Merry Christmas!

Christmas Day was great. We started with a big breakfast for the seven of us (introducing my brother's wife to the concept of crepes for the first time) and continued with an extended and very relaxed session of listening to music, opening presents, and just plain hanging out.

Mary had a blast, and that was good since -- let's face it -- you want children to have fun at Christmas. We had all cut back this year on how many gifts we were buying, and there was a heavy emphasis on charity and good works. Mom and I both made donations to Love Without Boundaries. She made another to Nature Conservancy. Jared and I had made donations to Heifer International in his mother's name. (He also took blankets to a homeless shelter yesterday.) Mary and Mom and Denis both received Heifer donations as gifts as well. My brother went the One Laptop Per Child route and a laptop will be reaching a needy child in Africa and another one stateside -- isn't that cool!? And finally, Mom also bought a month's worth of wind-generated electricity for Jared and I and for Dave and Angie. I think this program works to support wind-generated power and stuff but I need more details.

I have to say that eating and relaxing with the entire back of the house covered with windows that give onto the marsh was pretty awesome -- Jared would say "Pass the syrup" as a Great Blue Heron would fly past behind him -- Uncle Dave and I would wander outside to get fresh air and see Snowy Egrets feeding -- the tide rolled in, transforming the grasses to a flat shining stretch of water, and rolled out, leaving them yellow-tipped and bare in yesterday's sunshine.

Anyway, some pictures.

Indian River oranges ready for squeezing.


First sight of the Christmas tree.

Christmas Sandwich (with Lucy as an unwilling side dish)


Mary enjoyed Christmas.

Bungee cords are fun!

Everyone needs a moose to love.

A special moment with Aunt Angie.

Possibly one of the worst family Christmas pictures ever (but at least everyone's having fun except Lucy).

Big Day Yesterday

Yesterday was busy! Mary's school had their holiday get-together -- someone with a sense of humor decided she was going to be a cello, so the photos below show her struggling under that burden. (I mean, if we must see a small Asian girl with a string instrument -- not exactly unusual -- isn't a violin usually the first pick?)






Then, that afternoon, our friends showed up with their daughters E. and P. If you'll recall, Mary had her first sleepover EVER with E. -- and sleepover number two happened last night, in her new BIG-GIRL ROOOOOOOOM! (She remains that excited about it.) Below, a few pics of E. and MKPD giggling and playing around. E. is a nice and very laid-back 4-year-old -- let's model some behavior on that! -- and it was wonderful having her and her parents and sister here, even if only for one night. Please come back guys!




And now, we're getting ready for Christmas fun -- presents, clothes, etc. I'll post in a day or so with the latest!

A Christmas Miracle

Not that we folded some laundry, but that Peanut and Emily would actually deign to share the red sofa.

Growing

As you almost certainly know, if you've ever read any other entries here, Mary is pretty tiny. She's short, certainly, but she is a little wisp of a thing as well. That's not to say she doesn't have a wiry strength and an astounding amount of toughness (smashing both lips open on Monday meant only a minute or so of tears and twenty minutes of bloodstained teeth; 2nd flu shot today and not a tear again, despite an anguished cry of "Daddy!" when the needle went in). But at about 24 pounds and 34 inches tall, she's teensy.

We asked her doctor recently whether we needed to worry. On the one hand, some people just are teensy -- and folks in Asian countries seem more inclined that way than many Americans. On the other hand, it's so common for these little heart babies to start really growing after their hearts are repaired that we wondered whether we should be worrying more; whether we shouldn't have dropped the hourly-spoonful-of-peanut-butter nutrition techniques we'd had early on to make sure she got tons of nutrients and fat.

Her doctor asked us to bring her in for height/weight checks over a certain time period so he could establish a more consistent baseline and discuss. Today's appointment was the one where he would discuss. It turns out that over 3 months, she's gained a pound or so and grown a couple of centimeters. Though she remains tiny -- well below the 5th percentile for weight, and only barely grazing it for height -- the curve of her growth is paralleling the growth curve for other kids her age. She's keeping pace. No failure to thrive.

He noted that that he was not worried, but was interested, and recommended that we meet with him every 3 months to recheck her. I like that he's paying attention. Because honestly, we are pushier about the food thing than we otherwise would be, and I feel like maybe he recognizes that without that, she wouldn't necessarily be keeping pace as well.

