Savage Happenings Update

Well......first let me start off by saying that I don't have any pictures to update yet. They have been taken, so I will share them with you, but it's been a pretty crazy week for us Savages and loading pics hasn't been on the top priority list.

However, I did want to give you all an update from our travels last week. We started off by heading to Fort Worth on Wednesday where we stayed overnight. Thursday morning, my mom met us at our hotel and rode with us over to Abilene to finalize Madilyn's adoption in the courts. It was a breeze - as easy as we could have ever possibly hoped for. We were in and out of court in 20 minutes....and that includes the time we took taking pictures and visiting with the judge! She was a very sweet lady, and she was just as excited to grant the adoption as we were to have it done. In the words of our lawyer, we now have Madilyn's official "title papers" and she's stuck with us whether she likes it or not! :)

After the hearing, we went back to our adoption agency where all of the employees there offerred a blessing for Madilyn and gave her a book that they had all signed. It was very sweet. We then drove back to Fort Worth where we stayed again on Thursday night (mom had to drive back to Tyler, though, b/c she had to work on Friday).

For us, Friday involved waking up at 5:00 in the morning so that we could be packed up and in the car by 6:15. Poor Madilyn was not ready to wake up that early, so we just loaded her in her pj's with bad breath and stopped later on down the road once she was ready to wake up! Our destination was Little Rock. We arrived just in time for our 1:00pm appt with the pediatric cardiologist. This was my first encounter with a Children's Hospital, and I must say that I was quite impressed. Everything was so well organized and flowed so smoothly. We still ended up being there for 3 hours, but that was to be expected.

The long and short of it is that after visiting with Madilyn's cardiologist, we now understand that she didn't exactly have a "hole" in her heart. What happens is that when the baby is still in utero, oxygen is arriving to the heart from the placenta. After birth, there are two pieces of "skin" that should overlap to seal the area where the oxygen used to get to the heart from the placenta since it should now be coming from the lungs. In Madilyn's case, the two pieces of "skin" do overlap, but there is a gap/space in between those two "flaps". This doesn't really cause her any trouble right now. The only thing that the doctor told us was that this condition (which is apparently very common....20% of Americans have it even though they don't all know it) has been linked to migraines later on in life (which he couldn't explain - the link has been identified, but not the reasoning for the link) and also a link between this condition and early age strokes. Obviously, the later link was what was more concerning for us. For now, there's nothing that we can do to help her, though. The cardiologist said that she's perfectly fine and healthy, and there's nothing to worry about. We'll just go back around age 4 or 5 to have her re-tested to see if the gap has closed and repaired itself. If it hasn't, we'll discuss further options at that point.

We also addressed her slow blood flow and her limbs turning purple so easily. Basically, her body is doing exactly what God designed it to do in order to regulate her temperature. When you get hot or cold, your blood vessels expand and constrict in order to regulate the amount of blood flow going through. This is what causes the "purple" color that we see when a person is cold. In Madilyn's case, she's just got a more sensitive "thermostat" so that she gets hot and cold easier than most of us. Her body is responding to the temperature changes exactly as it should, though, so it's not a problem. We just now know that she responds to temperature changes quickly.

So that's about it! It was an incredibly LONG time to be on the road, and we weren't sorry at all to turn in our little rental car (with an add'l 1500 miles on it), but both trips/visits went exactly as we could have hoped that they would or could. Thank you all for your prayers. We knew Madilyn was a perfect little girl - it's just now been confirmed for us!! :)

Memorial Day Visit

For those of you who don't know my sister very well, she has this very bad habit of being quite impulsive. As the years have gone by, I've given up on trying to figure out what she's thinking and why - it's better to just go with the flow! The most recent surprise was a call last Friday afternoon saying that she was going to be coming to the States the next day!! Since it was a 3-day weekend, my mom had already planned on coming up to Arkansas to spend some time with Madilyn (and us...to a lesser degree). Karen had plans on attending a camp reunion on Saturday, but since Mom was up here, she drove up to Arkansas on Sunday afternoon. Since Mom and Karen were both going to be in Arkansas, Dad decided to drive down from Kansas City, too! Soooo.....long story short, Scott and I had originally thought that we'd have a nice relaxing weekend to catch up on household "to-do's", but ended up with a house full of family!!! It was nice, though, and we enjoyed the visit. I snagged the attached photos from my sister's blog b/c when she and my mom are around, there's no need for me to have a camera!!

I had Madi for a little bit at the beginning
of the weekend, but after everyone else arrived,
they were glad to take her away from Mama
and spoil her themselves!!

Here's Madi with Auntie Karen when she first
arrived (we were at Scott's parents' house at the time).

This picture is funny to me for a couple of reasons...
one is that I think it's hilarious that my mom opens
her mouth every time she gives Madi a bite of food
(although my sister apparently does the exact same thing!)
Also, I think it's funny that Madi is just eating dinner
in her bloomers since I forgot to bring a bib for her!

Grandpa grabbed some last minute sugars before
he had to leave on Monday afternoon

I just thought this was the cutest little picture
that Karen caught of Madilyn checking out the
mirror on her exersaucer :)

For those of you who complain that I don't get
more pictures of Madilyn posted for you guys,
this is often the reason...I have a curious
(and grabby) baby girl who doesn't always
make it easy to capture her little moments!

Madilyn has a very creative Daddy! When she started
getting cranky while helping him with pictures for the blog,
he decided to play "Post-Its" with her!

For those of you who haven't tried them,
Post-Its are quite tasty!!

As hard as she tried, the Post-It
would just not fit in her nose!

Hey, Daddy! How am I supposed to reach it,
if you stick the Post-It way down on my leg?!

Silly, Daddy! I can't see if you put
the Post-It on my forehead!!