Three Months

It was three months ago yesterday that we met Lia for the first time. Our adoption was finalized three months ago today. I am going to post some pictures from today and then a one taken the day we met her and then one from the camera that we sent to the SWI. How much she has changed:)

Four months ago at the Orphanage:



Today (this is the same bear):




A few hours after returning to the hotel on our first day with her:

Today:

Two hours in the Emergency Room

With who else? Garrett...

At around 5pm, Garrett came over to me crying and coughing. He was actually foaming at the mouth and drooling this stringy mess. It was like nothing I had ever seen before and it kept coming and coming. I panicked.

We drove to the ER and proceeded to wait for a long time. I kept asking him if anything hurt or if he ate anything unusual. He insisted that he didn't. By the time we were actually back in a room, he said "Now I remember, I drank some funny water in a bowl in the backyard." The funny water? It was Caelan's afternoon "experiment" - something that she learned in first grade. You mix water with salt and pepper. Then you dip your finger full of dish soap into the bowl and the salt and pepper moves to the side of the bowl. Garrett was foaming Palmolive! Uugh! He is fine and no longer drooling foam. What a night.

End of Summer, sort-of

Well, Bob's days of leisure are over. He officially goes back to work tomorrow after 5/6 weeks off. We spent most of the summer at the cottage. We are planning to go there next weekend, but I am not sure after that how often we will make it up there. We are going to my parent's cottage for an "Olympics" party on the weekend of the 8th, which I originally thought was going to be a typical Hannan party: boat ride, hot tub, some wine and a good dinner, but I think that they are planning "games"... Hmm.

Lia has quite a few appointments coming up as well. Nothing this week, as I am waiting for my babysitter to come back from Florida (Hi, Katerina- we miss you!!), and would prefer not carting around all three kids. Lia is going in for a vision screening, hearing screening, vaccines and will have her first visit from Early-On (other than the evaluation). Garrett also has his 4 year old well child check. Fun. His also will have vaccines involved.

How many have you read?

I saw this on another blog and as I have been reading quite a bit lately, I wanted to see how many I actually have read. I didn't do very well, but at least I did better than "6". (This is coming from a teacher with a minor in English- and when life is calm, I do a lot of reading for fun.) I do suspect that I have read a few others- but did not bold them as I can't remember any details.

Here’s how it works:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE - mine are in red
4) Reprint this list in your blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and force books upon them.

The premise of this exercise is that the National Endowment for the Arts apparently believes that the average American has only read 6 books from the list below.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (I did read the first one)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible ( I have read quite a bit of the bible-13 years of Catholic Education- but I am sure I haven’t read the entire Bible)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Big Girls Weekend in Chicago

My friend, Becky and I have been planning a trip to Chicago with Caelan and her daughter, Isabel for probably six months. She wanted to do something special for Isabel's seventh birthday. My brother, Kevin lives in Chicago and so does my cousin Molly. My aunt is now renting a condo near Lincoln Park Zoo. I wasn't sure if I was ready to be away from Lia for an entire weekend, but decided to go. Lia did great, as I expected at home with Bob. We drove 4 hours, to Michigan City, Indiana, where we got on the commuter train to Chicago.

Friday we went to Lincoln Park Zoo and out to dinner with Kevin. On Saturday morning, we woke up and took Molly and Ruthie (the girls' American Girl dolls) out to breakfast at the American Girl Cafe. Caelan and Isabel were pretty excited. We shopped a bit at the store and then went to Navy Pier to the Children's Museum and then spent the afternoon on Navy Pier. We walked back along the lake and then went to dinner. It was short, but I felt like I had been gone for more than a weekend. It was very refreshing. I really don't think that I needed any kind of a break from Lia- but Garrett has been a bit of a handful lately and two nights away was exactly what I needed. Also, it was nice for Caelan to do something special. We had a great time. I LOVE CHICAGO!!

