Monday, December 31, 2012

Birthday Girls

On Saturday, the 22nd of December, we had a birthday party for our two girls.  They turned 5 on Thursday and Friday of that week, so Saturday was a joint party.  Therese was super excited about the party, but a little confused about the arrangments.  Whenever we mentioned the party, she would pipe up and say, "Can I go?"  Then I would explain the party was going to be at our house and that of course she was going.  We went through that several times per day in the week leading up to the big day. 
 
 I made cupcakes and an individual heart-shaped cake for each girl.
 
 
Catherine blew out her candles so fast that I don't have a picture of the action.

 
We let Catherine go first, since Therese had no idea what strange customs Americans have for birthdays.  She probably thought that putting candles on a cake was very strange!

 
Therese, with her big owie from her crash on the plasmacar the day before:

 
She huffed,

 
And puffed,

 
and finally all the candles were out. 

 
The young revelers at the kid tables

 
My beautiful new god-daughter, who just arrived home from China.  With our family and Therese's godparent's family, we had 6 kids from China in our house, in addition to one adopted from the DR Congo and two from Guatemala.  We are the international corner in our parish since we usually sit near each other.

 
Therese was thrilled with her presents and her first birthday party ever was a resounding success.

 
Catherine, even though she is an old hand at birthdays, hugely enjoyed her gifts too.

 
What a special day, to celebrate two beautiful sisters turning five.  The wonderful thing about adoption is that these two girls were born on opposite sides of the world, and now they are sisters.

Friday, December 28, 2012

Eating snowmen

Today the kids were absolutely thrilled by the first real snow.  It was mostly gone once the sun came out, but the older ones did get to play in some for awhile, so they were happy.  Even though it was a very tiny amount of snow, they still managed to track it everywhere and leave wet snow gear everywhere.  I spent quite a lot of time on my hands and knees by the toilets, cleaning the grout with ajax and a toothbrush, so I needed a quick dinner idea.  The menu tonight is a green smoothie, salad, and pumpkin flaxseed pancakes.  You can't get a menu like that at IHOP!  I accidentally made one shaped like a snowman, so now all the kids want them.  Since I'm not very talented, some of them look more like binoculars.  Some either looked like very small-headed snowmen, or maybe a textbook drawing of an appendix.  The kids don't seem to care that their mom's talents are definitely not in the area of art.  Mr. B. asked me if I could make one shaped like a rabbit.  Maybe I took the rabbit thing a little far, but I couldn't resist the challenge.  It does look different than a snowman, or binoculars, although the first try was more like Mickey Mouse, after getting his head stuck in a door.  It is a good thing we have a similar sense of humor.  When we start a good joke we are like dogs with a rabbit, I mean with a bone.  We can have fun with one, then later dig it up and enjoy it again.

Green smoothies came first:

 
Today I put fresh pineapple in it.

 
My best effort at a bunny-shaped pancake:  (Yes, I served it on a Thomas the Train plate.  No one is too old to appreciate a classy plate like this!)

 
Therese with her snowman pancake.  She said, "Thisa funny!"

 
"I like it, this one."

 
Since I'm on the topic of food in shapes, here is a cute spinach leaf I found the other day.  We eat bushels of it but haven't ever found such a cute little heart shape.
 
 
On the 26th we actually had Christmas dinner, and since it was late we were the only ones eating in state in the dining room on the good dishes.  The kids loved it.

 
Eagerly awaiting his food--John liked the menu very much even though he declined the sauce and he was skeptical when I was cooking the bean cakes.
 
 
My plate, showing the menu:  Adzuki bean and rice cakes with roasted yellow pepper sauce, asparagus, and mashed potatoes.

