Time off from the Blog-o-Sphere

Micah, wearing his BAHA, driving the tractor at the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia

BAHA-less Micah with his Velcro sunglasses


Thea's New Year's Day masterpieces




Chef Thea with puffy hat created by her Mom

Thea's unique take on fashion: The "I'm Everything" Look

I have been full of good intentions that have not manifested into action, at least regarding writing up a new post. The plague departed, the Christmas holiday came and went, New Year's came and went, and all the stuff I wanted to write about is just a big blobby mass in my brain now that it's the middle of January. And I am a slug. Big time.

Big news: Thea is reading The Backyardigans Ready-to-Read series, which is just amazing since we've not exactly been doing anything more than reading to her and sounding out letters.

Micah has about 30+ words or so, which means he's moving up to about the equivalent of a one-year old in terms of speech (supposedly the average one year old has command of about fifty words). Not that he uses them consistently and some almost never on command.

Tomorrow thanks to the MLK holiday there is no PIG (parent-infant group) at Summit Speech School, which will be a nice break. Micah seems to benefit from whatever they're doing with the kids, but the mommies group is going to be the death of me. Same stories, same schticks, different week - and it would probably be horrible un-PC of me to say, can I just go read a book in the lobby? Considering that the school codes the time we're there as 'respite' care, it would be nice if it were a true respite instead of listening to the same predictable stuff from the same people week in and week out.

Thea, Micah and I went to the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia last week - where the parking rates have risen even beyond the extortion I remember while I was a student at Penn. The parking was 2/3 of what it cost in admission fees to the museum for the three of us. It will be interesting to see what the museum will turn into when it moves to Fairmont Park sometime this year - and if there will be a parking fee.

Six months have passed since Micah's adoption. Our social worker came on New Year's Day for the post-placement interview, and Friday I finally summoned the strength to take Micah for his bloodwork. Two sticks, because his first vein collapsed. The two phlebotomists had the second tourniquet on and the vein tapped before I could have a fit (Micah's fit was already in progress and was mostly due to being held tight rather than being stuck.) Wednesday I take him in to see the doctor for the paperwork that goes along with the labs.

And in only 41 days, the boy turns two. . . .

The Plague descends upon our house . . .

We're all sick or getting sick: Micah's had a miserable cough for more than a week, keeping him (and us) awake at night and just making life hard, especially since he's not eating much. (He is still drinking his bottles of formula and sippy cups of water.) His cough is so harsh, I half expect to hear the wet splat of a lung hitting the wall. He and I finally went to see the doctor yesterday, and he's now on azithromycin - and we'll see how things go over the next few days. Micah is so much better than Thea at taking medicine. Thea started with a cough and runny nose Friday, I've had something lurking in my sinuses on and off for a couple weeks, we just need to get better before Christmas.

I got most of our holiday cards out this week, with a few stragglers here and there. Next year, back to shutterfly.com or kodakgallery.com. Now if I could just get motivated to do the Christmas shopping.

The Bureau of Vital Statistics re-issued Micah's New Jersey birth certificate, so the Bite-Me comment can be rescinded. Despite the screw up with the file number, it still took less time than Thea's birth certificate.

By stock in Kimberly-Clark, the only holiday decor in our house is fluffy drifts of tissues all overthe place.

Potty-less in Princeton

I'm shamelessly riffing off of one of my favorite blogs, http://www.cluelessincarolina.blogspot.com/. If you read the Crayola Factory post, you're aware that on Friday, my dear sweet Micah flushed a small plastic bottle down the powder room commode. This is the potty of first resort when you have a four-year old whose executive planning skills doesn't include making time to use the bathroom. Out of commission for the weekend, hike to the upstairs bathrooms, plan ahead.

The very nice plumber came Monday afternoon, gave the toilet the equivalent of an endoscopy with the snake, pulled the toilet, gave it the equivalent of a colonoscopy and said that there is the perfect place for something this size to wedge itself, beyond the reach of the snake. So the toilet got taken - likely to be replaced on Wednesday. The plumber's boss called and said they'd give it one more try in the shop before declaring it dead.

So right now we have a gaping hole in the powder room floor, stuffed with half a roll of paper towels to prevent sewer gas from making its presence known and morning will bring either the old almond porcelain toilet back to us, or a new white one. For the sake of expense, I hope it's the old one, but since the plumber said that it was likely a lost cause and new toilets do not come with seats, the kids and I went to Home Depot and bought a toilet seat - and a new kitchen faucet.

