Amanda update

I know I have not updated in a while. Amanda is doing well, growing slowly, but definitely growing. She is trying hard to walk, when she thinks I am not looking, she will walk 8-10 steps, but when she spies me watching, she sits down. I am not certain why she does that, little stinker.

She loves to sit in that spot above, she scoots right over there and sits and laughs and plays. The cats go over to her and sit with her. It is partly the sunlight that streams in there, but I also think she likes the dirt!

She is gradually eating more table food, but still has too much carotene in her diet and is still a little yellow from it. LOL Her speech therapist asked me if her doctors were concerned about her jaundice, I have to repeat over and over again, it is NOT jaundice, Amanda has carotenemia. Explained below, it is a benign condition, and since she is very light complected, it is very obvious in her skin, even more obvious when the flash from the camera bounces off it.

I usually try to correct her pictures a little because sometimes she looks quite yellow, this is the same picture without correction:

Carotenemia is a benign condition most commonly occurring in vegetarians and young children. Carotenemia is more easily appreciated in light-complexioned people, and it may present chiefly as an orange discolouration of the palms and the soles in more darkly pigmented persons.[4] Carotenemia does not cause selective orange discoloration of the conjunctiva of the eyes (orange coloration over the sclera), and thus is usually easy to distinguish from the yellowing of the skin caused by bile pigments, in states of jaundice.

She has learned to climb on everything, before she was a little scared to, and now, I have to rescue her off things all day. She is sitting in the sink of their play house in the picture above.

I love living in Arizona in the winter, it has been in the 70's here and we can wear shorts and short sleeves. Amanda usually wears tights under her clothes, she is skinny with very little body fat, and needs more clothing than us. It was 75 the day I took that picture.

Amanda is changing a little every day, people notice she is friendlier, laughs more, and self stims less. She surprises us daily, and it is very heartening to see her opening up more. I know adoption is hard on our kids, so many stressful changes, but I think they show remarkable resilience considering.