In Which The Little Guy Is Under The Weather And Eden Holds Her Own

Last night Connor stayed up until two thirty in the morning, so it's not surprising that he was a bit groggy when I dropped him off for school.  Apparently he perked up quite a bit once he got there though, and he was fairly cheery until Eden's physical therapy appointment this evening, where he started throwing up and then conked out on one of the mats for the whole hour.  I think he might be coming down with yet another bug; it is rather the season for them.  I had to wake him up when it was time to go home, and once I put him to bed he was out like a light.  Poor little guy.  He's not running a fever though and he didn't have any seizures, so we'll see how he feels in the morning.

So I was sitting there at while Connor snoozed away watching Eden balance on a wobble board while she threw a basketball back and forth with her physical therapist, and I was awestruck by just how far she's come in the past eleven months.  When she got here, walking more than a few hundred yards was exhausting, stairs were a serious challenge, and something like balancing on a wobble board seemed completely out of reach.  She's not only running and jumping and balancing on that board like a pro; she's also standing so much taller, with her shoulders back and her head held high.  It's absolutely amazing how much of a difference it makes; I love seeing the evidence of the confident, self-assured young woman she's becoming in the way she carries herself.  That's my girl!

In other news, tomorrow I have my intake appointment for the home health care company who will be doing our respite care!  I am so unbelievably excited about this-- I did a happy dance around the house for about five minutes after I got the phone call.  Working with two different companies for respite care and night nursing may be a bit complicated, but I am really, really ready to have my respite care back so I'll make it work.

Anyway, it's late and I need to be up a bit early to get some extra cleaning done.  Tomorrow's another busy day!

~Jess

In Which Connor Is Still Sick And I Answer Some Questions About Ellen

Connor started off the morning without a fever and then slowly developed one during the day.  Other than the seizures we've seen no other indication that he's sick, making me wonder if he's picked up a UTI or some other bug that wouldn't involve congestion.  He had seven or eight seizures today-- Jer and I lost count between us-- that lasted between ten to twenty seconds each.  It's difficult to know whether or not he's having the seizures because of his fever or because he's having a reaction to weaning down off the Trileptal, but we'll let the neurologist's office know and they can take it from there.

It was a beautiful sunny day outside, and I spent part of it out in the yard weeding the front garden, which has been sadly neglected because of Connor's shenanigans.  I had to take a break and go clean out my hummingbird feeder (which has also been sadly neglected over the winter) because one persistent little hummingbird sat in our flowering cheery tree and scolded me for an hour or so until I gave in and got her some food.  Evidently she thought I was out there to cater to her.  My guess is that she had hungry chicks to feed; the breeding season for the hummingbirds around here runs from December through May so she probably had some demanding, hungry mouths waiting back in her nest.

Hummingbirds will be one of many new experiences Ellen will have when she joins our family; they don't live in Thailand.  I have a group of five or six regulars who are downright cheeky; they often congregate around the feeder in the spring and fall months and drink out of the thing as I'm refilling it.  Connor loves to watch them, and I'm looking forward to seeing our daughter discover them for the first time!  I'm also hoping she'll want to help me out in the garden.  I really enjoy gardening (though you wouldn't think it if you took a look at my yard the way it is now) and it would be a fun mother-daughter activity to share. 

Our agency took off for Thailand today, and so the countdown for new pictures and information begins!  I've had a lot of questions asked about our adoption process recently, so I made a quick list of the ones we get most often and I thought I'd address them here.  Some of these questions will probably seem redundant to you regular blog followers, but I'll go ahead and put them down anyway since I get asked them so often.  Eventually I'll get around to updating the blog since it's not really just about Connor anymore, but I'm sort of lazy and I don't know when that's actually going to happen.  So here's what you get in the meantime. 

So who the heck is Ellen anyway?
"Ellen" is the thirteen year old girl we are adopting.  She currently lives in an orphanage near the city of Bangkok in Thailand.  She has cerebral palsy that affects her lower legs-- particularly the left leg-- and has spent almost all of her life in an orphanage.

Ellen isn't a Thai name!  Are you changing her name?
Ellen is the alias we're using for our daughter to protect her privacy and to make sure we respect Thailand's wishes in regards to publicly sharing information about a child in the adoption process.  That's also why you won't see any pictures of her here for the time being.  It is not her real name, which we will be keeping.  We'll also probably give her a chance to choose an American name, and she can choose which one she wants to use.  That probably won't be Ellen either, as the name is kind of hard for Thai speaking people to say. 