Garrett's Fourth Birthday

Garrett turned four on July 16th. He was very excited to turn four and as we went to bed the night before, he knew that because he was born at 12:16am, he would officially be four before he woke up. As he went to bed he asked at least ten times, "Am I four yet?" After many "No's" he did wake up at around 3am and I could finally say "yes". We celebrated with Bob's mom, Jenna, Zane, Mikey and Emily. Here are some pictures. Note that Lia is uninterested in the gift opening and cares only about the placement of the children's chairs:)

For our Alaska Friends

Just a quick one, I wanted to include a couple of pictures from our very good friend, Cory Cook's wedding in June. In typical Cory style, we walked in and there he was making coffee, not even dressed yet, though the wedding was set to start in a few minutes. We chatted a bit, and unknown to Bob, he was the best man and we were at the head table. Bob even came up with an impressive toast on the spot. Hee hee! Cory's wife is wonderful and perfect for him. They are both moving from Vermont and have teaching jobs in New Hampshire. I thought that those of you who know him would enjoy some pictures.

Home for a few days

We have been at our cabin for most of the last 2-3 weeks. Lia is loving it. We start the day by going for our morning walk, followed by lounging around the lake. Lia loves being outdoors and playing in the sand. She likes the water, though it has been a little cool. I am pretty happy with my exercise routine up there, I always walk around the lake once (4 miles) and I have been also trying to ride around the lake in the evening, though I may need to get a new bike seat if I want to keep that up. Hee hee!

I brought Lia and Garrett home for a little break on Monday. We had a very odd day on Sunday while at the Traverse City Cherry festival, starting with waiting two hours to eat breakfast at The Omlette Shoppe. Yummy, but not worth waiting for two hours with three small kids. Then as we went to watch the air show, an older woman passed out next to us. While she seemed OK, she was very disoriented and against her urgings, I called 911. She was not happy, but she wasn't with anyone and I couldn't just leave her like that. Then, Bob and I seperated for a moment so that he could watch the rest of the airshow while the kids and I looked at the crafter's booths. He thought I was going to meet him at the car. HA! The car was 2 miles away and I had all three kids. That was not my intention. After walking back and forth for an hour looking for him, I realized that he was nowhere around. He had my cell phone, my money, and the diaper bag. Great. So we made the long trek back to the car and sure enough, he was there. What an odd day. So I was crabby and the kids were crabby, and it was time to come home.

Bob and Caelan stayed until Thursday and we will hopefully go back there on Monday.
Here are some pictures.
Lia and I walking on the beach
Garrett and his friend, Amelia, at a park.
The "other" side of Garrett...
Caelan and Jenna on the jet-ski's
Morning family photo (Garrett has since gotten a hair cut)
Garrett's early b-day present- a pedal tractor which replaces last year's model.
Dancing on the beach
Bob's big fish
Caelan jumping at the festival

Cousin Lukas and Lia at the beach. Luke is 10 months younger than Lia.
Jenna, Caelan and Emily (of the Silva 4)

Lia's Evaluation

Wow! Five posts in one day. Well, this afternoon an "Early On" teacher came out to the house to evaluate Lia. I want to make sure that we are doing everything that we can to get Lia caught up to other children her age. As I expected, her fine motor skills are age appropriate. Also her cognitive skills are level appropriate. She is delayed in gross motor and language. She said that Lia is at 15-18 month level with gross motor and 12-15 month with language, though she seemed quite impressed with Lia's receptive language. She does qualify for weekly playgroups and monthly home visits. In August, she is going to be even further evaluated to see if she will qualify for additional services, but I got the feeling that the teacher believed that in another month she would likely have progressed past the point of needing these additional services. I was worried that Lia might not show the teacher all that she is able to do, but she was quite cooperative and I believe that the assessment was accurate.

