Our Journey to Norah...

Happy Hannukah!

2008-12-23T16:42:00.000-06:00

Look at my big girl lighting the candles!! Ok, not really, this pic makes her look closer than than she really was.

That would be a reindeer bath towel.

My Bucket Head

2008-12-20T17:03:00.000-06:00

December began with teething, teething and more teething. It happened at a fun time too, right when we were getting rid of her morning bottle and transitioning her to a new class room at school. For a good 2 weeks we had a very cranky whiny sleeped deprived baby. In the 1 year old classroom they eat at little tables and sleep on cots on the floor. What I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall in there, especially when she started this. And we were amazed, she did it. She sat at the table and ate her food and started napping my longer than she was in the cribs in the infant room. She was not happy about it for a few weeks, missing her teachers and her friends but when I dropped her off the other day she could not get rid of me quick enough. They are doing so many art projects, she probably brought 8 or so home around x-mas and lots of reading signing, and dancing. Her signing really picked up, along with her vocabulary. She has probably said at least 1 new word every day since early December. I know, my baby is a genius. ;-)

So here is Ms. Bucket Head at 16 months having a little fun in the kitchen while mommy tries to cook dinner....

Hello to all my fans out there!

Then Norah helped put up the x-mas tree. She got really into it, deep in concentration with her daddy. And when it was done she said "tree".

Norah's present from her Granny Janny and Papa NeNe arrived early. We were going to wait until Hannkah (yes, we celebrate both!) but the box was taking up too much space.

Doesn't she look so precious in her chair? We also went to my sister's house for dinner and so they could give Norah a Hannukah present before they moved out of state. She got to seek and destroy non-baby proofed territory.

Daddy and cousin Ziggy.

Look mom, cables and buttons!!

Munchin on a gram cracker.

Surgery #3. Thanksgiving. Etc.

2008-12-01T16:30:00.000-06:00

November kicked off with Norah, 15 months old, and learning to eat candy. One might think... why would that be a good thing? Well, it isn't! But we learned that she will eat fruit flavored things, even if she will not touch actual fruit or juice. Here she is raiding the Halloween leftovers...

Caught in the act!Then pissed when I won't open them for her.

Then on 11/13 she had her 3rd surgery, to separate the fingers on her left hand. All went really well and we did not have to do the daily bandage changes this time around. After the required 11 days of surgical wrap she was free to do as she pleased which was a nice break for everyone.

This time she was a little more aware of what was going on so we opted for the happy juice. She went bonkers by the time we got to the pre-op room and was acting like a complete looney toon.

Meeting with the anesthesiologist again. Yes, she deals with needles.

And this is the front view of her face.... a very very stoned baby.

Then in post-op recovery with mommy.

A little over week later she was back to her happy self.
Thanksgiving was spent with the family of Norah's Aunt Liz & Uncle Mikey, close friends that I went to school with. I was bad with the camera that night and did not take many pics or not many good ones at least. The food was good and we had a fun time playing with Liz's dad on the floor... someone is ready for his own grandaugters to be born! Then at the end of Nov. we did a picture session for Norah's first x-mas card. That was challenging, I must say. We moved all over the house and even tried bribery.... and lo an behold, chocolate got a smile.

I shall not be ashamed that I used bribery... or that my baby loves chocolate. A little treat now and then never killed anyone...Tada! Final photo for those of you that have not already seen this...

A day at the park

2008-11-09T08:29:00.012-06:00

Norah, blubbles, park. I am tired. This is my 9th post today. I just can't keep up with the blog. Anyone know of a site that lets you upload more than 5 photos at a time and does not put 40 lines of blank space between each one?

