Bet you weren’t expecting this
You guys totally forgot that I was adopting, didn’t you? I know it’s seemed like forever and a day since I posted any news (it really hasn’t been that long; it’s just adoption-time), but I’m still waiting. But at least now I’m waiting at #2! I’m betting there’ll be no referral news for me until February at the earliest, but it’s nice to have a little bit of movement and see at least one family get news of their referral.
Kuhgee, ugh and tee
Okay, maybe you didn’t get that title? Let me help you out a bit. Oscar threw me for a loop on Saturday when he gave me the greatest Christmas present ever. Not one, not two, but THREE – yes three! – brand spanking new words. All in about 45 minutes and all with the one common link that is almost guaranteed to keep my little guy trying to talk. Food. He is definitely my child.
We were lounging in bed late Saturday morning, which we almost never do, but I was exhausted because someone (you know who you are) lured me onto F@cebook and I stayed up far too late playing around there. Oscar crawled back into bed with me to tell me he was hungry (signing), so I asked him what he wanted to eat . . . “do you want scrambled eggs? can you say egg? I know you can say egg. . . “ You know, my standard drill, but for some reason something was different Saturday, and instead of pulling me toward the kitchen and grunting, he just looked at me with a sly smile and there it was – “ugh”. Egg!
Feeling a little cocky, I figured we would try for more. After some prompting, he gave me “kuhgee” (cookie) and when he was demanding to drink my tea, he came out with “tee.” After hearing the cheers in my bedroom for ughs, Nanny Norma joined us in the festivities, which I think helped in the motivation for saying cookie. Oscar is a bit of a ham and looooves the attention.
I’d love to say that he kept this up throughout the weekend, but we’re still stalled on the spontaneous speech front. He’ll say a few words (bye, ball, mama, no and oh no (when he’s scared; it’s really sad)) spontaneously, but usually his speech is just repetitive. But – he’s up to 22 words that he can say, which I think is awesome. The whole thing is really quite difficult, though. I’m starting to see why he doesn’t speak that much. It takes so much work to form a word. If I’m finding it mentally taxing, I can only imagine how difficult it is for him. He’s doing great, though. And even if we need to increase his signing ability to help us all on the communication front, I’m so happy each time I get to hear his sweet voice.
By the way, Kelley, thank you again (and again) for getting us started with signing last year. When Oscar went completely silent on me around the time he turned one and it seemed like he was never going to communicate, another mom of a little girl from Oscar’s orphanage encouraged me to start signing with him. I had thought the whole signing with infants thing was a little silly, but since I was scared he would never talk I thought I’d give it a try. He’s been signing for a long time now, but in the past six months or so it has become a truly effective means of communication in our house. I hate to think what our lives would be like if we had waited until Early Start suggested signing (in September of THIS year) to start doing it. Although I certainly hope we won’t face the same language issues with Baby Etta, we’ll be signing with her from the day we pick her up at the care center.
Our Family Tree
Last year I couldn’t bring myself to do a real Christmas tree. I’m one of those people who likes their tree perfectly adorned, and I figured that wasn’t going to happen with an 18 month old running through the house. No big deal, we’d do it this year. So, this year I unpack the ornaments and start putting them on the tree, only to have Oscar “assist” me by systematically taking them off the tree for me. Not an issue until he decided that the vast majority were worthy of permanent destruction, if you know what I mean.
As a result, I salvaged what I could from my ornament collection and I returned to my stand-in from last year, one of those table-top trees that showcase a few ornaments. Not terribly festive, but it’s something. Since we might be going this route for a couple more years, I decided to take Oscar ornament shopping for our “tree,” which we decided to decorate as an homage to our family.
Here are Grandma and Grandpa (an avid fisherman):
Nanny Norma (she’s quite athletic):
Oscar (born in the year of the Fire Pig):
Me (hey, I lost a little weight, thought I’d show it off a bit; I might never look this good in a bikini again):
And, introducing Baby Etta (no, I don’t have a referral, but she’s part of the family nonetheless):
Happy holidays from our family to yours!
Time for Botox
It finally happened. A woman in a store at DFW just asked me if Oscar was my grandson. GRANDson. I could blame the flourescent lighting and the fact we had gotten up at 3:30 am, but we know this is simply the first of many times I will encounter this issue. Any insights? All I can come up with is a chemical peel and injectables. Hmm. Or, I guess I could face the issue head-on with dignity. Yeah, I’m kidding about that last option.
Archaeology with Oscar*
*Guest Blogger Oscar
My mom woke me up at the butt-crack of dawn because she wanted to see a bunch of old buildings over by the ocean. She made me to go to breakfast at 7:00 am, even though she knows I need to have my first breakfast first before my official breakfast and she didn’t even give me any Cheerios first. So after we went to the restaurant and I refused to eat (duh), she made me get into a taxi (which she knows I HATE) to drive to some place called Tulum.
