In Which I Have A Close Encounter Of The Adorable Kind

Our plans for visiting the Lunar New Year festival were derailed today when I got an e-mail about a Saturday morning swim practice for Eden.  Her swim team was planning a trip up to Port Orchard to get a chance to practice in the long course pool there.  So we got up ridiculously early in the morning and made the hour-or-so trip up that way to join her teammates.

Her practice was three hours long, and I didn't feel like sitting on those metal bleachers the whole time watching the kids swim back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth ad nauseam.  I'm all about being a supportive parent, but swimming, I'm sad to say, is not exactly the most exciting sport to watch.  So I put Connor back in the van and drove up the coast until I saw signs for Manchester State Park and decided to check it out.  Access to all of the state parks is free for disabled park visitors and their caretakers, which is pretty awesome, so when the chance for a spontaneous visit to one I haven't seen before comes up, I almost always take advantage of it.

Manchester State Park turned out to not be the most accessible park ever-- many of the trails were sort-of paved in chunks of asphalt and large pebbles-- but Connor was okay with that because it made for a bouncy ride, which he thought was fun.  I took him down the path along the coast for a bit, and we stopped and watched a small group of grebes diving for fish out in the sound.  It was very peaceful, if a little cold, and since it was only nine in the morning it seemed like we pretty much had the park to ourselves.  

On the bouncy way back to the car Connor started rubbing his eyes, and shortly after we reached the paved park of the trail again he was asleep against the side of his wheelchair.  I didn't want to put him back in the car immediately since that would wake him up, so I kept going and took the short paved path down by a little rocky beach.  I parked him on the trail where I could see him easily and walked down the beach towards a large speckled granite boulder to sit for a minute and let him have a rest.

I was about three feet away when the top of the boulder rose up and locked eyes with me.

I froze in shock.  The harbor seal and I stared at one another.  His plump, grey mottled body was almost the exact same color as the lichen-covered stone, and he'd curled himself neatly into a cup-shaped depression on top of the rock so from the trail he was nearly invisible.  He regarded me solemnly for a minute while I did my best not to breathe, blinked his huge black eyes a few times, seemed to come to some sort of conclusion about me, yawned widely and then flopped back down like a cat and went to sleep. 

I stood there for a while and watched his side rise and fall as he napped.  A few of his long white whiskers curled up at the ends, and every once in a while his nose would twitch like he was dreaming.  Finally Connor woke up and began making his happy "train whistle noise" from his chair, so I knew it was time to go.  I carefully backed away from the rock, but halfway back to where Connor waited the seal lifted his head again, and he locked eyes with me one more time before casually turning and sliding down the boulder into the ocean.  His head popped up in the water about thirty feet away, and he seemed curious about me and Connor because he swam along beside us, keeping pace until the trail turned off towards the parking lot.

So that was my accidental seal encounter, and it was pretty amazing.  I never would have approached so closely had I know he was there, but I'm glad he didn't seem to find me much of a threat.  I seem to have a knack for stumbling into really close encounters with wild animals, like when this and this happened.  Also that time I opened the front door after a big storm and a bat crawled into my house, though I may not have blogged about that because I think it happened during that big break I took from blogging.  Did I tell you guys about that?  I can't remember, but if I haven't I totally should, because, you know, there was a bat.  In my house.  

Anyway, so after that incredible morning we went home and all took a nap, which was much-needed by everybody.  Then we got up and headed out to the grocery store where Connor proceeded to have a thirteen-and-a-half minute seizure in the middle of the pasta aisle, because apparently this day was going way, way too well and the universe likes to mess with me.  He's currently sleeping off his emergency seizure medication, and we'll see how he's feeling in the morning.

Oh well.  Seals are still awesome.

~Jess

In Which Sleep Will Happen Shortly And It Is Awesome

Just popping in here: Connor is currently asleep and I don't have to wait up for the night nurse since it's one of her days off, so I'm going to try for an early bedtime tonight!  This almost never happens, so I'm super excited.  Eden is a bit put-out that our typical bedtime routine will be interrupted, but hey, she'll live.  We've got to be up by six tomorrow so that she can get to her three-hour swim practice on time, so a little extra sleep is going to go a long way.

