China, From Lora's Perspective

January 16

If you're counting, today marks one month that Mae has been ours.  How time flies.

When we went to China we gave Lora our point-n-shoot camera.  We knew she'd enjoy taking pictures and it would give her something to do along the way.  It was both interesting and funny to the see the pics she took.  Here's a sampling.

I think she took this picture 3 times and cut my head off every time.  This is in the hotel in Nanjing.

Some of the Christmas decorations in Nanjing.

The breakfast table...

Our server/waitress in Nanjing.

Scott looking at a TV monitor somewhere.

Decorative stone in the Confucius Temple area.  Lora got mad at Joshua because his foot kept getting in her shot when she was trying to take this picture.

Curly fried potatoes.

Lora and some lady.

Lora on the plane when we were first flying to China.  Note the excitement.

The seat-back entertainment on the plane.

Scott playing is some airport.

Chinese TV in one of our hotel rooms.

Lauren carrying a stroller up a few steps.  We did a lot of this since China isn't ADA compliant.

Up please...

This is part of a phone number on the side of a but in Guangzhou.  It took three pictures to get the whole number in.  The bus driver (on a smoke break) stood back and watched her take them and seemed utterly confused.

Suplosion

We've been home almost two weeks now, past the first round of doctor appointments, past the jet-lag, and are starting to figure out what's gonna work for us going forward and what isn't.  We still have quite a while until this becomes the new "normal" for us but so it is.

The kids are doing well, here's the rundown youngest to oldest:

Mae
Mae is generally a happy little girl until she gets tires.  She seems perfectly happy with Heather or me.  She sleeps through the night and naps well although it's sometimes difficult to get her to sleep to begin with.  Heather's better at that than I am.  Mae also cries out frequently when she's repositioning in bed, I don't think she actually wakes up b/c she calms down quickly but I think it does wake Heather up.  Otherwise, she's eating well, she plays wells, and is doing great.

Medically, we have an appointment with Shriners in February for an initial evaluation.  The Pediatrician ordered some blood tests but nobody's been able to draw her blood.  At the latest attempt, the tech felt her arms and didn't even try to stick her.

Scott
Scott gained 10 pounds the minute we got back from China.  Not sure how but he did.  He eats non-stop and is insatiable.  Because he eats so much he also does something else so much, his diapers are barely containing it and sometimes fail to do that.  He gets frequent impromptu baths...  He's very active, plays well with Jacob and Mae although sometimes he and Jacob squabble which I suppose is normal.  We've managed to get him sleeping in his own bed again, now we just need him to put himself to sleep...

Matter of fact, as I was finishing this very paragraph, the following happened:

• Scott fell off a small chair and busted his upper lip (blood everywhere).
• While tending to his bloody lip, I notice he stinks a bit.  First things first, let's deal with the blood.
• Once I get the lip and the crying under control I sit with him to calm him down (it's about nap time, he passes out immediately).  I notice the stinkyness again.
• I take him to the changing table and find that he's blown out of his diaper...  I get him cleaned up, stripped down, in a new diaper.
• I lay him in the bed and he falls asleep on his own.

And there you have it, that's how we roll.

Jacob
Jacob is very active.  He seems to be attaching well but gets very nervous when either one of us leaves (unless he's leaving too).  This morning Heather took Lora and Joshua to school.  As they were getting ready, Jacob kept getting his shoes and trying to get one of us to put them on...  He's a typical 2-year-old in many other ways, testing boundaries, temper tantrums, hitting, biting, etc...  We're working through all that.

Medically, he has a heart echo scheduled next week and then they'll do a heart catheter a week or so after that.  Those two tests will help the surgeons determine a path forward.  The Pediatrician also ordered blood work on him.  2 labs and 4 techs, nobody has successfully stuck him yet.  Heather did get a poo sample submitted, lets hope they don't lose it (check the post from February 6, 2013 for the history on this comment).

Joshua
Joshua is Joshua.  He's nosy, inquisitive, a copy-cat, and all the other things that a 4-year-old little brother is.  He's in pre-school and enjoys his, he's a good learner.  He tries hard to follow rules but frequently acts without thinking, again typical 4yo I think.  He still has very tender emotions, i presume he'll grow out of that.  Anyways, he's been ours over two years now and we couldn't imagine life without him.

