is responding much more quickly to his name and other stimuli these days.

The visits to the dentist over the last couple of weeks have not been too pleasurable for our poor baby. He has had to get an impression of his mouth, which included 3 people holding him down while they squirted a whole bunch of goo into the roof/open pallet of his mouth, which had to set up for a minute. Now, these guys are amazing, and did this incredibly fast. But, for a little guy who is used to breathing through the opening in the roof of his mouth (which was now clogged) and who is very defensive about anyone touching anywhere around his mouth, this was even more of a traumatic experience than would be for anyone else. He was a trooper and held on tight to his mama afterward. With impression goop all in his hair, we met daddy for lunch and the world was good and happy again.

We received his appliance the next week and received a special story with it. Samuels dentist has developed a relationship with the guy who makes these special cleft appliance for him. The man lives hours away, works a full time job during the day, but after hours has set up a shop in his home to design and make these cleft appliances. Years ago, his son had a cleft palate, and this man, who makes retainers and other dental appliances for a living, set out on a mission to create these very unique apparatus' to help our special little ones. We also found out he even prays over them before he sends them out. Pretty amazing!! God just continues to show Himself all over the place along this journey. So very comforting knowing His hand is in all of this.

Samuel was supposed to have this appliance for 6-8 weeks. The goal is to expand his palate 7mm by expanding it 1/4mm twice each day. We do this by turning a "key" on the expander once in the morning and once at night. The appliance stays in place by hooking into his palate, holding onto his upper molars and some Fixodent. He wears it at all times except when he eats. Look at the math for a minute.... Because of Samuels tissue being soft, they will be expanding this in 2 weeks rather than the 6-8 we thought!!! Wow, this seems to all be happening so fast!!! We have gone through quite a bit of Tylenol, as this has been pretty uncomfortable for Samuel, but he is doing great, and leaving the appliance alone as it does its work. How many people can say their 2 year old uses Fixodent?? Pretty funny if you ask us.

Now for some pretty incredible fun facts from the last couple of weeks. Samuels eating has dramatically changed. Going from struggling to eat baby cereal a few weeks ago, he is now eating adult oatmeal!! In fact, he can eat an entire bowl full for breakfast!! Just this last Friday, Elijah was eating a corn dog and some cheesy broccoli for lunch and Samuel started reaching for it. Within 20 minutes he had taken out 1/2 corn dog and a big scoop of the broccoli!!! I was in shock!!! Since then he's eaten pizza, pasta, and just last night, jambalaya!!! Our little man is reaching for the stars, and accomplishing great feats right now.

He has also greatly expanded in his toy play!! He just recently began to hold a marker so we could begin to work on coloring. This has been really hard!! He has not wanted anything to do with even picking one up. So we've gotten a couple of scribbles thus far, but the way he explodes with everything else once he learns something new, I'm sure we'll have an artist on our hands by the next blog.

He also is now pushing a dump truck around the house, which is great work for his motor skills, and he LOVES to throw balls. Over handed and with pretty good force behind it!! Unfortunately for Matt, we have another right handed boy. No left handed pitchers yet.

We had a really nice day, weather wise, a week or so ago, and Samuel had his first experience with sidewalk chalk and the park. He loved being outside!! His brothers helped him go down a slide for the first time. They are so good with him. Elijah even insisted on pushing his stroller as we took a walk down by the lake to see the ducks.

Samuel will be going this Thursday to see if his palate has expanded enough for surgery. If it has, we should be scheduled for lip and palate repair in the next couple of weeks!!

Thank you again for all your prayers for Samuel and our family. We are continually thanking God for all of your support and for giving us another miracle baby in our family. God is GOOD!!!

Some pictures . . .

Just wanted to post a couple pictures from the last week or so.  We've had several more doctor's appointments.  Amy will update more on that in a blog later this week.  For now . . . some pictures.

 

 

In the waiting room at the doctor's office . . .

 

 

 

Waiting for the pediatric dentist to take an impression of his mouth . . .

 

 

 

Shopping at Old Navy . . .

 

Snuggling the mama . . .

 

Cheesin big . . .

 

 

 

China requires that an ad be posted in the local paper for every child that is found/abandoned.  We found a guy on the internet that with a little bit of background info will track down "finding ads".  We received Samuel's finding ad this week.  Samuel's ad ran in his province's local newspaper in September of 2011.  We feel fortunate to have this piece from his past.

 

A Spiritual Pause . . .