For me, anyway.  She's not planning to go to bed early, because she is a teenager and I'm pretty sure going to bed early is A Thing That Teenagers Must Never Do.  It's a rule or something.

So both kids had good days today, Jeremy is fine, the cats are causing trouble as usual, I didn't manage to burn the house down today, and all that sort of stuff.  On to the sleep!

Hooray for sleep!

~Jess

In Which There's A Whole Lot Of Snoozing Going On

We had a long day today!

Connor stayed up until around three in the morning-- probably because of the storm.  Then we had to be up by half past six to make it to Eden's swim meet on time.

This was a home meet, which means the parents all pitch in to help run things.  So we were there for eight hours and Eden had four races, each of which was less than three minutes long.  The area I was volunteering in ended up being really slow, so I got quite a bit of reading done.  Connor spent most of the time either snuggled on my lap (for limited periods of time, as it was pretty hot in there) in his chair banging on the iPad, or sacked out in between bleachers.  I got the impression he was extremely bored.  I can't say I blame him.  The things we do for our kids, right?

When we got home, I put Connor down for a quick quiet time, left Eden doing homework at the dining room table and nipped back to my bedroom for a bit of my own quiet time.  When I got the little guy up forty minutes or so later it was to discover that Eden had gone to bed-- at 5:30 in the evening! I guess the swim meet was pretty tiring for her.  Since Connor looks like he'll go down well tonight too, I might even get some extra sleep.  Even the cats are of the same frame of mind; they're both conked out in front of the fireplace right now, and normally whenever the house is quiet they decide it's time to sprint around and yowl like banshees.

Hooray for sleep!

~Jess

In Which We're Still Busy

Yesterday was another extremely busy day for us.  We started off the morning with a swim meet for Eden.  It was a small meet with just one other team, but even so there were quite a few kids there so it took a while to get started.  Eden swam very well.  Connor, however, did not have such a nice morning; he had a seizure on the way there, and then overheated a bit at the swim meet and ended up having another one.  So he spent a good portion of the meet stripped down to just his shorts and lying between the bleachers on the seat cushions I'd brought.  He perked up about two thirds of the way into things though, so that was good.

After the meet we went out to lunch, and then we headed down to Northwest Trek (one of our local wildlife parks) to check out all of the animals.  When we took the tram ride through the free range area of the park it was drizzling a bit-- which is just the type of weather the animals around here really like-- so we were able to see a lot of activity. 

Probably the coolest thing we saw was a baby buffalo that was about six hours old; he was really unsteady on his feet and didn't seem to know what to make of the tram, but he was also huge for only being six hours old.  I have new respect for buffalo mothers.

So we got back to the house in the late afternoon.  Connor, probably due to all of the napping he did today, proceeded to stay up until one in the morning, which was not particularly fun for me, but otherwise the evening was uneventful.  We'll see what kind of adventures we get up to today!

~Jess

In Which This Girl Should Not Be On Fire

I've had the stomach bug for a few days and now that I'm recovered, the kids seem to be coming down with it. It's almost ten in the morning and they're both still asleep, which is a practically unheard-of occurrence in this household.  Hopefully they'll be over it quickly!

We're three months in now, which is hard to believe, and we're still completely in love with our girl.  We're still having many new experiences, and since her English is growing by leaps and bounds we're learning more and more about her every day!  Yesterday I brought out my old makeup and let her play with it on me and do my hair, which was definitely a new experience for us both.  I told her she could be "as crazy as she wanted," and she took me at my word and lunged for the dark green glitter eyeshadow.

I ended up with eye shadow up past my eyebrows, the entire upper half of my cheeks painted bright pink, crimson lipstick and wildly teased hair.  She had an absolute blast.  I wanted to post a picture to show all of you, but she made me swear not to put on online.  Evidently she was either worried about protecting my reputation or she's trying to protect hers.  She has no idea that it's way, way too late-- thanks to roller derby I've already worn my underwear on the outside of my clothing in public and thus have no reputation left to protect.  Either way she's adorable. But I promised her, so you'll just have to imagine how fabulous I looked.

Now that her English is coming along well, we've had some funny misunderstandings.  The other day she was at swim practice and one of the kids on her team started singing "This Girl Is On Fire."  She was very concerned.  "What girl?  Why she on fire?  Not good!"  She thought the girl should find some water and jump in right away.

