Fourth of July

It takes a certain amount of self-confidence to be able to wear such a loud (albeit, patriotic,) hat. Jack wore his spangled sombrero proudly as he cruised the lake. His dad spent most of the day dragging him, and some of our friends, in an inner tube and they all had a blast. While this was going on, I was up in the house with Makena. I know that, had she seen Jack tearing across the water, she would have wanted to do the same.
At the end of the day, we had the best viewing for the fireworks: right from the middle of the lake. Sometimes it seemed like the flurry of sparkles was raining down right over us. It was excellent. It felt like our own private show (We were one of probably a couple hundred boats on the water.) We took Makena. I was a bit concerned that she might freak out about the noise and the lights, but she didn't. She rallied and although she was cautious at first, by the end of the fireworks show, she had added "wow" to her vocabulary.

Wow was right. This was her first Fourth of July with us!

Isabelle

Wealth

How do you measure wealth? Is it by the amount of savings you have in your bank account or rather the number of long and lasting friends you can turn to at the end of the day? I believe it's the latter and, boy, did I feel rich this week.

My oldest friend in the world came to visit me from Canada with her husband and two children. I've known her since I sat next to her in the fourth grade at St. Leon's public Catholic School in Westmount, Quebec. (The same grade that Jack will be entering in September.) I started playing with her eraser and she was too shy to tell me that it bugged her. But I think our friendship was really cemented when we sat together at the back of the church (every first Friday of the month) for two years, watching the rest of the class take communion. Apparently, our parents had failed to help us get our "first communion" in a timely matter and we were, as a result, most assuredly going to hell. The gateway starting with the humiliation of being singled out as nonbelievers (yet still having to do confession). Boy, did we say a lot of Hail Mary's. Ultimately, our potential damnation was swept under the rug and we were post haste communed by a stranger priest so that we could be "confirmed" with the rest of our sixth-grade class. I vaguely remember the light blue knit mini skirt I wore for the occasion (with matching top) and the orange knee-high socks I paired my ensemble with... Go figure. (I couldn't dress myself back then and I still can't now!)
We've never lost touch and since Jack and her sons have been born, we've always tried to get together once a year. (Mostly me visiting them up in Canada.) It turns out that her oldest boy was born on our wedding anniverssary and Jack was born on theirs! How Karmic is that?

It was great to hang out with her. The boys adored and engaged Makena and it was one big laugh fest. I played tour guide and took her family (along with mine) to Hollywood tourist destinations and booked Jack and her sons for three days of surf camp.
Makena, as expected, wanted to take part in it too. The week flew by and it really was a great way to kick off the summer.

I can't believe they are gone!

Is - still Canadian

Look back

One year ago today, I was standing outside a restaurant in La Antigua, Guatemala. I was in the middle of a rain storm straining to hear my husband's phone call. The reception kept getting cut off as he tried to give me the details of Makena's referral.

She was eight months old and she was described as beautiful, active and curious about bright lights and music. In the ten months since she has been home, nothing about that description of her has has changed, except that it failed to mention how funny and fearless she was.
When I finally laid eyes on her photograph the next day, I cried. I hugged Jack, immediately called my husband, and I told him that I loved him and I thanked him for making my dream (over thirty years in the making) come true.
I love your extraordinary and boundless spirit, Makena. I love it with all my heart.

Is - your mother

PS The picture of Jack was taken in La Antigua, the day he became an older brother.

Olivia and Amelia

Makena and I met up with her Qianjiang "cousin," Olivia, her older sister, Amelia, and her parents for Dim Sum a few Saturdays ago. The girls had a great time. They miraculously managed to stay seated for almost half an hour so, we, the parents could catch up and talk. When it was over, they successfully left the restaurant without stabbing each other with chopsticks or getting scalded by the steamed dumpling carts.

Of all the families who traveled with us to China last summer, they lived in closest proximity to us. As of July, that won't be the case anymore because they are moving to North Carolina. They have great jobs to go to, family close by, fresh air, affordable housing and the chances that the girls will be whining for BMWs when they turn sixteen are slim to none. Who could ask for more than that? I'm bummed because (selfishly) this means that we won't see them as much and because it also means that they won't be able to attend our first reunion next month. On the other hand, I'm happy because they have promised to scout "Outsider Artists" in the area for me (a type of art I like to collect), which could be just the excuse I need to go visit them!

