In Which Connor Stays Awake And We Try Some Down Home Cooking

It's nearly one in the morning right now; looks like Connor's seriously considering pulling an all-nighter.  It doesn't happen as often as it used to anymore, but it does still happen.  Unfortunately it's the weekend for our night nurse too, so it looks like I may need quite a bit of coffee in the morning.

Connor spent some quality time with the grandparents today while Eden and I went out for a while.  We ate some lunch and then tooled around the mall for a couple of hours.  It was fun getting the chance to spend a little bit of time with my girl, even if we did have to go into every shoe store known to mankind.  This kid loves looking at shoes.

After that we swung by and picked up Connor.  After his quiet time, we piled back into the car and headed for the grocery store, where I picked up the ingredients for the jambalaya I planned on making tonight, as well as fixings for the pumpkin pie and the green beans I was making for tomorrow.  We're having a slightly early Thanksgiving celebration with my parents this year, which was nice because it meant I didn't have to fight my way down the aisles like I would have if I'd been doing this shopping the day before the real Thanksgiving.

Anyway, Eden and I cooked a big ol' pot of jambalaya together tonight.  She's really interested in cooking, but I think she was fed up with the whole mess after about fifteen minutes of stirring the pot.  Basically in jambalaya (at least the kind I make) you end up stirring everything for about half an hour total before you stick the pot in the oven and bake it.  "Why we not get the kind in the box?" she asked.  "It easy."  Luckily she changed her mind and decided it was worth all the stirring after she tried it.  She's developing quite a taste for Cajun and Creole food; I think it's all the seafood and spice that she appreciates.  Oh, and the sausage-- the kid is in love with andouille.  We've got plenty of leftovers (it's pretty impossible to make a small batch of jambalaya) so it's a good thing she likes it!

Connor spent the time we were cooking hanging out on his rocking horse.  He's borrowing a full-sized hobby horse from his therapy center-- one of the kind you don't see made any more because kids kept getting their fingers caught in the springs-- that's been modified to provide extra support.  Not only is it great practice in torso control for the little guy, but he also absolutely loves it.  It's difficult to find toys that will motivate him to work hard in physical therapy, so this is a sneaky but effective way to get him to do some work.  He seems to be feeling a lot better and was pretty perky today.

Now if I can just get him to go to sleep!

~Jess

In Which Connor's Ticker Looks Good And I Get Some Respite

So Connor had his cardiology appointment this morning, which went well.  His heart looks about the same, which is always nice to hear, and he did well at the appointment, which the exception of the seizure he had shortly before.  As a result we now know the entire current pediatrician team of Madigan.  While they were all very nice, I sort of wish we'd skipped that part.  Connor was fine, and as it goes this seizure was a short one, but they're never particularly fun.

I got a phone call while I was at Madigan; the respite care worker who was supposed to be starting today ended up unavailable and so the home health agency wasn't going to be able to staff any hours for me until January.  I was, needless to say, pretty disappointed about that.  Luckily the staffing agency had another respite care worker who could work with him in the meantime-- and possible permanently if we get along well.

So we met with our new respite care worker, and she's very sweet.  She came and watched Connor for pretty much the whole afternoon, so I got the chance to get a lot done around the house.  We're not exactly sure what the schedule's going to be like for the next month, but we'll figure it out.  I'm so excited to have the help again!  She doesn't have quite the same flexibility in her schedule that the home health agency was going to provide and I'm not sure when we'll be seeing her again, but I'm so, SO glad that I'll finally be getting the chance to have a break!

So tomorrow the respite care worker was going to becoming all day and Eden and I were going to have a special outing together, but unfortunately that's not going to happen.  However, my parents were gracious enough to step in and offer to watch the little guy for a while so the little miss and I can still have a few hours of quality time.  I'm not entirely sure what we'll be doing yet, but I'm sure it will be fun!