We got there a long, long time later and there was this cool tram thing that we rode in for a few minutes, but then I had to get into the stroller so we could go to something everyone kept calling the ruins. I didn’t understand the name, since I hadn’t been there before, so I couldn’t have ruined it. I’m sure I’m going to get blamed for it, though. My mom pushed me in the stroller for a while up a bunch of hills through a jungle and then we got out in the open and I didn’t want to sit in the stroller anymore, so I yelled “DA”. My mom just looked at me and pointed at this building and told me how old it was and stuff. Okay, whatever, lady. I just told her “DA” again and she pointed at some plants. C’mon, what’s the problem, woman? I gave her fair warning with a third “DA” and when she went to put me in the stroller, I just told her no (you know, by screaming and arching my back). Then I decided to just sit down. Try to get around that, woman.
Looks like she’s going to try to call my bluff, so I think I’ll pour on the tears. She’ll have to carry me out of here if I’m hurt. See, MaMA, my leg and my thumb are hurt (you remember, I cut my thumb last month). They hurt really bad right now. I think it might have something to do with the 97 degree heat with 95% humidity.
Holy crap. Mean mommy doesn’t even care that I’m hurt. She just kissed my owwies and told me to walk some more or get in the stroller.
Okay, she had to pick me up to carry me up the new set of hills. Mom says it’s beautiful. Um, what? Do you see what I’m seeing? Seriously? I don’t like this at all and I make that clear. Mom explains the guys on the right are just playing, but they’re obviously going to try to push me off the cliff. And what are these crazy people doing? Mom says they’re praying to a Mayan sun god. None of this is right. None of it. Get me out of here. NOW.
Mom at least is carrying me now most of the time, but I’m still not happy. At all. And why did those old people just tell mom that “they rarely continue to act this way when they get to the second grade?” I think they were talking about me. What does she know about any of this stuff?
Mom says she’s going to find something special just for me. I’m skeptical, but I’ve decided to give her the benefit of the doubt for a bit. And, get this, she scored! Look at this guy! Mom got him to jump around and even to run towards us a little. It was pretty awesome. After that mom said she wanted to take this one picture, so I let her, and then we hiked all the way down the hills again to get the stroller. Mom said she was surprised that it was still there, but why would anyone want that thing? Then I told mom I was thirsty and she looked at me funny, and we went into this one store where mom griped about spending $5 for a Coke.
After that, we went back to the taxi. Mom seemed to think that we were going shopping, but after a couple of stops at stores I made it clear that that was not going to happen. We just went back to the hotel to go swimming, which is what we should have been doing all day anyway.
Los saludos de México
Having much fun in Mexico, if you ignore young Oscar’s outbursts every single time he is approached by a strange man on staff at the hotel.
Here he is getting his first taste of salsa music. I think he’ll like it once he figures out the musicians aren’t going to abscond with him in tow.
And here is his attempt at eating at the kiddie pool this afternoon . . . not terribly successful. He ate about a dozen strawberries, a handful of cheerios and one small muffin all day today. Not a good showing.
Big Boy
Oscar had his two year “well baby” check-up this morning. Yes, we’re a bit behind the curve there. With all of the previous doctors’ visits he had earlier this year we thought it was best to defer his official visit until the end of the year. I’m kind of glad we did, since he’s made such amazing progress.
He’s gone from not being on the growth charts at all, to hovering around the 10th percentile to being in the 38th percentile for weight and (get this) from the 25th to the 75th percentile for height. Our ped re-measured him herself just to make sure and then just sat there shocked for a minute. Then she ran a series of tests on his thyroid and requested a consult with an endocrinologist just in case. I knew he went through a massive growth spurt, but I had just been thinking that I was mis-measuring him at home and that perhaps we should use cold water when we wash his clothes to keep them from shrinking. Nanny Norma just beamed with pride when I told her, which is completely appropriate. She’s proof that it is possible to get a finicky toddler to eat on a consistent basis. I need to follow her lead on this.
Our ped also ordered a whole new slew of consults for us, a new speech pathologist, a new pediatric optho (an expert who consulted with us previously but she’d like him to become our primary optho), a new neurologist and yet another developmental assessment. Bonus, we’re having his MRI results looked at by another series of neurologists, although I seriously question where she’s going to find more neurologists who haven’t seen his file. Um, why, you ask? Well, seems that embedded in the results of his MRI were two references to abnormalities (in addition to his corpus callosum) that apparently concern our doctor, who was on maternity leave when the report came in. Since the doctor who ordered the MRI was most concerned with Oscar’s vision and not his overall development, she thinks the focus was placed on the issue that was most likely vision-related and explained how it could be influencing his speech delays (which, when he had his MRI done, people were still saying he might grow out of). You can imagine my elation at hearing this. Too early to tell what these issues are, but she did think that whatever we glean from additional review will lead us to the same place. Something has happened in his brain and there’s no easy fix. He’s going to need a lot of therapy. For a long time.
So, all in all, it was a mixed bag. Great on the physical development front, social areas (Oscar was incredibly sweet to her when he wasn’t screaming, and he didn’t scream all that much while she was there – she said she didn’t recognize him when he wasn’t crying. nice) and even his vision (she agrees that his nystagmus has visibly improved), but not so great news on the other stuff. You know, The Brain Thing. I’m off to call a whole bunch of doctors.
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Etta’s Hats
Where I’ve Been