Norah is 15 months now and very busy. She is full on walking all over the place and getting into everything. The dishwasher, the trash, the fridge, the cat food (yeah, she ate that a few times last week) I have to keep a constant eye on her. She throws huge temper tantrums at a whim and then wants snuggles and kisses the next minute. Our most recent victory included getting her to wear and walk in shoes. Woo hoo! Okay, the little things make us happy. It is still amazing to hear her giggling and gibbering around the house. Barnabas and I appreciate every minute of it even if we don't love the screaming. She has surgery #3 this Thursday the 13th to separate the fingers on her left hand. We are anticipating it to go smoothly and for it to be outpatient again.

Adoption #2 is hitting the usual speed bumps. Nothing really exciting to report. We are still trying to get our dossier to ET by years end so that our official wait can start for Norah's sissy.

My favorite pic this month. =) Now it is freezing outside so it will be a while before I can go crazy with the camera again.

Ducks by our house.

Duck butt!

Our friends, the Misfits.

Halloween

2008-11-09T08:16:00.006-06:00

This was the best face she has ever made when I took the camera out. She loves playing with her beads every morning before school. My fairie princess. After 30 minutes of wrestling her into the costume during a kicking, screaming fit. Ahhhh, my little angel. This is Norah's second costume. I made the mistake of going to Gymboree on Halloween day and there was a clearance sale. Enough said.

She didn't really get the concept this year nor did she want to eat any candy. But she did like the mini pretzels!

Cheeks stuffed with pretzel and a glow stick!

Fun at the Pumpkin Patch

2008-11-08T13:37:00.005-06:00

Pumpkin patch part 2 with the neighbors.
The boys and Norah on the hay pyramid.

Running with daddy.

She really did not want anything to do with the pumpkins.

A corn stalk works as a good wand.

I just could not get that shot that I wanted. I blame it all on Lauren & River.

Pumpkin carving. Ours was so bad that I did not even take a picture of it this year. Yep, that bad. If you want a cool pumpkin you can go look at Stacie's Obama pumpkin.

Norah's butt pumpkin... yeah, I did it. No, she was not thrilled with this. But come on, it's cute.

Florida Part 4

2008-11-08T09:51:00.006-06:00

On this day we went to Mote Aquarium. Norah loves watching the fish and banging on aquariums. Not really sure the fish love her!Lion fish.

Did anyone know fish eat broccoli?

Pretty.

I see Nemo!

I want to keep him.

Granny Janny bought her Max the Minnow with the crazy eyes. She wanted us to read it to her a dozen times.

We were running in the wind to try to get a smile out of her.

Deep in thought.

Petting sea urchins.

This tank of fish were right across from the Giant Dead Squid exhibit which really freaked Barnabas out. It was like a huge squid in a coffin.. and usually I am the one with squid phobias.

Most of the large animals at the aquarium were rescues. One of these turtles was blind.
And a manatee that had gotten hit by a boat.

And then back home at the pool. I have no explanation for this picture.

Norah and Granny Janny and Great Grandma Katie.

Florida Part 3

2008-11-08T09:29:00.007-06:00

Norah's first trip to the beach. She did not really know what to make of the sand. She was pretty pissed at it at first that she could not get it off her hands. But there was no sand eating so that was good.

Playing on the beach. Granny Janny had the beach toys covered too.

This was right before she started screaming to be picked up.

And there is my girl. We have 10 Million photos with this look. Typical Norah.

Oh... there it is again.
Playing with Granny Janny and a boat.

Beau Bird. (Family joke).

Turtle in my parents's yard.

And back in the pool at home.
Back with Papa Ne Ne again.

These are my 3 favorite pictures from the whole trip.

How cute is she?!?!

My grandma Katie.
At the pier, although it was too dark to see much of anything by the time we finished dinner.

Florida Part 2

2008-11-08T09:21:00.005-06:00

Papa Ne Ne showing Norah how to blow bubbles.

She is thinking about it here.

Florida Part 1

2008-11-08T08:38:00.010-06:00

Late October we had our first family trip together to Florida to visit my parents and grandmother. Norah had been taking a few steps here and there before the trip but while we were in FL she took off and really started walked. With the walking came a bunch of words... duck, look, book, doll, turtle, dog. It was really crazy. She did great on the plane rides but ended up with a mild ear infection while we were there and what I think was some viral bug. She ran a temp of 103 and was whinning for days. We still managed to have a great time, go lots of places
and take tons of pics.