~Jess

In Which Connor Is A Sickykin

I kept Connor home from school today as he wasn't feeling at all well; he dozed upright in his chair all through our morning routine and even the car ride to drop Eden off.  So I brought him back home and put him to bed, where he slept for around three hours.  Then he perked up a little bit and I brought him out into the living room, where he watched the Broadway productions of both Phantom of The Opera and Les Mis-- both highly appropriate movies for a seven year old.  Oh well; he loves the music.

With the exception of a brief break for tea with my mother after she popped by to say hello and choir practice in the evening, I spent pretty much the whole day cleaning and belting out the lyrics to the musicals.  Connor seemed to be okay with my top-volume version of "Do You Hear The People Sing?" but the cats were extremely unimpressed.  I'm pretty sure Cricket thought I was dying in some horribly agonizing fashion.

Tomorrow the little guy has a cardiology appointment; I hope he feels up to going!  I have to schedule those things quite a bit in advance, and we need a renewal of the kid's heart medication.  We also have our first respite care session tomorrow, and it would be nice if the little guy was feeling up to meeting somebody new.  I'll be sticking around the house this first time anyway as it will be a new nurse, but I would imagine things will go much more smoothly if Connor isn't feeling crabby because he's sick.

~Jess

In Which I Buy Tree Trimmings And Connor Runs Out Of Steam

I took the opportunity today while the kids were in school to go out and pick up some of my Christmas trimmings for this year.  This will be Eden's first Christmas home, and I want to do it right!  Of course, it made me want to put up all of my decorations now, and it's still too early.  This will be Eden's first Thanksgiving too, and I should probably wait until she's experienced all of the holidays before I start skipping over them.

Connor had a bit of a rough day; he didn't have any seizures, but he threw up all of his meals at school and at physical therapy he did an amazingly realistic impression of a sack of potatoes.  Not only did the kid not attempt to work on any of his normal exercises, but he was actively trying to lie down every time we sat him up.  He spent the entire trip back home alternating between signing "tired" and "sad," and when I gave in and put him down around five in the evening he was out in less than five minutes.  Part of it may just be the season; we're getting into the time when it's dark outside at a depressingly early hour, and goodness knows it always makes me want to hibernate.  I hope he's not coming down with something; maybe it was just one of those days.

Hopefully he'll feel better tomorrow!

~Jess

In Which Many Many Things Happen

Well today was eventful!  I dropped the kids off for school and then spent the morning filling out paperwork in preparation for my intake meeting with our new respite care home health agency.  Even with filling out all the paperwork in advance, our meeting ended up being nearly two hours long.  I'll also probably be talking by phone with our assigned nurse tomorrow, and I'll be doing an orientation with her on Friday.  It's amazing how large an instructional manual I need for my kid; Connor's a complicated little guy.

I'm really excited to be starting up respite again, though; it's going to be great to not only have some occasional alone time in the evenings (while Eden's at swim practice) but also to be able to spend some one-on-one time with the Little Miss as well.  We're going to have our first outing this Saturday, and I think we'll have a pretty good time.  Connor will still be getting his Mommy-and-Boy time with me during Eden's swim practices where I don't have respite care, so I think this will work out well and the kids will both be getting some balanced time.

After my meeting I made a quick stop at Eden's school, ran back home and ate lunch, and then I was off to pick up Connor.  The oxygen equipment technician was waiting outside our door when we got back to do some routine maintenance on Connor's condenser.  Then I helped Eden with her homework while Connor had his quiet time.  Then we were off to the store, and then there was dinner to make and more homework and our nightly reading time and Connor's medications and bedtime for Connor and then Eden and then I kind of collapsed in a little heap in my easy chair and didn't move until it was time to let the night nurse in.  It was a busy day.