But she's blooming really (blooming into incredible feistiness and defiance lately, wheee) so it's nice to not have to add a new worry. And no more shots until her birthday!

Some Tidbits on Babies, Bumps and New Rooms

Baby is a kicky little miss. Kick, kick! Sometimes, it's a little alarming -- and often quite uncomfortable. Don't think that problem's going to improve before delivery.

All right, after several requests, here's a photo of pregnant me. It was first thing in the morning so if I look a little bedraggled, it's because I'm not all the way awake yet in that picture.

Last of all, Mary's been doing GREAT in her new room. She's much more interested in hanging out in there than she was in her old room, which is nice -- perhaps because it's so much brighter? Or because her toys are readily available? I don't know. Here are a few photos of the room with some pictures hung, etc., as well as the stuff in the closet. Once it has curtains and a rug and her newly upholstered chair, I think it'll be much cozier.

It's a Girl!

A girl's room, that is.

Months ago, as we tried to figure out where we would have a baby's room in this house, we tentatively proposed to MKPD that she get Jared's music room, which was currently more than shared by Peanut (our kind of insane and ancient tortoiseshell cat. Yeah, you don't see her in photos much. That's because a blurred photo of a murderously swinging paw fails to excite visual interest after the first few times).

She was interested, so we started discussing the fact that one day her big-girl room would be ready. We heaped up the inducements -- it would have a big-girl bed! and, gasp, a big-girl pillow! Since she was still in her crib (though we'd rigged this sort of hilarious stuff up in order to give it a bedrail so she could climb down safely) this was kind of exciting. She started referring to some beds as "big-girl beds" and started referring to the music room as "my big-girl room" and her current room as "my old room."

It took ages to do -- our goal was to finish by last weekend, but we only missed it by a week. We had to move Jared's stuff out and build him a music closet of sorts in the guest room. We had to move Peanut out and reintroduce her to having full run of the house. You know how they talk about reintroducing animals to the wild? It was sort of like reintroducing the wild to our other animals. (That's not fair, actually; Peanut's been pretty chill about all this, by her standards, and hasn't exploded into the urinating, vomiting, hissing machine we'd feared.) Then we had to clean out 4 years or more of dust and scattered cat litter and odds and ends. Then we had to paint pretty much every square inch of the room that wasn't floor or window glass. Jared's dad and especially his mom put a lot of hours toward that to help us, very kindly.

The last couple of weeks have been a sort of nightmarish exercise of coming home from work and frantically painting in the evenings to try to get it ready. (Now you know why I haven't been posting much.) You see, the rush was that we wanted Mary solidly ensconced and comfy in her new room before the holidays, so that when the baby arrived and got settled into Mary's old room, it wasn't as jarring for MKPD. 3 months seemed like the right amount of time.

This week, we finally finished the painting. And yesterday, we moved her into her new room.

Below, the photos tell some of the story (although there aren't any shots of Jared and I, paint-covered at 10 p.m. on a weeknight, both hunkered into the same closet and trying to touch up trimwork and swearing).


The "before" photo: This actually shows the room with much of Jared's stuff moved out, but accurately conveys the dinginess of the whole scene.

Painted and clean: Woohoo! We thought this might never happen! Even after an initial cleaning pre-paint, it took two full sweepings, two runs with the vacuum, and a mopping, yesterday, to bring it to this point. Turns out making music was dusty work.

Mary "helps" Daddy take her new big-girl mattress out of its plastic wrapping. She was pretty excited.

Mary is ready to go to the dump, but carried in her new big-girl pillow to be added to the bed. Note the red mittens she insisted on wearing.

I put the case on the pillow while she waits eagerly.

Mary puts the pillow in place on the bed.

Operation Big-Girl Bed complete! Yay!

The room was still pretty spartan at this point, but the crucial elements were there.

First nap in the new bed (and she conked for 2 hours after some excited fidgeting).

Spacecase

I seem to be going crazy. I seem to be really suffering from the pregnancy mush-brain thing.