 

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Life Isn't Fair

Since I have been sharing my silly side in posts like this one, I thought I would share a much more serious but funny story.  This morning my dear curly-headed-diva-daughter was in a snit.  This is a normal state for her.  There is more emotion in her small self than in half a dozen more normal kids.  She was offended because I chose to change a poopy diaper and one that was overflowing with pee before I helped her get dressed.  The smell of a diaper filled over night with e.coli filled urine is something that you never forget, so to my more logical adult mind that seemed a high priority.  She started on her usual repertoire.  "That's not fair."  "You love everyone more than me."  I didn't think that the smelly children would appreciate my elaborating on their current states by pointing out that if you have younger siblings who reek to high heaven, they are going to get first priority.  So, on the impulse of the moment I tried to be philosophical and tell her that life isn't fair.  The more I see of the world, the more I realize how I have been blessed to be born to loving parents, to be born without any medical problems, and to never be lacking food or other basics of life.  This didn't go over very well, and she said, "I don't feel special anymore."  Since her birthday experience of wearing a crown and being presented with gifts and special food, followed by the celebrations on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, she is experienceing a big letdown.  So I gave her a very inspirational little talk about how most of the great saints we admire, like Mother Teresa, experienced a dark night of the soul and even felt that God didn't love them.  All my efforts at explaining the dark night of the soul and offering up our suffering were in vain.  Maybe the dark night of the soul is a little deep for a 5-year-old, in spite of my brilliant attempts.  She will appreciate my theological reflections when she is a teenager, right?  Don't answer that one.  Anyway, I resorted to making faces at her until she couldn't resist laughing.  I will have to postpone my career as a theologian until I get a more appreciative audience.

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Monday, December 24, 2012

I think my sense of humor is going downhill....

Recently I laughed until I cried, about the idea of wrapping everyone's Christmas presents in the boxes that enemas come in.  I don't know why that was so funny, but I was laughing so hard that Mr. B. was looking at me with that funny look he gets sometimes.  I came in holding the box, and told him, "isn't this a great box for Christmas presents?  It is such a nice, clean, box, and the perfect size."  Maybe I need to get more sleep, but tears were streaming down my face because I was laughing so hard.  I feel like chuckling even now, just thinking about it.  I guess my family will find out very soon if I actually did this.  Ha ha!  Then last night I laughed until I cried when Mr. B. was talking about killing and eating rabbits in survival training.  I even made him laugh, but I was the only one crying and barely able to breathe.  It is pretty funny when you are a vegan family, picturing a bunch of sleep deprived cadets trying to evade their instructors and set traps for bunnies.  I suggested that when they ran into other groups of evaders in the dark, they could make bunny noises to find out who they were.  The instructors weren't hungry so they wouldn't come running if they heard a bunny noise.  Don't ask me what noise a bunny makes in the middle of the night on a mountain side, but I thought it was a great idea.  Our kids have no idea what parents talk about when they are all in bed.  I don't laugh that hard about all military stuff, although it can be interesting.  It is a good thing Mr. B. married a nerd, and one whose dad was a military history buff.  We stayed up late one night last week discussing logistics.  There is apparently a whole field of study on how best to move supplies in and out of war zones.  They even have their own professional journals.  I think that generals could learn a lot from moms with lots of little kids to manage.  Getting my crew places can involve some pretty advanced logistics.  Maybe I should offer the military my services to teach a class on how to keep snacks and toilet paper and diapers in stock and how to effectively mobilize.  Or maybe I should just write it up and mail it to one of the generals.  I have several nice, clean, enema boxes that are just the right size.

Postscript:
I managed to keep the joke going by eating my breakfast on Christmas Eve in a Peter Rabbit bowl.  Also, as we pulled up at church at 11:30 PM for Midnight Mass, a rather large rabbit ran across the playground, in the spotlight of our headlights.  I guess I'm not very spiritual because when I should have been recollecting myself for the Mass, I found this rabbit hysterically funny, and couldn't resist telling Mr. B., "Look, there's a bunny!  Why don't you see if you can catch it?"  Yes, I think rabbits are going to be a popular theme in our house for the near future.  As soon as I post the Christmas pictures you will be able to see who was the lucky recipient of the enema box.

Sunday, December 23, 2012

A happy family

This whole thing about getting used to counting head up to six is starting to get comfortable, and I really feel like the kids are acting more and more like siblings.  That can be good and bad, but mostly it has been good around here.  We got to enjoy unusually warm weather which provided more opportunity for outdoor fun.

Thomas, riding a tricycle as fast as he could go

 
The older kids playing soccer, of course:

 
I promise I didn't pick these guys for their looks.  (Their referral pictures made them look like little red raisins!)


 
"Not the camera again, Mom!"


I don't think Mom can see me if I hide here..............





 
"Don't take any more pictures of me!"

