One month mark!

We've known Lucy for one month as of June 25. She fits in so well that it feels like she's been with us for much longer. It's amazing to think of all the changes she's made in her life and how well she's handling it all.

She is learning English at warp speed - the other day I was cooking when I realized that Lucy was counting to ten in English then throwing a flag up in the air. She missed one or two numbers each time, but she was doing it. No one has ever taught her this, although some of the books we read have counting in it. Then yesterday I was telling someone that she's learned to count to ten and she started counting to ten. She understood what I was saying!

Yesterday, she rode a pony at a block party - big smile, not scared. One month ago she had never been out of an orphanage and now she's been in a car, bus,stroller, ferry, train, airplane, carousel and pony. Before we met, I thought of cocooning her at home for the summer, but when it's time to put on her shoes and get in the car, she's excited. She doesn't want to miss out on anything out there. We have taken her to some birthday parties and such for short times and she is shy and withdrawn at first but opens up quite quickly. Today we walked on the Pearl Street mall, watched the musicians and visited all the play spaces. She just soaks it all in, looks around to make sure we're close by, runs in for a hug and then back out to play.

She's also un-learning some of the less desirable orphanage behaviors. As one of the books said, "patient kids don't get ahead in an orphanage." When you think about it, pushing, whining, yelling and grabbing were probably the only way to get what you wanted in the orphanage. If I just say, "Lucy please be patient", "gentle voice" or "gentle touch", she does. She's been starting to say "please" and "thank you" much more.

Lucy still gets anxious when it's bed time and is still sleeping in our bed. When you think about it, she is entitled to cause much more disruption. Sometimes I need to lie with her for her to fall asleep. There have been times when she panics and cries if I get up to even use the bathroom. This is happening less and less. Why does the night or the stillness of nap time cause a kid to get so scared when she has been laughing and confident all day? Does it give her time to realize all the changes she's gone through without the distractions and excitement of the day? Is she grieving her friends and caretakers from the orphanage? She can cuddle so well in times like these - she must have been well loved.

She has no idea how brave and resilient she is!

philosophical about 40

I’m turning 40 in less than a month and my January resolution was to sign up for and run a marathon in my 40th year. When we accepted Lucy’s referral in February, that plan went out the window.

When most people hear that I was a Peace Corps volunteer, they are impressed and it starts conversations, gets you into graduate schools of choice. The implication here is that it was hard work and demonstrates courage and commitment. But when I returned and started working as a public school teacher, I felt this was more of the trenches than being a PCV ever was. The hours are longer, the pay, in comparison to cost of living, is lower, and there’s no VIP status. And THEN, I became a stay-at-home-mom. This is hard work – I know I chose it and I’m not afraid of hard work – but this makes the Peace Corps look like Club Med.

A typical morning, wake up late with a daughter on each side of me. How did Lorna get in my bed? When did Lucy actually fall asleep? Realize it was not a dream about being suspended in the top of a coconut tree but actually Lorna’s feet on my back. Realize I need to get three kids up, fed, dressed and out the door in 1 hour. Shades up, whining children, cereal, vitamins, ponytail for me, finesse a wrinkled-sock-impending-tantrum, stop Pug from darting out the door with left foot, while holding one child and a cup of coffee.

And when I get them all in the car, with clean diapers, sippy cups and snacks, I look around for applause because this is my greatest feat - not to lose my cool, even do it all with love, smiles and sometimes even a song... and relatively clean clothes. For me (and I know this is such a personal thing for women) this is so much more than Peace Corps, fancy grad school, or meditation retreats – maybe it’s all of those things rolled up into one. And, I’ve been in rooms with people with interesting worldly careers and artsy lives and felt as though I have nothing to contribute. My world is so small. You can fit it all into one family. It’s also temporary. While it lasts there’s so much to explore and enjoy in this tiny little world, so many ways to grow through being with my children and all their ups and downs. Who needs a marathon?