Chinatown was the perfect setting to get together. What was also wonderful was how the dim sum waitresses hung around our table and marveled at the girls, peppering us with questions about them and Qianjiang. It was a very happy atmosphere and a lovely way to say good bye.

Have a great adventure and we hope to see you soon.

Is-going to miss you.

PS: If you are wondering what Outsider Art is, click on the "yard dog" link.

Ticked off

I went on a hike with my girlfriend, Rae Dawn, last Thursday. ( A hike that I normally ride when I take my horse out on the weekend.) I decided to be adventurous and led Rae Dawn on a little bushwhacking to get to the creek because I knew it flowed nearby. It was great. The dog stayed with us the whole time and we discovered these stacked stones that someone had left and realized that they were the gateway to this beautiful part of the creek. It had several small pools flanked by boulders we could climb and hop around on. It was magical. I felt great. My girlfriend's fat-burner meter watch read that she had burned 400 calories (Therefore I had too, right?) and my goals of slipping into a bikini before August seemed almost reasonable. We came home exhilarated.

Shortly after that all hell broke loose. I felt something crawling along the nape of my neck and ran my hands through my hair. My fingers zeroed in on something crawling and I pulled it out to discover A HUGE TICK. Ugh. I thought that was it, until Rae Dawn told me to lift my shirt up so that she could make sure it was the only one. I did as I was ordered and, I swear, about 8 of those parasites fell to the kitchen floor and started to scatter away. I was screaming, trying to gather them up and exterminate them, when Rae Dawn told me to stop moving and not panic. Nancy (my babysitter) took one look at my back and said "Oh, that's not good," and by then I'm in silent freak-out mode thinking I"m in some bad remake of Anaconda, the movie. I had two more tics imbeded in my back and Rae Dawn came to the rescue and grabbed one of our prized bottles of Tequila. I was thinking, "Cool, I could really use a shot," and she laid the open bottle straight onto my back and covered the tic with it. (Not what I had in mind!) About thirty seconds later, she pulled the (now drunk) tic off my back and repeated the process again with the second one. Finally released from the grasp of these parasites, all my modesty flew out the window and I stripped in the middle of the kitchen and ran to the bathroom to shower. In retrospect, I can only imagine the visual the babysitter was left with because I found out that Rae Dawn did the same thing, only she didn't immediately run away. She had poor Nancy check her over, standing in front of her in her birthday suit!

I was thinking this little nightmare was behind me until I woke up the next day to see these enormous bites on my rib cage. Just so you have the correct visual, they were swollen about two inches in diameter. I know this because I drove myself to Urgent Care (The same place you can get Botox injections on an emergency basis.) The doctor took one look at me and prescribed oral antibiotics four times a day for the next seven days. Thank God for Keflex.So much for wanting to be active and healthy. Let's just say this little episode left me really ticked off!

Is-a-bitten
PS The pictures are of Jack, Makena and Jack's friends: Skyler and Caelan at the "survivor" party their teacher threw for completing third grade.

Love

Summer is finally here! One year ago today, we were getting the first of three calls from our agency letting us know that we were one step closer to laying our hands on Makena. It would be several more days before we saw her face and knew how old she was or where we would travel to finally meet her, but I clearly remember the relief (of having waited eighteen months for this call,) the excitement and the joy we all felt.And look at this smiling face! Makena is always giggling and full of mischief but the minute I point a camera at her she gets all serious and no amount of cajoling can get her to smile on demand. (She's very controlling that way.) It isn't often that I am able to capture this expression but when I do, it's like gold for me.
Jack is more complicated when it comes to having his picture taken. If he isn't doing his "rabbit ears" or giving me his "tough guy" look, then his smiles are slightly forced. I love this one. A) because it's a record of how long hair can grow in one year. (He hasn't cut it since China.) And B) This is the last photo I will post of him looking like this before he gets his hair buzzed for camp.