Here is the crazy "vagabond" as daddy called her the night before the trip. She is still only napping about 30 minutes at day care so she either comes home a complete psycho or delusionally giddy.

Her most recent fishy face. She takes little quick breaths when she does this.

And with the drool...

And now we are in Florida. Papa Ne Ne snatched her up as soon as we got to their house and they were pratically glued together for the entire week. Check out the toys...

And more toys... a whole living room full of toys... baby was in heaven.And we found out that she CAN sleep somewhere other than her crib! The first morning she was in a great mood and so excited to play with all of the new toys and rip apart my mom's plants.And explore outside, with the fishy face...
Meeting great grandma Katie and playing peek a boo. And then pool time!! She loved the water. She got really excited whenever we brought out her swimsuits.
And of course we needed pool toys.

It was totally amazing that she actally left the sunglasses and hat on. And of course super cute.

Afternoon at Eckerts

2008-10-12T14:01:00.001-05:00

On September 12th we picked up my mom and sister and headed to Eckerts for some fun with some of the Ethiopian families around STL. It was a gorgeous day and Eckerts was packed. We hung out and ate some yummy turkey legs, saw lots of animals, said hi to the other kiddos. We never did make to the pumpkin patch. It was just too crazy.

Norah loves corn!!

Llama llama mad at momma... or alpaca ... whatever...

Norah watched Granny Janny feed the goats. We love goats.

Daddy and Norah being silly.

Peek-a-boo...

Sharing a chocolate and cherry concrete with daddy...

Asleep on her flower. All worn out after a long day!

Halloween Photo Session

2008-10-11T10:10:00.000-05:00

I ran into an old friend from high school at our subdivision picnic in early September. She is starting up a photography business and volunteered to do a free session with Norah to use in her portfolio. I love the collage below. This was Norah in her original Halloween costume.

Beating the window with my glass beaded corn.

The poster below is in celebration of our 1 year anniversary of Norah's referral. I cannot believe that she has been a part of our lives for over a year and yet it feels like she has always been here. I could not imagine life without her. She is my heart.

13 Months & Baby #2!

2008-09-28T08:25:00.011-05:00

Well, this month just flew by and I have a feeling the rest of the year is going to be the same. It is amazing how busy weekends get when you have a baby. There are all sort of baby related things to do: play dates, play groups, gatherings, park time, blogging, scrap booking... it just goes on and on. Here are a few of the things we have been up to this month.

A play date with Yael. This kid is smart! She knows a billion words and at 20 months has already started potty training. If only we can get so lucky with Norah.

Look at that face. Yael and Norah sitting on Alana's lap. Yael was naming all of Norah's body parts. Norah did not know what to make of it. Norah is still only saying a few things in the midst of her gibberish. Mama, Dada, Baba, Hi, Bye bye, uh-oh and every now and then we think we hear other words like Aiden (cat and cousin), Elmo and we swear she said macaroni this week.

Then she gestured back? Maybe?
Cute girls.
Then on the 8th Norah and I got to spend the day together. She had a follow-up for her hand surgery at Shriner's. Everything went perfectly and they said scarring is minimal. Her second hand surgery is scheduled for Nov. 13th. After the appt. we stopped by Panera and got a chocolate chip bagel. It is sad but Norah now knows the BAG that the bagels come in. She begs immediately and starts shrieking. She LOVES bagels. Now if we could just get her to eat meat...

Please feed me?

After a little bagel she was being super cute.

Then we had some playtime with daddy outside while enjoying a break from the rail brought in by hurricane Ike. This was just a really windy day.
Playing with grass and leaves.
She LOVES her slide. There is that tongue again.
Weeeeeeeeeeeee....