Lia's Diagnosis

After the lab work showed that Lia was mildly anemic, the pediatrician ran further tests and determined that she has beta thalassemia minor, a genetic blood disorder. From what I understand right now, this is the least severe type of thalassemia and she should have no chronic problems. Basically, she is a carrier but will never develop beta thalassemia major, because she has only one copy of the thalassemia gene. When she is ready to have children it is advised to have genetic counseling to determine whether her partner has beta thal as well, as it could be passed on to her children. I was unable to talk in much depth to the doctor as Lia was having a major tantrum at the time. I am pretty certain that this diagnosis has nothing to do with her small size.

Speaking about her size, I plotted her weight, height and head circumference on the American growth chart and it seems so out of whack that I suspect the last three measurements that she had in China are inaccurate. The international adoption pediatrician who reviewed her medical reports was so concerned about the last three measurements because her growth seemed to be taking a bit of a nose dive, but her current measurements are right in line with the measurements that we have from her first 12 months. Odd. But if it had been any different, she wouldn't have likely been referred to us.

Here is a picture from the weekend. Cousin Jenna, Caelan, Lia and Aunt Vikki:

Big Storm

I know that the U.S. seems to be getting hammered with all of these storms, but we had a wild night on Sunday. Bob and I went to bed when all of a sudden it seemed that buckets of rain were being doused on our house. We heard the loudest roaring wind that I have ever heard and ran downstairs. Our bedroom is the only room on the second floor, the kids rooms are downstairs. The power went out, so all we could see was lightning flashing nearly constantly. We have no basement, and while the bathroom is probably the safest room, we also determined that the kids bedrooms and the closet between them were also a good place to go in a storm.

We live on the Saginaw Bay, part of lake Huron, and in our living room we have a wall of door windows looking to the bay, so Bob was looking out the door when he saw the neighbor's pole barn that he has been building, come crashing towards the house. I ran to Lia's room (Caelan is staying with Bob's parents for the week) and Bob went to Garrett's room. The pole barn landed on top of our cherry tree, which is only ten feet from our doors. It took out our fence in a section as well. Once the storm passed, we could see that trees were down, tree limbs were scattered everywhere. The kids toys were blown over and moved. It was scary. Apparently, a funnel cloud did touch down in the bay, so many of the houses along the bay were damaged in the storm.

Garrett's Big Day

As I have said before, Garrett is a big fan of motor vehicles. He will sit in the car while we drive long distances, looking out the window, saying "Wow I wish I had that truck.." and "Wow I wish I could drive that bulldozer." He is fascinated with mowers, construction trucks, pick up trucks- really anything with wheels. Bob once told Garrett that he saw a truck pulling a trailer with two riding mowers, two push mowers and a John Deer tractor. Garrett's response was "Dad, was it a dream?" Too funny.

Bob's dad works construction and brought Garrett to see some of the trucks that he works with. Garrett was actually able to use the controls on some of them, and they brought many for a ride. Here are some pictures from that day.

Summer

I am going to write a few little posts this morning, as we won't likely have much time over the next six weeks to keep this updated. Last summer, we bought a small cabin near Baldwin, Michigan. By small, I mean 300-400 square feet, consisting of a living room, bathroom and kitchen. We had such a great time up there last year and spent most of July there. Bob is now off until the first part of August and we plan to head over to our cabin on Sunday. Our friend that we met in Alaska, Cory Cook for all of my Alaska friends, is getting married on Saturday night, so we are going to that first. Oddly enough he met a woman from Michigan while teaching in Vermont.

Well, as long as Lia adjusts well to being at the cabin, we will hopefully stay there for the next 5-6 six weeks. Life is so laid back up there, I think she will be fine. My day will consist of waking up, having breakfast and a cup of coffee, going for a walk around the lake (4 miles, and I do it every morning), eating lunch, hanging out at the lake, eating dinner, again more time at the lake, and then bedtime. We will be able to focus all of our attention on the kids.

Happy Second Birthday!

