Big Year, Big News
December 31, 2008 10:40 PM

[ NOTE: I started this post in the car and finished it the next day
at home, which is why it ends with a mention of Juliana's bath
time. –Tami ]

Another year is gone already? Didn't we just pack the Christmas decorations away from last year? And now we are doing it once again. This year has flown by faster than any year before!

I was just sitting here looking through my calendar for 2008 just to remember what all happened. More doctor appointments than I care to count, numerous speech therapy sessions, dance classes, soccer practice and games, summer camps, a few IEP meetings, a trip to Myrtle Beach, a trip to Chicago, several trips to the Miami, five surgeries, filming a new documentary, and a deployment. Did we really do all that? No wonder I can't remember this year.

Christmas morning was very peaceful at our house. We started a new family tradition for our kids. My aunt and uncle have been doing this for 16 years with their children, so I cannot take the credit for this idea, but I love it! We decided to only give the girls three gifts a piece, which represented the three gifts given to Jesus by the Wise Men. We want the girls to know the true meaning of Christmas and not be swallowed up by the commercialization of it.

We are on our way home from Miami as I type this. And just as soon as I started, Juliana woke up! Doesn't that just figure! She had surgery yesterday. Everything went perfectly. She now has the tissue from her back completely attached to her face. One end is near her left ear area, and the other end is now connected to create (sort of) her left cheek and half of her upper lip. It does not look exactly the way that we expected it to, but we should know by now not to know what to expect.

My best description is that it looks like a snorkel. The tissue is still rolled in a tube. The remainder of the process will happen throughout a couple of more procedures. During those procedures, Dr. Wolfe will be smoothing the tissue out to create a flat cheek. It is still very difficult for us to see the big picture. I guess that is why we leave the creativity to the professionals.

I'm hoping that Juliana will be returning to school next Tuesday when class is back in session. She has been home since early November. She really misses her friends and all of the ladies in her class (teacher, asst. teacher, interpreter, and nurse). It has been a long couple of months and we are ready for normal life to resume.

Okay, now for the announcement which has my heart bursting with joy … Are you ready for this? We will have a new addition in the Wetmore family!

No, it's not what you think. I am very done giving birth! We are in the process of adopting a beautiful little girl. She will fit in perfectly in our home. She too has Treacher-Collins Syndrome. Obviously her case is not nearly as complex as Juliana's. She does not even have a trach or a feeding tube. She will need hearing aid implants, but other than that it seems from her pictures that anything else will be merely cosmetic. We won't know for sure, of course, until we go to her country to meet her and finalize the adoption.

This is an international adoption, so the process takes much more time than a domestic one. The process is very slow and mainly consists of waiting on documents and other people—which is where we are now, just waiting on the Dept. of Homeland Security to complete their part of our paperwork.

I'm planning to have our dossier (paperwork) ready to be sent some time within the next few months. But, what I plan and what actually happens are often not the same thing. To answer the most asked question—"When will she be coming home?"—we don't know. We are hoping and praying for some time during 2009. Once I have the paperwork sent, we are at the mercy of her country's government.

This process has been in the works since last May, but was temporarily put on hold when Thom was gone and we were traveling back and forth to Miami several times for unplanned surgeries. We don't like for life to get too boring around here!

I suppose I had better end this now and get the mermaid (aka Juliana) out of the bathtub. When she recovers a bit more from this surgery, I will post new pics.

Happy New Year, everyone, and thanks for all your love and support!

—Tami

Time? What's That?
December 01, 2008 5:30 PM

I have started an update three other times this past week and was not able to finish any of them …

As Jeanne already told everyone, Juliana is home and recovering from another surgery. This one was fairly minor, considering the others that she has been through. Dr. Wolfe did a skin graft to cover the area on her face where the original procedure, done November 6, did not take. She is in quite a bit of discomfort right now. Her donor site is very tender and that makes it uncomfortable for her to sit and even walk.

This whole procedure of moving the tissue from her back to her face is proving to be a lot more than any of us bargained for. But, Dr. Wolfe informed me this past week that if we go about this slowly enough, we may get enough tissue for both sides. That would be so incredible if we did not have to put her through any more of this to do the right side.

As I write this now, I am reading over my last couple of posts and thinking about what has happened in the past four months. I am really not much of a planner. I like to just "see what happens." It seems that the few things that I did plan for during the past few months have not gone as planned anyway. Let me prove my point: I planned to get this update written while the house was quiet, but Kendra woke up at 6:30. Juliana just woke up and they are fighting already! …

Now it is 10 hours after I started; lets try again to get this finished:

Thom is scheduled to come home on Thursday. This has been a very long six months for all of us. I can't begin to imagine the fear that he went through while he was gone. It is always so much easier to deal with situations hands on rather than through the phone and internet. He left on deployment "planning" for this to be a quiet and uneventful six months. Why, after five and a half years with Juliana, are we still kidding ourselves about anything being "quiet and uneventful"? …

Okay, now it is the day after I began this post. I guess I better wrap this up otherwise it will never find its way on-line. I still have so much to say. I will start another update soon. No promises as to when it will be finished! We have a very exciting announcement to make, so I'll be back soon for that. My heart is bursting with joy and I can't wait to tell you all about it.

—Tami