This was after schlepping for the third trip to UPS in Hamilton/Trenton to try and pick up my prescription pads. They must be signed for and handed to a live person, so what I usually do afte the delivery notice arrives is get on the UPS web site and have them held for pick-up. It's been a fairly routine, every six month occurance since I started working at the family practice in 2001. Wednesday the delivery came, and since we were all at the ophthalmologists' office, the notice was on the door. That night I put the hold notice in the computer. Thursday morning Micah and I go to UPS on our way down to Columbus. Hours have changed, the pick-up/drop-off place now opens at 11:30. Bite me, UPS.

So we stop off on the way home from work/day care on Thursday and the package is out for delivery, whoever is in charge of pulling it FAILED to do her job. Bite the other butt cheek, UPS.
Friday, we bailed and went to Crayola, so another day lost - for a package that allegedly will only be held at UPS until December 5th. Finally on Monday after picking up Thea at school, we went one more time and got the package. Fortunately, my supply of Rx pads is not completely used up so I was only flipping out over the number of trips there in a world where gasoline is almost $3/gallon.

Bite Me, NJ Bureau of Vital Statistics

Back in mid-October, on a Wednesday when Ela wasn't able to come for Micah's session, he and I zipped down to the Bureau of Vital Statistics to apply for his NJ birth certificate. I was thrilled that the person who had helped me with Thea's application had not yet retired, brought all my papers and then some, and we got through the whole process and went home to wait. The wait for Thea's NJ birth certficiate to arrive was around four months, and that was considered very, very fast.

So imagine my utter delight when right around Thanksgiving, Micah's NJ birth certificate arrived in our mailbox. I went to the Yahoo group for NJ parents with children adopted from China and posted my surprise and happiness. . . .

. . . .and then last week a letter arrives from BVS asking me to return those birth certificates because they had the wrong file number on them. And the office sent an envelope but didn't even have the decency to put postage on it, considering it was its error, not mine. So today, after seething quietly about this, I finally copied everything (including the envelope because the person who had written the accompanying letter wrote on it so that it would come back to her) and sent it off.

Maybe obtaining Micah's passport will be trouble-free part of this whole documentation process. . . . I doubt it - and it worries me because when I do apply for it, I have to surrender the one and only copy of his Certificate of Citizenship. It is returned with the passport, but considering even expedited processing isn't really expedited, giving that up, hoping it doesn't get lost in the processing, is more than I can handle right now. And we're not going anywhere anytime soon anyway.

Crayola Factory & National Canal Museum

What do you do when your toddler flushes a four-ounce bottle of his sister's juice down the powder room toilet, flooding the bathroom? You mop up and decamp for greener pastures. Actually we were on our way to going to Easton to the Crayola Factory when Micah found a four-pack of Thea's juice somewhere on its way upstairs and decided to see if the four bottles and his bottle of formula would sink, swim or flush. Thea pulled two out of the toilet, I found one in the foyer, and the fourth is likely lodged somewhere beyond reach. The plumber will be coming on Monday, and his fee will be deducted from a future allowance payment.

Anyway, Crayola is just a bit more than an hours' drive from Princeton, and the route goes right past the drive-thru D-n-D, so coffee was also part of the agenda. Thea warmed up to Crayola pretty quickly - there are just so many little projects to try out: we got modeling clay, made gingerbread puppets, paper-bag puppets, went to this area that projected her movements onto a screen in various colors and speeds. She tried out her Super Spy dance moves and was impressed with the results. Micah liked the area that had lots of plastic balls that you dropped into a bin, the balls rode up on a screw-like device, went on rails over to a series of plastic ramps down into the bin where they could be retrieved and the process repeated, and repeated, and repeated.

An elevator ride above Crayola is the National Canal Museum, which was very cool - very hands on: Thea could take a model of a canal boat and move it through a series of locks up and down, loading coal along the way, until the boat arrived at the other end. She took it very seriously, unlike the three boys on a school field trip who were playing Battleship with their canal boats.