I can't say that the work stuff is suffering necessarily -- or perhaps it is and I'm so out of it I haven't noticed, but I don't think so -- but I have started doing weird things. Here's an example:

Day A: Take cap off milk. Can't find it anywhere. Give up and shove milk back in fridge with a little twist of Saran wrap in the top. Jared finds cap in sink, where I have inexplicably thrown it, some time later.
Day B: Somehow pour orange juice all over the floor. Laugh wildly.
Day C: Discover mid-way through the day that I have my underwear on inside out. I did not get dressed in the dark. There is no excuse.
Day D: Call our COO. Refer to him as Chris (not his name) when he answers the phone. Laugh wildly (again) and then explain that I know that isn't really his name, before getting on with my question.
Day E: Get dressed and put on shoes and walk downstairs. Wander around for a bit. Kick shoes off and sit at table for breakfast. Halfway through breakfast, notice, with wonder, that I have been walking around in two totally unrelated shoes -- different height heels, one is a slide and one has a closed back, one has a square toe and one a round toe.

The best (or worst?) part of this is that I'm in this funny frame of mind where I feel much less uptight than usual about things, and so I'm much more likely to laugh uproariously at these things. That's fine sometimes, but probably annoying for others, who wish I would take it seriously when I accidentally leave the car door sitting open and walk inside the building. Et cetera.

Santa

MKPD has seen and even talked to a Santa, but never done the whole Santa's lap thing -- partly because neither Jared nor I were too focused on making that a family tradition, it turned out, and also because I think she was sick last year when I had a chance to take her to my company's annual Santa Picture pose-a-thon.

But this year, we trekked off to give Mary a chance in the Jolly Red Lap of Holiday Cheer.

Mary was quite intrigued to see him, but when it was suggested that she (gasp) sit on his lap her eyes grew very large and she shook her head and said, "No." Several times.

It was quite clear, in the end, that there was only one thing to do. Mommy sat on Santa's lap, and Mary sat on Mommy's lap.


I'm quite hurt that Santa didn't ask me what I wanted for Christmas.

26 Weeks

I greet Sundays with joy these days, because Sunday/Monday is when we recognize the completion of one week of pregnancy and the crossover to a new week of pregnancy.

Now, we're at 26 weeks (as you can see from the handy countdown timer in the right nav). Being at 26 weeks actually means you've completed your 26th week and are in your 27th (but not done with it). I treasure these distinctions because I am entering (far too early) into the "enough already, let's get on with it!" phase.

26 weeks is a nice place to be. Nausea is far, far behind me. I am not too unwieldy to walk and climb stairs and hoist a toddler onto my lap (though I do breathe harder than usual when climbing stairs). I look pregnant, but not so much so that strangers rush up and grab my belly or gasp and say "When are you due!?!" I have taken and failed my glucose screening, but taken and passed the glucose tolerance ordeal, so hurray, no gestational diabetes for me -- and not much more by way of tests, either. Not that we did most of them anyway -- I think we skipped almost every common screening there was, feeling that we were unlikely to do anything about it if all was not well.

But one of the nicest things about 26 weeks is that (depending on how you count it) I am entering the third trimester at last. (Some books count the first two as 12 weeks each and the third one as a really long 16-week haul, but my books don't, and neither does AmericanPregnancy.org, so I've erred on the conservative side.) And I am counting. (Those of you who remember my obsessive adoption timelines from 18 months ago will find this easy to believe.)

Anyway, it gives me a distinct sense of satisfaction, each Monday, to start the week knowing that I'm one week closer to the goal. Even if I then remember that one week closer still means 20, or 18, or (this week) 14 weeks to go.

Cousins

When I was little, my brother and I LOVED going to visit the various groups of our cousins. We loved them all, but we especially had fun when our visit meant a whole weekend of romping around playing wildly with cousins close in age to us.

This weekend, MKPD, Maymee and I drove further north to see family who have three kids in the 5-9 range. Mary had such a blast -- I loved watching her play and giggle and enjoy herself with her cousins. I love these three kids, too -- they're all so neat.

I am dead beat after driving back south and an unsuccessful attempt to offload Maymee at Reagan/National Airport (unsuccessful because her flight was canceled) and the resulting trip home in the messy messy weather, so I'm going to sign off and go to bed. But here are two of my favorite photos from the weekend. Enjoy!

