Who am I mad at?

We  finally got a follow up appointment today for Alex's feet.  He hasn't been seen in 3 months because of a referral screw up. 

His appointment today started out badly, I signed him in and they wondered why we were there.  Apparently a different patients name was put in our spot and then the therapist who always sees him was out due to a family emergency. 

So here I am ticked about referrals, not being on the books and being seen by someone who has never seen Alex before except to observe his tenotomy back in August.  And I'm pretty ticked at myself for letting insurance dictate the care of my son, I should have been way more aggressive in getting him in sooner.

So his right foot is looking great, no concerns there.  His left foot (which has always been worse) not so great.  His flexibility is pretty good but the bony part of his heel is not where it's supposed to be, it's about an inch above where it should be.  So his heel is basically mushy fat.  The therapist we saw was very helpful and gave us more stretches to do with him, found out that we should have been doing them all along which wasn't really relayed to us by others.  Nice.  Anyway, right now we're going to put him back in the brace about 19 hours a day, really stretch that left heel down and pray that works. 

All in all, the kid has done amazingly well as you can see in these pics.  These were taken before any casting was done.

After 4 months of casting, a tenotomy and bracing (bar bar to Alex :-), here are his adorable feet now!

So I suppose it's ok to be mad at everyone involved, especially myself, but look at those feet!  It could be so much worse and I can put up with more brace time, it will help keep him out of everything :-) 

Such Big Boys...

We got together with a family from our travel group yesterday.  Alex and Ty spent the first year of their lives together in the LOCC, Luohe.  Here's what they looked like almost a year ago:

And here they were last night

Tell me these kids aren't adorable!!!

So Tired...

I will never again brag about how well my kids sleep!  My little man has always been an early riser, 6ish.  But he'd lay in his crib and just chat with himself quietly.  Now he wakes up at midnight or 3, mostly 5 and it's not a quiet chatting anymore.  It's a lot of moaning with screaming sprinkled in.

Maaamaaa
Daadaaaaaa
Booooogerrrrs
Blaaaaaaanket
Maaaamaaaaaa, uuuuuupeeeee

We usually break down and check on him when the moaning about boogers start.  So we lay him back down and the screaming starts, and he's not a quiet child.  If he's being held, he's a happy camper and he falls back asleep.  Lay him down and it starts all over, this happens at nap time too.  So not only is he not sleeping, neither are James and I. 

About 10 months after we came home with Syd, she did the same thing but only at bed time.  We tried letting her scream it out and finally figured out that if we're in the room with her, she would calm down.  So we started out sitting next to her on the floor so she could see us through the slats.  We'd think she was asleep and leave, 2 seconds later the screaming would start again.  We took turns laying on the floor next to the crib for however long it took for her to fall asleep and crawl out of the room trying to avoid all the squeaks in the floor.  You never know how squeaky the floor is until you really don't want it to squeak!  After 2 months of this, she finally started falling asleep on her own again and to this day, sleeps like a rock through all the moaning and screaming.

So maybe it's a turning 2 thing, the not sleeping, but this time I have an air mattress next to Alex's crib for the naps I so need and so we have somewhere relatively comfy to lay on while he goes through this phase.  And it is a phase--I refuse to believe that this will turn into a long term sleep issue :-)

Snow Day

More CNY fun!

Our agency had a CNY celebration today, the kids had a lot of fun.  Alex liked all the music and dancing, he kept yelling "HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY!" and clapping his little hands.

Gung Hay Fat Choy

Happy New Year-The Year of the Rabbit!  This year kind of got away from me and we haven't really done anything at home, we at least usually do some crafts but our birthdays kept me busy.  We are going to a CNY celebration done by our adoption agency on Saturday and we're all looking forward to that.

Every year since Syd has been in preschool, I've talked to her class about CNY.  I got to talk to both second grade classes today about what CNY is and how it is celebrated.  I told them about the animals in the zodiac and about all the fireworks we saw in China last year during the Lantern Festival, which led us to the craft. 

This is only one of the classes, but the kids had a lot of fun making the lanterns and then asking questions about China.  The kids were curious about Syd's silk shirt so she explained how we went to a silk factory in Beijing and saw the silk being made.  They had lots of questions about what we did in China last year and all the different things we saw and of course "How did you get Alex?".  Lots of paper work, we told them :-)

Syd was what you call a velcro baby, until she was 4 or so.  Super clingy, super shy, never would talk in front of large groups or people she wasn't familiar with.  She wouldn't try anything new unless we were right there with her.  Hated, hated, hated talking about herself or hearing anyone give her any kind of compliment, even from her family (including her parents).  Today she stood in front of 54 other kids answered questions and explained what it was like in China without any help from me.  I really never thought she would be comfortable speaking in front of groups but she was fantastic today!  She is proud of her birth country and I am so very proud of her.

Happy Birthday, Baby!

Guess who turned 8 today?  She woke up at 4:47 this morning and was good enough not to come get me until 6:20.  We got her new roller blades so she can play hockey outside and some more Ben 10 stuff.

Today was also her 2nd grade assembly, they sang a bunch of songs about bugs and it was super cute!  She was excited that she made it to this one, we were in China for her 1st grade assembly.

Syd had a hockey tournament this past weekend and her team won a hard earned gold medal.  She was goalie for 2 of the games and stopped about 15-20 goals per game!  She kicked some serious bootie!!!  Her last game went into OT and there were a lot of excited parents when we scored the winning goal.  Too much fun :-)