We're still working on idioms.

Connor's had a couple of small seizures this week, but overall the medication seems to be working well for him.  I've been a bit worried about how taking him to Ellen's swim practices and meets would work out, as it can get pretty warm and humid in there and we're always worried about his core temperature getting too high.  So far so good, though.  He actually seems to really enjoy going to the practices, probably for a couple of reasons.  He seems to like watching the swimmers-- as long as he doesn't have to get in the water, he seems to think all of the splashing and whatnot is pretty cool-- and he likes the two hours of uninterrupted snuggle time.  I'm doing my best to make sure that both kids get some one-on-one time every week, but it's quite the adjustment for a kid who is used to being the undivided center of attention 24/7.  I think you get that same adjustment any time you have a new sibling in the house.

He'll get a chance to shine soon on stage; Connor is going to be in a talent show!  It's in April and is being put on by his therapy center.  He's going to be clapping along with a group of kids to a song; I'm excited to see him on stage!  We're bringing the video camera for sure.

~Jess

In Which We Do A Lot Of Stuff And Things

I'm afraid I may have to turn on that darn "weed out the spambots" button-- the spam is getting kind of ridiculous now and I have quite a bit less time to spend deleting it all, dang it.

We had an extremely busy week around here!  Connor went almost ten days without seizures, which was pretty exciting.  He had about a twenty second one yesterday and a fifteen second one today, so that trend may be over.  We'll see what tomorrow brings.

The little guy had a progress report done in physical therapy yesterday.  He's now able to straighten his legs about twenty more degrees than he could a few months ago, so that's some movement in the right direction!  Connor's hamstrings are still somewhat constricted-- he can extend his legs to a 150 degree angle rather than a 180 degrees-- but any improvement in his flexibility is fantastic.  With kids who sit in a wheelchair most of the time like Connor does, hamstring shortening tend to be inevitable and if they get bad enough children can need surgery to be comfortable.  So I'm glad we're keeping him as limber as we can!

Ellen had her second swim meet this past weekend; it was a two-day affair and she swam eight events total.  She did a fantastic job, and we're pretty proud of her!  She's told us that in Thailand she didn't get to swim in very many competitions each year and they were all against other children with disabilities, so she's not quite used to this swim-meet-with-typical-kids-every-couple-of-weeks thing yet.  She had a really good time, though she was pretty tired by the end of the weekend!  She's starting to open up more to the other kids and seems to be making some friends; it was pretty neat to see all the other kids cheering for her as she raced.

I had a meeting with her teachers today; I hadn't met most of them yet and this was a good time for a check-in.  We also wanted to get the ball rolling on a 504 plan for her, and talk a little bit with her teachers about how Ellen's education might be affected by cultural differences between Thailand and the USA, her cerebral palsy, long number of years in institutionalized care, and her adoption.  All of her teachers seemed very nice and they all had wonderful things to say about her-- she's is a very eager student.  She really seems to love school and is pretty enthusiastic about learning.

Tomorrow morning she and I have an appointment up at the rescue center to pick up a pair of guinea pigs!  Unfortunately the rescue is not wheelchair accessible, so Connor has to stay home.  But I'm sure the whole family will spend quite a bit of time staring into the guinea pigs' ridiculously huge cage (no seriously, this thing is HUGE) once we get them home.  Ellen and I set the cage up today, and so it's all ready for its new occupants.  She's decided that she wants a pair of boy guinea pigs, though she may change her mind once we get there and she has to choose.  We've been talking a lot about how the guinea pigs might be "feeling" after leaving all the other guinea pigs and coming to a new, strange family.  I think the guinea pigs are going to be a rather important tool for expressing emotions around here for a while!

~Jess

In Which We Take The Plunge

Connor only had three seizures today, so we're moving in the right direction.  Hopefully as we continue to titrate up towards his full therapeutic dose we'll see his seizures start to taper off.  So far we haven't seen a lot of side effects as far as his new med goes, though he did throw up quite a bit today. 