Lia's birthday was on Friday. We got her a little swimming pool, which she spent hours in, and then went out for ice cream. On Saturday, we went to my parent's cottage for the night. I was a bit nervous about going, as I feel that Lia is doing really well and was afraid that an overnight so soon wasn't really the best thing for her- but she did great. I am coming to realize that she is a pretty easy going girl. She enjoyed the hot tub and her cousins. She even got a pretty big kick out of "Uncle Patrick." My brother, Kevin, and his girlfriend Teresa came too along with my sister, Maura and my parents.

We went in for a second round of bloodwork. The doc is trying to determine whether the cause of her anemia is a genetic condition or just lack of iron. Thankfully, this time the blood draw wasn't nearly as stressful. We went back to the hospital and I specifically made sure that "Esther" was the only one who would draw her blood and she got it on the first attempt. I am hoping that we will hear something about the lab tests tomorrow. She also has been found to have a stomach bacterial infection which she is being treated for.

Next week, Lia is being evaluated by the county's early intervention department. She is understandably delayed in her language development, but she has been picking up words pretty quickly. She definately can repeat sounds, and says mom, dada, up, bye-bye, thank you (in a voice only a mommy can understand), cheese (do you think she has had her picture taken a few times?), woof (yes we have a noisy dog) and a few others. Her fine motor skills seem pretty good, but she does struggle with gross motor skills. She walks in that wobbly baby way and can't run. We did go to the playground today and she was able to climb the steps independently pretty well by the time we were ready to leave. But, I do think that it is important that someone else tells me what types of things we should be working on.

Caelan is riding a bike after two summers of trying. She was doing well last summer, but she fell in August and refused to ride again. She got the hang of it again last week and we just ordered her a new bike. Originally I told her that she had to use her own money to pay for it, she has a savings account and hasn't spent a single penny of it. But I have decided that bike will be her payment for being my "personal assistant" this summer. I have found that if Lia is playing and I get up to get anything, she stops playing and will not return. So I have been asking Caelan to help me with things. She even got my coffee this morning and put the perfect amount of cream in- though the coffee pot had been off for an hour, so I knew there was no worry of her burning herself.

As it is the season, Garrett is very busy mowing... Not much else going on with him. For those who know him, he takes mowing pretty seriously and goes out with his bubble popping mower any time a neighbor is also mowing. It was very funny last week, as he kept "mowing" with a toy baby stroller. I asked him what he was doing and he said that he was getting too big to push his mowers and he had a hard time reaching the handle. Too funny. I can't wait until he is actually old enough to mow our lawn!

Out of school

Well, it has been a busy week. We took Lia in for her bloodwork last Wednesday and it was a nightmare. The tech was unable to draw any blood successfully. I left with a hysterical baby, and I wasn't feeling much better than she was. That, and I knew we would have to repeat the bloodwork as the tiny bit of blood that she was able to collect clotted. Her arm was badly bruised so I waited until yesterday to bring her back in, this time to the hospital, where the first two tech's were unable to draw even the tiniest bit of blood. Lia gets so nervous that she tenses up and her muscles (apparently) stop the flow of blood to her veins. Finally the third tech was able to draw the necessary blood. We got some of the results back already, and so far everything looks fine, but she is mildly anemic, which did not surprise me.

Otherwise, she is doing pretty good. We had a rough few days over the weekend and the beginning of the week. She was clinging to me and very upset if I had to put her down, like when I took a shower and put the dinner in the oven. She had quite a few tantrums and was hard to console, but the last two days have been wonderful. She has started to play more independently and even wanders in different rooms.

I brought my two girls down to see Patrick's new baby over the weekend. See the picture below:) Abby, my brother's oldest, is only 9 months older than Lia. Look at the size difference! Lia doesn't seem all that small to me until I compare her to other kids her age.

Bob and Garrett went to our little cabin to open it up for the season- we plan to settle there for the summer on the 22nd of June. The kids are now out of school. Bob has to work for the next 2 weeks and then he will have six weeks off.