 
"Take my picture, Mom!"

 
Fermin took his sister off-roading in the stroller and showed her all the sights.

 
The kids met a neighbor's dog, and even thought about petting him.

 
Fermin took the scenic route on the way to the pond, and found that going uphill is much harder than down.

 
Time for some fishing!  Maybe we can catch some leaves for dinner.



 
Yes, she is just like what this picture makes you think--a diva!

How to be sensitive to adoptive families.

I thought THIS was a very good post for extended families or friends to read, now that holiday gathering season is in full swing.  We are very blessed in our family and our church and their warm acceptance of our children, but I recently read about a friend's experience and thought the more we can spread the word, the more situations we could avoid.  This mom has a child just home from China, and at their family gathering an aunt actually reprimanded the child for throwing a temper tantrum by telling her she should be grateful she has a family and that she could still be living in an orphanage in China.  I think most adoptive parents would tell you that we don't expect our kids to be thankful we adopted them, any more than we expect our kids to be grateful when we suggest that dancing on the front lawn in your underwear isn't proper behavior, that they should brush their teeth and make their beds, or later tell them when they can and cannot have the car keys.  Anyone who would say that to a newly adopted child is either thoughtless or hopelessly immune to suggestions, but for those who are open to them, that post is very good.  Please keep in mind that even though as adults we know that it is great these kids have access to food, medical care, and a family to love them, but that leaving everything you have ever known is hard.  Learning a new language and culture is hard, and so is finding your place in a new family, surrounded by unfamiliar things.  No child (or adult) wants to be made to feel like a charity project, or that they are less valuable than kids who stay in their first families.  Kids with medical needs benefit from the care they can get here, but their most fundamental special need was for a family.  Our kids didn't have any choice about whether or by whom they would be adopted, and we don't expect them to be grateful.  They are just kids.   Our job is to pour love into them and help them have the best lives possible, no matter how tough the early stages of adjustment are.  All adoptive families that I know adopted their kids for a very simple reason--love--and that is what we are celebrating this holiday season, after all.

What about John?

I know I've talked about more about Therese than I have about John Francis.  Part of that is because he was so blessed to live at Eagle's Wings foster home, and because of that he is so, well, normal.  He wasn't starving or denied basic care like Therese.  He came home basically on track and he seems like such a normal 4-year-old that it is almost surprising.  That is the good part.  The other side is that the little guy had a pretty tough time the first two months home.  He really needs security and stability in his life and being adopted and taken away from everything he had ever known, his friends, and his country and language were just hard.  He grieved so much, and although we knew that was because he had a rare and precious gift of a happy childhood, it was very hard to see a little boy go through that.  In a more perfect world, a child shouldn't have to give up everything just in order to get a family, but we live in a far from perfect world and this was the best option available to him.
 
Once of John's reactions to the stress was to seek comfort in food.  I suppose it is ironic that we had all these food issues with the child who wasn't malnourished, but personality makes every child react to stress differently.  He acted desperate for food and constantly asked for snacks.  He ate the food that other people left on the table and even off the floor.  He ate cat food.  You couldn't crack a cabinet in the kitchen without him materializing almost magically with a hopeful expression on his face, even if all I was doing was getting dish soap out of the cabinet under the sink.  Imagine you were a child who detested vegetables, and you got adopted by a family who were following a plant-based diet, so the meals were basically cooked vegetables or raw vegetables.  He was happy about the bread and the rice.  While I cooked dinner, he would come and pet me.  He was also showing a lot of oral fixation, constantly putting toys in his mouth and chewing on inedible things.  He would eat helping after helping at dinner, more than either of his parents, and didn't seem to know when he was full.  He was gaining a pound per week, even on our no junk food vegan diet, and the week he put on two pounds I had to put a stop to things. 

I didn't want to limit his food too much in the transition period but that couldn't go on.  So I radically limited snacks, limited him to two helpings of food at meals, and eliminated all nuts from his diet.  I told him that he couldn't have seconds of anything at meals until he ate his raw veggies.  We did find out that one reason his tummy looked so big was constipation, and getting things moving again helped.  He has gradually moved back down to about where he was when we came home.  Managing bowels for children with spina bifida can be a challenge, but our high-fiber diet is very good for him.
 
