Didn't quite make it...

We are just short of the Wisconsin/Upper Peninsula border. We stopped for the night, even though we are only a few hours away from home at this point. Once we cross over into the UP, we no longer have many choices until we get home. G is doing great, but was having difficulty being in the carseat up against her stitches. In the morning, we'll only have a few hours to go.

Edit: A is having a hard time with G and I being gone. She had trouble falling asleep last night, and Wood eventually went into her room, and laid down on G's bed. He heard a rustling under the pillow. When he looked, A had drawn a picture of her and G, holding hands, and put it under G's pillow waiting for her return. While we were in Milwaukee, G insisted on buying a present for her little sister. Tonight, they talked on the phone. G told A about her stitches. Not to be outdone, A told G all about her new "papercut". They commiserated together - it was cute.

G is now in a fair amount of pain - we went out to the pharmacy to get her two new meds filled (if you are counting, this makes 9 prescriptions that she is on - all at the same time). It took them forever to fill them, and G got shaky and felt very unwell. I have no idea how single mothers do it - all I can think is how I really could have used Wood around for the past few days.
In case you haven't guessed, not a single dr out of the many we saw while at Children's agreed with our ped at home about the so-called eczema fiasco. None of them even considered it - one even rolled her eyes when I related it. At this point, however, I'd happily deal with eczema.

I was thinking tonight about the many posts on the forum when prospective adoptive parents on the forum are contemplating the medical checklist, and what they are "open" to. There just are no guarantees - no matter what you list, you may end up with something completely unexpected. That's just part of being a parent, adoptive or otherwise.

When we accepted A's referral, she was an extremely malnourished child, who wasn't walking independently at age 18 months, didn't talk or express herself and had multiple opportunistic infections indicating a poorly functioning immune system as well as the malnutrition. She is now the healthiest child I have ever seen in my life. She never gets sick, willingly eats an incredibly balanced and healthy diet and is the picture of health. Meanwhile, her older sister, who was an incredibly healthy infant and toddler, had every advantage, was breastfed until age 14 months, never had even an ear infection - got sick around the time her sister came home from Ethiopia and has incredibly fragile health ever since. Crazy - you just never know.