Ellen had her first swim meet here, and she did very well!  At first she didn't want to go, but as I dragged her to it anyway and as I expected once she got there she threw herself into it.  I'm starting to know her moods and figure out a little bit about what makes her tick, and I've noticed that she's not a huge fan of new situations (though she almost always ends up having a blast once she gives them a go).  I think this was her first time racing with typical kids, and she was pretty nervous about it.  Everybody cheered for her and she beat her best times in all of her races, so by the end of the night she was really enjoying herself. 

It was neat to hear the other kids cheering for Ellen and wishing her good luck; as her English has been improving and her obviously outgoing character has started shining through I've started noticing that more and more kids are saying hello to her at swimming and school.  She's started mentioning friends in her classes, and it's really nice to see that kids are being helpful and welcoming.  I've been pretty worried about her, since in my opinion middle school kids sometimes can be the Meanest People On The Planet due to their hormones grabbing the reins and taking over from common sense, but so far so good! 

~Jess

In Which Ellen Meets Some Folks And Gives High Fives

We had an extremely busy day yesterday!

Ellen and I got up pretty early in the morning-- around four thirty.  We're still kind of on Thai time here, and also I think she was a bit nervous because we were going to go visit her school for the first time that day.  So we spent some time looking through Leela's She Simmers blog, naming all of the food and telling each other what we liked to eat and disliked.  We made some plans to try making a few of her favorite meals together, which is pretty exciting.  The pictures were great and I now know that Ellen would like a strawberry cake for her birthday, which is coming up in little over a week.

Anyway, so after it was a decent hour and Connor was up and moving we dropped him off at school and then drove over to the junior high school where Ellen will be going.  She seemed pretty nervous when we were going inside, but thankfully the staff was very warm and she soon felt at home. 

Public schools in Thailand are very different from in the United States, so it might take her a little while to adjust.  Children in Thai schools usually learn by rote and are not encouraged to ask questions of the teacher, who is the absolute authority in the classroom.  Also the children stay in one class and the teachers rotate out, they stay with the same children the entire day and of course they're in identical school uniforms right down to the socks.  So Ellen was a little surprised to see children with blue hair walking around between classes on our school tour, and she was a bit stunned by the chaos between passing periods.  She's pretty adaptable though, so I think she'll get the hang of things quickly.

She got to pick out two electives, and she chose P.E. and choir.  So it looks like I'll be heading to a performance or two sometime in the future!  She also got the chance to meet the administration and the support staff, like her English Language Learners teacher.  She'll be officially starting school in the seventh grade on Monday.  They're assigning another student to help show her around the first day and to sit with her at lunch, so that's good.  I really hope that the students are as welcoming as the staff has been!

When we walked out the door she gave me a high five, shouted "Yeah!" and then asked if we could go buy her backpack.  So I suspect the girl is slightly ready to go to school. 

Anyway, after that we went right out and bought all her school supplies, headed to a Thai restaurant for a celebratory lunch, wandered around a pet store for a bit to kill time and then picked Connor up from school  He had a great day yesterday, by the way-- no seizures other than a couple at night.  He did refuse to acknowledge that we were coming up on the weekend as there is no school, so I guess we've got two kids in the family who are rather enthusiastic about learning.

We came home, Connor got in a quick nap and then it was off to Tacoma for Ellen's first introduction to her new swimming coach.

I'd contacted the coach of a swim team in the area shortly after we'd found out that Ellen was slightly better at swimming than we'd originally expected, and instead of enrolling her in recreational swimming we needed to be looking for something slightly more intensive.  So we went in and Ellen changed and hopped into the pool.  It's the first time I'd seen her swim, and it was really neat to see how beautifully she moves through the water.  Connor and I sat and watched while he asked her to demonstrate various strokes.  The little guy decided that the pool sounded musical, and spent the time dancing to the water, which was pretty cute.

The swim coach decided Ellen will be in the advanced group, and so she'll be swimming five nights a week beginning on Monday.  I like the coach a lot-- I think he'll push her to show her best potential but will also keep things fun.  The group is mostly typical kids, but there's another girl who competes in para events on the team too, so I think she'll feel right at home.  Her schedule is really filling up quickly!

So I got another "Yeah!" and a high five on the way out of swimming, and she declared it to be a very, very good day-- the best she's had in America so far.  She's used to a really packed schedule, so I think she'll be happy to be busy again!  And I think she's really missing being around other kids her age, so I hope she'll make some friends quickly. 