We were attempting to grow his hair out so that he could donate it to Locks of Love, the organization that supplies wigs to children suffering from cancer, but he's been whining and complaining so much about having to brush it that I'm throwing in the towel. Donated hair has to be at least ten inches long, and we are about three inches short of that. We will still send them his hair and they will, in turn, sell it to wig makers. This isn't the first time we've donated Jack's hair to Locks of Love. We did it a couple of years ago, but he was younger then and somewhat more compliant with the hair brush. We'll pick another cause for him to get involved with. One that is less "hair raising".
Little League and my "Team Mom" duties, I am happy to say, are finally behind me. Makena became the team mascott and all the boys were so sweet and patient with her. They loved having her around. My heart melted at the closing ceremony when Makena left my side and weaved her way through the crowd to reach Jack. Without missing a beat, Jack opened his arms and she came to rest in his embrace and stayed there about five minutes. I'm so happy they have each other. They really do love and care for each other in their own special way and that is the best gift I could ever receive from them.

I love my children.

Isabelle
PS This post is part of a photo challenge from http://www.2happy.typepad.com

Go fish

I was so pleased to finally be able to have Makena reconnect with one of her China "cousins". Lien was also raised in Qianjiang and was adopted on the same day as Makena. We hadn't seen her or her mother since our return to the States last August.

We decided to meet at the Long Beach Aquarium because we thought that looking at fish and getting to run around there would be safe and somewhat quiet. WRONG. I think that every student from L.A. County showed up for a field trip that day, at that very exact time. It was like being back in China -- except that the girls would not sit or stand still. So keeping track of them in the darkened exhibit rooms as they wove in and out of schools of children, was mind-blowingly stressful -- to say the least. I couldn't coral Mak with the stroller because there was no room to manoeuvre it!When we finally got to lunch, it took a super-human effort for me not to buy the mini-bottle of Chardonnay that was staring me in the face. I gave the LB Aquarium a golf-clap for appreciating the stress people are under when they take children to their establishment and offering "said" refreshments. Boy did that look good. I opted for a tall, cold, bottle of water. It wasn't until we finally sat the girls down to lunch that Linda and I had a chance to catch up.I'm hosting our adoption group reunion in August and I wanted to get her input on food options for the fifteen or so families who are going to come party at our house. FYI: We decided on pizza & salads for lunch and a taco and quesadilla bar for dinner -- with Subway sandwiches for the picnic, the following day. I'll blog about this event later.

Lien and Mak are practically the same size and have the same non-stop energy level. They both babble, love to laugh and run around and climb. Except that Lien was way more well behaved at the dinner table than Mak. Mak, in her best Helen Keller impersonation, refused to sit down, had to either eat standing or diving under the table, snatching food off Lien's side of the table and, as a final blow, attempted to stab a little boy at an adjacent booth, with her fork (thank god for plastic).

After lunch, we took them back to see the fish and the girls ran around up and down this ramp, following each other. It was pretty darn cute.They finally allowed us to strap them into their strollers when we were leaving, so I managed to snap a couple of pictures of them to have a souvenir of this great day.

I drove home in bumper to bumper traffic thinking about the glass of Chardonnay that was waiting for me at the end of this fish trip...

Is - tired

Ninjas, Part Deux

I mentioned a few posts back that Jack had discovered the show Ninja Warriors on the G4 network. He was never what I can call an "active child" -- but watching this show triggered something in Jack that moved him to start climbing door frames, leap over our bed and rearrange furniture so that we could time him in his acrobatic exploits.

EM and I had talked about getting a jungle gym to give the kids an outlet for their energy. But it wasn't until Jack decided to "traverse" our bathroom shower wall by hanging onto our towel hooks ( in an attempt to recreate the NW cliffhanger) and literally pulled the glass tile off the drywall, that we decided to cough some dinero up for a play structure.
The WHOLE ENTIRE WALL separated yet managed to stay in one piece. It was a miracle that my aqua hued bottle-glass tiles didn't explode and slice Jack up. Boy were we mad, but without further ado, we purchased a play structure (so that junior could take his ninja show outdoors) and it was finally delivered and installed last weekend. Of course, you'd think the kids would have been foaming at the bit to play on it. They decided that the packaging was more intresting and spent the whole morning camping in the boxes with their friend Caelan.