"Don't come back to see me...ever"

Today was Lucy's appointment at Children's Hospital with a pediatric cardiologist. I made the appointment back in April when we started making our travel plans. At that time, I wanted her to be seen but was anxious about how our bonding would be going or how I would be able to comfort her with all the big, scary machines. She did great. And it was interesting that she knew how to position herself for the echocardiogram and was not afraid of all the "stickers" for the EKG. The tech's kept saying that she had obviously done this before. There wasn't a whine or whimper although I did keep handing her rice crackers, her favorite.

The doctor finally came in with argyle sweater vest and wingtips to say "she's totally healthy. The hole has spontaneously closed in the past 6 months since her last echo and don't come back to see me...ever." We had a nice conversation about international adoption and he explained the dynamics of the heart and sent us off. Done.

Somehow, I just never put her heart condition on the list of worries. ( I had others, believe me...) Holes in the heart can be fixed here, was all I kept thinking.We have great facilities in the Denver area. We have insurance. What can be such a big deal? But at the White Swan we met all kinds of amazing people adopting kids with missing limbs or digits, cerebral palsy, or cleft palates and they thought we were brave to take on a heart condition. I started thinking that perhaps, I have been naive or blindly optimistic. Or, following my heart and not my head. Our friend and cardiologist, John McNeil, had looked over her referral records, called it mild to moderate and explained best and worst case scenarios - perhaps it was his calm, reassuring voice.

The poet in me just keeps thinking about a hole in the heart and its spontaneous closing in six months. I was calling Kim Morgan at Hand in Hand in December to tell her that we were getting too old and to take us off the waiting list for healthy infants, when she told me about the special needs option and how it would speed up the process. It's now June. And we're whole.

10 days home

We've been home for 10 days now and Lucy's beginning to get into the routine of life with a family, life with her own "stuff" and living Boulder. She really has done so well that I sometimes forget that she spent her first 3 years in an orphanage with minimal food, stimulation and one caregiver for 22 kids.

In pictures of Lucy's orphanage and in Will's observation, Lucy has been exposed to so little nature. Everything at the orphanage was tiled, the outdoor play area, which was very small, was concrete and there were just a few landscaping shrubs. In these ten days, I've been watching a child learn about the natural world. She's becoming more curious in the garden, is fascinated by dandelion poufs, and is becoming daily more confident walking through tall grasses down at the neighborhood schoolyard where we walk and sometimes build fairy houses. For the past three days she has come with me to drop Lorna at horse camp where she has seen huge horses, goats, donkeys, wild rabbits and big open spaces of horse country. We had a baby deer in our yard one morning and she saw a fox who went right in front of the card yesterday. Her new words this week include, tree, mountain, goat, bunny, deer (and "I love you"). What must this new relationship to the natural world mean for a child? Is it causing paradigm shifts in her world view already? What would it mean for her peers at the orphanage to never know this?

We've also been seeing some of the food issues we'd been warned about. She sometimes eats and eats and eats and I know she doesn't feel well at the end of it. Sunday, she was clutching this sesame ball thing that I got for her at the Asian market for about an hour without taking a bite. It was getting pretty gross so I took it from her gently. Big tantrum. The first one, and it was a gut - wrenching yell. I quickly put the ball in a baggie and gave it back to her to hold. In about 5 minutes, she was ok. But again an important reminder of where this amazing child lived for her first three years. I hope she learns soon that there will always be enough food and as her language improves we can show her where there will always be healthy snacks for her. It just breaks my heart!

One of the biggest challenges has been her fear of the dogs. Just today, I noticed that she walked right by both of them without a second thought - she's probably never petted a dog before and, if it's like Thailand, many dogs were rabid and children were told they were dangerous.

Kai is picking up some of Lucy's Cantonese expressions. No is something like "may-o" and Kai has switched from "no" to "may-o". Lucy says "car", like Kai's Bostonian accent, "Kai". They're creating their own language!

Tonight she kissed and hugged each family member and said "i love you". She's just a gem!

