College Student from JingZhou SWI

JingZhou was Micah's first home, from March 2006 until July 2007. There was a recent post on the Love Without Boundaries blog about a college student who had grown up at the SWI, http://lwbchinablog.blogspot.com/2008/04/meet-li.html.

I have soft spots for JingZhou and its staff, because they took such good care ofMicah, LWB and particularly Linda Mitchell who wrote the post, because she took photos of Micah for us during her May 2007 trip to JingZhou. LWB also sponsors an education program at the SWI.

Also, for those shopaholics out there, LWB is having an online fundraising auction April 24-29, which you can get to through its web site (http://www.lovewithoutboundaries.com/) or on eBay by searching for lwbchina as the seller.

Photos Uploaded

Micah with his BAHA-adapted baseball cap, April 2008

Thea at Hilltop Park, Princeton, March 2008.

Micah doing his sewer cap dandelion dance, April 2008.

Thea feeding peppermints to the horses, March 2008.

The problem with being unable to transfer pictures from camera to computer was the cable for the camera/USB port; the new one arrived in the mail today and it worked on the first try. I wish I could bill the help desk geek at Kodak for the $6.42 (which included shipping and handling) that it took to solve the problem since 30 minutes or so of his time was absolutely worthless.

Three posts in one day, that has to be a record for me.

New Layout

Caption: On our walk around the Princeton University Stadium.

I got bored with the monochromatic look of the old blog, so I went to http://www.suckmylolly.com/ to look for something a little more visually stimulating. After a few false starts and screw-ups, this is what I chose, I'm having a little thing for stuff that looks like 1930s/1940s fabric.

So if you like it, leave a comment, if you hate it leave a comment. I've learned how to delete comments - I found a comment on a recent post and was all atwitter, until I found that it was the blog comment equivalent of spam. Somebody in Brazil whose information links to a site that looks like it is selling something (my complete lack of knowledge of Portugese makes me only able to speculate.)

Zap went that comment, buh-bye - though the evidence that there once was a comment is still that. That's another trip through the help menu. And now if someone gives me a cheap thrill by leaving a comment, he/she work just a bit harder by copying the letters in the box before the comment can be left, and somehow will prevent spam comments.

overPass aka Jewish Holiday Dyslexia, etc.

Overpass is what Thea called the holiday we celebrated at her grandmother's on Saturday night when she was referring to it while brushing her teeth last night. It took a second to figure out that she was talking about Passover and not something related to the roadways/bridges around here. Somehow we've got to get a start on her religious education because right now all she can tell you about Jewish holidays is that we go to Grandma's and eat.

Thea and I made matzoh balls on Friday for our dinner at Grandma's the next day. It was a first for both of us - and I learned that my MIL made them once in her life, they turned out hard or rubbery, and from then on she bought them. Anyway, ours were a success so we'll share our recipe:

Open package of matzo ball mix/meal, put in bowl. Allow four-year old to pick out two eggs from the refrigerator and crack them over the bowl with the mix, Measure two tablespoons of light vegetable oil and allow child to dump them in, mix. Chill 15 minutes while answering inquiries as to how much longer do we have to wait. Boil water. Roll into 1" balls, drop into water, watch the ball expand like something in a bad sci-fi movie. Cook 20 minutes, transfer into chicken broth. Done. Pray to the deity of your choice that the matzoh balls are not doughy lumps. Not exactly culinary rocket science. Then learn to call it by its proper name, matzoh ball, not meatball. Thea proudly announced to her father that we had made meatball soup.

Right now the springOff are at the neighborhood park with their father. We stopped at Marquand Park on our way home from picking Thea up at school - it has a sand pit and families leave toy trucks, shovels, sifters and whatnot. Messy fun, if one remembers to shake out the shoes before going in the car or house. Micah had a great session with Ela today - she was pleased he used three words together over the weekend (SIT DOWN, MOMMY! proving he can be as much of a BLT (bossy little thing) as his sister.).

Tomorrow is Earth Day and Thea's school is going on a trip to a nearby recreation area so we had to make a stop at Wal-Mart to look for a yellow polo shirt. Pre-K doesn't have to wear uniforms to school, but the school prefers it if the children wear them on field trips. We managed to score a light yellow polo with a Peter Pan collar and interesting buttons, so she won't totally look like some sort of Asian preppy clone.

R.I.P. FiFi

Our 7+ year old guinea pig FiFi died right before the kids and I left for my mother's at the end of March. Since Steve was going to clean up and get rid of the cage while we were away, Thea and I had a little talk about death while driving down the NJ Turnpike. (Steve was in favor of telling her that FiFi had gone back to be with her family, a la our neighbors who used that stories while flushing their dead goldfish down the toilet. Why would the goldfish's family live somewhere downstream of where the poop and pee goes? It just didn't seem right.) Anyway, we survived. Thea doesn't want to be buried in the ground (where she thinks FiFi is, out in the backyard with Marco Polo and Mrs. Whaley, but I think Daddy took a few short cuts.)