Gifts and Showers for Baby # 2?

While being enthusiastically supportive of gifts and showers for everyone else's second babies, I find myself curiously uncomfortable with doing this for ours. It may be that I'm still reeling from the astounding, unbelievable generosity we encountered from so many people when MKPD came home, and I feel uncomfortable seeming to ask for or expect anything else. And it may also be that we need so little, comparatively. Since this baby is a girl, we have a fair amount of clothes for 9 months on, a crib and mattress, plus offers of things like the family bassinet, a breast pump, a high chair, a changing table, a Boppy, and so on. The astounding generosity just keeps on coming.

I finally went off and registered, a little guiltily, at Babies 'R' Us, for a handful of essentials that we don't have because we didn't need them for Mary -- breastfeeding supplies, a baby monitor, an infant car seat. I'm not sure whether it's going to be good for much more than helping me keep track of stuff, since I don't think we're going to have a real shower. But what I wonder is, why do I feel so silly about this, when I would and will gladly celebrate other families' second, third and fourth children with joy and gifts?

By the way -- I was looking this morning, and I can see baby kicks through my shirt, without even feeling my belly. So wild!

Whale of a Tail

I've mentioned Mary's fascination with bridges. Well, this week she was very lucky to be taken for a walk over THE Bridge. The one she loves best. The one she calls "The Big Bridge."

If you're familiar with our town, it's one of the ones that goes over the bypass -- not particularly big, but tall and rather slender, with a pedestrian walkway and skinny railings to peer through. Even better, on the far side is the Whale Tail -- an enormous wooden sculpture of a whale tail rising from the ground, as though the whale itself had just surged beneath the grass.

I think we got more enjoyment out of that 30-minute walk than a trip to Disneyworld would have elicited.

Two of My Favorite People

Happy Thanksgiving!

Gratitude

I've mentioned Love Without Boundaries here before. I have helped sponsor about seven children with them this year -- a few I've mentioned on this blog, but most I have not. LWB has a number of different kids to sponsor, often with conditions that aren't life-threatening, but I gravitate toward the ones with severe heart conditions. You can imagine how, after adopting MKPD and getting her heart repaired, I feel a connection to children with heart problems.

I'm also gratefully aware that Mary's heart defect was (comparatively) minor. It's not that it didn't take a toll on her development and growth, one which we're still wrestling with on some levels, and it certainly would have prevented her from growing up and leading a normal life if it wasn't repaired -- but she wasn't struggling hard just to make it to her 2nd birthday.

So I often will help sponsor a little one with a pretty serious assemblage of heart problems, with a sense of our utter gratitude for Mary and our hope for all these other children who need homes at the back of the sponsorship.

The thing that makes it difficult is that sometimes these children don't make it -- even after surgery. Two of the seven I've sponsored have not. It jerks me out of my comfortable daily round and makes me face the truth in a less protected, cushy way than usual -- these are real children, not just cute photos, and they have life-threatening problems and no family, and my $50 is not a magic cure.

It doesn't make me want to stop sponsoring -- on the contrary, I feel even more called to do what I can if it can help. I almost think of it as a miracle -- six or seven children who otherwise would have died this year didn't.

But it does hurt, wondering about whether it could have been different if those children had been helped sooner. And it makes me hug my sleepy, sweet-faced daughter a little tighter when she gets out of bed in the morning, knowing that without having ended up in an orphanage program that participates in international adoption (most don't), she too might be waiting endlessly, far down on a list, to qualify for sponsorship from strangers halfway around the world. Talk about giving thanks.

Weekend with Baby R.

We drove south to spend the weekend with friend's M & D and their newborn, Baby R. Mary was quite interested in meeting this little guy and asked about him periodically on the way down -- when she wasn't spending the four-hour car ride begging to go over every single overpass we drove under on the highway. (Arrgh. Love the fascination with bridges in theory -- am finding it rather wearing in practice.)

Mary was, generally speaking pretty good with Baby R., who's quite remarkably cute, and was from the beginning, bucking the trend of most babies who look cute yet crumpled and red and a bit deflated or something, simultaneously. Although I have to say my friends tend to produce some darn cute babies. Hmmm. Maybe it's just strangers' babies that look this way to me? Anyway, check his sweet sleeping self out.
She mostly remembered to be gentle with him, and mostly didn't mess with his stuff too much. It was fun to see Baby R.'s parents as well, and to get all kinds of baby-having scoop from his mom, and so on.

