Archive for the ‘Ava’ Category
Uhhhh, let’s see. How to summarize the past week or so…
We made it home. Merry loves the dogs and cats. Two of the dogs love her back, one avoids her (but she avoids everybody pretty much – she’s 15 years old), and the cats could mostly care less except for the fact that this interloper took over ‘their’ bedroom where they apparently decided to live while we were in China.
Merry sleeps. All night. You have no idea how happy this makes me. She had almost no issue with the time change. Ava took a few days longer. J took a few more. And I am still waking up at 4AM every single night.
She also eats. Everything. She has gained tons of weight and even wowed the cleft pediatrician today by gaining almost one full pound in one week. This puts her on the growth chart at about 2%. We have found no food that she dislikes so far.
We’ve been to the doctor. A lot.
Merry has seen a general surgeon, the cleft team (twice), and our local international adoption doc. She’s had numerous people poking and prodding at her and has handled it all like the trooper she is. So far we’ve done stool samples (four days worth), vaccinations (four of them), and blood drawn (nine vials that took two sticks and three adults to make it happen). She’s also had a TB test that was so non-reactive it was ridiculous.
Ava also went to the doctor for her five year old checkup. That didn’t go over nearly as well as Merry’s appointments actually. Ava was pretty much noncooperative which I think was, in large part, due to the many shots she had to get at that office right before we left for China. She’s still a tiny thing who tracks on the charts around the 5th percentile just as she always has.
J has also been to the doctor – a few times. He got bit by a spider or something and has been to the ER twice because we were (well, I was and I’m a frightful nag when I want to be) afraid his hand might fall off. It looked so gross. They have a wound drain on it now and he’s taking massive amounts of antibiotics.
We are struggling a bit with the sibling issues. Nothing major but I’m not going to lie – it’s challenging. Ava and I made a pact this morning that we would try each day to have a better day and leave the old, yucky days in the past. Today was better. I have hope that things will be okay once we find our new normal.
Except new normal is probably a ways off since we never dreamed we would be doing her lip, nose, and palate surgery less than 2 weeks after coming home from China. Oh, and ear tubes since her ears are absolutely filled with fluid.
Long story short, we had the opportunity to get in to see the surgeon that we’d hoped for (Dr. Bill Magee who is the founder of Operation Smile) and who feels that Merry is a good candidate for repairing everything in one procedure rather than splitting them up. They let us know last week that he had a surgery cancellation for this week and the cleft team went into overdrive making this happen for us. I can’t even tell you how impressed I am with how the craniofacial team works together for the good of the patient. It’s amazing. We did a cost/benefit analysis on doing this sooner (and possibly messing with her adjustment into our family) or later (and possibly messing with her speech and feeding issues even more by waiting) and after much discussion amongst J and I, along with her docs, we feel that delaying the surgery any longer could have long term detrimental effects that we want to avoid. This has been a tough call but J and I both feel (hope) that we’ve made the right decision.
So. Merry will be having surgery tomorrow morning. Her surgery should take 3-4 hours and she will be admitted to the Pediatric ICU immediately afterward. She’ll (we’ll) spend one night there and then we will evaluate whether or not she can go home or whether she needs another night in the hospital. It’s all about pain control and fluid intake so please send your best thoughts for I am a basket case already and I just may die when I have to hand her over to a nurse to take her into the OR without me.
Things that happened today:
Somehow scored a private van for free to shuttle us and another family to the Hong Kong airport from the hotel instead of making us ride the ginormous shuttle bus with a billion other people – check (woot!).
Waited in line forever to check in with United where they couldn’t find the baby’s reservation – check. (They eventually found it.)
Changed our remaining yuan into US dollars – yes. I was good. We ended up with less than 100 Yuan left to convert (approximately $8).
Got fast tracked through the security family line – sort of.
Bought the most expensive bag of M&M’s EVER in the Hong Kong airport. NOTHING is cheap in that place.
Inserted ourselves into the pre pre-boarding line and successfully talked our way through so we could get the car seat installed – yep.
Flew for 11 hours + 5 hours with a 5YO and a 15 month old without going insane? Yep (mostly). The car seat was a godsend. So glad J stood his ground on this. Merry stayed in the seat probably 85% of the time and slept for a good portion of the first flight and almost all of the second flight – well, except for the last hour of the second flight which I spent handing her cheerios one by freaking one. That’s okay. All three of us girls snuck in a good nap on the second flight. I don’t normally sleep on planes so it was a nice treat for me and definitely helped pass the time.