Lora
Lora is 5, very close to 6.  She's bossy, pushy, also nosy, and all the things a big sister is (I would know).  She's a very creative little girl and also a great learner.  Hyperactive, and as long as she gets her naps she's a delight.  She also mispronounces a lot of words which is super funny (Hence the title of this post.  Lora says suppression instead of explosion.  Any time the boys blow out their diaper Lora declares it a suplosion.)

Jacob's Special Vest

January 8

Today we saw the pediatric cardiologist for the first time.  Long story short, we have more tests and procedures to run before they formulate a surgery plan.  No surprises there.  They put a Holter (24-hour heart monitor) on Jacob to get more data.  Apparently some nurse at Texas Childrens devised a vest for kiddos to wear when they have a holter on.  It protects the sensors and has a pocket to hold the device so the kids don't mess with it so much.  Pretty smart if you ask me.

The doc explained that Jacob's heart/condition is pretty much what we thought it was.  For those interested, he appears to have PA (pulmonary atresia) and VSD (ventricular septal defect) with mapcas (major aorto pulmonary collaterals).  For those of you that aren't medical professionals and/or don't know how to use google, this means his heart doesn't pump blood to the lungs like it ought to.  You can read more about it here.  None of this was really news to us so it's business as usual.

Jacob in his special vest.

Tuesday night was the first night that we managed to keep everyone in their bed all night long.  That doesn't necessarily mean that everybody slept through the night but it's a big step in the right direction.  The kids are still clearly tired during the day both from the jet-lag and from the busy schedule we've been keeping but we don't cut them much slack, at least not until they start sleeping through the night again...almost there.

Jacob last night.  Fell asleep at his desk.  This will be me the first week I go back to work.

Mae tonight after dinner.

Otherwise we've been enjoying are kids while we're all home.  Here's a few pics of them.

Dr. Time

January 6

Today we go to our first Dr. visit with the kids.  It's with our regular pediatrician so I'm not expecting anything real revelatory but you never know.

One a side note, Jacob actually slept through the night last night.  Good step toward being on local time.  Still gotta get Mae and Scott to sleep through the night.

Hard to believe that only two years ago we were going through all the same things with Joshua...

Mae the T-Rex

January 3/4

Last night (this morning) the three littles woke up at 2am and were having trouble going back to sleep.  As I was sitting by Mae's bed trying to sooth her and get her back to sleep I had this thought - Mae is kinda like a Tyrannosaurus Rex.  I made a list.

Way's That Mae is like a T-Rex:

• Mae's arms aren't much use to her, just like a T-Rex.  She can do a little with them and some day she'll do a lot more with them but for right now she's mostly legs, torso, and head.
• Mae's dominate limbs are her legs.  This is the positive side to the fact that her arms don't do much.  Her legs are very strong and flexible and she uses them to great advantage.
• Mae attacks with her head.  Since her arms are not useful for attacks, she uses her head.  The first few days we had her she would strike at us with her head much like a cobra does (I started calling her Cobra Kai).  It was hard to tell if she was trying to bite us or kiss us but it was a bit scary either way.  She would also do this move to head-butt the other kids, which was funnier to me but only because I wasn't the intended victim.  Anyways, her primary tool of aggression is her head/face.

After about 30 minutes of deliberating this I started to think about how perhaps this was a bit absurd. Comparing my daughter to a dinosaur.  So I made a list of all the ways that Mae is NOT like a T-Rex.

Ways that Mae is NOT like a T-Rex:

• Mae actually exists, live in the flesh. Nobody has ever seen a living T-Rex, at least nobody that bothered to record their experience.  The most complete T-Rex skeleton ever found was only 80% complete which still leaves a lot of room for speculation as to the details of what it was and wasn't.
• Mae likes fruit, particularly bananas, whereas the T-Rex is thought to be a carnivore.
• Mae is a mammal, T-Rex is a reptile (I think).
• Mae weighs about 22 pounds, T-Rex is more like 5 tons.

By this time Heather came and relieved me and I went downstairs to keep Scott company, Heather soon brought me Jacob as well.  Jacob cried a long time, which woke up Scott.  I finally got them both to calm down by singing Jesus Love Me.  So we sang that about 2,000 times.  After that I let Jacob help me memorize and recite the beatitudes.  I figured that if we were going to be awake we might as well be productive.

Finally about 5:00-5:30 we wall fell back to sleep.

Mae likes the bouncer because it's one of the few times she gets to stand up.

This morning is her panda gear while we were doing some unpacking.