We're going to take it kind of easy today, because on Monday things will really start!

~Jess

In Which Nobody Puts Baby In A Corner

Today I decided was the day to look for a swimming team for Ellen.

While we're not sure which grade she'll be in yet, we're guessing that Ellen will probably end up in the eighth grade based on what level she's in school in Thailand.  The school district's swim team opens up for children in ninth grade and above, so she'll probably be here about seven months before she's able to join.  Because swimming is so important to her, we don't want her to have to wait that long before jumping back into the sport.  She's already going to be going through such a difficult transition; we don't want to take anything else away from her if we can help it.  If she chooses not to continue swimming that's an entirely different story, of course, but we want to have a place for her figured out before she gets here so we won't be left scrambling to find her a place.

At first we just figured we'd look into the recreational swim team options, but that was before we found out exactly how committed she is to the sport.  Not only is she apparently swimming seven days a week, but she's been competing on an international level.  Needless to say, if she wants to continue we're going to be slightly more involved in swimming than we originally thought, and a recreational team just isn't going to cut it.

There aren't any competitive swimming teams in our city, so I found a directory of teams in the local area and selected a few that I thought we'd be willing to drive to and would work with our budget.  I must admit to being more than a bit nervous when I picked up the phone to dial the first number.

I'm sad to say that I've run into more than a few organizations over the years who have either rejected Connor completely or were very reluctant to let him participate.  We ran into this issue long before the seizures started and his medical needs escalated, so this isn't simply a matter of people being unqualified to watch him-- something that is completely understandable.  I think it has much more to do with the fact that many Americans seem very uncomfortable around those with disabilities.

Case in point: I attended a church for about a year that encouraged me to leave Connor (who was about one and a half at the time) in the nursery.  They told me that the teacher was trained in CPR and had taken classes in early childhood development, and that Connor would have a great time with the other kids while I focused on the adult service.  So I finally decided to give it a try, and the teacher told me that she had everything covered and that she would come get me if there were any issues.  Every Sunday she assured me that he'd enjoyed himself.  The arrangement worked very well for about three months. 

Or so I thought. 

Then one Sunday I needed to leave the service a bit early and walked into the nursery to discover Connor lying by himself in a crib in the corner, staring at the ceiling while all the other children had story time.  It turned out that Connor spent an hour and a half in that crib every Sunday while all the other kids played, did crafts, and had a grand old time.  The teacher informed me that she "didn't know what to do with him and didn't want the other kids touching him, so it seemed like the best thing to do."  For three months, she'd been sticking him in the crib directly after I left for services and took him out about ten minutes before it was time for the kids to rejoin their parents. 

Needless to say, that was the last Sunday we ever attended that particular church.  And let me tell you, the incident in no way helped me get over my Helicopter Mom tendencies.

Anyway, most of these swimming teams cater to the serious, elite able-bodied athlete.  Since I was calling to ask them about taking on a swimmer with a disability, I wasn't sure what kind of reception I would get.  I absolutely didn't want to put Ellen in a program that would isolate her from the other kids or would simply accommodate her; I wanted to enroll her in a program with coaches that would be genuinely happy about her being there and wouldn't leave her in the corner, so to speak, while all the other kids had a great time.

On the second phone call, I hit the jackpot.

The swim team practices about twenty minutes away.  They already have several children and young adults with disabilities who swim competitively enrolled, and one actually went to the paralympic time trials for swimming this past year.  The coach was enthusiastic about the idea of Ellen joining, and explained how it would work.  He'd meet with her one-on-one to assess her skill level, and then she'd be assigned to one of the teams, which are mostly made up of swimmers without disabilities.  She'd be fully included and practice with the rest of her teammates, and if there was an exercise that she wasn't able to do they'd simply give her a modified version. 

She'd also be able to compete in the local swimming competitions with the typical kids, and there would be opportunities several times a year for her to travel to competitions for disabled swimmers in the USA and Canada, if she qualified in the necessary time trials.  It sounds like a fantastic program, and hearing the excitement in the coach's voice as he asked me when she'd be coming and joining the team made me so happy that I'd picked up the phone. 

I can't wait to get her home!

~Jess