They're living in a new house with a big backyard and a swingset, and Mary really liked it. So I'm adding some photos of our big girl -- boy, she looks grown up to me sometimes -- hanging in the yard. A couple aren't as crisp as I'd like but they capture her essence so well that I left 'em in.






I have to apologize to anyone who wondered if I'd fallen off the planet or something. I'm finding frequent posting hard these days -- we've been coping with doctor's appointments and fatigue and getting dark earlier and afternoon/evening commitments and getting Mary's new big girl room ready and the result is that the blog gets short shrift. I also take fewer photos now that it gets dark sooner. I promise that if something really dramatic happens that isn't a real tragedy, Jared or I will post here and let folks know. And thanks for the concern expressed in emails and comments!

Last but not least, Mary left school early today so I could go take her for a flu shot and a height/weight check (the doctor has asked that we do that for a few months to establish a consistent baseline so we can figure out if she is growing appropriately). She was SO BRAVE. She did not shed a single tear. Her face scrunched up and she said piteously, "Mommy!" after the shot, but I hugged her and she hung in like a trooper. I salute her.

Clean Living

Being sick (yes! that's where I've been! It's been a bumpy 7 days, but we're crawling out of it!) has thrown my whole-grain-noodle-eatin', organic-choosin', small-portion-servin' pregnancy habits for a loop.

Now, normally, I''ll beat 9 out of 10 kids in a mac-and-cheese and hot dog eating contest, if I'm not disqualified for knocking them off the stools with my flying feeding-time elbow action.

But my OB has a bee in his bonnet about diet -- oh, I mean, a very sensible and wholesome attitude toward pregnancy, weight gain, and food choices.

So I got to see him expatiate on these opinions in some details about 6 weeks ago and it put the fear of God into me and I started eating thimblefuls of Annie's Organic Boring Faintly Cheesy Whole-Wheat Squiggles and large trenchers of steamed broccoli and organic free-range chickens hatched lovingly from nest eggs and raised in a Montessori coop. And man, it was boring and expensive, but suddenly I felt better after eating -- with the departure of straight-up carbs, I saw an end to heartburn, indigestion, and uneven weight gain. (Mary and Jared started making secret midnight runs to McDonald's, but ... just kidding.) Honestly, I've never been a terribly unhealthy eater -- but I liked carbs and plenty of 'em. And I stopped eating like that, and it was -- mostly -- good.

And then I got sick, and pretty much stopped eating. And then my mom came to visit, and kindly worked herself to the bone helping us get rid of stuff and get cleaned up and so forth, and we had one or two carb- and fat-laden breakfasts as I was remembering what it felt like to eat more than one meal a day, and ... well, so now I need to find the path of wholesome grains and reasonable portions once more.

Today's lunch was a decent reflection of both the last couple of days of extravagance and the upcoming days of austerity: a small cup of tomato soup, a piece of lowfat string cheese, a hard-boiled egg, and a wild mushroom crepe filled with cremini, chanterelle, and portobello mushrooms, in a rich cream sauce with lashings of truffle oil.

It's going to be a tough journey.

6-month Post-op Check-up

We've had a lot of doctor's appointments lately -- one on Thursday, two on Friday, one on Monday. We may have another today or tomorrow, if I keep having chills and fever and abdominal shakes, which started up yesterday and knocked me for a real loop -- ugh. Don't you hate huddling under 5 layers of covers shivering?

So I admit, I felt too terrible to post anything about the results of Mary's heart exam yesterday. But this morning, I felt like I really, really had to let you all know -- it looked great. The patch is in place and working away. Her heart valves and everything are doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing. Even more amazing, the right side of her heart, which was quite enlarged (and had made a resulting bulge in the growth of her ribcage above it) has returned to a normal and appropriate size. Dr. L. was very happy about that indeed.

One small fly in the ointment -- and to hear them describe it, it's the tiniest of flies. They saw what may be the tiniest traces of a leak around the patch. They couldn't be sure that it was indeed a leak, because of a large vein that runs across there and can make echo results unclear, but they said even if it was, it wasn't a problem, and she doesn't need anything more than an appointment one year from now -- which is what they'd recommend if everything was 100% perfect.

