Four Month Update

First of all, Happy (Early) Chinese New Year!

We've been home with L for a little over four months, which is hard to believe. It seems like yesterday we just staring at his picture, and at the same time it's hard to imagine our lives without him in it.  So, how are things going?

Sleep:
L recently transitioned to sleeping in his own room--yay!!! Until now, he slept in a crib next to my side of the bed.  For roughly the first 2 months home he woke 4-5 times a night to use the bathroom or just hold my hand.  Since Christmas we've been able to take him to the bathroom right before we head to bed and he's made it through the night just fine.  His transition went pretty well overall, so he was ready (and so were we).   He took to waking at around 3:45am for a few days, but we started hooking up his light to a timer and the new rule is that he can't get up until the light turns on.  So far it's worked, so we'll see. 

Health:
Due to past ear infections which were likely untreated, he has permanent holes in his eardrums.  He will need surgery to repair these at some point but specialists like to wait until children are in the 5-6 year-old range as the surgery is far more effective.  We just had his hearing tested, and this did show some definite hearing loss. The tests were completed about halfway, so I'm not sure yet what this means (hearing aids, surgery sooner than expected), but have decided not to completely freak out until everything is done and verified.  Hopefully it's fixable at some point.  He's learning English at a pretty fast clip, so I know he can hear something.  We'll see.

Attachment:
 I think L is showing excellent attachment behaviors.  He is outgoing and social but wants one of us nearby at all times.  We've started a few classes, including soccer, Little Gym, and preschool at the library (one day per week, 1 hour), and he checks in with me constantly.  He's definitely not ready to be on his own yet but I'm hoping this fall he can start preschool 1-2 mornings per week.  However, I think he enjoys being around other kids and learning new things, so it's been fun.  I'm dying to start swimming lessons but the perforated eardrum issue needs to be resolved first.

General Development:
L's strengths lie in gross motor and social skills.  He gets along with other kids generally well and is proving to be pretty good at whole-body skills (skipping, jumping, climbing).  He is absolutely right-handed, but without a right hand, so that can complicate things a tad.  He will always try things with his right side first and then switch to his left.  His brain creates workarounds--this kid will have some amazing critical thinking skills some day.  His fine motor skills need some work in large part due to lack of experience with things like crayons and scissors, as well as the right-left hand issue.  For example, we were using a crayon to do a maze and I noticed he was ham-fisting the crayon, so I showed him how to properly hold it.  He watched me, then attempted to switch the crayon to his right arm.  His brain was saying "yup, I can do that with my right hand" and he had a much harder time with his left. With practice, however, he was able to transfer that skill to the left hand.  Skills we are working on include using chopsticks, putting pennies in a bank, ripping paper, cutting paper, and gluing.  It'll come in time. 

Of course...pictures!

Pizza at the San Diego airport

Backward on the balance beam!

Proud of his big-boy room

 

The New Year

We had a wonderful holiday season in which traveled to California for an extended visit with my family. L had endless playtime with his older cousins, discovered that Santa does in fact bring what you ask for (a garbage truck with flashing lights--he was mighty specific about that), and that the Christmas season just pretty much rocks. 

He was a trooper on the flights although he has decided that flying is "scawwy".  Which puts me, a former Valium-flyer, into the awkward position of assuring him that flying is super duper fun!  We'll be juuuust fine! all the while biting my nails and trying not to bolt for the exits.  But all's well that ends well, and we are home in rainy Seattle. 

Our old doggie had a stroke last weekend, which put a scare in us, although she has recovered remarkably well.  She's around 14 years old, so we know this is probably the beginning of not-fun stuff but are happy that we seemingly dodged a bullet this time around.  We also caught the Alien Death Flu that is going around but are on the road to recovery. 

So onward to 2013!  We made a list of goals for the year and on it is to begin our next adoption.  The past five years impacted us a great deal financially which will play a large role in future family building.  We want to give our current family plenty of time to gel and at the same time I turn 40 in 2 months (what?), so if it's going to happen we'd like to formally start a new adoption this summer/fall. And there's plenty of prep to happen before that, so ..... we'll see.

Happy 2013!!

One Year Ago

One year ago today, we received pre-approval to adopt this little boy:

One look at his referral picture and we were smitten. Those eyes!  Those cheeks!  Technically, you are supposed to look at the file before the picture.  Has anyone ever done that? 

One year ago, our lives changed.  We still had mountains of anxiety and a long way to go.  But it was the beginning of a wonderful journey to our family. 

We have so much to be thankful for. 

The road to adoption is incredibly hard--at least, it was for us.  Yet in the end, we get to tuck this little boy into bed each night.