I will admit that San Francisco almost did me in, though. We arrived half an hour late cutting our time to process immigration, customs, baggage recheck, and hoofing it to the gate to less than 1 hour and 50 minutes. Oh yeah, and they threw in not one, but TWO, last minute gate changes just for fun.
I won’t lie. It was tight and we wouldn’t have made it if the incoming plane hadn’t been running a few minutes late. And I think it’s pretty much a miracle that I didn’t die of a heart attack and/or J and I didn’t kill each other while trying to make it to the plane.
Our immigration officer was nice (but slow) and congratulated us (and Merry) after he completed our paperwork. I think he was just happy that we had everything since the people in front of us were disorganized and clearly got on his (and my) nerves. Customs waved us through after hearing our sad connection story and the baggage recheck guy helped us out as well. But of course we ended up with a TSA jerk who was too busy to check our stroller in a timely fashion as we went back through security so of course we ended up with his supervisor coming over to smooth things out and take care of it (OMG – deja vu).
I do have a few pictures from the day but none of Merry as she came through immigration to become our newest American citizen. Too crazy, stressed, and hectic (and I forgot for Ava, too so I figured I shouldn’t do it for one and not the other). I did explain to Merry that today was kind of a big deal even if she didn’t quite grasp the significance. She will later (I hope).
Anyhow, all that to say we are sort of home. Well, we’re in the US at an airport hotel anyway. We head to my mom’s tomorrow to pick up our dogs (oh, I have missed them) and then back to our house on Friday. I cannot wait to be home but I am so happy to have made it this far today.
I love the USA. I just do.
The (arguably) most important part of the whole trip, well – after Gotcha Day anway.
We had our consulate appointment!!
We had to be on the bus at some ungodly hour to be there first thing so breakfast was early, early, early. I don’t do early and J was annoying because he was hungry so we started out the day snarling at each other over the breakfast buffet. In his defense, he felt icky and looked worse – so much so that our guide (who was a bit overly concerned with our safety and welfare) kept asking him if he needed medicine, water, rest, etc. It really got old – I mean she asked him every 2 minutes – so I decided to further annoy him by also asking him the same things she did every 3 minutes.
The consulate experience was the same but different. For one thing, it was packed. There were lines of Chinese people waiting outside and inside. We, as US passport holders, also had to wait in line – however it was much shorter and moved much faster. That said, waiting in line with Chinese people is pretty much a free-for-all that really brings out the worst in me. There is no awareness of personal space or concern for smaller children or babies. J threw a few elbows with the best of them and we finally made it in after going through the TSA style security check and surrendering our cameras.
The oath used to be taken in a large room with lots of other families and it was really here that I could see the decrease in the number of people adopting. The adoption room is much smaller now with only about 20 seats. When we were there with Ava we took the oath in a huge room with probably 50 other families. This time there were seven. Five of those were from our group. I would say that only one of those kids were from the non-special needs program (and that’s just a guess on my part since they were the only non-Hague family).
I teared up a bit while taking the oath. I know what this will mean to Merry in the future – it really is a bit like a golden ticket – so the significance is not lost on me. She didn’t care. She was more interested in pulling off her headband (how DO people get their kids to wear those things?) and undoing the velcro on her shoes. Ava was manic so I had to do the underarm get-your-attention pinch and the snarling under my breath detail of all the horrible things I would do to her once we got back to the room if she didn’t chill. She kind of chilled out a bit at that point so I didn’t have to torture her (much) after all.
We were the last people called up to complete our paperwork, knocked that out quickly, and then headed back downstairs to wait in the gazillion percent humidity (and the non air-conditioned lobby) for the bus to show up. J was alternately grouchy or looking like he was about to pass out so he went outside for some (questionable) air since it was actually cooler outside while I chatted with some of our travel group.
One of the other moms said the nicest thing to me in there while we were waiting. She said that of all the families that our family was the only one that just seemed to gel immediately. From her perspective and viewpoint it seemed that we were the ones who had it all together, had the easiest transition, and just ‘fit’ right away. While I don’t know how true that it is in reality it made me feel good that it seemed that way to her. It has been an easy-ish transition (knock on wood) but Merry gets all the credit for that. She is one tough little girl to come through all this and still maintain her sunny personality.