OK - it's been tough

Not because the kids are difficult or Lucy is having trouble adjusting, but the jet lag was super-hard. All three kids were up on the second night at 2 am and ready for bed at 9 am. There were many times when all three kids were melting down and I was just doing my best to keep them awake. I survived on caffeine, cartoon bribery and babysitter, Kelsey. My sleep deprivation was on overdrive with no end in sight so I was saying a lot of "om"'s while trying to navigate tired and cranky kids. Will went back to work Monday so it's been intense. But I think we're 95% back on Colorado time and finding our groove now. Like right now, she's in bed, by herself, after lots of cuddles and all three kids are asleep. Voila!

She loves the bath and is still terrified of the dogs. She is literally learning about 5 words a day and understands me when I ask her to get her shoes on or to put her jim-jams under her pillow. I'm not sure Lorna understand English quite as well.

I'm trying to keep Lucy home as much as possible so she feels secure and safe before venturing out into Boulder and beyond although yesterday I took her to the pediatrician to make sure her heart was working fine in the altitude. Dr. Legare was "floored" at how healthy, attached and developmentally on track she is. Poor Lucy had to give five vials of blood for all the testing, however. She cried at the poke but was a trooper while they tried to readjust and accumulate all that blood from her tiny vein! She has been so congested since we first met her - even after one round of antibiotics - so she's being tested for food allergies. She has an appointment at Children's next week with a pediatric cardiologist, so we'll see what's going on but Legare couldn't hear anything abnormal and said that she's obviously having no trouble with oxygen...(Lucy was technically a special needs adoption because she has an ASD or hole in the heart.)

Today was great! We woke up and rode bikes and trikes, planted flowers and more basil, played on the swing set, ate 3 bowls of noodles for lunch, made cookies, said hello to Melanie and napped at the right time. She and Kai ran to the door yelling, "daddy!" when Will pulled up. When we sat down to dinner she reached to hold hands as we always take turns giving thanks. Will said, "doesn't it feel so right? Like she was always meant to be sitting right there and that she knows it too?"

Exactly!

First day home

Lucy woke up in her new house and we happily showed her around. She loved her bed and bathroom, then squealed with delight at the basement playroom. After breakfast we went outside and she showed me how she can already do the monkey bars and was great going up and down the slide.

Jet lag was tough today for all of us.
Attachment is going great, she's loving the house, but not so excited about the dogs. Everyone napped today and then went down very easily for the night. Knock on wood, this is so much easier than I expected!

Time for bed,

Journey Home

On Friday morning we left Guangzhou for Hong Kong. It was a short flight - up, serve a drink, and down - and a good test flight to see how Lucy will do with the big journey across the Pacific. We stayed at the airport hotel in Hong Kong and got the kids their last good nap in their time zone of comfort. After nap, we met up with my old friend, Doug, who has been working in Hong Kong for three years for a quick tour. We met him in Kowloon, crossed into Hong Kong by ferry, walked in pedestrian overpasses through Hong Kong and got to see trolleys and double decker buses - Kai's favorite. Doug found a natural / organic restaurant and we all happily forwent the local cuisine for a big fresh salad. Then caught a cab to train back to the airport.

Now ten days ago, Lucy had never been outside of the orphanage. Then in one day, she was in a taxi, airplane, train, and ferry. She did wonderfully, thanks to some patches to help with motion sickness, I think.

Saturday morning we set out for the airport and check-in. We left Hong Kong at 11:45am and arrived in San Francisco at 8:45am - I love getting three extra hours in life. The flight was long and the kids did great. At one point, Lucy and I were lying together on the seat and she was tapping my chest saying, "mama, mama". I tried to use her Chinese nickname to return the gesture, but she said, "no Lucy!". I'll still keep trying but at this rate, she'll be conversant in English by the end of summer. They all took naps as they would on China time, then when it was time to go to sleep for the night, they were turning on the lights to serve breakfast.


They were exhausted when we landed and went through customs - Lucy actually slept through becoming a citizen. On the other side of customs, my dad, Val, Daisy and Tim were waiting with a 10 passenger van, car seats and a picnic. They took us to Coyote Point to run around and get to know Lucy during our 4 hour layover. Dad said it was amazing how lively everybody was and how much fun it was to meet Lucy and get to know her a little bit. What a treat for everybody!