They did finally did turn their attention to the Jungle Gym -- which, I admit, is a bit advance for Mak. She's already taken a header off the slide (she likes to go up the slide and down the ladder) and Jack's first attempt to traverse the monkey bars, saw him get his leg caught in the trapeze which made him fall, dangling.Nevertheless, practice will make perfect and I am one or two CAT scans away from feeling confident that my children will be able to play safely on this gizmo.

Now, all I've got left to do is it to call my tile man and see how much he is going to charge me to fix my bathroom -- I'll add that to the price of the play structure to get the final tally. Gulp.

Is - still a mother to ninjas

Just add water

Makena started her first round of swimming lessons a couple of weeks ago. The teacher's goal was to have her hold her breath underwater, blow bubbles, learn to kick, hold onto the edge of the pool and clear her nose. As expected, she took to the lessons like a fish to water. It was a group lesson and Moms were not in the pool. The only problem that arose was that Mak wasn't very patient at waiting her turn, so if the teacher so much as glanced at her, she threw herself in.

The good thing was that, by the third lesson, she was holding her breath from four to five seconds and coming up smiling. By the end of the session, she was starting to figure out that kicking helped her get to the outreached hands while she was still underwater -- her movements became almost dolphin-like. It was quite fascinating.

The teacher tried to get her used to floating on her back but she always wiggled out of that position, and blowing bubbles wasn't something she understood -- or so I thought. I caught her blowing bubbles in the bathtub this week, and yesterday, when I was giving her another bath, she spent it entirely on her back, submerged in three to four inches of water! She refused to sit up and every time I tried to assist her, she would screech and throw herself backwards, flapping her arms and soaking me (I'll post video, later.)



We also took her on her first boat ride last Memorial Day -- duh, she loved it. The life jacket, not so much.

Needless to say, I've decided on a second round of lessons (1 hour, 10 weekdays in a row) because she is so eager to be "one" with the water and because I desperately need to have her somewhat water safe, sometime soon.


Is -- mother to a fish.

Crossover

Today is Makena's "crossover" day. The date that marks the time that she has officially been with our family longer than she was without us. This time last year, I had had several nervous breakdowns from the stress of knowing that there was a little girl somewhere in China who I would soon be a mom to but I didn't know who or where she was. All that changed on June 27 when her picture was faxed to me at the hotel I was staying at in the jungle of Guatemala and then again on August 15, in Chongqing, China, when I could finally lay my hands on her and give her a long awaited hug.

I thought I would post more pictures than words, this time, to show Makena's "evolution" these past nine and a half months. This one was taken while we were still in China. She was nine and a half months old.

Makena (10 months,) attending one, of many, of Jack's soccer games.

Makena (11 months) and her first trip to the cabin.

Makena (almost 12 months old) and her first Halloween.

Still crawling around at thirteen months.

Her first trip to Hawaii at fifteen months.

One of many Little League games at sixteen months.

Loving her bath time at seventeen months.

Another trip to the zoo at eighteen months.

Makena at nineteen months.

Your family loves and adores you, Makena.

Is - proud to be your mother.

911

I'm sitting on our deck overlooking the lake and Makena is plopped on my lap and I'm reading her a book. That should have been my first warning sign: the fact that she was sitting still and listening as I read her Baby Bug after Baby Bug (a baby magazine of short stories). EM and I were blissfully enjoying a moment of calm when Makena started to jerk. I thought, "Great, I knew this was too good to be true". I started to set her down, thinking she wanted to get off, when I noticed that her head was cocked back as if looking over her shoulder and her eyes were rolling to the back of her head.

As the realization that something was terribly wrong hit me like a two by four, I quickly yelled at my husband to call 911 because Makena was having a seizure. I turned her over in my arms to brace her because her body was jerking so violently. Her eyes had disappeared and she was grunting with white foam forming around her lips. Waiting for someone to answer my husbands plea for help was torture in and of itself. He finally got an operator who instructed us to quickly strip Makena and cool her down. I ran into the bathroom and put her on the floor while the operator kept my husband on the phone and told him that the paramedics were on their way.

