An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle but will never break. --Chinese legend

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Spring Festival

We celebrated Chinese New Year yesterday at a party across the street. Our neighbors have a 7 year old daughter from China, and every year they invite other families who have adopted from China. We ate Chinese food and did Chinese crafts and learned Chinese trivia. The kids played until they dropped in the basement, and it did not bother David in the least that he was the youngest. Here are a few pictures. Happy year of the ox!

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Single Ladies

David is still doing well, has not required anything for pain since Wednesday and is no longer afraid of taking a bath. We go for his follow up visit a week from tomorrow, but as far as he is concerned, everything is good times as usual.
As the dance compilation video below demonstrates, David enjoys a wide variety of music and fashion. He loves his "Veggie Tales Sing the 70s" cd, but nothing beats Beyonce's "Single Ladies." Sometimes even when there's no music on, he'll start dancing and singing the oh-oh-oh's to himself. We're still working on capturing the singing at its best on video.
This weekend David has also been enamoured with his Cocky hat and has insisted on wearing it for most of his waking hours. He also demanded that I wear my winter hat pretty much all day Saturday.
We've had a lovely, lazy weekend avoiding the cold and hanging out at home. Tomorrow we ring in the year of the ox and in just one week, we'll be celebrating David turning the big oh-two. I hope you enjoy David's new dance moves...

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Chef David

Not much new to report. David continues to have brief periods of pain or discomfort or just being out of sorts but is pretty much his normal happy self most of the time. Most of this is probably surgery related, but I also suspect some toddler crabbiness and perhaps a touch of milking it for what it's worth. He has tried to avoid nap time and a diaper change by asking for "mesds" (medicine) in a very pathetic voice.
I'm off work all this week, but Alma is coming, too. It's been nice to be able to take care of his meds and incision and spend some quality time with him but also have an extra pair of hands so I can sneak away and get some cleaning and errands done, too. For example, today I vacuumed the equivalent of 2 Snoopies worth of dog hair from our bedroom floor. I don't even think that's an exaggeration.

Here are 2 more pictures in our "It's a Dog's Life" series


David helping me get asparagus ready for tonight's dinner. He also took a couple of bites of raw asparagus and enjoyed it very much. Maybe next time I won't bother cooking it.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

POD #1

Just a quick update to say that David continues to do well. He slept through the night and was up bright and early at 5:30 ready to run, dance and play with his dogs. He has had several short episodes where he seems to be in pain and cries and says "ow!" (we assume when he's peeing), but they only last for about a minute. The rest of the time he is his usual maniacal self.

No pictures from today, but here are a couple Alma took earlier in the week that are too cute not to post.

Friday, January 16, 2009

Activity: as tolerated

Video of David shortly before and after his surgery today. Fortunately for us, other than no ride-on toys for 3 weeks, he has the blessings of his surgeon to do whatever he wants.

David and the no good awful very bad day

David had outpatient surgery today to correct a problem unrelated to his cleft. I assume that the David of the future will want very few details about this surgery on the internet, so I will leave that between him and his urologist. What I can tell you is that David did great. We left for the hospital around 7:00. We took a monkey, a bear, several cars and part of his train set with us, all of which provided him comfort at some time or another. He had a pretty good time playing in the pre-op area. I was expecting more issues with the no food or drink, but he didn't get grumpy until the very end. He went back to the OR around 9:45. As I had anticipated, this was by far the hardest part of the day. I knew he was in good hands and that the surgery would go well. I can do post-op wound care and pain meds and catheters, but those few minutes that I knew he was awake and scared without me were the worst. The surgery lasted a little more than 3 hours plus some extra time for the anesthesiologist to do a caudal block for some pain relief. When he was all done, they took us to the PACU where he was groggy and fussy. After singing "The Wheels on the Bus" and some "Old McDonald" and letting him hold his train, he calmed down and perked up enough to drink some water. We were told to expect a few rough days even with pain medication and that he might be very weak and have trouble walking tonight from the caudal block. We made it home around 3:00, and by 4:30 David was running laps through the house, doing face plants onto the couch and jumping around like the monkey he is. We'll see what the next few days hold, but so far so good.
David hunting MRSA under his crib and in the sink in our pre-op room.
Asleep in the car on the way home
Stay tuned for video of David before and after surgery...