What's her birth story?  Why is she in an orphanage?
That's her own story to tell, not mine.  Sorry.  You won't see it end up here unless she chooses to share it.

How much does it cost to adopt a child like Ellen?
Less than you'd think.  Basically it ends up being a bunch of money up front, but in our case most of it should be refunded through grants and the tax credit that the US currently offers for adoption.  Also Ellen's adoption fees are substantially lower because she is an older waiting child and harder to place.  Also I would like to point out that no, we are not buying Ellen, thank you very much.  We are paying for the background check, paperwork processing, travel, visa application, etc.-- not for our child. 

When will she come home?
Not for a long while yet.  While we're hopeful that the process may be speeded up a bit because of Ellen's age and her special need, we could be easily looking at between a year to two and half years before we bring her home.  We'll keep you posted!

If I answer any more questions right now than this blog post is going to be ridiculously long, so I'll save the rest for another day.  It's a start, anyway.  If you've got a question you want answered, let me know and I'll see what I can do!

~Jess

In Which We Have Another Adoption Announcement

So I figured now is as good a time as any to reveal the next stage of our adoption saga.  They say the third time's the charm, and since adoption referrals one and two didn't work out we're really hoping this one will stick.

So anyway, we're adopting a teenager!

Yes, I know we might possibly be insane.  But whatever kid we adopt would end up a teenager eventually anyway, and this girl seems to be a really great fit for our family, so we're taking the plunge!  Of course adopting an older child-- particularly a teenager-- comes with its own set of issues and concerns, but we've done our homework and feel like she's the girl for us. 

She's twelve years old right now, and she's currently living in an orphanage in Thailand.  She'll probably be thirteen or fourteen by the time we get her home, which should be either late 2011 or early 2012.  She loves school (her favorite subject is English), playing chess, watching Thai soap operas with her friends, and swimming-- though not in water over her head.  She has cerebral palsy which affects her lower limbs, but thanks to years of intensive physical therapy and surgeries is able to walk very well.  She's described by her teachers and caregivers as friendly and a hard worker.  She's a little shy and has a beautiful smile.  She's amenable to the idea of adoption, though she won't know about us for a while yet.

We're going to keep her Thai given name as her first name and give her the American middle name of Ellen.  It's a name that has sentimental value for us as well as a strong meaning, and is also easy to pronounce for someone who is not a native English speaker.  We'll let her choose what she wants to be called when she's here, but for blogging purposes she'll be Ellen; at least until she gets home and decides whether or not I'm allowed to blog about her.  She's old enough to have a right to privacy if she wants it.

We have a lot of information about her, and we can't wait to get her home!  I'm getting excited about all of the fun things I can do with a teenage girl; shopping, crafts, family game nights, cooking, going out to get manicures together, watching ridiculous chick-flick movies.  Jeremy's excited about teaching her how to ride a bike, building Lego creations with her (you are apparently never too old for Legos) and he's started playing chess against the computer so he'll be ready for matches against Ellen once she's here.  We're thinking we might want to home school her the first year so we can work on her language skills and have a few hours of bonding just with her while Connor's in school, so I've started looking at a curriculum for that.  Since I originally intended to be a teacher before having a very cute wrench named Connor thrown into the works, I'm excited about getting the chance to teach!  I'm also trying to learn as much Thai as I can before we go over so that I'll be able to hold a basic conversation with her without the need for a translating device or a go-between.  Hopefully we'll be able to keep her studies in Thai up as well; Jer and I could take classes with her and (if you count sign language) we might eventually be a trilingual family.  That would be pretty awesome, I think.

So we've already redone our homestudy to reflect Ellen's age and special needs, and we're back in the dossier process right now.  We're getting pretty close to having all our paperwork ready, and then we'll have to sit back and wait.  Forever.  I don't want to do too much with her room because she'll be old enough to have some say in that (decorating-- another fun thing we can do together!) but I've started thinking about basic furniture and whatnot, so once we finish up all the paperwork I'll have something to work on rather than just going crazy with waiting.  I might do that anyway, but at least she'll have a bed and desk before I do.

So here's to embarking on another new adventure!  We don't know exactly where we'll end up, but we're hopeful that things will go a little more smoothly this time and in another year or so we'll be a family of four!

~Jess