The redness of her lip/nose is partly due to her condition and partly because she has a snotty nose and gets her nose wiped about a million times a day.

Reflections from Heather.  I don't blog much as this is really Micah's thing but thought I might reflect on some things....This trip was definitely different for me.  Different from the first.  I am an experienced China traveler now.  I knew what to expect in most ways and that was comforting in some ways.  But it was still exciting and I was filled with anticipation of getting our babies.  However, two babies at one time made it different as well, and when you add in three existing children, well, lets just say I am spent.  I was relaxed a bit though.  I didn't even make Lora wear swim goggles in the shower like I did last time to make sure she didn't get the bacteria filled water in her eyes.  Maybe I should have put some kind of muzzle on Scott though since it was impossible to keep the 1 year old from sucking on washcloths and drinking bath water.  Hence, we ended up with a stomach bug producing diarrhea (meaning lots of diaper blowouts), vomiting and fever!  I am thankful to be back in the US where you can actually use the tap water (except maybe in LaPlace, LA) for brushing teeth and washing dishes.  I was definitely prepared this time for the food.  However, I am happy to be home where generally there is an accepted practice of which particular parts of the animals are used in the dishes we eat.  I realize this isn't a guarantee, but there it is a high probability that while you are eating pork, just like they say, it is most likely the parts you don't want to eat that are in the dish.  Nevertheless, this time I let down my guard and ate fried squid on a stick with my husband on the street.  And cow's stomach at a restaurant.  Chewy and prickly....not my thing.  I even let my kids eat Chinese hotdogs...and if you think American hot dogs are questionable.  Well....I just didn't ask.  I have to admire though a culture that leaves nothing to waste.  And I am happy to return to the land of carseats.  While I never really worried about the safety of my children not in car seats while there, I do like that I can buckle them in and for three of them there is nothing they can do about it.  And I don't have to hold on to them while they are squirming.  That is the great thing about a five point harness.  I am also happy to be home to the land of steak and potatoes.  I love rice and noodles, but there just comes a point when you can't do it anymore.  I was just lucky to have found that the Starbucks now carries iced lemon tea, and while that isn't Southern sweet tea (which by the way I have not had yet and am happy pay lots of money for right now) it was better than nothing and actually had ice in it.  Anyway, just some thoughts I had and thought I might share.  Still might share some more, but I am tired now and all the kids are sleeping...for the moment.

Bringing Children Home from China

January 1

Today we left the hotel in China at 05:30 and arrived at home at 17:00 (mom, that's 5:00pm).  In other words we spent 25.5 hours in a single day getting from point A to B.  Overall, January 1 was 38 hours long for us which is longer than the normal day.  For all those people out there that say "I wish I had more hours in the day", you really don't.

The kids were great on the flights.  The airline/airport staff were terrible (more on that another time) - the only exception being that a Chinese customs/immigration agent actually got out of her booth and helped me fill out the exit cards I needed so that we could leave China.  

Getting home was easy thanks to our beloved friends.  When we got home we found that our neighbors had made us dinner and our church LifeGroup* had stocked our pantry and refrigerator.  Couldn't feel more blessed to have my kiddos home and know that we are surrounded by people that love and care for us.  

* - In case I lost you with the word "LifeGroup" this is a current buzzword for what I used to call a Sunday School class.  You can call it what you want, the point is for Christian people to minister to each other physically and spiritually, to the point co-dependency.  This is what they're doing for us right now and while it's humbling to accept help, it's heartwarming to feel their love.

January 2

Everybody woke up 2am, we ate breakfast shortly after and went back to bed by 5.  Up again at 6, ate lunch at 9 and down for a "nap" again at 10am.  We all woke up from our "nap" at 5pm...  Shortly after that we heard the door knock, some dear friends were bringing us dinner (it was delicious).  Now we're trying to keep them up a bit longer before we go to bed, just lost Scott (at 10:15) and the others probably won't last long.  This is just how it's gonna be for a few days...the tricky part is keeping all the kids and us on the same schedule as we transition back to local time.  

We've unpacked a few things but not much really.  Took all day for the house to warm up b/c I turned it down to the 50's while we were away, I'm cheap like that.  As for the kids, they're doing great cause all we do is eat, sleep, and play.  They all sleep well as long as someone sleeps with them, it was the same way with Joshua for a while.  Not a big deal except I still don't get to sleep in my own bed.  

Everything considered, I wouldn't trade it for the world.