Not willing to part with the leaf.

Testing the wind with her tongue?

Later that week we had another parents as teachers appt. They were asking all of the things she can do so that they can plot her on a graph. She performs to a T during these appointments doing things we did not even know she can do. Then there is the list of things we tell her that she isn't doing yet and lo and behold she does them the next day. On the 13th Norah took her first tentative step. She is now up to 5 or 6 steps at a time and only between us. When she gets towards the end she LUNGES forward and laughs. You have to catch her quick or she will fall on her face. She walks like mini Frankenstein. Super cute. My guess is that in this time next month she will be walking all over the place. Get ready Granny Janny and Papa NeNe!!

On the 14th we attended a subdivision picnic and met several nice families with small children in the neighborhood including a girl that I graduated high school with. Small world!

Outside the picnic playing with flowers.
And trying to eat them.
With Dada.

Playing peek-a-boo.

Mama telling Norah secrets.
Trying to get her to smell the flowers.
So other than that, Norah's car seat is now turned around forward facing and I finally started scrap booking which is very time consuming. I was up until 11:15pm last night messing around with it. Norah went to the doctor on Thursday for 3 more shots and screamed bloody murder until they gave her 2 cookies. That stopped the tears immediately. She is now 19 lbs 13 oz (20%tile), 29 1/4 in (30%tile) and her head circumference is 45 cm (45%tile).

And in other news we have officially began our 2nd adoption. We switched agencies and are updating our home study docs. We will be going to Ethiopia this time and have requested another infant girl. I have not given up my dream of having a little boy, it is just temporarily on hold. We feel that having the 2 girls closer together in age will be easier as far as shared space, activities, toys, friends etc. Someday they will have a little brother and then our family will be complete!

Behind again... beware 10,000 pics ahead

2008-09-13T11:45:00.022-05:00

So here we are almost a month later as I am behind again. There just is never enough hours in the day to do everything I want or need to do and spending quality time with Norah surmounts all. So in the last month Norah has cut another tooth, is standing on her own and THIS close to walking. I almost had her taking a few steps on her own today. It won't be long now. She is yaking up a storm and talking back to me constantly. She is screeching and shrieking, wonderful habits she picked up from the other kids at daycare. She is still only saying a few words; mama, dada, uh-oh, hi and bye (on occasion) and yes or yeah. She has not started with the NOs yet, thank god. She is eating mostly table food now and is obsessed with mac'n cheese. I tried explaining that they do not eat mac'n cheese in Viet Nam so she should try other things but she won't listen to me. Pretty much all pasta is a safe bet, including rice noodles but not rice, that she spits out. Along with meat 99% of the time unless it is freshly grilled steak, no leftovers! Her school swears she eats the lunches there but won't ever touch the same things at home so who knows. Since she has not been to the doctor since the end of July we are guessing she is around 19.5-20 lbs. We would really like to know because it would be nice to turn her car seats around so we can see her. =)

So I am going to start with the most recent pics we have and move backwards to the end of July. Yes, that is bad. I didn't post pics of her actual birthday spaghetti dinner and several people asked about them. So here goes..

Starting with Norah @ 13 months

Norah can comb and/or brush her hair! She also likes to chew on her comb and the Balmex. She does this excitedly while hopping up and down on her butt.
She still loves daddy the most although mommy gets a day every now and then. We had a good day this past Monday together, that reminds me, there are MORE pictures on the camera. Ugh.
When she is happy she always sticks her tongue out. Always.
Here she is practicing standing. In the past week she has gone from only doing it a few times a day unassisted to doing it a TON. She really likes the Baby Einstein Movin' and Shakin' video we got from the Powers family for her birthday!
We can stand and clap too. Or stand an shred anytime of paper produce as there are 2 finely shredded napkins all over my floor right now.
She is clapping a ton as always and now initiating peek-a-boo.

