Recuperating Rex-Style

Yesterday morning it got eerily quiet in the playroom, so I went and checked on my little guy. Here's what I found. Apparently my child has his own ideas about recovering from surgery.

Rex - Seven Weeks Home

Today marks seven weeks home and nine weeks out of the orphanage for Rex. The main event of these last 14 days has been Rex’s successful palate repair on 9/12. The surgeon did a beautiful job and Rex had a very easy recovery. Rex also had tubes placed into his ears and a hearing test is scheduled for 10/15, so we will finally find out if and/or how much our little guy can hear. Our main concern/struggle now that we are home from the hospital is to keep Rex hydrated on soupy and liquid foods without allowing any utensils into his mouth for ten days as well as to keep him happy wearing arm restraints for a week.

Waking up in PACU:

We are doing lots and lots of sensory activities with Rex, including bouncing on an exercise ball, moving him in a sheet swing (both of which he loves), therapeutic brushing, deep tissue massage, joint compressions, etc. We have also introduced a visual language board which we hope will eventually help Rex communicate his needs to us. For now he is beginning to sign a little bit (this morning he signed music over and over when the songs from his toy stopped) and he has added the word neh (no) to his spoken repertoire that previously only consisted of his Southern hi. We continue to work on fine and gross motor skills as well. Rex now climbs our fourteen stairs on all fours (even in arm restraints); he can push buttons with an isolated index finger or thumb, and he can put a fork loaded with food into his mouth unassisted. It was bad timing for the latter skill as he learned it only a few days before his surgery and now we cannot allow him to self-feed for a while.

Rex loves to play with doors. When a door closes, he needs our help to re-open it, so he comes to where we are, takes our hands and leads us to the door. Then he places our hands directly on the door handle to indicate that he would like it to be opened. He understands very well what needs to be done and I love that he now purposefully seeks out our assistance. He is also using the same method now to ask us to get certain toys for him or to follow routines that he recognizes at home. For example, in the evening when we go upstairs, he indicates to Craig that it’s time for daddy to go into the shower by touching the shower door. Rex is also very determined to reach things on the countertops in the kitchen, so my solution has been to keep the edges clear. Well, he has decided to outsmart me and is now using tools to swipe for things he wants. Also, when he wants to get to objects on the floor from which we are trying to keep him, he sweetly takes our hands and walks us a few steps away, then lets go of our hands and tries to run past us. The little guy definitely has strategies!

We (or I should say Craig) have also discovered that Rex has a heightened sensitivity to light which explains why he was not able to nap in his orphanage room with a southeastern exposure nor in our home which is flooded with natural light. He sleeps great at night, but he just couldn’t keep asleep during the day. In an act of creative parenting, we have set up a little cot for two in our walk-in closet where one of us naps with Rex now every day. It’s pitch black in there and he gets easily a 90 minute nap each afternoon now if not more. Guess who else is happy to get some daily post-lunch rest?

We are all waiting for October 3 to roll around, so we can celebrate sister’s official joining of our family. We are just so excited for her homecoming!

After The Game

The Colts lost yesterday. My guys were clearly distraught by this outcome:

I don't care about football, but I love, love, love seeing them together.

Change Is In The Air

Tomorrow is the day of Rex’s first cleft palate repair. As any parent, I am nervous about him being away from me in surgery and under general anesthesia. I am anxious about his level of pain after the procedure and about how he will recover. But a part of me is also feeling sentimental. Closing Rex’s palate means that we are taking away another little piece of who he is, another tiny bit of his history. I know what we are doing is for the greater good in his life, but my heart still hurts because progress has to come with yet another loss for him.

I will miss Rex’s hazardous food sneezes at mealtimes and I will miss his vigorous digging for leftovers which will be just plain old nose-picking after the surgery. I will miss the way his voice sounds and the constant stream of drool from his mouth. I don’t even remember what it feels like not to have my own shirt drenched in toddler spit all day long. And there’s never been a morning when I have lifted him out of his crib and not found parts of last night’s dinner on the sheet.