J kept the girls again while I headed out to the Pearl market with some of our group. I knew what I wanted so our guide immediately bypassed the lower level shops and we went straight to the 5th floor. Merry now has a set of pearls which will be a gift at some significant event in her life, I have a new pearl bracelet – as do both Merry and Ava – and I also picked up a small piece of jade that is actually from her province. Her city is known for its jade so I really wanted to do this. I will display it now but Merry will get it when she has her own house and wants it. The other families left the Pearl Market early and my facilitator nearly had a heart attack when I decided to stay behind a little longer. Mind you, there was another CCAI guide there so it wasn’t like I would be alone AND last time I checked I’ve pretty much successfully navigated my way through a number of cities in the world so I’m pretty sure I could make it to the taxi station just down the road on my own. She was having none of that so she sent the rest of the group on their way and stayed with me. I kind of felt like I had a handler. We did have a really nice conversation on the way back to the hotel where she talked about her life in China and what is happening to the China adoption program.
Let me just add that China isn’t nearly as cheap as it used to be. Everything is more expensive and the exchange rate is significantly less than when we were in China before. Bottom line – pearls and jade aren’t the great deal they used to be. Still good – but not great.
Neither is Shamian Island. A whole group of us decided to blow off the Pearl River cruise and head over to Shamian for the afternoon/evening. I needed some larger size Chinese dresses to put up for Ava and I couldn’t resist the siren call of the squeaky shoes. Honestly though, I didn’t buy a lot (not nearly as much as I did with Ava) and I left ALL of the negotiating to J (he was finally feeling back to normal after a nap in the room and actually volunteered to come shopping with us – oh, wait. Maybe this means he was delirious.) and one of the other dads in our group. He’s an attorney by trade so he was determined to get the best deal he could and he was good at it. But – I thought the shopkeepers would be more open to wheeling and dealing due to the loss of business now that the White Swan is closed but I would say not so much. We talked to several of the shopkeepers and they are really feeling the loss in business. It was kind of sad really – we saw maybe one or two other adoptive families while we were there. Otherwise, it was kind of deserted so when they spotted us (15 total, I think) they really swarmed us trying to get us to come in their shops.
We finished up the evening with dinner at Lucy’s. It was fine – they had A/C and cold Cokes, my kids outfits matched the tablecloths so I now know where the fabric for their shirts came from, and a great time was had by all. I have definitely found at least one new friend (and her mom) from our travel group that I’m sure we’ll keep in touch with.
Oh wait, the evening didn’t quite end there.
Remember I said the island was deserted. Well, the lack of people coming to the island means a lack of taxicabs dropping people off and picking up new ones. We didn’t even see one for ages so we decided to walk over to the Victory hotel to see if there would be more available over there. Ummm, not so much.
The first taxi who pulled over for us got cabjacked by some lady who saw me walking toward the cab, in the rain, while carrying a sleeping baby and dragging a tired preschooler. She just jumped right in and took off. Personally, I’m wishing super hot eternal hellfire on her for doing that. We finally caught another one about 10 minutes later so we managed to shove eight people into that one while another seven went into the next one that came along about 30 minutes later.
Hey, guess what? Another good day in Guangzhou!
With bated breath we headed to the visa medical appointment. Merry was loaded up with ibuprofen and we headed out thinking good thoughts of a normal temperature and a patient child(ren).
We made it to the new building with no issues. The medical exam used to be done on Shamian Island but it’s moved to a a newer, more spacious (and much cleaner) building in Guangzhou (no idea where it’s located – we took a bus so I didn’t pay attention). It wasn’t any less crowded but they do have a separate waiting and exam area for adoption visas so at least we were out of the main drag while we waited. Ordinary Chinese citizens in need of vaccinations, exams, etc. for immigration or visa purposes must also use this clinic so overall it was quite crowded. They also do the visa photo there now as well. This used to be done separately so we found it quite convenient to have everything in one place.
The new building:
Yep – we’re in the right place:
The visa photo was done first. Painless (maybe because I didn’t do it). J handled that part while I wrangled Ava.
Then we headed back to the medical exam area.
We got there early so it was deserted.
(Note the Mickey Mouse on the floor. I swear there is something Disney every time we turn around.)
(Note also how empty it is. This did not last.)
See. Starting to fill up. (And I have no idea where Merry is in this picture. Presumably J had her.) This wasn’t even close to how busy it was just a few minutes later. It was packed in there.
We waited a while – rather impatiently I might add, while the doctors and nurses socialized so I snapped some pictures. The one below isn’t the greatest (out of focus and J is missing the top of his head) but I loved the smile on Merry’s face.
Merry did great, of course. She had a fine time playing with the doctors as they tried to examine her.
And there wasn’t even one tear when they looked in her ears or mouth. As much as she hates anything on her face I totally expected drama so it was a nice surprise that it went smoothly.
Aaaannnndddd her temp was normal. You have no idea how tense I was until they said that she was good. I will attribute some of that to the Motrin we’d given her beforehand, some to the antibiotic we started a couple of days prior, and some to all the good thoughts and prayers from everyone.
