Jadens Journey

I guess I’m in a writing mood tonight. I realize I haven’t given much of an update on Jaden except for sick, sick, sick lately. So here goes – I apologize in advance if I’m repeating myself since I haven’t re-read any of my older posts tonight.

Signing: Jaden knows more signs than we do now. His teacher at school is fluent in sign language, and is teaching all of the kids in his class some basic signs, and that’s helped him immensely. He now gets frustrated with us because he’ll use a sign he thinks we should know but we can’t figure it out. There’s no “reverse sign language lookup” dictionary out there, that I know of, so it’s like a needle in a haystack. It took us ages to figure out that he was signing train (his sign is a variation of the ASL sign), another long while to figure out he was signing bus (which is also his sign for Thomas the Tank Engine), and now he has this new one that I just haven’t been able to decipher yet. I am amazed at how many signs he knows. If I ever tried to write them all down, I know there would be over 100 (we counted that far already) but I’m guessing the latest number is more like 200. I have to say signing has been a godsend for us since his speech is taking longer than we had expected, and during the terrible twos the last thing you want is to add communication problems to the mix.

Speaking: Jaden has quite a few “word approximations”– but there’s one word that he says loud and clear: “NO!” — yep, he learned that one perfectly. His pronunciation of “no” is always emphatic. It was cute when it started – I’ll leave it at that.

His real speech breakthrough started coming, believe it or not, after we put early intervention on hold. We put them on hold for a number of reasons, but the intent was not to shock Jaden into talking, yet that seems to be what has happened. I know while they were coming he was very stubborn about doing what they wanted him to do, and even now if you try to get him to say something he’ll only attempt it if he’s really in the mood to do it. Otherwise, forget it. No way Jose.

So he’s saying Buzz (Buzz Lightyear), and Woody (also Toy Story), and “nana” (banana). Of course he’s been saying “mama”, “dada”, and now for Grandpa he says “papa” and for Neville’s dad he says “pop-pop”. Sometimes those two sound very close, but usually we can tell the difference. He says “bus”, and “rain” which means train. He says “all done” which is very approximate, but I know when he’s saying it. Let’s see – there’s also “apple”, “eat”, “water”, “Gordon” (which sounds like water), “more” (which also sounds like water), and a few potty training type words I’ll save you from reading. He’s getting colors down: purple (that one is very clear), red, orange, green, blue, and yellow. He even signs the colors, which just baffles me since I don’t know them at all. We need Antina here more often for that. I’m sure there’s more I’m not thinking of but the point is that there’s been a tremendous breakthrough in the past few weeks to a month. The biggest difference I see is that he’s now willing to TRY to say words, whereas before he wouldn’t even make an attempt.

We’re looking into other options for speech therapy. In the meantime we’re very impressed with how much he’s progressed.

Everything else ASL, Buzz Lightyear, sign language, speech, Thomas the Tank Engine, Toy Story

Alas Jaden is sick again for the third time since January 10th. In the beginning of January it was some type of virus with high fever and all the cold symptoms to go along with it. Of course I caught it a few days after he did. At the end of January he had a stomach bug that he kindly shared with both me and Neville. Now he has a virus that seems very similar to the early January one. I think he’s made it to school (daycare) less than two days a week on average (out of the three he’s scheduled to attend) since the year started.

On Monday he is supposed to start his five days per week schedule at school, but who knows whether or not he’ll be well enough to attend yet. I certainly hope so. It has been very difficult to get any work done while he’s home, and since he’s been home so much, well – need I say more?

Of course I have my usual guilt over sending him. But then I tell myself we do send him to a “school” and not just a run-of-the-mill daycare, and he is getting a lot out of it. They teach him a lot – they’ve even started to try to potty train him (good luck with that! hahaha). I know it’s good that he has contact on a regular basis with other kids his age – since right now at home it’s just us, or my parents, or Neville’s parents, and Jaden just doesn’t have the patience yet to talk about the weather, or American Idol, or the latest sports results. A friend of mine once said to me that she thinks sending her daughter to daycare makes her a better mother. So that means now that Jaden will be going to school for 5 days instead of 3, I should be 66.67% better as a mom, right? It’s nice to think that way.