We all fell asleep on the Denver flight by about 4pm. The kids stayed asleep all the way through the landing, baggage claim and drive home. Will was up at 2am, Kai at 3am, Lorna at 4, me at 5 and Lucy we had to wake at 6am - go girl! And we're off...

Almost time to go home

For the last two days, I've woken up and thought 'it's so nice to be home' but then open my eyes and realize that I'm still in the White Swan. Although we've been very comfortable here, we're ready to go home and start life together. It's been rainy and the pollution is intense.

Yesterday afternoon, Lucy, Lorna, Will and myself went to the US consulate to finalize her paperwork and take the oath. There were maybe 25 families and they called us up one by one to check our passports and have us double check the information for the millionth time. Then a consulate guy came out with a microphone and made it ceremonious - calling out birthdays, families who were doing this for the fifth time!!!, etc. Then we all raised our right hands and repeated after him. Lucy has a Chinese passport with a US visa, but will become a citizen when we clear customs in San Francisco.

When we got back from the consulate, Kai was again running a fever so I stayed back with him while the rest of the gang went to our favorite vegetarian Buddhist restaurant. We were all holding our breath because she's been so attached to me, but turned to me, said 'bye bye', and did great- really bonded more with daddy. Kai just laid on my chest all night and was fine in a few hours - so it all worked out the way it was supposed to...

Lucy is officially not a quiet kid any more. There's been lots of bed-bouncing and happy screams with Lorna and Lucy. Lorna saying over and over, "it's a Paradise family party!" Lucy tells us lots of things in Cantonese and I think I know how to say, "what's this?" Her English is coming along very easily and she loves to do somersaults. New likes are: french fries, birds, my iphone, dogs!, strolling, cheerios, kale, lollipops, 'go dog go', playing ball, being held upside down and hopefully tomorrow she will like airplanes.

Tomorrow bright and early we're heading for Hong Kong. We'll stay there for about 24 hours before heading to Denver via San Francisco.

Tuesday, and Kai's feeling better

Monday, to Maoming and back

The trip to the orphanage was priceless. Kelsey, Lorna and I left at 7am w/ our guide Mr Peter and a driver in a Buick. There are a lot of cars here in Guangzhou and most of the drivers have had their licenses for less than 5 years. They all pretty much suck at driving and every taxi ride leaves you believing that if there is a god, this is his idea of comedy. We knew it was going to take us 5 hrs to drive to the orphanage in Maoming and were as ready as we could be for the ride w/ food, water, videos for Lorna and a pillow for her to nap with. After 2 hrs of driving we had only made it 17 miles out of Guangzhou and I was thinking that this was a bad idea. The super highway was closed for construction for a ten mile stretch and everyone had to wind their way off the highway, through small towns, to get linked back up w/ the super highway. Once we were on that road the ride went smoothly except for the moronic drivers that brake when they pass, drift from lane to lane for no reason, and think that anyone can drive.

We arrived in Maoming around 1pm and went to the park where Lucy was found when she was a few days old. It was a small people's park and we wandered through it and took some photos. We have heard from many folks that this will be very important to her as she gets older. We then headed to a small place for lunch because the orphanage was closed from 12- 2:30 so the kids could eat and nap.

We made it to the orphanage at 2:30 and visited w/ the director and the other woman that brought Lucy to Guangzhou when we first met her. They toured us around the place and answered our questions: " She was friends w/ everyone. She made the other kids happy. She plays hard. She eats w/a spoon. She is a good sleeper". The orphanage has 300 or so kids there

at a time. It is one of two orphanages in Maoming. Lucy, as a special needs kid because of her heart, stayed in a different part from the non-special needs kids. This part is supported by the Half The Sky Foundation and they do a lot to help these kids. The overall mood of the orphanage was more upbeat that I expected and most of the kids seemed pretty happy. We met two twin girls that need a home and my first thought was "we can take two more." We are holding off for now! I shot a bunch of videos for Lucy of the place, the teachers, and all of her friends. We will definitely stay connected w/ this place and we will bring her back here when she is older.

