一个月后

Today marks one month since we first met Joshua face-to-face.  A lot has changed in a month, some has not.  Here's a recap.

What's basically the same...

• He still has a hernia.  We saw a surgeon at Texas Children's Hospital yesterday.  He agreed that Joshua definitely has a hernia (knew that, thanks), that it needs to be fixed, and that they clearly tried to fix it in China.  So this will be a re-do surgery which is slightly more complicated.  That's schedule for later this month, looking forward to getting all that tucked away.
• He is still missing his left hand.  Can't find it anywhere.
• He still speaks a mixture of actual chinese and gibberish chinese.  We've learned to understand a lot more of it but sometimes he just goes into a story and all I can say is "you got that right".  Typically 2 year-old, his thoughts exceed his vocabulary.
• We still don't have someone to speak chinese with him on regular basis.  I think we have a connection to a native speaker but he isn't back from vacation yet.  So, if you're out there and are a native Mandarin speaker (or know one) somewhere close to the NorthEast Beltway, let me know.
• He's still a food-hoarder although he's getting over it quickly.  Mealtime usually goes something like this:
• He asks for food A, we give it too him (presuming that food A is not junk, he loves his junk food).
• He asks for food B.
• We tell him to eat food A first and he refuses.
• We take food A away and give him food B - he gets upset.
• We give food A back and take food B away - he gets upset.
• We give him food B in addition to food A.  He holds food A close by while he eats food B.
• From this point forward he eats foods C thru X all the while holding on to food A.
• When he's finally finished eating everything else, we run out of food, or we cut him off, he then eats food A.

What's a little different...

• He understands a ton more english than he used to.  He now understands enough for us to tell him most of what we need him to know (stop, come here, go, no, yes, sit, stand, kiss, hug, etc...).
• His list of foods that he's willing to eat keeps expanding and expanding.  He's a good eater.
• He gets more and more willing to let other people get near him, touch him, speak to him, etc...  He loves other kids and love Lora.
• Up until about a day ago, he absolutely did not want to pee or poop in his pants.  In the last couple of days he's discovered that if he pees in his pull-up, it doesn't really make a mess or even make him wet.  ***Panic... All hands on deck.  We need him to continue thinking that wetting your pants is a terrible things to do.***  We returned fire with a switch from pull-ups to actual underwear.  He peed his pants once today and of course got very wet.  The rest of the day he was definitely letting us know when he needed to go to the bathroom.  Might've dodged a bullet.
• He's gotten a lot more stable on his feet and has gained a lot of confidence when it comes to negotiating the stairs, getting up and around in his bed, and just getting around in general.
• I'm back to work.  Feels kinda nice to be back in my routine although I'd rather be at home than at work.
• Found out a few weeks ago that he had an intestinal parasite.  Got some drugs and hopefully have that cleared up.

All in all this has been an interesting month.  Seems like we've had him longer but that's just how it is I suppose.

Just to close the loop on one other items... I mentioned earlier that the kids did most of the Christmas tree decorating and left the tree a little lop-sided.  We left it that way.  On Christmas morning Lora was reaching for a present and snagged her hair-bow on a branch and pulled the whole thing over.  Lost a few ornaments and destroyed the tree base.  Packed it all up that evening, first time I ever put the tree away on Christmas day.