Sunday, February 17, 2013

Happy New Year

 A very happy new year to everyone. 2013 is the year of the snake. It can be filled with lots of ups and downs!! I need some smooth sailing right now not ups and downs.

My Dad is doing pretty good. He has lots of decisions to make but he has in no way given up the fight. He is the strongest person I have ever met or been around. He truly is just grateful for every day that he is given and just wants to spend those days with his family. I had a great time visiting with them without any distractions. I was a treasured time.

We are celebrating Chinese New Year next weekend with our friends as I was supposed to be out of town on Sunday. I ended up coming home on Saturday due to a nasty snow storm that meandered our way. I was very glad that I came home early!!!

So this is going to be one of those posts that are written over several days :) Trying to find the time is really difficult.

Last night we had our Chinese New Year dinner. It was wonderful and I know I made some of the food, but it rocked. The leftovers tonight we just as fantastic. I didn't take any pictures as I was busy cooking, but, everyone else has pictures so I will post them as soon as I get a hold of them. It was so cute seeing the three little 3 year olds together again. They don't really play together. They just hang out in the same room together. They are still super cute when you can get them to all stand beside each other and hold still. By the way, the copy cat PF Chang's Mongolian Beef recipe on Pinterest is super easy to make and it is to die for!!!! I made two sirloin roasts and we hardly have any left.

Tomorrow, Ainsley, Sofie and I are going to a Chinese New Year luncheon with a play group of adoptive parents and adopted kids.  I hope they have other foods available as I am not sure I am going to be able to get anymore Chinese food into my two kids. They have had enough. I, on the other hand, could eat it every day :) I am looking forward to meeting with some other Mom's who have been there done that. I am feeling a little lost and out of sorts since Christmas. It has been a month since Sofie's intense speech therapy schedule starting and I just haven't been able to get into a groove with out schedule. I feel like I am always running around like a chicken with their head chopped off! Don't even talk to me about laundry :( This is why I am up at 11:30 pm writing a blog post while folding laundry.

Today was an awesome day. For a while now, Sofie has been calling me Mama. She also calls everyone else Mama when she needs something from them. It is also a really loud demanding Mama, like I need something so pay attention. It hasn't really bothered me that much because I know that she knows who MAMA is.....me! Ainsley has always called me Mommy or Mom. That is what I called my Mom so I just worked for us. Today, Sofie came up to me to ask something and clear as day said "Mommy." I stopped and my heart just melted. I heard "Mommy" over and over again all day long. Once she figured out that I liked her saying that, she didn't stop all day long. While I know that one day I will grow tired of the incessant Mommy mommy mommy, for right now, it is priceless. I am no longer  Mama I need something.......I am Mommy! Just plain old Mommy and I love it :)


Sunday, February 3, 2013

It has been a tough month

I have been trying and needing to do a post and let off some steam. I just don't seem to have the time, the emotional fortitude nor the words to do so. So here goes it..........
As some of you may know, my Dad has been in his second battle with prostate cancer, his third battle with the ugly beast called cancer. He never complains, never feels sorry for himself and just wants to hang out with his family and grandkids whenever he is able to. Hence, the trip down to Minneapolis for Christmas which required postponing a round of chemotherapy to do so. I think he was prepared to walk down here. We had a wonderful time. While he was here, he came down with a nasty cold and looked just awful. Everyone headed back up to Thunder Bay the Thursday after New Year's. I got off work on Friday and looked at my phone on the way out. I had two text messages from my Mom. My Dad had been taken into hospital in an ambulance. I think my heart just dropped out of my chest. He was very weak and couldn't walk. His cough was awful and he was having a hard time breathing. The EMT noticed something on his EKG in the ambulance and made the ER physician aware of it when they got to the hospital. They did the usual battery of blood work and tests and he spent almost a week in the hospital. We found out that he now has COPD and had a heart attack probably at the end of their trip down here. His hemoglobin was also really low so he ended up getting 3 units of blood while in the hospital. He gets a little better and has a little more strength every day. He is still not back to his usual self. We have no idea what caused the heart attack. Whether it was the low hemoglobin, the cold or the chemo or the combination of all three. He has resumed biweekly chemo sessions and I am just so worried about what the chemo is doing to the rest of his body. The chemo is also not doing what it should be doing. His cancer is spreading and the next chemo has just awful side effects. I am heading up to Thunder Bay next week to meet with my Dad's oncologist. I have about a billion questions for her. I don't know what else to say......I am scared and worried. He still does not complain about anything at all. I am worried about my Mom too. She has been through a lot the last few months too. It will be nice to see my Mom and Dad again. I just wish we were closer to them so I could spend every moment I had free with them. Sometimes life just seems to stand still, like when you are waiting to adopt, and sometimes it just flies by all to quickly. There is so much more that I want to say, yet, I cannot seem to find the words. My father is a great man. He has touched the lives of everyone he has ever met, and then some :)