Anyway, to FiFi, who despite her semi-snotty attitude in her younger days, was a fairly good rodent. May her next incarnation bring her further along in the food chain.

I'm having trouble transferring photos. I spent 45 minutes in a chat mode with some geek at Kodak who was utterly useless, I definitely was interrupting him from cruising on-line porn or clipping his toenails. I'm going to try getting new cables for the camera and see where that gets me.

Garden State Discovery Museum

In my semi-monthly attempt at being a Good Mommy and infusing my children with 'culture' of a sort, the three of us trooped down I-295 to Cherry Hill. After a few misteps with the directions thanks to those damn NJ dogleg exits to make left turns, we arrived. Just as all the school buses were loading up to leave, the timing was nothing less than exquisite. I also scored parking karma with a spot right by the entrance.

It's a bit of an irony that the GARDEN STATE Discovery Museum is in an office/industrial park with greenery limited to a few shrubs and grass.

Micah was asleep when we pulled into the parking lot - naturally, what occasion or trip hasn't he slept through? Oma's Special Park, the cherry blossoms, and whatnot. Asleep, zonked out, in dreamland. But he rapidly pulled himself together and was ready to run once we got inside.

Overall, Thea gave this museum a better rating that the Please-Touch Museum in Philadelphia. She got to operate a news camera (several times), make enormous bubbles, look at animal x-rays in a child-sized mock-up of a veterinarian's office and all sorts of other stuff. Micah liked the air vent over which he could suspend a beach ball and watch it float - and I think just having the freedom to run and touch whatever.

While making our last pass at the Channel 6 newsroom, we met a grandmotherly-type lady who asked what type of hearing aid 'she' had. (I'd really need to rack my feeble brain to think of what he was wearing yesterday, but since I rarely allow him to go out in drag, my best guess is navy sweat pants and an orange Tiger Soccer shirt (courtesy of Target, not Princeton.) Rather than beat the point home, I said that HE uses a BAHA. It turns out the woman knew some sign language from teaching dance to deaf students, and she thinks it's a beautiful language so she's hoping SHE (Micah) is being raised bilingual. The cruel little devil who sits in some dark recess of my brain wanted to ask, "English and Chinese?" not the English and American Sign Language that the woman meant.

But I just said, ASL may be beautiful, but HE (dammit) has a physical/architectural problem that can be repaired in time, and HE is a part of a hearing family so he attends an oral deaf education program and if HE's using ASL it will limit the number of people with whom HE can converse. She pulled a bit of a sour face on me, but by then I was clock-watching and ready to get out of there to avoid the afternoon traffic. Conversation over, I don't feel compelled to defend our choices.

On the 'up' side, I bumped into a former Pfizer rep who was at the GSDM with her children - she had left Pfizer before Micah's adoption was in process, so she was surprised that I had two in tow, and she had a new three-month old son in addition to her daughter (who I think is around Thea's age.) She was one of the reps I liked, so it was really nice to see her.

And once we got home I had an email from another friend about their newest, who was born March 29th in Kyrgyzstan.

Aside from our adventure yesterday, the other big news is that Micah peed on the potty today. Naturally when we bought the potty seats for the regular toilets we thought we would be the parents of two girls, so somewhere in the house is the little snap on piece for the potty seat that keeps the mopping up to a minimum. I have to remind myself that it was 20+ months between Thea's first use of the potty (August 2005) and being officially declared potty-trained (February 2007). The end probably not in sight, much as he does love to flush the toilet.

I will upload my photos soon - I've got to get them into Kodak Gallery before Micah figures out how to get his hands on the camera and deletes them.

Bite Me, Yet Again, NJ Bureau of Vital Statistics

Many months ago I blogged about going to the BVS to get Micah's NJ birth certificate and how what the NJ BVS gaveth, it tooketh away about two weeks later, claiming that his birth certificates had the incorrect file number on it. It all was resolved, or so I thought, after I sent the incorrect certificates back to BVS and new ones were reissued. Matter concluded, all in less time that it took to get Thea's birth certificate three years ago, one more thing checked off the list.

So imagine the spike in my blood pressure when I get another letter from BVS stamped in red with FINAL NOTICE stating that the issue of the incorrect birth certficates was still outstanding. I put the letter on top of the envelope with all of Micah's other documents that are waiting there until I muster the energy to apply for his passport, and let it marinate for a few days. Until it popped into my head again Monday at around 4:05 pm.

No NJ state employee answers a phone after 4 pm, or so it seems, so I left the pinhead who sent the threatening missive a voice mail. So the nice head of steam I worked up was all for naught.

And then I called her again during a brief lull in the morning. The woman agreed that the file numbers on the certificates in my possession are indeed the correct ones, offered nothing remotely like an apology (and she called me "Hon" which just automatically torques my shorts) and then we concluded our call.