Everything else daycare, school, sick

Neville and I have spent the last week (literally) empathizing with my brother  and sister-in-law (with the new baby) in the land of the sleepless. Where to begin?… we awoke abruptly Sunday evening (technically early Monday morning) to Jaden vomiting up his milk he drank before bed. He was running a 102 fever and it started with him coughing – then he gagged and that was the end of his milk.

On Monday Jaden was irritable, to say the least. His fever had increased, at one point topping out at 105. He was so miserable, I could tell he was in a lot of discomfort and it drives me crazy to see him like that and not be able to do anything about it. We called the doctor’s office when they opened; the nurse who took the call thought he might have a sinus infection and said to bring him in. So I bundled up my sick child, and dragged him to the doctor’s office, only to have them tell me that we need to wait 24 to 48 hours before they can do anything for him. So why did we go in? I just don’t get it. They did however say that if his fever doesn’t break by Tuesday they want him to go for a chest x-ray to rule out pneumonia. Great. So Tuesday morning when his fever was still over 104 I bundled him up once again and dragged him out into the cold to the hospital out-patient center for a chest x-ray.

Let the fun begin! I know I’ve said this before, but Jaden is what some parenting books call a ’spirited’ child, meaning he doesn’t do anything without putting up a tremendous fight (unless it’s something he enjoys, like eating cake and ice cream). The two of us (Jaden and I) went into the hospital on Tuesday, and all I could think is “How on earth are they going to get him to sit still for an x-ray without doping him up on general anesthesia”? I should have taken that thought as a forewarning.

After waiting almost an hour we finally were called to go into the x-ray room. Three women there asked me if Jaden will stand up in front of the bulls eye they have on the wall so they can take his x-ray. Ha Ha Ha. He’s TWO — what do you think he’s going to do? First of all, I couldn’t even pry him off of me – he had his legs in a vice grip around my waist and his hands clawed at my shoulders as if his life depended on it. So they said, “okay, then you’ll have to get in the x-ray with him” – whatever.

Maybe we should have gone to Children’s hospital where they have all kinds of tricks to get kids to participate in things they normally don’t want to do. But here we were, at the out-patient center with not a lot of options, so I said okay, donned the lovely lead apron that is so fashionable in these hangouts, and tried my best to hold Jaden in a stable enough position that they could get the x-ray. By this point Jaden had already decided that he did not like these women, he did not like that I had to pry him loose in order to put the lead apron on, and he was not going to, under any conditions, allow me to hold him still so they could get the x-ray. Somehow they managed it anyway, but by the time they did, we were both traumatized.

…….

Well, I’ve now lost my train of thought since I put this down about an hour ago. As I was writing that last sentence, over the baby monitor I heard the usual coughing, then gagging, then puking fit. Neville was holding Jaden by the time he tossed up his ice cream and milk, so it was all over Neville, all over Jaden, and all over the carpet. This time it was much earlier than every night past, so maybe this means he’s getting better?

What fun parenting can be. I never imagined I’d be watching Neville clean Nestle’s Quik colored spew off of our beige carpets, but here we were, me holding Jaden trying to keep him from getting even more upset than he already was, and Neville trying to clean up the mess and hide the smell so we can get Jaden back to bed asap.

That just about sums up what we’ve been through every night. Here’s hoping one more day will do the trick.

Everything else fever, illness, sick, sleepless, x-ray

My favorite numbers have always been three, six, thirty-three, and sixty-six. If I had to pick one favorite, I would whine a whole lot about being forced to pick only one, and then I’d choose thirty-three. I never thought of eight as a lucky number, just as I have never thought of clubs as a favorite suit when playing cards.  That has all changed.

My brother and his wife had a beautiful baby boy on Christmas Eve. It has always been difficult living two hours away since I’d like to see them more (especially now!) but I was fortunate to see them twice the week my nephew was born. Once the day after Christmas, and once a few days later. On the second visit Antina and I went together, and my brother announced that they were trying to decide on godparents for my nephew. They said the godfather was easy– my sister-in-law’s brother– but for the godmother, they said they love both me and Antina equally so they couldn’t make a decision. So my brother came up with this idea that we’d each draw cards and the high card wins.