And introduce him to the wonders of the holidays.

Sleep can be hard.  Separation is tough, as are language barriers.  It's not perfect but it's perfect for us.  And it's worth it--oh, boy, is it worth it.

Happy holidays from our family to yours. 

Doctor Week

Poor L has endured several trips to the doctor over the past week for a variety of reasons:

**His first well-child visit, which we had been putting off as we were still triaging other areas, such as sinus issues and athlete's foot.  As those have mostly cleared up, we took the plunge into the vaccine-laden well-child, which pretty much sucked.  He received 6 shots and a blood draw (and flu mist up his nose), and screamed like nothing I've ever heard.  I cried, he screamed, it was messy.  And it's over.  He still needs boosters, but nothing like this first appointment.  Tylenol/Motrin staggering helped a lot, but he was running a low grade fever and was sore for a few days.

**Limb Deficiency Center:  We had a meeting at Seattle Children's with the limb deficiency team, consisting of the head of the department, a geneticist, and a dysplasia nurse. The end result--his limb deficiency is not genetic, was likely caused by a blood clot in utero, and will require zero treatment. In the future I may request an occupational therapy referral for things like buttoning shirts and opening Ziplocs, but for now we're just going to figure it out with him. We discussed a prosthetic in-depth, and there are two distinct, colliding schools of thought on this area of limb deficiencies. This particular doctor felt (strongly!) that prosthetics are necessary in certain cases (lower limb deficiencies, multiple limb deficiencies) but for L, it would do no good and would probably be quite frustrating. As he pointed out, hands are used for sensation as much as for grasping, which can be hindered with the no-sensation prosthetic.  L has tendons and nerves that run to the end of his arm, so if our decision changes in the future, he's a good candidate for one. Lots of people use prosthetics for specific activities at different times in their lives.  Again, two very divergent opinions about prosthetics exist, and I'm sure we will try one at some point. But not now.

**ENT: L came home with a sinus infection, which we treated with a kiddie Z-pac, which is pretty standard.  A few days after the antibiotics were finished, I found bloody pus leaking from his ear--yup, ear infection with a ruptured ear drum.  While he still had major antibiotics in his system.  Hmmm.  So, another round of antibiotics.  And this week, another ruptured ear drum (same ear), so yet a third round of antibiotics, and a referral to ENT.  He doesn't even let us know that there is an issue until it's ruptured, dang it.  Of course, we don't have any information on past medical issues, so who knows what's been going on?  So we will throw ourselves on the mercy of the ENT professionals, and hope we get things figured out  as soon as possible.

Other than this, things are going well in our little world.  I'm working 24 hours a week from home, and it's actually really hard, and at the same time I really can't complain as at least I'm at home at all.  I love my job, but working for a social services agency means that I would essentially be working to pay for childcare, so this solution is the only one at this point that makes any kind of sense.  And I'm grateful to have employers that get it and are willing to make it happen.

L continues to be a rambunctious little boy, who is social and funny and obstinate and very, very loud.  He loves all things construction, is very interested in fish and sealife  and seems to consider Maggie his bestest friend in the whole world.  We've done some mom-group activities and he generally does well with other kids, as much as any 3-year-old does, and enjoys having structured activities throughout the day.  And so, frankly, do I, so it works. 

Watching the garbage trucks, holding his garbage truck.  It was amazing, indeed. 
And garbage men are seriously awesome people--they never fail to acknowledge enamored little boys.

Fun at the Seattle Aquarium


 

Halloween Fun

Another surreal holiday down!  We had lots of fun on Halloween, although I wonder what L thought of the whole thing.  We did a little trick-or-treating, but the overall Halloween creepiness wasn't really appreciated by L--the pumpkins we carved last weekend freaked him out when lit.  Which, of course, we didn't know until it was bedtime, and L said his first actual sentence in English (besides "I love you"--"I lobba"), which was "Bye-bye Dada sca-wy pumpkin!".  Oops.  And then the squirrels came around and ate the faces off, so, you know. We ended up playing Halloween down a bit this year. But he loved his costume and likes some types of candy, so there ya go.

He dressed as a nice doggie (not a "sca-wy" one) and Maggie was a ferocious dinosaur. Yes, we are those people who dress up the dog.   She's a sport.

L had a routine doc appt ahead of time, hence the blown-up latex glove.  Not part of the costume. :-)

Three! (and other stuff)

Our little L turned three this past week.  I know I've said it before, but the fact that we got to celebrate his birthday with him was one of the biggest gifts we were given in the timing of the adoption.  Choosing just the right present (a Big Wheel) and finding a cake he likes (a brownie--he's not much of a sweets boy just yet) was fun and something we had dreamed about for a long, long time.  We had family over for a small party, and I teared up when we all sang the happy birthday song.  He absolutely loved the attention, and our families were generous and thoughtful, and I think were as excited as we were to be at his party.  It's been a long time coming. 