John Francis is such a tender-hearted boy, and he had a hard time adjusting to having rough-and-tumble big brothers.  Jose and Fermin are very active boys and they roll and tumble like puppies, greet each other by punches in the shoulder and shoves, and just generally act like boys.  John didn't know how to react to all of that, and because his balance isn't very good, a shove that was meant to be playful would often knock him over.   He cried a lot, over every little thing the boys did, and of course the rude things they did.  He was very frustrated for awhile because of the language barrier and got upset when the other kids tried to joke with him.  Some days he would get overwhelmed with grief for his old life, always in the late afternoon, and he would cry for hours.  For the first two months there was just a lot of crying.
 
Other than crying, John's stress reaction is to shut down.  He can do that so effectively that when we were at the ER with him, the doctor who came in looked him over and said, "Is he able to speak at all?"  That kind of shocked me but I guess the doctor came in and thought he was dealing with a severely disabled child, who was staring into space and refusing to make eye contact.  I assured the doctor that he is quite a little chatterbox, but even then I thought he looked doubtful.  Besides shutting down, he would sometimes go into an overdrive charm mode with people he had never met before.  It was quite a surprise compared to how he was acting with us.
 
I don't want any of this to discourage anyone from adopting a child who is a little older, or even from adopting out of birth order.  In John's case, the out of birth order placement required me to do a lot of buffering between the kids.  I didn't get much done for weeks at a time and had to do housework late at night when they were asleep.  Now the kids are starting to bond and it seems less like a playdate that never ends and more like a family again.  The new kids are speaking English, and John Francis especially is getting more and more fluent.  It was hard for such a verbal child to be unable to communicate.   He is also very sensitive to other people's moods, and his new big sister is moody to an amazing degree.  It really hurt John's feelings to have her invite him into her room to play, and then later rudely order him out when her mood changed.  I would like to say her moods have changed, but that is the way she is.  I've tried to explain to John that sometimes big sisters change their minds, but it is hard to help a 4-year-old understand he doesn't have to take things personally.  Even I take her moods personally sometimes.  Most of the time she is very sweet with him and they have lots of fun together.
 
In the last few weeks it has been like watching a flower open--John Francis is happy.  There is a bounce in his step and his cute little voice is cheerful.  He is a very empathetic boy and is always comforting anyone who gets hurt.  He makes such a big deal over Mommy getting an owie that it is almost embarrassing.  He is very polite and says please and thank you.  He rarely causes fights between the kids, and I'm thinking that maybe the rumors I have heard are true, and there are some easier kids out there.  Maybe I finally have one in my house!  He is very, very snuggly, and he always notices if I make an effort to put on some jewelry or a scarf, saying, "so pretty, Mommy!  I like it, this one!"  He has also gotten more used to his new way of walking with AFOs and isn't falling down so often.  It was a happy day when he kicked a soccer ball around at the park. 
 
Now that John Francis is feeling comfortable in his new life, he is letting his silly side come out.  He is so cute and funny when he makes up a silly dance, and he laughs heartily with everyone.  He enjoys jokes and fun so much, and he is one of the few kids who doesn't like to laugh at someone else if they are not laughing too.  He makes very silly faces.  He makes us all laugh and the more he laughs the more I do, because his laugh is very cute and funny.
 
 
I'm so happy that he is happy and just enjoy my snuggle boy.  He is definitely Mommy's boy right now and helps me out by folding washcloths and other jobs like that.  We have his series of MRIs scheduled for January 2nd, so we hope to get answers soon about what the neurosurgeon thinks he needs.  She hoped that he might have outgrown his need for a shunt, but as a Dr. Mom, I think it may need to be replaced.  When he tries to use the potty the pressure in his head increases and he will cry with pain and tell me his head hurts.  I have postponed further potty-training efforts until after we get that testing done.  I am not saying this as a biased mom--this has to be one of the sweetest little boys I have ever met.  He has a very tender and loving heart, and every family would be blessed to have a boy like this.
 
 
 

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Conversations with Therese

Now that she can communicate in English, little bits about her past are coming out.  She told me a week ago that there were three girls in her room in China.  That seems like a small number to me, but that is what she said.  She calls them all sisters, and even though she knows her own Chinese name she hasn't been able to tell us the names of any of them.  I'm glad that she seems to have happy memories of her former life, since I struggle a lot with anger about how neglected she was.  No child should be that malnourished or have deep ulcers in their little bottoms from not having their diaper changed.
 