Of course we were all giggling about the idea and just to make sure we all understood, we started to wonder aloud: Are aces high or low? Are twos wild? What order are the suits in the case of a draw on the face value? That one was Mom’s question–  and once my brother rattled off the suits, she expertly wrote it all down in her executive assistant-style notebook, just to make sure there were no arguments after the draw. You can never be too cautious when dealing with sisters.

After we got serious again, I drew a card. The eight of clubs. With a deep sigh I resolved to being the “loser”. I thought there was no way I was holding the high card. I showed my card to the room and you could almost hear the heaviness in the room as if everyone was thinking “oh, too bad for her”.   So we were all surprised when antina drew the six of clubs. (Sorry Antina ) And now, not only do I have a new appreciation for the number eight, I’m a godmother too.

Everything else baby, cards, Christmas, godmother

I dropped Jaden off at daycare this morning, then headed to work. I put in a few hours (even though I didn’t need to be there today) and then I had to run a couple of errands, the first of which was to pick up a new winter coat from a woman who offered it on freecycle. The coat is for my sister-in-law’s mom who is coming to visit our very, very cold part of the globe from a very, very warm country. But that’s besides the point.

The trip to get the coat was about 45 minutes from work, but on the way I had to pass the exit for Jaden’s daycare. I couldn’t pick him up yet because I couldn’t drag him to my second appointment that afternoon, and Neville wouldn’t be home from work for another few hours.

If you have ever felt homesick, you will have a good idea of how I felt as I drove past the exit for daycare. It was the oddest feeling in the world to me at that particular moment. I couldn’t understand how I was that sick about leaving Jaden in daycare for what would amount to another 90 minutes, maybe. He likes daycare now. He’s happy when I drop him off, and he’s happy when I pick him up. Of course he wants me to stay with him, but he has a great time all day anyway. I can see the excitement and pleasure in his face when I sneak a peek into the room he is in before I actually open the door and give away that I am there to pick him up. So I shouldn’t be getting sick over leaving him for another hour or so, right?

It just struck me as amazing, and it saddened me in the same way being homesick would sadden me. In a good way. Because the way I see it, I can’t be homesick unless I am missing someone I love, and using roundabout logic that means homesickness is a good thing– even though it feels like crap when you’re in the thick of it.

Everything else daycare, freecycle, homesick

Today was Jaden’s 24 month check-up with the pediatrician. The visit was a disaster, but the good news is that Jaden is growing up just as expected. He weighs 31 lbs and is 36 inches tall, which is pretty near the top of the Korean boys growth chart (around 95th percentile for height and 90th percentile for weight). They say his chronic congestion could be allergies (environmental this time – last time they thought it was food but it wasn’t). So we have to get an air purifier and shampoo the carpets and wash all the sheets etc., etc., etc. in hot water– even his giraffe  (so we might have to go searching for more pretty soon since my guess is this one is going to fall apart once immersed in hot water).

The disaster occurred because the visit scheduled for 10:45 a.m. — shortly before Jaden’s normal 11:00 a.m. lunchtime (and noon nap time)–did not go as scheduled. I don’t know if I realized how close we were to lunch when I made the appointment, or if it was the only appointment I could get with our preferred pediatrician. It probably would have worked out fine if it were our normal visit to the ped – walk in, get called into the examining area before we even take a seat in the waiting room, wait 5 minutes for the doc, spend 15-20 minutes and leave — home within the hour.

No such luck today. We arrived and waited in the waiting room, which by the way has no books or toys for kids other than a couple of those wire thingys with beads on them. After waiting about 30 minutes I asked the receptionist what was taking so long -they said the doc was running 30-45 minutes late. Now, had they told me this when I arrived I would have rescheduled, because at 45 minutes late, the timing is getting dangerously close to nap time, without lunch, and anyone with a 2 year old knows that a tired toddler is challenging, but a tired and hungry toddler is nearly impossible. However, they had not given me that information, and therefore I now had to decide whether to wait another 15 minutes, or cut my losses and go home.

Since it was already 11:15 I thought I’d be better off waiting. I should have known not to trust my instincts today (although how I should have known this, I don’t know). Or maybe I should have actually done the math to realize I’d be getting home very, very late.

