thankful

Taking a little break from blogging these days, but thinking a lot about being thankful. Our one year "Hannahversary" is drawing near. Thankful that Hannah can walk... and walks quickly when she has somewhere she wants to go. New words and understandings are revealed to us every day. The physical therapist is ready to discharge Hannah from First Steps. The speech therapist thinks that she's almost there, but would like to see her use some more action words such as "go" before Hannah is discharged.

I found my dream house for sale this week listed for 60K less than what someone built it for three years ago, and then the previous owners put a lot of bling into the house after it was built. Finished basement, custom blinds, bar in the basement, built in entertainment center, office with built in cabinetry all around the room, hardwood and tile flooring, and a new wooden swing set, slide, and sandbox for Hannah. We looked at it, loved it... and then did the math. Our saving the last few years paid off college loans and adoption related expenses. We should follow the original plan and save for a few more years before pursuing the dream home, but it is heartbreaking to let go of such a good deal, interest rates are still low, and it is exactly what we want. I'm trying to shake off "house fever" and work on just being thankful for what we have... but I still have that nagging feeling in my gut that we should be jumping at this opportunity.

We went for a walk in the park this afternoon after brunch. After picking up a leaf for each hand, Hannah did really well walking down the trail all by herself. Hidden roots in the leaves caused a few face plants, but she quickly picked herself "bup" and and kept on going.

My Jedi Masters

We trick or treated with Hannah for the first time tonight. Our little Yoda liked riding on Luke's shoulders and waving her lightsaber around. Hannah can't say trick or treat yet, but we'd prompt her to say "please" at neighbor's doors and wave bye-bye when we left. We went to Nana and Papa's house to enjoy a few of the treats. Hannah was very eager to use her words "more" and "please" for bites of a Kit-Kat. Towards the end of the night she put candy in the bags of a few trick or treaters.

I couldn't get Hannah to look at the camera tonight. She's too busy using the force and looking at trees, leaves, birds, kids, cars, etc etc etc.

Happy Halloween

She looks pretty pleased with herself,
doesn't she? And she should be!!!

Today we went to the peds office for Hannah's second flu shot. No fun, as she saw the syringe and knew what was happening as Mama pulled down her pants so the nurse could put the shot in her thigh. Dada held the top half and Mama held down Hannah's bottom half. Interestingly, she screamed more when the nurse was putting on the band-aid then when she got the shot. After the band-aid was applied Dada held her and Mama signed "all done" and said all done several times. Hannah broke out a smile and signed "all done" and the crying stopped immediately.

Today our speech therapist was very pleased with how far Hannah's vocabulary has come in a short period of time. New words this week are please "peas", up "bup", door, more, juice "oooce", and others that I can't remember right now. Seems like she'll repeat new words back to us for about a week or two before she uses them independently. Hannah is quickly learning that Mama gives her what she wants when she says "please," and she's stringing "more please" together in order to score yummy treats. She likes the results of "up" because we'll quickly help her climb into the chair she wants to sit in, or up on the couch, or when she wants to be held. This next week we're working on open, close, on, and off.

Until we had this experience with Hannah, I would have imagined that physical therapy and speech therapy was about the therapist teaching the children new skills. For us... the sessions have mostly been about the therapist showing US how to engage our child to encourage her to try new words, use a specific kind of play to specific muscles, and a lot of praise to encourage Hannah to keep going.

Last week Hannah got to touch bubbles that she speech therapist blew into the air. She'd blow more bubbles when Hannah attempted to say "bubbles." This week Hannah knows what the bubble container looks like. She used her words "more," "bubbles," and "please" several times to ask the speech therapist to blow more. Then the speech therapist closed the bubble container and encouraged Hannah to mimic the word "open." When Hannah said something that kinda sounds like open, the speech therapist opened the bubbles container and blew some more, closed the container, and started all over again. Participating in this is so exciting now that she uses new words all the time and thinks it's such a fun game.

This "pumpkin booty" shot is for Andrea, the Happy Hippy. :)

Tea, anyone?

For anyone out there who loves Tea Collection, coupon code "fall15" scores you 15% off. Even Kevin comments that he likes Hannah in the "daily tea" line as they are made well, fit Hannah's petite frame like they were tailored just for her, and the styling is Asian inspired. There are some short sleeve dresses on sale, so the 15% off helps you score a super deal. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

redirect: an adoption story in photographs

I'd like to redirect you to an adoption story in photographs. Tisra and her husband are in India adopting their daughter Dorothy. Tisra is an artist and is blessed with many creative friends. One of those creative friends is Jess, a professional photographer, that has come along with them. Jess has been posting photographs on her blog at Speckled Bird Art that have captured the anticipation, the joy, and the frustrations that come a long with international adoption. I've linked to the posts with the tag adoption. Be sure to click on so you can see the amazing photography.

Halloween party

We went to a little Halloween party tonight hosted by two nerds (those pocket protector wearing parents are lucky that I didn't take their photos), Cleopatra, Cinderella, an elephant, and a Ninja.

Updated 10/25/09 at 10pm: The nerds proudly blogged HERE with a photo of their costumes! Love it!

My little Jedi master had to draw out her weapon.

Ninjas are dangerous, and Hannah defended her parents against an attack.

(photo credit to Amy - thanks!!!)

We gave the ninja, Cinderella, and Cleopatra peace offerings of giant disgusting gummy worms, centipedes, and octapus tentacles. These treats were brought to the party to protect us from tricks. Unfortunately, I don't think that the mother (yes, the nerdy one) of Cleopatra, the ninja, Cinderella, and the grunting elephant was very amused by the disgusting treat that her children loved. Threats have been made. I fear revenge is near in the form of a small but very loud and annoying Christmas present for Yoda.

scary

We went outside this afternoon right before naptime to take a few photos with Hannah's beloved pumpkins that she calls "ballz." Of course, it started raining again as soon as I took my lens cap off. I got one good shot in before we had to go back inside.