They could also build their own canal using a series of plastic walls and sending bathtub boats through the chutes that they created. Thea got to steer the tiller of a mock-up of a canal boat, which made a platform move and she tried pulleys to lift a 32 pound barrel to see which pulley system made it easier to lift. I almost enjoyed all of this more than Crayola, especially since there were fewer people around.

After we made the obligatory stop at the Crayola Factory Store, we had lunch at Perkins and then drove home. Micah was asleep before we got to the bridge over the Delaware River, and Thea conked out after a few rounds of games on her Leapster.

The Eyes Have It. . . .

Today was ophthalmologist appointment day for the kids. This was on the To-Do list from Micah's ENT, but was a lower priority than the audiograms, the renal ultrasound, EIP evaluation, etc. Thea's got included in the field trip because Steve thought she was having a problem with distance vision because she couldn't (wouldn't?) read a speed limit sign while out on a walk on Thanksgiving. So on Monday, while driving home from Summit Speech School, I called South Jersey Eye Physicians - and got appointments for today. Sort of amazing. . .

And. . . .both of them check out just fine. Thea did well on all parts of the exam, except the second eye drop - the first one didn't thrill her, and she was not pleased about having the process repeated. But Dr. Wexler seems to have a particular talent for prying open small eyelids and getting the job done - and then the whole process was repeated on Micah, except he had to have two drops because of his age. Not quite the meltdown of the ER visit, but he was not pleased at being placed in his second headlock of the week. Then we got to go out to the waiting room to leave another trail of mayhem and destruction while the eye drops worked their magic.

Anyway, Micah's exam was normal and Thea has 20/20 vision and does not need glasses - and she did the "big girl" test with the letters and not the shapes, so she's quite proud of herself.

One more thing crossed off the list, leaving just bloodwork left for Micah. (The ENT also recommended genetic counseling, but I don't really see the point if all his other exams are normal and he's developmentally on track. It wouldn't change what we're doing or plan to do, so why bother just for the privilege of paying another co-pay and seeing another specialist.)

Next week on December 5th we have yet another audiogram at JFK, the second one with the BAHA, then I probably should make another appointment with the ENT to check in with him.

Monday night I went back to Summit School for the reading and book signing. Josh Swiller is even better in person than on the NPR interview. I got my copy of his book signed for Micah. I highly, highly recommend his book The Unheard.

More later.

Baby's 1st ER Visit

We've always told Thea no ER visits until after you're five years old. Somehow I missed out on conveying that important piece of information to Micah - and tonight we went to the ER for the first time and he got a few stitches in his forehead. It all started with his standing on the sofa and trying to jump or walk, and going off the edge and right into the edge of the coffee table - not the first time this has happened, but this time he conked his head just right and there was a little gash on his forehead. It looked tiny enough, but since it kept oozing, I wanted to have it checked out, especially since it was on an area on the forehead where his BAHA band sits.

Fortunately tonight was a quiet night at the University Medical Center ER (I've always hated that name, it's like the hospital is trying to capitalize on a non-existent relationship with Princeton University). No sooner than giving Micah's information to the receptionist and getting an ID bracelet slapped on his ankle were we taken into the triage area, and no sooner did the triage nurse tell us to go out and wait did the trauma tech come along and take us back.

The tech took off Micah's bandaid, told me that it was going to need stitches and went away. Phooey, I was hoping that someone would glue Humpty Dumpty back together and we could get out of there quickly, but it was not to be. And a big fat non-thank you to that trauma tech for not giving me a tissue or a gauze to catch the blood that started to seep out and run down Micah's forehhead yet again after yanking at the bandaid. Fortunately I felt ballsy enough to rummage for what I needed (I really like the vest I had on and didn't feel like getting blood on it).

The rest of the staff we dealt with (Dr. Lee, Nurse Jacqueline, Cecil) was very nice. The doctor and nurse got him numbed up, and then Cecil came in to wrap Micah in a sheet and then put him on the papoose board. Micah had a little snooze after the local anesthetic went in, so he came back full throttle with the wailing and wiggling for Act II. I held his head for the first set of stitches, then the nurse took over for round two - it's hard work to hold a little body still for more than a few minutes and Micah's determination to fight and let us know how pissed off he was did not flag for one single second until he was released from the Velcro.

All in all, with his bonking his head at 7:05, getting to the ER at 8:00, we were home by 9:15 pm which has to be some sort of record. Micah should sleep like a rock after this - but he's fooled us many other times.