There was one bout of waiting after another – waiting to get into the examining room, waiting for the doctor, and then waiting (seemingly forever) until the nurse with the vaccination showed up. By the time the doctor came in we were already nearly an hour past Jaden’s lunch time, and coming in for a crash landing on his nap time. He was one CRANKY baby. He hates doctors to begin with (who doesn’t? No offense, Neville) so he spent the next 20 minutes screaming, thrashing, kicking, squirming and at one point I thought he threw a punch at me, while the doctor tried to talk over his yells and perform the examination. He was so exhausted (and probably starving) that he fell asleep within seconds of putting his head on my shoulder after the doctor finished prodding him. Then the doc gives me the good news – he needs a vaccination (I was told he wouldn’t need any at this visit) – oh, yay. The docs are too smart to freak the kids out by giving them needles themselves, so they make the nurses administer the sharp stuff.

So to add to the already crappy visit, by the time the nurse showed up Jaden had been asleep on my shoulder for nearly 20 minutes and the nurse stabbed him while he was still sleeping. She thought it would be better that way. I thought he’d possibly be afraid to fall asleep in my arms ever again, since now he’ll never know when mommy’s going to hand him over to the evil nurse with the needle. Okay, maybe I’m paranoid.

Now Jaden was really screaming at the top of his lungs, naked as a Jaybird (LOL– pun intended), and I had to try to dress him (another one of his favorite activities — sarcasm intended) then carry him out into the bitter cold, snap him into his car seat and drive him home. Screaming all the way. That sounds like a Christmas song to me…

“Dashing through the snow

in a barentz blue Volvo

All the world can hear

Jaden screaming as we go

ah ah ah….

There’s no way we’re taking a nap

so it’s early to bed tonight

These docs make Jaden cry and scream

and give him an awful fright…”

Okay… now I’ve really lost it. No, antina, I’m not drinking (at the moment).

Back to my story – by the time we got home it was 12:45 — two full hours after our original appointment time. Starving, over-tired, with a 20 minute nap on my shoulder, this boy was not going to give me a break and take his usual 12:00 to 2:00 nap. I tried, I really did. I tried hard. He just didn’t want to sleep. At one point I even just told him Mommy needs a fifteen minute nap after that doctor’s appointment – so he waited in his crib and let me sleep. What a good boy. He must love me. He must also have a very good internal clock, since he woke me up nearly 15 minutes on the nose, saying and signing “train”. Ahhhh – he wants to play with his new train we got him for his birthday. So we did.

Here’s some pictures from Christmas:

About Jaden's Journey, Everything else, Pictures check-up, Christmas, doctor's visit

It’s been quite some time since I’ve written anything… and there’s probably no one following us now, but here I am anyway.

The end of the semester is winding down now, I finished the tedium of putting together the final exams for my students today and submitted them to the copy center. Now it’s a matter of picking up the exams, administering them on Tuesday, and then grading (and grading, and grading…). Lately I have been the most disorganized (unorganized? anyone?) person on earth so I’m sure it is going to take me at least a week to gather all the little scraps of paper on which I’ve jotted down my notes on who deserves an A from Santa this year and who deserves a C (or worse). Grades are not due until after Christmas (thank goodness for little miracles) so I have a chance to take a deep breath and….

do all my Christmas shopping!! Yes, folks, I have not even started. Here we are, 13 days until Christmas, and I don’t have one person finished. I just started last week because my mom wanted to check out a local fair they were having while she visited here. I found a couple of nice gifts for Jaden’s teachers at his day care center, and maybe a couple of things for some family, but that’s about all I have done. This, unfortunately, is the usual story for me. I get caught up in the end of the semester and don’t start making my shopping list until after finals.

The more I think about it the more I realize that I’m basically caught up in a tornado from the start of the semester until the end of the semester, and I’m very thankful for those little “breaks” in between that allow me to do things like brush my teeth without simultaneously trying to remember if I already photocopied the handouts for class later the same day.