Checking out his new dump truck and school bus.

 

Getting ready to blow out the candle.

 

Post-party roughhousing with Dada and cousins.  These were some tired kids at the end of the day!

We also had our first post-adoption home visit, which must happen in the first month of custody per China.  The visit went really well, and I was far less stressed than homestudy visits of the past.  Of course, I still cleaned like a maniac, but some things will never change. 

We took L to the pumpkin patch as well, and I think he enjoyed it although sometimes I think he must think we're a bit nuts.  He loves pumpkins, though, and insisted that we not only purchase one for each of us but that we pick out one for Maggie (our dog) as well. 




Fun at the pumpkin patch!

 

Happy Mama

Happy Dada 

Things here continue to go pretty well, actually.  Over the past week or so, L has started to show some real interest in learning English.  He's now repeating most of what we say, and is holding things up so we can tell him the English word for it.  In the past, he usually corrected us when we would tell him an English word --he'd look at us like we were just a bit slow, and repeat the word in Mandarin.  It's complicated, this whole international adoption thing (understatement, yes).  We are dying to communicate with him, and since he talks constantly, we would really love to know what in the heck he's saying.  But losing his native language is sad--it's a big, big loss.  There are certain little catchphrases he says that have now entered our vocabulary that we don't want him to lose, such as "Baloo!" which means stinky and is accompanied by a funny face.  We have lots of video of him speaking Mandarin.  And we need him to have some vocabulary to communicate with those around him, and our Mandarin is pretty limited.  So we're working on it. 






10 Days Home

These first ten days have been a pretty amazing learning experience for all three of us.  L is adjusting rapidly to the new home, toys, smells, foods, and schedule.  This is probably a really boring post, but I want to get these thoughts down so I  don't forget them :-) 

Pets: We have three cats and a dog, the youngest being 12, so essentially we own the Home for Elderly Pets. While sometimes one of them gets a wild hair and is playful, generally they lounge, eat, and sleep. L was literally screaming with terror when he first met them--trying to tell us that there is a cat in the house!  Cat in the hooouuuse!! Get it out!! and we were thinking oh, kid, you haven't yet met the dog.  So the first few days were hard for all four of them as they figured out how to live together in the same (small) space.  Now, however, L is wildly interested in them, wants to touch their eyes and teeth specifically, and is learning to pet gently.  He has gone into a modified time-out for kicking Maggie-dog and being too rough with Dee-cat, although these are actually the only two times he's needed to take a break so far.  He's learned to surreptitiously feed Maggie his food and blames his gas on her, and the cats just stay up high when they are not in the mood, which is most of the time.

Schedule:  We are feeling more and more over the jetlag thing every day.  Consistency is key, so he is going down at the same time each evening, and takes one mid-day nap.  He's sleeping between 11 and 12 hours per night, getting up at least once to go to the bathroom.  I think we may bag the nighttime pull-ups as he's had only one accident since being home, the first night.  We'll see.  He currently sleeps in his crib in our room, and seems to take comfort from having us so near. 

Health:  L came home with a sinus infection, a general body rash, and a raging case of athlete's foot all over both feet.  We met with his pediatrician, who prescribed antibiotics for the sinus infection, which is now gone, Cort-Aid for the rash, which is also gone, and prescription cream for his feet. My feeling is that his shoes were rarely, if ever, off in China, and that the athlete's foot is going to take a long time to resolve completely.  But the itchy-burning feeling seems like it has decreased, which also makes for a more peaceful nighttime.  It was driving him crazy, poor little guy.

Limb Deficiency:  L was born without a right hand.  He has a little wrist bone, so can manipulate the end of his forearm just a tad, which helps a surprising amount.  He is extremely adept to figuring out how to make things work, although he seems to be naturally right-handed as he always tries with that arm first.  His brain has created some amazing work-arounds, however, and he can do almost anything with his left.  We've been doing small activities to work on fine-motor skills with the left, such as putting pennies into a piggy bank, and he does just fine.  We have a meeting with limb deficiency doctors in November and are curious to see what their take is.  Some children wear prosthetics, some don't, and some do for certain activities (such as playing guitar) which require two hands.  The first prosthetic most children use, per our pediatrician, is kind of like a scooper, called a "hook".  Thus, we will be able to tell people:

Mah boy's got a good right hook!

(ha ha!  get it?)