They also weighed and measured her.
New stats (approximately since I’m working from memory) and a few other tidbits:
29 inches tall
17.5 pounds
I would like to point out that she has gained 2(!) pounds since we met her. This little girl was ready to eat food and eat she has. Cleft or not, she eats pretty much anything and everything and gets MAD if you are eating in front of her and don’t share it.
She also has 4 teeth (she’s sprouted 2 since we’ve gotten her and I expect another within the next few days) and is starting to walk a little bit holding on to only one hand instead of 2. She is standing on her own easily and is getting braver every day. She loves being held and carried though and we are happy to oblige.
Once our medical was done in typical Chinese fashion – with no real order or lines – we snapped a sister picture (or 12) while waiting for the other families in our group to finish.
Again – not the greatest shot since it was taken quickly (and is clearly out of focus – no idea why) but it was the only one where they were both smiling and it didn’t look like Ava was contemplating tossing her down the stairs.
After we got back to the hotel and let the girls take a quick nap we took a taxi over to Shamian Island with a few of our travel mates. What a trip down memory lane that was. Good because it reminded me of being there with Ava but bad for a few reasons – the White Swan is closed and looks deserted, very few adoptive families around anymore, more than a few of the shops have closed down due to the lack of business, tons of staring and pointing at Merry, and because I quickly remembered how much I hated bargaining with Chinese shop owners. They’re just sooooo much better at it than I am and I really hate arguing with someone for a price difference of 10 yuan.
It was Saturday and the island was packed There were bridal photo shoots and fashion models EVERYwhere. And it was hot. Really hot so we we hit a few stores for the only pair of squeaky shoes (at Sherry’s place) that I could find in Merry’s size (she has really tiny feet), a pair of flip-flops for Ava that have already started falling apart, and a quick dinner at Lucy’s before we were just done.
It was a good day.
Merry is sick.
She has been running a hard to reduce fever (between 100 and 103 degrees) for more than 24 hours now. She is eating normally and drinking enough – even though I resorted to syringe feeding (drinking?) her 6 ounces of formula and 4 ounces of pedialyte this evening. I understand why she wasn’t gaining weight before now – it is so much work and she just gets tuckered out trying to drink a whole bottle. (We do have a sippy cup she’s been working on but not a whole lot of luck with that so far.) She’s sleeping a little more than usual but is not lethargic and is still playful and (mostly) happy. She loves the bath so when she starts feeling too warm we plunk her in there to cool her down and she’s happy as a clam.
I have been corresponding with our IA pediatrician and he has given the go ahead to start her on the Bactrim we brought for Ava. Not necessarily the first antibiotic of choice but it’s what we’ve got to work with so there you go. She’s had 2 doses so far. We also now know that Tylenol doesn’t do a thing for her. As a parent, I know the fever isn’t too high and isn’t hurting her – but I am worrying anyway. I can’t read this kid completely yet and don’t know what to do. (And I still can’t believe we didn’t pack a thermometer.) We are fortunate enough to have a doctor in our travel group and she concurs that Merry likely has an ear infection and that proceeding with the Bactrim is a good idea.
Because Merry is sick I pretty much only left the hotel room for a quick breakfast and to take a short walk with my little big girl – who really needed some Mama time. Except that didn’t really work out. We went to the little tiny grassy park area behind our hotel, sat down to have a Mama/Ava talk at a pretty little table, and were immediately accosted by some woman and her kid. She gave Ava candy (which we took but then immediately threw away) and sat herself (and her kid) right down at our table and started talking (in Chinese) at us. I told her we were “mei guo ren” and english only and she promptly pulls out a camera and wants pictures of us with her kid. We got up, said “zai jian” and walked away – no pictures. Ava was so upset that our time was interrupted and I’m just over it.
We leave tomorrow for Guangzhou despite not having a passport yet for Merry. The provincial changes for passport application have things all messed up and our facilitator has basically had to ignore us in order to do all the legwork to try and get passports pulled together for 5 families from 4 different cities. Each one has their own procedure and only 1 family so far has their new child’s passport, I don’t need to tell most of you that it is critical that we get her passport in the next day or two. If not, we’re in a world of expensive hurt. If you’re the praying type, now would be a good time. We need her fever to break by Saturday morning for our visa medical appointment and we desperately need that passport in our hands before our consulate appointment on Monday. Yisha, our facilitator, is amazing and is working her rear end off trying to make this happen but so much is out of her control, too.
Yeah, my anxiety level is high again. Can you tell? I’m not the only one either. The whole group is ready to get this show on the road. 9 days in Zhengzhou is more than plenty.