Monday, January 12, 2009

David's baptism

We spent this weekend in South Carolina celebrating David's baptism. We decided to have him christened at St. Martin's, the church where I grew up and was baptized and where Kevin and I were married. We arrived Thursday night and spent some time playing trains before bed. We enjoyed dinner with the Starnes family Friday night. David was a huge fan of the chicken and pasta Jennifer made for us but wasn't quite sure what to do with his enormous gingerbread clown. He did, however, manage to share my piece of chocolate pie without difficulty. He had a lot of fun playing with Haley. At one point, Haley was explaining in dramatic fashion to Jennifer that she wanted to wear her Princess Aurora dress. Jennifer was obviously not moving fast enough because David walked up to her, looked her straight in the eye and said "Aulola!" very emphatically.
David two-fisting fries on our flight, playing trains with Granddaddy and checking out his cookie with Haley.

Saturday we had breakfast at the "Pandy House" (aka Original House of Pancakes) before a walk through of the service at the church. In the afternoon the Chicago contingent took a tour of the state house and ate an authentic Carolina dog at Sandy's. That night they joined us at my parents' house for some wings, Chick-fil-A nuggets and boiled peanuts. It turns out David is a huge boiled peanut fan and has been begging them off of Uncle Adams and Aunt Leslie all weekend (see below).
The service Sunday morning was lovely and significantly shorter than the 2 hours everyone was expecting with 6 baptisms on the agenda. David looked very handsome in one of the outfits we got for him while he was in China. He also wore the jade pendant we got there. Jade is supposed to protect the person who wears it. In an attempt to minimize his freaking out, we'd been talking to David about the baptism--about how we would go to church and pour a little water on his head 3 times--and practicing in the tub at night. It seemed to help because instead of writhing and screaming like we were lighting him on fire (his typical reaction to washing his hair), he gave a short little cry and calmed down pretty quickly. He got a little fussy towards the end of the service (who cam blame him?) and was asleep by the end of the closing hymn.
David crashed after his baptism. David with me, Kevin and his godparents--Jennifer and Steve.
Lamb cake and the 3 of us with Allen, Amanda and Aimee at the church reception after the service. Aimee and Al introduced Kevin and me, and Amanda is our goddaughter, so we were thrilled they were able to be there.
After the service and a quick stop at the reception at the church, we headed to Aunt Judy and Uncle Bruce's house for the real party.
Here with are with Kevin's family, Kevin's grandma and my family at Aunt Judy's.
We feel very fortunate to have been surrounded by so many family and friends for this special occasion. Thank you to everyone who endured a lengthy Episcopal church service and shared this day with us! Thank you to Aunt Judy for a great party. A very special thanks to everyone who travelled through Chicago snow or Texas heat or who drove up from Atlanta on very very short notice to make it here. Thank you to Paris, our priest in Chicago, for her help in our preparation and to Furman, who was so willing to work with us so that David could be baptized at St. Martin's. Most of all thank you to Jennifer and Steve, two very special friends whom we are honored will be a special part of David's life.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Helping in the kitchen

I'm not sure if it's because he has a cold or if it's because he's (almost) two and he feels like it, but David has been giving Alma a hard time about napping in his crib this week. You can see the results above. That's our monkey asleep under the futon in the office. I'm sure no one is surprised to see a dog napping comfortably on the furniture.
Tonight Kevin was late getting home so David helped me with dinner. While I chopped the bell peppers and onions for the fajitas, he played with bowls and measuring cups. Once there were pepper and onion pieces in a bowl, he used a measuring cup to move them from bowl to bowl. He ate a few pieces of green pepper, which he enjoyed, and then tried onion which he chewed briefly, pulled out of his mouth and threw in the bowl with the rest of the veggies that were going in our dinner. They were definitely fajitas for the three of us only.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Happy 2009!


David has proclaimed 2009 to be the year of the David, and he rang it in in style...at around 8:30. We partied with Nate, Charmaine and Evie and with Josh, Kate and baby Zachary. Let's face it. Wherever there are two toddlers and a newborn, there are good times. David had tons of fun playing with all of Evie's toys, which she shared admirably, and ate his weight in Josh's homemade popcorn. (Yes, I know it's a choking hazard.) We stayed until 9:00. David fell asleep during the 5 minute ride home, and Kevin and I were in bed shortly thereafter. New Year's Rockin' Eve, indeed.
We got a sweet e-card today from Sophie who was our guide in Beijing and Chongqing, which was a nice surprise. It's hard to believe it was 8 months ago today that our flight left for China.
David naps as I type this, and once he's up we'll celebrate the new year Polish-style with some stuffed cabbage (and lots of other food that we'll eat too much of) at Kevin's Aunt Barb and Uncle Rog's house.
Here are some cute pictures of Evie and David playing last night.



Pretty in pink: David this morning in my hat, gloves and scarf