Kick

I was a very kicky baby.

And I've been feeling movement from this baby for well over a month, more like two. Don't ask me why, since that's pretty early, I guess, but the movements were there and they've just gotten stronger.

The last couple of days have been particularly fun, as the kicks and nudges were strong and purposeful, and Jared could feel them easily. I found that it was pleasant and reassuring to think of this energetic little creature in there. I wondered at what point it would become uncomfortable.

And the answer is: Today.

Today I feel too FULL and each kick is uncomfortable. In addition, I'm worried this child has stubbed her toe, since she kicked me in the belly right at the point where my body was pressed against the edge of my desk, and she definitely met resistance. Hope she's OK.

Mostly, I think I'm just feeling full today, and then Team Baby will beat out Team Organs for another few cubic inches, and all will be well again. But I'm getting a real sense of how this may feel further down the road.

It's a Girl!

And man does she have a sweet little face. Goodness.

Paging Doctor Mary

Mary was full of eager anticipation at the thought of wearing her new scrubs for Halloween. They did not disappoint. She was darn cute, I have to admit.

And she demolished a large Reese's peanut butter cup before bed. Another fine tradition of the night upheld.

Vignettes

1. Mary, running around in circles screaming happily, with occasional reassuring announcements of "I'm not freaking out, Mommy!"

2. Last night on our walk, we were heading back in the near-darkness, under powerful streetlamps that sent our shadows on ahead of us, long and dark and very crisp against the pavement. "Shadows!" said Mary delightedly. She was riding on her dad's shoulders. "That's right," he said. "Look, you can see my shadow, with you on my shoulders!" "Yeah!" she agreed. And then pointed at our other shadows (we had the dogs with us, and as a result I had a full and odorous plastic bag swinging from one hand). "And Henry, and Lucy, and Mommy, and dog poop!" Sure enough, the dog poop bag had its own distinct little shadow -- though we had said nothing to her about its contents.

3. Mary's best friend K. had her birthday party yesterday -- I think their class for the morning hours was invited. Mary had a blast, and was hopping and skipping behind her friend gleefully. I liked this photo because she's actually got both feet well off the ground in her jump.


4. We drove up to the Blue Ridge Parkway today to enjoy the sun and crisp temperature and autumn leaves. It wasn't the smoothest walk in the mountains ever, but we did snap a few pictures.



Mary was enjoying hugging the dogs.


But Lucy was not a fan of that.


Also, here's a rare photo of Henry where you can actually see his brown eyebrows and cheek patches, and pretty brown eyes.


And a photo of Lucy looking sleek and alert, also with her almost-hazel eyes lit up by the sun.


5. Mary's entered in on the world of one-upsmanship -- or at least group participation -- in a big way. She, of course, knows exactly what it's like to have a baby growing in her tummy. Because, she tells us, she has five babies growing in her tummy. Our welfare check next year is going to be nice and big.

6. I mentioned she's pretty fixated on the difference between left and right, and she tends to request that her left arm be used for things, instead of her right -- although she's pretty clearly a righty. Well, tonight she refused to even tie the shoe on her right foot. "You do dat," she told her dad. "I no like dat foot."

7. She's quite full of stubborn, testing behaviors these days -- the kinds of things that make parents wonder if she can't understand simple instructions, or if she's filled her ears with peas and can't hear anymore. Tonight, she wouldn't cooperate at dinner, so we left her alone at the dinner table to finish her last two bites on her own. Well, she sat there defiantly eating nothing and doing nothing, until I pulled out the big guns. I started folding laundry next to her. To add insult to injury, there was a big pile of her daddy's boxers that I was ostentatiously piling up to fold in a minute -- one of her favorite things to fold, because she's good at it. "Mommy, MY boxers!" she finally cried with real anxiety. "I'll just pile them here and if you finish your dinner before I get to them, you can fold them," I said airily. Her food was finished in about 60 seconds flat. It's all about knowing what's actually a carrot. But is she the only child who follows directions only when you tell her she won't be allowed to fold laundry if she doesn't cooperate?