Eden's reading time, by the way, is probably the best thing in the universe.  Her English teacher wrote home saying the kids needed to be reading out loud for twenty minutes every school night.  We sort of neglected to tell Eden that it was only school nights the kids were required to be doing this, so we read twenty minutes every night.  Eden used to grumble and groan about this, but now she actually asks to do her reading time.  Of course, it might have something to do with the fact that she can't play on the iPad until her reading is done, but hey-- whatever works, right?  Anyway, not only is her reading seriously improving, but the twenty minutes of reading is basically an excuse for her to have my undivided attention the entire time, and get a little bit of snuggling in with my girl as well.  Right now the reading is very much a collaborative project; she still needs help with every third or fourth word in a sentence.  So we have to sit close together so that we can both see the book, which is great for that bonding and attachment that is so important to any adoption.

It's also a fantastic opportunity to introduce various pop culture references, slang, idioms, etc. that she'll run into over her middle school and high school years.  We've worked our way through four books now, that have slowly upped in vocabulary and maturity level.  We started out with a collection of For Better or Worse, worked our way through Amelia Bedelia Means Business, and then tackled Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life.  Currently we're reading Awkward, which is a book about a high school girl whose embarrassing video goes viral on the Internet.

Though it's true that because the books contain language and phrases that are popular in teen culture it can get a bit awkward sometimes (ever tried explaining the phrase "that's what she said" to a kid with a limited English vocabulary?) talking about the characters in the books is a great way to have conversations about a lot of topics that most teenagers are familiar with but that are new to Eden.  They also provide opportunities to talk about some of the cultural differences between American and Thai teens, and to draw parallels between the experiences the characters have with what we encounter in our daily lives.  We've probably got a few more weeks to go before this book is finished, but if anyone has any recommendations for what we might tackle next, I'm all ears.

Not that I need any excuse to read more books.  Oh well.

~Jess

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 We Do Our Best To Balance

We had a super, super busy day today!  We had church, and then while Eden practiced for the Christmas play, Connor and I ran home and made some asparagus for a potluck, which happened right after practice was over.  We stayed until nearly three in the afternoon, and then went home so the Little Miss could finish some work on a school project.  Then we headed out to get her a new backpack, since the holes in her old one have gotten two big to cover with duct tape.  This is her third backpack this year; the kid's hard on the things!  Hopefully this one will be sturdy enough to last her a while.

Connor had two seizures today but otherwise seemed to be feeling pretty well.  I think these were probably of the 'every two weeks or so I must have a seizure' variety; I swear he schedules the things.  If he starts getting sick we'll know otherwise, but so far so good.

We had to choose between going to the potluck and going to the annual Loi Krathong celebration at the local wat.  I let Eden decide what she wanted to do this year, and she opted to go to the potluck since it was indoors and it was raining and very cold outside (the festival is held outdoors).  I suggested that we have our own celebration at home if she didn't want to go to the festival, but she said she would rather not.  It's been tough trying to balance activities with the Thai community here with the other many things Eden has going on; I want to make sure she has those connections, but I also don't want to force that sort of thing on her and right now she's not all that interested.

I think right now she's more concerned with fitting into our immediate community, and she's put making connections with other Thai Americans on the back burner.  I suspect she sees being Thai as being 'different' from most of the people around her, and she wants to focus on blending in as much as possible.  I hope, however, that she'll eventually want to take part in events with the the Thai community again.  I won't push her, but I'll keep presenting opportunities and letting her know that our whole family enjoys participating in Thai cultural events and holidays.  We'll be traveling back to Thailand in a couple of years to visit; maybe that will spark an interest for her again.

She's retaining all of her Thai with no trouble though, which is a very good thing.  We want her to be able to travel between Thailand and America and feel like she can fit in wherever she is, and language is such a fundamental part of that process.  I've read so many essays about how many internationally adopted children who lose their native language later feel that they don't fit well in either America or the country of their birth, and while there's no way that we can completely avoid this issue we'd like to make sure Eden is as comfortable as possible balancing between her birth country and her new nation.

~Jess