Saturday, February 2, 2013

More stories.....

Well, here is the lost hearing aid story. Sofie had her first speech therapy session at the beginning of December. We left the clinic and went to Menards to buy some Christmas lights and then came home and had some lunch. Sofie was playing with her toys in the kitchen so I logged onto the computer to catch up on some emails. Pretty soon, Sofie came up to me and was trying to get a necklace around her neck. She had tried to do this the other day and had pulled out one of her hearing aids. When she got close enough to me, I noticed that one of her hearing aids was gone. We immediately started searching. I put the dog in her kennel just in case she got a hold of it. I looked everywhere and Miss Farty Pants was no help. I finally asked her several times where her hearing aid was. She bent down and pointed to underneath the kitchen cabinet. I didn't panic at all, no big deal, until I reached under the cabinet and there was a gap between the baseboard and the cabinet. It was just big enough to fit a hearing aid :( I panicked!!!!!!! Sofie was insistent that she shoved her hearing aid up underneath the cabinet. She even showed me how she did it. Jim came home from work and we drilled a hole in the bottom of the cabinet. He was able to reach into the little space and feel around the whole cavity. NO HEARING AID......at all. I totally panicked now. She has only had them for 2 weeks and one hearing aid is around $2500!!!! I look at Sofie and ask her where it is. She shrugs her shoulders and walks away!!!!!!!!!!!! Clearly, the significance of this is lost on a toddler. I start retracing our steps throughout the day. On a whim, Jim calls Menards and sure enough someone turned in her hearing aid. Thank you so much kind soul whoever you are :) Sofie now wears straps that go around each aid and attach to her shirt. She can't lose them......hopefully! She still insists to this day that her hearing aid was under the kitchen cabinet??????????????????

Speech therapy is going fairly well. It is a long, slow process where accomplishments are measured in very tiny steps. Both of her Speech Pathologists talk to each other on the phone and make sure that they are on the same page. I am very appreciative of that. One works for the school district and the other for the ENT office so it wouldn't necessarily be like that normally. Everyone keeps telling me that Sofie will catch up and she will be fine. I know she is an amazing kid who has overcome so much already. She meets all of life's challenges head on with no fear at all. I think the only other people who get it is Jim and our Audiologist. Sofie has a huge mountain to overcome. I am not saying she won't, I am just saying it is huge. She has all the articulation problems that a cleft kiddo has, but, she has also had auditory deprivation for almost 3 years. She not only has to learn how to speak and how to form words and sounds, she also has to learn to listen. She has no idea what sound a kitten makes or a dog or a car. She has probably never truly heard these sounds and therefore cannot associate these sounds with a particular object. Our Deaf and Hard of Hearing teacher is wonderful. She gives me all kinds of hints and assistance on how to help Sofie. I truly don't know what I would do without her. She just gets all the problems that Sofie faces and has wonderful ideas on how to help her overcome them. All of her therapists are also very adaptable. They have all decided that instead of just teaching Sofie how to say certain words and sounds, they would help her learn words that she would use in everyday life first and then worry about the traditional teaching pattern that you would normally follow later. They are a wonderful group of people and they have all been very helpful and have guided us at a time where we feel like we have no idea what we are doing. I would be lost without them :)