Here we are just over 5 weeks out from one of the most special and exciting adventures Amy and I have ever been on.  I often get asked "what made you want to adopt?".  The answer isn't simple.  We do have a worldwide orphan problem.  More people really should consider adoption . . . but that's not our main motivation.  Amy and I have biological kids and nothing that we currently know would prevent us from having more . . . so adopting isn't the only way we can add to our family.  The answer is much deeper.  That makes it hard to explain in a quick conversation.  Sometimes, I take one of the easy answers.  But the real answer is much better.  Good thing for you this isn't a quick pass-you-by conversation.  It's a blog . . . and I get to do all the talkin :)

Spiritual molding and divine timing in our lives, some before Amy and I even met, had let us to the other side of the world.  To China.  We went there to find a specific little boy, Wei Min Han.  He had never seen us and we had only seen pictures of him, but our plan couldn't have been more simple.  Our plan was to make him ours.  This wasn't a test drive.  Not a "let's see how he does with us".  This was a "let's get our son home" trip.  You see . . . we knew he had a bilateral cleft lip and palate.  We knew he would be stinky.  We knew he would be small.  We knew there would be challenges in his life.  None of those things mattered.  Our adoption agency sent us a picture of a child that didn't have a mom and dad and we made a decision to love him. 

This isn't just any kind of love.  This isn't a "you'll owe me later" or "where is my thank you?" kind of love.  We made a decision to love him the same way we love our biological children.  While hair, eyes, height, etc may all be different . . . this is a love that sees no difference in the way it loves Samuel or Micah or Elijah.  Samuel is ours, he is a Mangels.

People often ask if I look forward to the day Samuel realizes the life he has and the life he avoided.  Let me tell you that I do.  But I might not look forward to what most people think.  I will certainly enjoy hearing how glad he is to be where he is.  But there is something that I am more excited about . . . I can't wait to tell him that just like he was adopted, God adopted his children too.

Talking about Ephesians 1, John Piper said, "When God was thinking about how to create a universe, what was centrally driving him was, how can I create a universe in which My grace would be put on display most beautifully.  His answer was, I will predestine people for adoption."

Mankind chose not to submit to God, but instead to rebel against God.  See, our sin has left us as spiritual orphans.  We want to rule our own lives.  Our rebellion creates a problem.  It keeps us from entering heaven when we die to dwell with our Creator.  But our Creator made a decision to love us anyway.  He looked past the dirt and stink of sin and saw His beautiful creation.  But a perfect Holy God and sinful man together . . . that can't be.  There must be a sacrifice . . . God's only son, Jesus.  Jesus came to earth and led a faultless, blameless, perfect life in order to become the sacrifice for my rebellion against God.  Jesus's death on the cross washed away the stain of my rebellion.  His death is my salvation.  After placing my faith in Jesus and His death for my eternal salvation . . . I became an heir to God's kingdom.  I became a part of God's eternal family.  Now when God sees me . . . he sees Jesus . . . when He sees me . . . he sees his own.

God chose to love me.  He chose to love me before I even knew He existed.  He loves me through all my faults.  He loves me through all my challenges.  The same way we were folded into God's family, Samuel was folded into ours. We want people to see God's story in our story.  We want people to see God's glory and grace when they see us.  This is our calling to adopt . . .

Doctors visits and more doctors visits

Well, we've had lots of doctors appointments and lots of information given to us since our last post. Our first appointment for Samuel was to a specialized general pediatrician that works specifically with children of foreign adoptions. He was quite amazing and has been very helpful to us, even before going to China. He checked Samuel over and gave him a clean bill of health except a double ear infection, which we expected. Samuel has gained even more weight, and is up to 22.5 lbs and has grown an inch since we got him a little over a month ago!! The doc then sent out a script for an antibiotic and ordered a blood draw of 6 vials of blood. My poor baby. He was a trooper though and stopped crying very quickly after he was done. I did make daddy hold him for that one, I couldn't be the mean one for that. The doctor then set us up appointments with an ENT and plastic surgeon.

We met with the plastic surgeon and were very impressed with him. He is world renowned and teaches at universities all over the world. He explained in depth what all Samuel's surgery would entail and then told us he would prefer to wait 6-8 weeks. He wanted us to go to an orthodontist to get Samuel an appliance to wear until his surgery to stretch his palate as to have more tissue to work with. He explained how this would help Samuel in the long run, and of course we told him we were willing to do whatever was best for our little boy.

So off we went to the orthodontist the next day. What a cool place it was!!! It was a kids only office and was decorated amazingly and they even had a trained golden retriever whose job was to go around and soothe the children. Spencer the dog was amazing, and Samuel loved him as well. We will be getting the appliance for Samuel within the next week. It will be somewhat painful, so please keep him in your prayers, and hopefully these next 8 weeks will pass by quickly for him.

So that is what our lives have been full of in the last couple of weeks. Along with lots of singing, snuggles, playing in kid friendly waiting rooms, snow days and Samuels first time playing in the snow!! Wow, he was not a fan at first, but once he saw his brothers having fun, he decided it wasn't so bad after all. He even helped us pat the snowballs for our snowman!!

He is also becoming quite a pro at baby cereal. He's eating much bigger bites now and is swallowing them much faster. He also has fed himself puffs, noodles and peas!!! Yes, that's right, his little fingers put food in his very own mouth. This is a HUGE step!!! He also crawled up our front steps for the first time!! He is amazing. He is progressing so beautifully. Our little man is surprising us every day.