I was sharing these feelings with a good friend of mine and she pointed out that American thinking is frequently about fixing things and making them perfect, but that my perspective on the surgery is more along the lines of preserving and making whole the little person entrusted to me. In my eyes, Rex is already perfect. I know he needs this repair and I cannot wait to see what it will do for his development. But I do also grieve this loss from which I cannot protect him and, to some extent, the impending change in this wondrous little creation I am blessed to call my son.

Court Date For Sister

We just got word that court for our adoption of Rex's little sister has been scheduled for October 3. Yippeee! After a journey of almost three years, our family will be home together for the 2011 holidays.

End Of Summer Happenings

Homemade salsa and pesto with goodness from our garden and the farmer's market:

Our nephew Michael’s Schultuete, a German tradition for the first day of first grade handmade by Aunt Bibinan:

Inside a Schueltuete are usually some school supplies and some fun gifts. For the latter, I made Michael this shirt in his school colors with a secret message hidden under the front seam. I told him if he ever feels lonely or scared, all the has to do is look under the seam of his shirt and know that I love him:

Cousins showering us with treats:

Rex's first campfire:

Rex - Five Weeks Home

Yesterday marked five weeks home and seven weeks out of the orphanage for Rex. Oh, how much has happened! First of all, the biggest change is that the rages are gone. He may throw a good tantrum once in a while, but there is no more crazy, auto-aggressive raging. The improvement was brought about by us using a new strategy based on the book Holding Time which I recommend as reading for everyone. We now hold Rex several times a day, sometimes just a few minutes, sometimes closer to an hour. It has made our bond so much stronger and the difference in his outlook overall is so incredible.

We also had a couple of firsts these last two weeks: Rex is beginning to climb the bottom stairs, he occasionally sits in a shopping cart, he can squat without support now, and he stands in the bathtub unassisted and endures the soap and rinse down. Today he climbed onto the couch by himself for the first time. He is also beginning to put things in rather than just take them out. He is trying his hands, literally, at waving and clapping and we think he says hi which sounds very Southern, more like “haaahhh.” We are so thrilled to see him gain new skills. Rex attended his first picnic and his first wedding reception and did well at both. His self-regulating mechanisms are definitely improving.

Rex has also become more picky with his eating. If we'd let him, I think he would live off bread, cheese and yogurt. He also is increasingly rejecting mashed foods and wants to eat solids from our plates. It’ll be hard to keep him fed for two weeks after his surgery as he will have to be basically on soupy liquids. As I mentioned before, Rex is not very interested in fresh fruit, but he will eat it pureed and preferably stirred into another food, such as yogurt or oatmeal. When we first got him, Rex was eating sliced banana because he knew it from the orphanage, but it appears now that he actually doesn’t like it very much or has just had enough of it. He will not even eat the oatmeal with banana chunks anymore. He will not go near fresh watermelon (even though it is an Armenian summer staple) or grapes or diced apples yet.

Rex’s bloodwork from the International Adoption Center has come back and it looks really good. We found out he already had the chicken pox, but has no blood diseases and has never had any. His thyroid function may by a teensy bit low, so they want to re-test just to make sure the reading wasn’t off. He doesn’t have lead poisoning either. He has some great immunizations from Armenia, but will need a few boosters and also some initial shots that are not part of the Armenian immunization schedule. We will take our time and do these immunizations as we see fit. It doesn’t all have to happen in the same day. Unfortunately, Rex’s genetic test results have revealed that he suffers from a rare chromosomal abnormality (about 1 in 20,000 births) which will likely result in pervasive developmental effects on him as well as impact the possibilities for his entire life. We continue to be committed to ensuring his health and happiness as well as to helping him achieve his fullest potential. He is our pride and joy and we were meant for each other.