Health-wise, Belane is doing well. Her last blood test results weren’t great, but they weren’t awful either. (Not bad enough for AHOPE to start her on any meds). Our doctors here will definitely be starting her though, and they anticipate getting her settled on her meds and her doing extremely well.

She goes to the Pediatric HIV/Infectious Diseases clinic next week, and will see their doc who is also an international adoption doctor for a full work up. I am looking forward to getting her treatment started. I will be sharing how that goes on here to some extent, because I want other parents adopting HIV kids or considering adopting HIV kids to get a realistic idea of what the medical end of things could be like.

Overall she is doing well though. She still has a little stuffy nose and cough, but it doesn’t seem to affect her, as she is eating, sleeping and full of energy. She has a little mollescum on her face which is common in any Ethiopian kids, but besides that, she looks great. Her weight is good and development is better than good.

Someone had asked me before I traveled if I would always look at her as “the sick one” or just somehow differently, and I said that I didn’t think so. Well, now that she is home I can honestly say that no, I don’t look at her any differently than the other kids, and in fact even though she’s only been home a few days, I do just sort of “forget” about the HIV. She is just so much MORE than that…it’s now who she is or what she is. She runs and plays and laughs and cuddles and is just like all of my other kids (only smaller!)

I have had lots of fun the last day or two emailing pictures of kids to people that we took while we are over there. The kids are all SO beautiful. There are a few that I am sad about… I have beautiful pictures of them and no one to send them to because no one is interested in adopting them. I wish I could post them on here, but of course for privacy reasons I can’t.

So, I think that has me pretty caught up as far as the blogging goes. I will keep updating on how things are going here for Belane and the whole family, and will try to get back to some “normal” blogging as well.

I do want to thank you all again…the support and love that I have gotten from so many of you has been priceless to me. We have not gotten much support since we have been home (or while we were gone for that matter!) and it really means a lot to me to know how many of you are out there praying for us and caring about our family and wanting to know how things are going. Thanks so much. I wish you all lived close enough to come on over.

More soon from home sweet home.