Anyway, we'll see what the doctors say and use their guidance to see what next steps, if any, we will take. 

Language: L talks constantly, and is now showing interest in learning English words.  He has his old standbys of "Helllooooo" and "Bye-bye", and has added a few more, including hammer (hammah), kitty (kitt-AY), Maggie (Magg-AY), please (wuh-LAY), thank you (daydoo) and how are you? (hello loooo).  He has a handful more, and is adding to his list daily.  If he has a question, he still adds "ma" on the end of the sentence, which is a question word in Mandarin--if you add "ma", it makes the sentence a question--"Behfast Mama ma" means "Breakfast, Mama?".  It's been such an interesting process.

Work:
Cory went back to work the Monday after we returned, although he worked short days the first three days back---thank goodness.  He's now full-time so we call several times a day and check in.  L loves his daddy, and wonders often where he is, saying "Dada wo-looo" ("Dada's at work").  I go back part-time from home next week, so am trying to enjoy my last maternity leave week.  Sigh. 

And now, pictures!!  For some reason, I can only attach one at a time--so here ya go. 

Brushing teeth is so much fun!

Home

We are home safe and sound.  After a lovely meeting of family at the airport, we went home to our clean home (thanks, Mom and Dad!) with dinner waiting (thanks, Mom and Dad!) and attempted to get some sleep.  The flight...well, it's over.  Wasn't horrible, wasn't fun...and it's over.  We got through it, and the best feeling ever was passing through customs.  L continues to do well, although sleep is confusing and difficult right now, and will continue to be for a while, I'm sure. 

There's no place like home, and we are so happy to be back as a family of three.

Ok, another attempt at pictures!

Final Day--Packed and Ready

Today was mostly preparations for tomorrow--the Big Flight Home.  We leave our hotel at o-dark-thirty to head to the airport in Guangzhou.  We fly to Beijing, then have a 5-hour layover, then straight to Seattle.  Total travel time from takeoff in Guangzhou to landing in Seattle is around 20 hours, but after we land we get to go home to our own house, with our own rooms, bathrooms, kitchen, and animals that we miss tremendously.  The second flight begins at 5PM China time, so we are hoping that after takeoff, a busy day, and some dinner L just may fall asleep.  That's a lot to ask, but here's hoping!

So we are pretty well-packed, other than nightclothes and toiletries, and our suitcases are weighed and zipped up.  We went back the store today to purchase extra toys and snacks so L just maybe can handle such a long flight.  He's also gotten sort of interested in some of the apps we have on our Kindle, so maybe that will help for a minute at a time or so.

We also have his Chinese passport in hand, US visa inside, and a packet of information that we cannot open, but will hand customs in the US as we enter the country.  This will make L a US citizen. 

So this is it!  Come on, USofA!!!

Day 6 - Consulate Appt

Today was the Consulate appointment, which is the last official step before we are allowed to return to the US with L in tow.  We were ushered into the US Consulate, which is in a tall office building surrounded by coffee shops and travel agencies, with the main locators being several small signs and a metal detector.  We joined about 30 other families in a large conference room, where we sat for about an hour waiting for the group oath to be taken.  L ate a snack and practiced his new English words ("Hulooooow" and "Bye-bye bus!") while we waited, and then began to play in the small plastic house at the back of the room.

The adoption officer came into the room--or actually, spoke to us over a microphone from behind bulletproof glass--and explained the paperwork we need to enter the US, what the oath means, and next steps.  We all stood up, raised our right hands, and essentially promised that the masses of paperwork we submitted is accurate and honest.  Then each family was asked to come to a window--sort of like at a bank--and go over paperwork and discuss final details.  This was the point where L completely lost it.  I would guess that most families of toddlers avoid places like the DMV for hours on end, and we've been pretty much spending long periods of time in such places for the past 10 days, and he is just done-done-done.  So in the process, he hit Cory and bit him on the shoulder, which are two behaviors we hadn't seen yet (he later checked Cory's shoulder, and kissed it).  So Cory took him to the back of the room, and gave him some crackers, and he quieted down and fell asleep.  The adoption officer helping me asked, "Can your husband handle this situation?" and I said, well, yeah.  He said, in all earnestness, "I would NEVER be able to handle it.  I would just leave it to my wife."  I thought that was pretty funny and surprisingly honest. 

But in the end we got through it fine, and I think this is the last of the big government buildings we will need to hang around at while we are here.  Thank goodness for that.

Tomorrow we pick up L's visa, and other than that, we will just hang out, pack, go to the pool, and enjoy one more day here in Guangzhou. 

One day and a wakeup, and we are on our way home.

:-)