Last week I told her that we are going to see a doctor and get her feet fixed.  She looked at me like I was telling her something very novel, and asked, "Like Catherine?  Like John?"  When I told her yes, she would have feet that were straight and be able to wear shoes, she just threw back her head and began to laugh with joy.  She has asked me several times since then, "when we go doctor?"  In China people would talk in front of her about her feet, and people seemed to see her clubbed feet as horrible deformities, not as something that can be corrected.  They were talking in Chinese but it was very obvious when they would point to her feet and talk among themselves.  Of course she could understand them, and she would get very quiet and uncharacteristically subdued for awhile.  I don't think she realized that anything could be done so she can walk like a normal person.  She has been so happy about that news, and especially about being able to wear shoes.  I have never seen a child who loves shoes as much as this one.   When we were still in China I wrote about my experience letting her pick out a pair of shoes: http://www.thelaundrymountain.blogspot.com/2012/08/a-new-pair-of-shoes.html
 
The other night when I was tucking her in, she talked about them again.  Tucking-in can be a bit prolonged.  After the hugs, kisses, and tucking, when I start to leave the room she will say, "Mama, hugga me!"  She has missed out of years of hugs so I go back and repeat the process while she beams with happiness.  The other night, she held on to me and looked into my eyes and said, "I want go."  I was a bit startled and asked her where, and she said, "I want go to my China."  I told her that someday she can go back to visit, and it all ended on a happy note.  A day or two later, she brought it up again when we were alone.  I asked her why she wants to go, and she said, "because."  (I told you that she is learning English very fast--that sounded so much like her other siblings!)  Finally I found out that she wants to see her friends and show them her feet when they are fixed, when she, "walks by self."    I guess the ultimate way for her to show people her new life would be to see her old friends, walking in on her own two little feet, wearing pretty shoes.

St. Nicholas, December 6th

Last year we adopted the old custom of having the kids leave their shoes out to be filled with treats.  We do this instead of doing stockings at Christmas and since they get toys and treats early the kids are very much in favor of the new tradition.  The kids were up bright and early, eager to pile out of their rooms and see what they found in and by their shoes.  I do know that a certain little boy did a sneak preview in the night, unable to wait to find out what he was getting.

 
The gummy worms were a big hit.  The new kids hesitated to bite into such a funny-looking things, but after that they ate them eagerly.



Urodynamics testing, December 5th

This was a day we both looked forward to and dreaded--we needed to find out as much as possible about how both kids are functioning, but the testing is very, ahem, personal, and not very comfortable.  In a nutshell, the testing involved putting little electrodes on them, and inserting catheters into both the rectum and urinary tract.  The bladder is emptied, and then filled with a solution that shows up on x-ray.  This way we could learn all sorts of things about sphincter tone, how much their bladders can store, and how well they empty.  This is very important for kids with spina bifida because many of them have reflux of urine back into the kidneys which eventually causes the kidneys to fail.  Now all of you probably want to sign up for this testing now that I've told you how fun it is, because you have always wondered how much your bladder can hold before it overflows.  I don't know if you can talk your doctors into a referral if you don't have a medical reason like spina bifida, but you will learn a lot of interesting things if you can.  You might even get candy and a stuffed animal if you are good.
 
We had to get the kids up very early.  Therese isn't the quickest kid to wake up in the morning, as you can see here, in this picture of her reaction to being awakened and brought to the table for breakfast while it is still dark outside:
 
 
John perked up pretty fast once he heard that food was being offered.

 
Little princess slowly manages to get a spoonful of rice cereal to her mouth.


Big brother steps in to help, speeding the process up a little.

 
After her test, Therese got a little pink pig and some candy, which she happily chomped down:


 
We got very good news from the testing, that Therese isn't refluxing into her kidneys at this time, and that John had normal bladder results.  The specialist who did the test said that he sees normal results in only about 5 to 7 percent of children with spina bifida.  I'm sure that none of the readers of this blog want to hear every detail about their urine, but I found it quite fascinating.  Anyone who wants more poop and pee stories just let me know.