Makena was still jerking, I had her stripped and I discovered, to my horror, that her stomach was boiling hot -- abnormally so (I had been clueless up until then.) I ran towels under cold water and covered her head and stomach with them, constantly telling her that "Mama is here, mama's trying to help you..." In the meantime, EM was running in and out, to be in front of the house when help finally got there and to give me encouragement. I was inside, Makena was still shaking -- although now her eyes were back in place but she had a far-off look in her eyes and she was just moaning. She didn't see me... I didn't know if she could hear me.

I kept trying to stop my thoughts from going to the last moments I held my mother as she was dying... trying to remain positive. Telling myself that Makena might be epileptic... remembering my old roommate who had it and was fine... just trying not to cry and remain calm... because what good would it do?

Finally the paramedics got there and when they tried to take her from me, she started to cry. Everyone said that was a good thing. It meant that she was fighting. They started an i.v., oxygen, and the works and threw me on the stretcher with her strapped across my chest and wheeled us off to the E.R.. Just as they closed the doors, Jack appeared in the street. He didn't want us to leave until he could see Makena for himself (he had been playing video games with a friend, in his room, and was oblivious to the drama.) EM told him that Makena was not feeling well but that she was going to be okay. That seemed to reassure him and he let us close the doors to the vehicle and take off.

In the meantime, as relief was spreading that she was going to get help, I started being questioned about the black and blue bruises on her back. What? I realized that they were pointing to her birth marks, the Mongolian spots that stretched from her middle-back to tail bone. It was nauseating to think that they weren't ruling out child-abuse as a cause for her seizure.

By the time we got to the ER, the nurses and doctors decided to transfer me to the stretcher and treat her on top of me. They ordered blood tests, CAT scans and urine tests and pointed again to her Mongolian spots. I realized that even though we were in a mountain resort emergency room, that they hadn't come across too many Chinese babies. I told them to go on-line and google "Mongolian Spots". The paramedic came back and backed me up (he had just checked it out himself) and this seemed to appease them. Meanwhile EM had reached our pediatrician in town, who told him that she had most likely suffered from a febrile seizure and that she would be okay. He told him that 3 to 5% of children suffer from this and that once you reach that subgroup that the likelyhood of it happening again is 20%. It's the result of the child's body not being able to adjust to a spike in temperature. The temperature increases at a rapid rate just before the seizure, and sometimes -- as a result of the seizure -- so you don't necessarily see it coming.

Six hours later and the temperature down to 101 degrees, the ER confirmed what our pediatrician had told us in the first ten minutes, and they finally allowed us to go home. We were all drained and exhausted.

Now that I can safely say that Makena has fully recovered, I have met and spoken with four people whose children also had it -- and several times to boot. I feel like I'm now part of the "febrile seizure" club. I've been instructed and drilled by our pediatrician not to call 911 the next time it happens (unless the seizure lasts more that 2 minutes) but to cool the baby, call him and then drive her into the office. The paramedic/ER approach can be traumatic and more stressful than is otherwise necessary. My friend whose son had seizures five times before the age of four, also confirmed that she called the paramedics the first time and then never again after that.

I'm slightly more paranoid now. At the onset of a runny nose, we have to treat her as if she has a fever and if she is up for vaccinations, we also have to alternate between Motrin and Tylenol -- other than that, she's back to her active-exhausting self.

All this to explain why I hadn't posted in a while.

Is - exhausted.

Re-entry

The memories of the ten days of fun in the sun I spent in Mexico were quickly erased on the return from Cancun. Makena should have slept at least two hours of the five hour flight home according to my calculations. She drank bottles, ate her food, read her books but would not go down nor sit still. Any time I tried to coerce her to recline she would scream... Sometimes those screams turned to tears... Sometimes they went back to laughter... She was hysterical in every sense of the word. Highlights included ripping the head covering off the seat and tossing it at the passenger behind me. She went on to assault him with my dinner fork, an ice cube and one of her Playmobil toys (I left it behind on the plane). She would simply not shut up or slow down. She had to babble loudly and constantly, so much so that I thought I was losing my mind. Jack managed to nap through this but that act seemed to drive her mad. She crawled onto him and then managed to headbutt him -- hurting him and herself in the process -- and then I had two crying children.

