Just an update to let everyone know how Emmanuella is doing. She came home right in the thick of Thanksgiving weekend. However, she quickly joined her cousins and brothers and played and tried new foods. We had a wonderful, quieter December and Christmas went wonderfully. She gave us a sense of just how we have TOO MUCH in the U.S. She played so well with just one toy for a few days at a time in Ghana with us. However, we came home and she was inundated with things. She bounced from one thing to the next for a while. It just shows how all our materialism isn’t helping our kids to focus. Anyhow, she has gotten used to it a little and is starting to focus again. She loves being/ pretending to be a baby, but we don’t mind:) It gives us a lot of chances to cuddle with her. Emmanuella continues to learn so quickly. There is so much to learn, but she seems to pick something new up every day. I was amazed at her time with her older cousins, Annika and McKinley over New Year’s… being with those older girls who played so well with her made her vocabulary grow so fast! She loves to sing and dance, so songs like the ABCs are easy for her to learn. She is still pretty confused by concepts like color.
Food has been an adjustment, but she’ll pretty much try anything. If she doesn’t like it, she’ll still eat if we feed it to her (which is fine compared to refusing). She prefers her spicy food over pancakes with maple syrup. We have a lot of foods we’ve come to love over the years from other countries and we now have quite a few fun ones from West Africa.
As you know, she has Hep B. She was tested here so that we could know for certain what stage she is in. The disease is in a “dormant” like stage now and may continue to be for the rest of her life. This means that the disease is not attacking her liver. We will continue to monitor this with a specialist for the rest of her life. There are drugs to help the liver if it becomes active. Unfortunately, our specialist believes that there is very little work on curing the disease since there is a vaccine. Just a reminder that this (as well as the possibility of liver cancer) is very preventable with vaccination. People in the US are encouraged to keep these diseases secret with everyone but their care provider. However, we felt that this was unethical since so many in our generation and older were not routinely vaccinated against it and it can be contracted.
Her brothers are enjoying the time they get to play with her. They take turns throughout the day so I have one-on-one school time with each of them. She has a great sense of humor and brings that toddler energy back to the house. Some funny things that she has said:
-We often have to tell her we don’t understand her so she can repeat her phrase…. the other day she told Daddy “I don’t understand you!”
-Potatoes = Katatoes, Uncle Dave= Uncle Bave
-She has watched Paul and Sam with their contact lenses and so she told me the other day that her eyes were falling out.
She is truly a blessing and we are so thankful to have her home.