Oh, and this lovely picture was her after she took some smashed potatoes and clapped and then flung them about. It is amazing how something can be so delicious one night and like poison the next.
Last Saturday we took Norah for her first haircut. It was getting quite long and unruly. It was also growing faster on the sides than in the middle of the back of her head. So away with the mullet and back to the baby doo. I sure hope the little curl she had is not gone forever.
She had just fallen asleep in the car when we arrived at The Hairy Hippo and was not thrilled to be set down in the Jeep, until ELMO was put on. Then she completely zoned out for the entire haircut. She loves ELMO.
How much nicer is this than trying to hold down a screaming baby?

Whatever you do, do not block ELMO.
All done, driving the Jeep. Norah had never been in a small car with a wheel before and she wanted to drive! It was so cute. I had no idea she would do that or even be interested in doing that.
Elmo was still on. And that adorable lady bug clip they put in her hair lasted all of 5 seconds.
All done. Norah is checking herself out in the mirror. And... there goes the clip.
Then we went out for Thai food which she devoured. It was then that she used a straw for the first time. As strange as it is, I was more proud of that than the hair cut! Then we went to the grocery store for some shopping. Since she had such a good time in the Jeep we put her in the big kids cart. It looked kind of funny but she had a blast. She loved facing forward in the cart. She also loved shaking this box of mac'n cheese.
Then I took it away to snap a pic of her in the cart and this is the nasty look she gave me. HEY!!!
So she got her box back. Geez already.

She is so tiny in the cart.
And of course it was such a nice day that later on we all played outside.
There is that tongue!
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee..... Hi mama.

Look I opened the door....
And escaped after dada...
She looks so tiny and cute in her jeans.... geez.

I see you rabbit.
Peek-a-boo.

Now we are going back in time a month to 8/5/08, Norah's first Birthday. She was in a great mood that morning. Eating her comb.

And happy in the evening.
Cheeeeese!
OMG, what the heck is this? So, I know it looks like a ton of spaghetti but I figured it would go all over the place and I wanted her to have a decent amount to actually eat. Now I know.
Uuuuhhhhhh.....
Tentatively tasting..,

Umm.
See that right hand about to drop a fist full on the floor?
And she knew how to suck the pasta in which was too cute. Look at those tired eyes.
Norah does not know that it isn't polite to talk with food in her mouth!
So we tried to have so chocolate ice cream for dessert. That was a no go. She screamed bloody murder and spit it out all over. What kid doesn't like chocolate ice cream?

Happy again in her spaghetti bath. I love this picture.
Clapping and splashing.

After we put her to bed with lots of hugs and kisses we went downstairs and watched the storm come in. It was very cool that evening.
Now, back in time once more to 7-29-09, MY birthday! We went to Outback and it was the best birthday ever because I finally had my baby! It was a great night. She was in a good mood and ate a whole loaf of beer bread, some steak and mashed potatoes. The waitress even saw how much she loved the bread and sent 2 whole loaves home with us!

She was being super cute all through dinner.
This smile was for Papa Nene.
The weekend between our birthday's we went out for Vietnamese food at Monsoon Bistro. That was when the raspberries started.

Then she went to the mall for the first time. She was lovin' on mom that night.
Weeeeeeeeeee.....
Chees'n again the next morning.
Big time.

Playing in bed with daddy.
I love these pictures. Look at Barn's face as she bangs on his head. =)
LOL.
And that is it. My husband is mad at me now because I just spent 3 hours editing the 10,000 pictures and getting them ready and up on the blog. I should go rotate laundry, do dishes, prep dinner, vacuume, clean the shreaded napkin, get clothes ready for charity, dust.... yeah, you get the picture!

A little pool fun

2008-08-17T17:15:00.003-05:00

Just cuteness...

Birthday Party fun!