While waiting for Hannah to decide for herself to follow us back inside, something really frightened her. There was lots of frantic scared crying. I ran back around the corner to see what had her all worked up with panic on her face...



and what did I find?



Apparently worms that wiggle ever so s.l.o.w.l.y are horrifying. How scary!!! She's not afraid of flies, of beetles, or scary looking monsters. But... the sight of a wiggly worm caused panic. Go figure.

Hannah, let's make a deal. You take care of the spiders, and I'll take care of the worms. Sound good?

flying bug

This one's dedicated to Lora... just to get a rise out of her. :)
Our flying bug is 21 months old today.

Taiwan's birth rate and other statistics

This article in the Taiwan News has me thinking a little bit tonight. The article mostly focuses on Taiwan's declining birth rate, but some stats at the end of the article have the gears of my brain spinning. "In terms of marital status, 132,450 newborns, or 96 percent of the total, were born to married couples, while 5,489 or 3.98 percent were born out of wedlock, and 28, or 0.02 percent, were deserted babies or orphans. Taitung County in eastern Taiwan had the highest number of illegitimate babies, followed by neighboring Hualien County and then Keelung City. The number of babies born out of wedlock marked a 0.22 percent decrease from the 2008 level, but an increase of 1.06 percent from 1997, according to MOI tallies."

So... 3.98 percent of babies in the first 9 months of 2009 were born out of wedlock and 0.02 percent were deserted. Let's just round that up to say that 4 percent of babies in Taiwan were born to unmarried mothers this year. I look around me, and I see unmarried pregnant women everywhere. What are the statistics in the US?

The CDC National Center for Health Statistics reports that 4 out of 10 births in 2007 were to unmarried mothers, with 6 out of 10 births to women ages 20-24 were among unmarried women. The press release goes on to list statistics from other countries... which are interesting to look at as well.

Thinking tonight about how it would feel to be an unmarried young women in Taiwan, choosing to continue a pregnancy, knowing that I'm very much in the minority.

W-sitting revisited

This post is the sequel to a previous post on 10/8/09. If you're new here, make sure you've read that one first.

Today the physical therapist said that Hannah has made great improvement in strengthening her core muscles. By using the prescribed exercises, the physical therapist expects a lot of improvement very soon, and doesn't expect that she'll need to continue physical therapy for very long. Our girl's on the right track. Yay! We can tell she's made great strides as well. Hannah prefers to walk all of the time and is picking up her feet, falling less often, and has better balance control. This week she walked down our sloped driveway without falling for the first time. Yay! We've still got lots of skills to work on, but we're on track.

The physical therapist shared with us a journal article on W-sitting published in Advance, a physical therapy news magazine. I found the full text of the article online here. If you have an interest in W-sitting, this is the best and most complete article I have read on the subject.

Exercises:
1) Sitting on a large ball to encourage trunk control. Unfortunately, Hannah hates this and cries when we sit her on top of the large exercise ball. She does better when sitting on top of a kick ball.
2) Sitting Straddling Leg to encourage trunk control. You tilt the child sideways by rolling your leg and tilting the child's pelvis. The child is to curve her trunk upward and maintain the head upright. Hannah's much more comfortable sitting on our leg with this tilt exercise.
3) Half kneeling. Encourage child to play kneeling with one knee down and the other leg with the foot flat on the floor. Position for 30-60 seconds and repeat with the other leg.
4) Stepping up and down on a curb. Start with a raised surface that is only 1-2 inches high, then moving on to something higher as the child grows. Stepping up onto Kevin's Wii fit is just the right height for Hannah right now.
5) Place obstacles around the child approximately two feet apart (soft cushions, telephone book, soft toys, etc) and encourage the child to walk around, over and step on the objects. No problem! We've got plenty of kid-friendly clutter to throw around on the floor, Ms. Physical Therapist!
6) Learning to walk backwards or to kick. Hannah can't do these activities yet. The physical therapist encouraged us to try to get Hannah kick some of her beloved balls and to introduce a pull toy. Pull toys encourage children to walk backwards because they want to watch it move as they pull the toy. Hummm... I have a feeling I'll be checking out pull toys at Target before the end of the week.

Our daughter came to us a modified W-sitter (one foot behind her and one leg straight out) with poor muscle control, and we didn't know this was a bad thing. So... now you know. No W-sitting allowed. Ever.

the tale of two costumes

Choosing a first Halloween costume for Hannah was really hard. I looked at well over a hundred photos online and racks of costumes in stores looking for the right one. Late one night, my dad and I even instant messaged eachother back and forth with costume suggestions. I liked flower pots, lobsters, mice, ducks, bumblebees, pirates, Elvis, lambs, and the list goes on and on. At the time of this debate, Hannah wasn't walking steadily... and we figured that she'd need to be carried. We decided that Hannah and Dada needed to be costumed as a pair. So... this is what we came up with!



I know, my little Yoda is a lot cuter than the real thing. This Jedi master really likes running around with her lightsaber. Looking forward to having both of my Jedis in costume together!

Nana wasn't at all excited about the thought of her cute little granddaughter costumed as a little ugly green creature. I decided that we needed keep Nana happy and find an alternate costume for trick or treating at Nana's house. And I LOVE costumes... so I didn't need any more encouragement to find Hannah an alternate that Nana would like.



I love this time of year. Love it.