And there went the five minutes that I could've gotten a cup of coffee, checked email or gone to the restroom.

The afternoon was spent, 12:30 to 3 pm or so in EMR training. We're getting an electronic medical record system. Much as I love technology, gadgets and geekery, there are parts of this that seem like a major headache. Or I'm on the downside of my learning curve. God help me on the 29th when we go live, there isn't going to be enough chocolate in the world to soothe my psyche.

So I'll practice for my next career: "Would you like fries with your order?"

Paging DYFS, catching up, etc.

Day of Guilt. I am a bad mommy, I've been thinking about Micah needing new shoes for a week or so, but never managed to get us to Village Shoes to do something about it. Today, on the way home from Sound Beginnings, he woke up as we were almost home so I decided today is the day.
Last time we got shoes for him was on a trip to Oma's last fall. Size 6. Measured today, size 7.5 - almost eight. One ticket punched on the guilt express. And we have a second kid with wide feet so it limited our selection a little bit, but overall I think Micah found the experience satisifying because when we got in the car to leave, he looked at his feet and said, "Wow, SHOES."

Our morning was spent at Summit School. The mommy group was especially heinous today because I didn't have much to keep me occupied other than cleaning out my mental sock drawer, having brought the scraps to write up my call slips but having left the booklet of pink messages at home. Fortunately the mommy whose voice was getting on my last nerve has a child who turns three and is aging out of the system at the end of this month. And I work the next two Wednesdays, so no group for me. By the time we go back, it will just be the cochlear implant moms and their usual minor monopolization of the group. Majority rules, whatever, them I'm used to.

I still need to connect the camera to the computer and download a bunch of pictures. Micah Thea and I went to Oma's the week/weekend of the 26th-30th. Oma had an appointment at the nail salon on Friday, so I went to Babies-R-Us, bought an umbrella stroller and took Micah and Thea on Metro to go downtown to meet up with my friend Lorrie and see the cherry blossoms. Thea had her own farecard so she thought she was all that and a bag of chips.

We got there early so we got off at the Smithsonian stop and went to the Air and Space Museum, which was a huge hit with Thea. ("I'm the luckiest girl in the whole world!" - Mommy will remind you of that comment one of these days, Miss T.) Then we subwayed it to Federal Triangle, which is not the Federal Triangle stop of 1995, the last year I worked in DC. Someone has built a huge building there, named it after Ronald Reagan (doesn't he already have an airport named for him dammit?) thereby throwing both of us off the proposed meeting place. Fortunately, we connected despite all of this and set off for the Tidal Basin. Thea was a trooper - we only had the umbrella stoller for Micah - which Aunt Lorrie pushed, for which I was probably not sufficiently expressive in my thanks. I miss the Stand-n-Stroll that was such a help in China but didn't survive much beyond the trip, it is the best stroller for the toddler/preschooler como, IMHO. The cherry blossoms were beautiful, the crowds weren't horrendous (the actual festival started the next day), and the whole trip exhausted them enough that they went to bed early that night.

Oh, and we had another ER visit, this time at Civista Medical Center in LaPlata. Micah was walking backwards, fell on a sofa pillow (that he had earlier pulled off of Oma's couch) and hit the back of his head on the brass handle of the drawer on the TV cabinet. Small hole in the back of the boy's head, and since I nearly didn't take him to the ER for the forehead thing that took four stitches, I thought it should be checked out.

When the triage nurse put the thermometer in his armpit, Micah said "all bettuh", which was cute. We got sent over to the fast track side and had to wait 20 minutes or so - long enough for Micah to discover a small plastic cup for medication on the floor, crutches that were propped against the wall and the rolling gurney-side table. By the time the physician assistant saw him, the small hole had swollen enough that he said just to put antibiotic ointment on it. Four mini packets of Bacitracin and a dose of ibuprofen for the $50 co-pay; peace of mind, priceless.

Now he just has a scablet on his head that everyone thinks is a tick. No, it's just a scab, I broke the baby. Again. Stop picking at my kid's head.

Not much else going on. Tomorrow I have EMR training - our electronic medical record system goes live at the end of the month, so in preparation I have to sit in one place for three hours (read: a nightmare, the one thing I don't have to do in my job is sit still), in front of a computer screen, with my phone on speaker setting connected to a training teleconference. I'd rather have a rectal and a root canal. Simultaneously.

Thea learned how to sing the Barney song in Chinese. What a nightmare. I hate Barney in English and his status is not made any better by putting him in Mandarin. (I much prefer "I love you, you love me, let's hang Barney from a tree. . . but I don't think Thea's Mandarin proficiency is at that level, yet.

She's sleeping in her Dora bed these days, which beats having a 60 lb. snoring lump in our bed. We had a couple of partial successes with the 100 Good Wishes Quilt and her 'real' bed, but it's going to be incremental progress to evicting her into her own room. She loves that quilt as much as Soft-Soft, her fuzzy blanket from Betty at my office.