2008-08-17T16:18:00.013-05:00

So yesterday was Norah's First Birthday party and the day was filled with much fun and excitement. As one might expect there was a lot of chaos, kids everywhere, and it went way too fast. I hardly got time to have a decent conversation with anyone or get pictures of our (adult) guests. Norah did really well with everyone holding her and had fun with all of the kids. She did not seem to care much for the cake which was a little surprising considering she loved the cupcake she had a few weeks ago. We are so glad that so many of our friends were able to make it and were so generous with gifts. Norah made out like a princess! We did not really expect that. We just wanted to celebrate our wonderful daughter who we waited so long for. And an extra special thank you to Liz and Mikey for helping set up and take pictures!! Speaking of pictures...

Handsome Micah

Stacie, Micah was a HIT!! Everyone loved him and told me for hours afterwards how adorable he was. BTW, I have your sippy cup. ;-)
Cousin Liam
Cousins Liam and Aiden covered in Cheetos.
The Birthday Girl crying....
Beautiful Mallory

So proud of her pear "cuz the trees at my house don't have pears".
Classic Liam finding the lone plane.
Super Max Power. Max was having a blast on the slide and catching some major air but we didn't get any pics of that... or of his parents...
Daddy and Norah.

Darling Greta. Greta weights about as much as Norah and she is only 3 months old. Don't you just want to smush those cheeks!
The birthday cake.
Friends Liz and Mikey.Hollie and Craig.Ashley, Greta and Jess.Karen, Chad and the backside of Gil.Aunt Lauren and the back of Gil again.Come on dad, I am naked here!
Birthday Princess.

You want me to do WHAT with this?!?
She gagged on the icing, never made it to the cake.

And icing hands right before they went in her hair. Note to other parents: Please make sure the baby is completely naked, down to the diaper before doing this and make sure there are 2 people available for the bath afterwards. Carrying a green icinged baby upstairs while wearing a dress and trying to open doors was not so much fun.

All washed up and opening presents.

Cousin Aiden showing Norah her cool new books.
Norah loves paper! She would have been happy with a stack of tissue paper and nothing else.

Norah and Shannon.
Mommy and Norah. The only pic of us together!
Friends Hollie, Craig and Shannon stayed overnight so after the party we were able to relax on our new patio (poured Friday night, nothing like last minute!)
Happy girl.
Can you spot the humming bird?

Then we went on walk to feed the ducks the leftover buns from the party.
Barnabas said we should wait until Norah is 10 before we have our second kid because it sure was nice having Shannon around playing with Norah and she had a blast too.
The perfect end to a beautiful day!

Happy 1st Birthday baby girl!

2008-08-05T06:33:00.003-05:00

I can't believe my baby is 1 today. She is getting soooo big. We are planning on doing her first spagetti dinner tonight and letting her cover herself from head to toe. I thought she would have more fun with that than if we went out somewhere. I don't know what her school does on birthday's. I hope something fun. I hate not being with her today but neither of us is able to take off work. Anyway, I better go get her dressed! More updates to come later.

We went out for Vietnamese food last weekend in early celebration. She was not in a great mood Saturday so when I asked for a cheese I got a raspberry instead.

Doctors, doctors and flowers

2008-07-27T17:37:00.012-05:00

So on Monday Norah went back to Shriner's for a post surgery follow-up. The nurse removed her bandages for the first time in 10 days. Her poor arm and hand were so dry and shriveled from being covered but her fingers looked great.

Norah was so amazed when her hand was free she just kept flipping them back and forth and staring and wiggling them all.

"Wow, a hand!!! Dad are you seeing this?"
"OMG, my THUMB!!!!"
She was soooooooo happy. She started grinning from ear to ear and clapping excitedly. She smiled at the doctor and nurses and cheesed.
Clapping and more clapping.

Her hands finally made the smacking noise she was missing so much.

Dr. Strecker gave her the A-OK and we don't have to go back for another 6 weeks. We will continue doing daily bandage changes until the scabs have healed and then we get to start on the lovely scar massage. The next surgery we were going to have on her left hand was going to be in early September but since we are going to FL in October we don't want any chance of infection that would keep her from swimming so we have agreed to postpone until early November when we are back.