As for Jaden – he is doing TERRIFIC. He’s really come a long way in the last couple of months. He enjoys going to his ’school’ three days a week. Sometimes he does give me a hard time about leaving, but on other days he goes straight to Miss “coco” and happily waves to me while he says “bye-bye” in his hilariously cute, toddler-phase, word approximation style accent. He must know close to 100 American Sign Language (ASL) signs (I’ve lost count)— believe it or not. I stopped having to teach him new signs — he actually teaches us signs now! His ASL-fluent teacher at school signs as she talks, so he picks up signs up from her and then comes home assuming we’ll know what he’s ‘talking’ about when he repeats the sign. It took us weeks to figure out that he was signing train, and another for helicopter. He kept giving us an evil stare when we showed we obviously didn’t know what he was talking about – it was as if he was thinking “YOU taught ME this language, why are you feigning ignorance?!”

We’ve been working weekly with early intervention on Jaden’s verbal skills. He’s coming along – he has approximately 20 word approximations now. Things like mama, dada, papa (grandpa) and bye-bye are really clear now. Today he said water and I couldn’t believe how much better it sounds than it did just a week ago. I have a feeling he’s going to start rattling off words as he rattles off signs. The funny part is that the words he speaks are also signs he knows — he’ll sign at the same time he says the word, so I still think, although it has taken him a while to speak, the signing was a godsend. Without it I’m sure we’d be having (many more) temper tantrums out of frustration. He’s been able to communicate with us really well with the signing even though the words are coming more slowly.

Interestingly, the word approximations he started with are less likely to be word approximations a child born in the U.S. would start with — for example he learned the sound of g’s and k’s first, which are usually later in an English speaking child’s language development (according to the literature early intervention gave me). My theory is that because Jaden spent 9 months listening to Korean, his tongue was learning to form Korean language sounds, and those were the first sounds he started babbling. Although, now that he is learning more and more, his language development is starting to appear more closely related to an English speaking child’s language development.

I have to wonder how our little nephew who is expected on 12/24 will fare with language development. My brother and his wife are going to bring him up bilingual. My sister-in-law will only speak Portuguese in the house, and my brother will only speak English (at least that’s the last they mentioned to us) — so it’ll be interesting to watch their son develop from that perspective. We are all SO excited about the new addition to our family – and of course the grandparents are nearly bursting with joy. Two years ago it seemed they’d never have grandkids, and here we are, with my brother and his wife expecting the 2nd (grandchild).

As for us, we always wanted two children, but I’ve been dragging my feet about putting in another adoption application. It was such a long wait for Jaden, and such a stressful process with Vietnam closing and not knowing what was going to happen with our application, etc, etc… so I think that’s what has me procrastinating. I also can’t imagine how I’ll get all the paperwork and running around done now that I have a toddler at home. It was hard enough to do it while it was just me and Neville. Plus I worry about our ages. Oy. Maybe I just need to have faith, and go with the flow. So I should just fill out the darn paperwork and leave it in our Creator’s hands, right?

We took this picture on Thanksgiving day before heading to my in-laws:

Everything else Adoption, finals, grandkids, Korea, picture, rambling, school

Jaden left about 20 minutes ago for school – we found out yesterday that they are doing pictures of the kids today so we did our best to dress our little man for his photo shoot. I tried to get a couple of quick shots of him (with my iPhone, no less) as he was leaving with Daddy for drop-off but he moves around so much this was the best I could do.

I’ve been blog-MIA again and I’m sorry it is taking me so long to get back into the groove. The semester is under full-steam now so I’m inundated with course preparation. My big goal (other than “publish, publish, publish!!!”) is to get back to a regular schedule for blogging – whether anyone is reading it or not, it is something I intended for Jaden to have as a part of his ‘lifebook’. I’ll get there…

Everything else lifebook, Pictures, school

Today we went to a kids salon to have Jaden’s first haircut all over again. We had been clipping it as best we could at home, but let’s just say that Mommy can use a little more hairstylist training. Jaden’s baptism is next weekend, so there was no time better than the present to get our little guy a real haircut. At the suggestion of our neighbor I thought we’d try this place that specializes in kid’s cuts; they have adorable chairs that are cars, trucks, and rocking horses to distract the kids from the actual act of cutting hair… but as you can probably tell from the pictures the allure wore off relatively quickly, and in the end I’m sure they charged me extra for the hearing damage the entire staff endured while we were there. LOL

Everything else

….but there’s a lot happening. Busy, busy, busy. Blogging has taken a back seat for the moment.

Jaden is getting so big, and we have tons of pictures to share.

More soon, I promise!!

Everything else still here