It was pretty scary to be driving back from Maoming and get the text from Anni that she was taking Kai to the hospital. I was at least an hr away and there was nothing I could do. He had two different IV/ drips that he sat through and you could see his color come back. The movie of him is from the hospital w/him feeling better and sucking a lollipop. He seems great today.

Lucy continues to open up more and more every day. She hardly spoke at all the first three days; now she talks a lot. She is picking up English fast and knows all of our names and some other words as well. She is cute as hell and her smile will melt your heart. Can't wait for you to meet her.

Life was great before we left for Guangzhou and it is even better now.

Monday, at Guangzhou

Early Monday Will, Lorna and Kelsey headed to Lucy's orphanage in Maoming. Will has a separate post about that amazing trip. So I was at the hotel with Lucy and Kai. After breakfast we went strolling and shopping when Kai started screaming. I went straight back to the hotel just in time for him to vomit and continue to do so. He started getting a fever and went right to sleep. Lucy kept bringing him his tiger and stroking his leg. He wouldn't keep water down and started moaning. Ugh! Trying not to panic, Lucy and I ordered room service and tried to spend some quality time getting to know each other. At about 3pm, I brought Kai down to the hotel clinic and they advised me to take him to "Sun Yat Sen Hospital". Thankfully, they sent a staff member with me - not sure how I could have navigated the place without her. To make a long and frightening story short, I got an insider's view into the Chinese medical system. Kai had bad strep throat, fever was up at 104 and was dehydrated, so after his first bag of iv antibiotics/fluids he was laughing and eating again. The waiting room was full of people getting iv's. They were just walking around with a friend holding onto a yard stick with the bag attached. For an extra $1.50, I sprang for a gurney and an iv stand. Will arrived about 7:30pm and we were all home with a well child by 10pm. Kai's been great all day today and we realized that Lucy too had strep throat and bronchitis - so they're both on antibiotics and hopefully feeling better.



Adoption is incredible in that all the "firsts" are in warp speed. We're getting to know her more and more each day. So in the week we've been together, we've had the first smile, laugh, hug, kiss, "mama", "daddy", singing, bath, run, jump, somersault, swim, doctor's visit, etc. All those things that you savor, document and date with your biological children, with an adopted toddler they quickly reveal themselves. The first few days, she was silent, as I wrote before, but she was also quite withdrawn, and slow-moving physically. Now she's jabbering to us in Cantonese, saying new English words every day, very curious, and loves to run and jump. It's only been one week. When I was in the hospital with Lucy and Kai, she stayed right with me - one hand on my knee and the other sometimes stroking Kai's back. It was remarkable how patient and "attached" she was in the moment when I had to be very present for Kai.

When Will showed up at the hospital and I've got one kid I'm trying to feed dinner and the other with an iv, he started showing me photos of some identical twins he met at Lucy's orphanage, fell in love with, and, "might we come back in a few months and adopt them?" Timing is everything...I didn't really answer. He's got a huge heart, my husband. Perhaps, we can show the photos of the sweethearts to some loving friends...

We're wondering if Lucy thinks we're going to live in the White Swan and eat in restaurants each meal for the rest of our lives.

Sunday, A day at the zoo

We went to the Chimelong Safari Park about 40 minutes outside of Guangzhou. The big event was seeing the giant Pandas.



We also saw koalas, baby tiger, white tigers, fed giraffes, and spent lots of time with the baboons. As we started heading toward the exit, the heavens opened and we were drenched with monsoon rains. It was kind of fun for all as we gave up any notion of staying dry. We walked right out to find a taxi and headed back for warmth and naps. For the second night in a row, we went to a great vegetarian restaurant and tried a great assortment of unknowns. Kai is the biggest rock star in Guangzhou - people stare and want pictures of him. I guess they don't see many blond 2 yr olds.