"Amazing!"

Then nurse Lauren came in and showed us how to do the daily bandage changes. Norah was sooooo pissed that we bandaged her hand back up and she was no longer free. She has been doing really well this week with the changes though and practically launches her hand into the peroxide water dip. She is such a good girl.
Oh yeah, and here we go again with the table eating again.
Daddy was the recipient of this nasty look. It is good to know it is not just for me. =)

Tuesday we had our second post placement visit with our social worker and all went well. We are getting excited about starting our second adoption shortly. We will write more about that later. Then on Thursday Norah had a well visit appointment with her pediatrician. She had 4 more shots and was a real trooper. She now weighs 18 lbs 8 oz (20th percentile) and is 28 in tall (35th percentile). She will soon be transitioning to milk and sippy cups. She is right on track developmentally. Everyday we are amazed by how big she is getting and the things she is doing. She is cruising so well now and tripoding on the floor, trying to stand on her own. She will probably be walking in a month. It is just crazy. I don't want my baby to grow up!

Bed head.
Saturday we had a birthday party for a co-worker's daughter. Norah was cheesing it up again before we left. The funniest part of this cheese was that she was doing it so over the top that she kept opening her eyes just the tiniest bit to see if we were paying attention.

Norah saying hi to her day care buddy, Dylan. She tried to steal his bink 5 seconds later.
Riding the carousel. Barn was very upset at how much interest she showed in the pole as opposed to the rest of the ride. After all, it is daddy's job to keep his girl off that pole!

She also got her first taste of a chocolate cupcake (sans icing). At first she just made a funny face and slowly chewed and then leaned in and attacked it.

Yummmmmmmmmmmmm.
What cupcake?
Then on the way out I wanted to get some pics of her in the sun but again, she hates the sun and she was overtired by that point. I was a little disappointed that I didn't get "the" picture. You know the one but she was sweaty and starting to pass out and daddy was done too.

A pretty butterfly. There were a ton of them and lots of different kinds, possibly escapees from the butterfly house.
This week Norah starts back to daycare after 2.5 weeks. We are hoping that she will re-adjust quickly and accept her new teachers as her old one left while she was out. And most importantly, we hope she will SLEEP there. She has been so good about napping for the last few weeks while she was here with us. No one wants a cranky baby!

Evil Eye

2008-07-27T16:33:00.012-05:00

Again I find myself two weeks behind on posting. I just don't know where the time goes these days. So 2 weeks ago when I was off I took 1 million pictures. Norah was great for the first half of the week. She started giving high fives and kisses to both of us. She was being exceptionally cute and crazy. Maybe it was the codine, maybe the change from not being in day care. Whatever the case in the later part of the week she really began to test me and I had to really set the "no" boundary. Up until that point we would say no a few times and then remove her from the situation. All of a sudden it started clicking with her and she got M.A.D. She started giving me really dirty looks. I had to call Barnabas at work and tell him and then just to make sure he knew what I was talking about I got the camera out and snapped away.

Happy girl.
Here she is screaming some baby obscenity at me.
Tippy toes.
Okay, this is where it starts. We do not want her chewing on the coffee table anymore. It surpassed cute a month ago and became annoying. Our pet bunnies live in the basement because at some point we were sick and tired of the furniture being eaten, and since I can't put the crazy baby in the basement she must learn NOT to eat the furniture. So at this point she is being okay and just gibbering to me...
Then she tried to eat the table (I missed that part) and I said "NO".

And she started yelling more nasty sounding gibberish at me.

What a face. I really had to try hard not to laugh.
And she goes in for another bite but fakes me out.
Then, not 5 seconds later, she is all smiles.

And blowing raspberries.
And giggling at god knows what.
Mom, look how cute I am!!

And then she is back at that damn table. She somehow thinks licking it will not result in me saying NO... she was sorely mistaken.

