Ordinary Time

It's been one month since we arrived home with K from Vietnam. When I think about all we've done this month it makes me realize why I'm tired. I want my relaxing summer to start! K's transition continues to be very easy. He is just the cutest and happiest little guy (who loves nothing more than an audience to make laugh). He even is starting to show me affection. He will come up and hug my legs, he wants me to pick him up, he smiles for me and makes more eye contact, and he started to cry when I left the house for a five minute errand on Tuesday. Up until that point, I wasn't sure whether he really cared yet if I was around or not. And so goes the dance of attachment...I love him, he begins to love me, I love him even more, and so on and so on. On top of the happy stuff, we've also had a parade of therapists in here through Early Intervention to perform screenings on K. The second set was here yesterday, both a physical therapist and an occupational th...

The whole time we were waiting for K to come home, one of my constant prayers was that God would keep him healthy...both emotionally and physically. From my compulsive reading habit, I was all too aware of how important the first few years of a baby's life are and how unsuited orphanages are at meeting a baby's needs. So as the wait dragged on (and on and on and on) this prayer became more urgent. Well, today K had his Early Intervention screening, done by a physical therapist and a speech therapist. And the verdict? He is delayed and qualifies for services; probably he will have two sessions a week. (Did I mention that E. I. comes to your house? Hallelujah!) But, I was expecting that. All along I had been saying it was much more like having a one year old (really like an 18 month old) than a two year old. And that is exactly the functional age that the therapists thought as well. (I guess I've learned something in the course of raising all these children.) But ...

I realize that I've been AWOL here at the blog for a while. June has turned out to be busier than I expected it to be. Much of that has to do with what seems to be a new family tradition which involves embarking on long cross-country car rides with newly adopted children. So far, in less than a month, K has ridden in a car in 6 states. (TM still has him beat...by the time he had been home for four months he had been in 11 states.) Thankfully for all involved K has turned out to be a great traveller. We don't ever intend to drag our newest members on endless road trips...the timing of things just seems to happen that way. This time it was a visit to J's grandmother who turns 107 in August. (She's doing amazingly well, by the way, and if her eye sight was better, I'm pretty sure she could still beat us at cards.) Because of J's teaching schedule, last week was our one window of time where we could go. And it's the kind of visit that really shouldn...

I had some nice pictures of the new kitchen to share. But, it seems that our camera has had something go seriously wrong. It was acting funny the last two days in Vietnam and now I know for sure. The pictures look fine on the camera's screen, but when I tried to upload them, the color was all off and whole sections of the picture didn't line up. I'm glad we hadn't taken anything truly important, although I am a bit sad that we don't have the pictures of the huge flowering trees (both purple and red) lining the edge of Hoan Kiem Lake. Maybe we'll try using M or B's camera this weekend. In adoption news, we've started the rounds of all the doctors with K. Today was the pediatrician, complete with three shots, two vials of blood, and an X-ray. It's not my preferred way to spend a morning. I'm a bit disappointed that K still weighs-in at just 20 pounds, even after a month of us feeding him lots of food (including half-and-half with chocolate...

We have spent the weekend moving into the new kitchen. I love it! I also love being above ground; it feels so luxurious. We can now shed our mole people personas. As I start emptying boxes and putting things away, I'm realizing that I have a major housewares addiction. I'm starting to wonder if my desire for a large family is merely a front for the extraordinary amount of bake ware, dishes, glasses, etc. that I own. My only defense is that I personally purchased very little of it. The majority of it all is either wedding gifts that have survived for 17 years or inherited items from disbursing my grandmother's and mother-in-law's homes in recent years. But still, it's probably safer if I just never set foot in Crate and Barrel or IKEA again. Pictures will soon follow. Right now it's hard to see the actual kitchen for the piles of things waiting to be put away.