A woman tried to help me by letting Makena watch a DVD and that lasted the whole of two minutes. Another dad gave her some squishy light-up toy that distracted her for all of thirty seconds and then she tossed it at the flight attendant who was not amused. I got zero service from him. Zero eye contact, just a cold shoulder and a glass of warm Chardonnay that did nothing but give me a headache. At one point, I was so desperate for relief I asked him if he had any mini parachutes with built in GPS tracking devices. I told him that I would be glad to toss Makena overboard and retrieve her in a couple of hours. He couldn't even manage to pretend to be amused. Let's just say that I was not flying the friendly skies.

Makena finally did fall asleep (predictably) as the plane touched the ground. I watched as three hundred passengers (my guess) filed past me, none of them making eye contact. If I had cringed any harder my head would have disappeared inside my chest and stayed there, I was so embarrassed.

This great idea to stay on in Mexico for five more days after EM returned to work was a fiasco. Granted, Club Med was fab and beautifully renovated in a very grand "Legoretto" way but I didn't really love being greeted with a mystery cocktail and then made to wear an i.d. bracelet. I felt like I had just walked onto "The Island" and Ewan McGregor was going to tell me that my brain was going to be harvested for some bimbo on "Days Of Our Lives." Nevertheless, my Guatemala travel buddy showed up with her son and we did have a lot of fun hanging out, watching our boys play ping pong, and trying to keep Makena from drowning.

Because when it came to playing in the ocean, nothing excited her more than having a wave crash onto her and being dragged back into the water. It was horrifying. All my efforts to give her a sense or prudence when it came to bodies of water seemed to make her want more. Chlorine, sea water, or sand did nothing. She didn't cry, she laughed. It was truly maddening and not one bit restful.

I did manage to hire a baby-sitter and escaped for a morning of fun the last day we were there. We took the boys to Wet n' Wild, a water park five minutes from where we were staying and bought ourselves a swim with a sea lion. We got there early and watched as fifty tourists ahead of us were lead to the dolphin tank while the four of us stayed back for what was essentially a private forty-five minute session with this hundred-and-fifty pound sea lion named Jenny. It was awesome.

http://www.ktvu.com/news/10332241/detail.html

Okay, so maybe there was a reason everyone went to the dolphin tank.


Is- not prudent, but Is-a-tanned!

Yes means yes

Yes, it was hot. Yes, it was sunny. But going to Playa del Carmen during spring break was a bit like going to Daytonna Beach expecting to have some wholesome family time.

The guys had a blast because our hotel and beach happened to be popular with the European ladies who didn't believe in wearing "two piece" bathing suits. Jack and his friend Conner were at first quite shocked by the sight of topless women but under the careful tutelage of their pigs -- I mean fathers, they spent their time trying to spot them. A sighting was greeted with a "yes". The boys were so well trained (so fast) that the dads could keep reading their books certain that their spotters would pat them on the shoulders when they sighted "a pair". Did they have fun? Yes!

Makena was extremely frustrated at not being able to hang out with Jack, Conner and Olivia in the pool and would often launch herself into the water whether we were ready to catch her or not. It was insane. We decided not to give her inflatable wings because we didn't want her to think that she could float. A couple of times when she charged into the water, we let her go under so that she could appreciate the difference between having air to breath as opposed to H2O. Did that stop her? No. She learned how to close her mouth and kept going. That's our girl.

Nevertheless, life was good. We even had Makena wearing a dress which took some getting used to because it kept getting caught in her legs when she tried to climb and that frustrated her.

This was Jack in front of our casita away from home resting from his fun in the sun. I did make him swear that he wouldn't share what he saw while on vacation with the rest of his classmates when he returned from spring break. I told him that he needed to learn that "yes" means "no!"

Is - mother of the year