The mother of all evil eyes. Dude, seriously? She is 11 months old!
WHY WHY WHY do you keep doing that crazy baby??
Peeking out from level 2.
Obviously still testing the boundaries.
NO NO NO NO NO

UGGGH ARRRRRRGRRRRRR UHUHUH YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

So then the next day we started out in a good mood again. I don't know if I have mentioned it on here but Norah has some weird obsession with Landon Pigg. He is a singer, not very popular, but back in March about a month after we got home from Viet Nam I downloaded his video "Falling in love at a coffee shop" onto our TIVO. Anytime I played it she would completely stop what she was doing in her Exersaucer and turn to watch the TV. She would not make a sound the entire time and go back to whatever she was doing the minute it ended. It was nice to be able to leave the room for 4 minute stretches to rotate laundry or go to the bathroom. Then it turned into a good distraction for when daddy left for work or when she was crying during a diaper change. It calmed her down immediately. Now she is obsessive about her Landon. I downloaded a second video a few weeks ago and every time she hears the TIVO bleep she fixates on the TV. If I do not play the video she screams at the TV or beats it. If I do play the video she crawls to the TV and attaches to it like glue. She goes ballistic if I pause the video for any reason.
Here she is glued to Landon.
She is totally in love with him. I have no other explanation for it. I would love to see what happen if we could meet him in person. After 5 months one would have thought this fascination would have dwindled but it is just as strong as ever.

Being cheeeeeesy.
And here we go again with the table eating..
This day I got nasty words, dirty looks and a temper tantrum.
She made this face and then looked at me to see if I would suddenly allow the table eating. No such luck.

For Pete's sake!
Then later that afternoon, friends Liz and Mikey visited. Again we had happy Norah.
Always trying to rip off noses.

Speed crawling.

And finally on Friday the 18th Norah and I went to my company picnic. She was tired and hot and not in the best of moods, big surprise.
Picking grass and trying to eat it.

Making new friends.
Visiting with co-worker Terri. I think she was the only person who Norah allowed to hold her besides myself.
Terri distracted her with jewelry.
And then happy again to be home in the air conditioning.

Recovery & CHI Picnic

2008-07-17T09:08:00.006-05:00

Okay so I started this post 5 days ago and cannot seem to find the time to finish it. Here are some random pics of Norah from this past week.

Baby stoned on Tylenol 3.
Before the CHI Reunion Picnic.

Fellow Viet Nam families that we did not get to visit with for long. (Walls, Leonards, Willards, Smiths) It was great meeting several of the families we blog with and seeing their little ones.
Cuties Khai and Mattix.

Norah and Stacey.

Baby was totally out of it.
All worn out by the time we got back home.

" This sock will not stop me!!"

She is getting soooo big.
A nice red crib mark on her head after her nap but she was in such a good mood.

The beginings of the evil eye... more to come on that later.

Banging to go outside. Not a chance when it is over 90.

The Art of Cheese

2008-07-16T10:59:00.003-05:00

So a few weeks ago Norah took her fake smile to a whole new level and will now "cheese" on request. Typically she will throw her head back and close her eyes and give the most ridiculous grin she can. Here are some from the past few days.

Over-the-top cheese

Cheesing with daddy. His face looked so crazy I had to cut him out of the picture!

Mini-cheese
Semi-genuine cheese
Cheesy play.

Surgery pics

2008-07-15T10:11:00.007-05:00

So Thursday morning we were up at wonderful and DARK 4 am. Norah was majorly PISSED OFF when I woke her up and screamed bloody murder while I changed her diaper and dressed her. She was allowed Pedialyte until 5 am. So here she is at 4:55 am drinking 1 oz of the stuff. Look at those sleepy eyes...

So then we get to the hospital almost on time at 6:10 am and check in. We saw this lovely sign on the way up that reads Welcome New Patients and Norah's name was the top left one. That was nice of them to do. So why is it that the hospitals always want you there an hour or more early? It takes 5 minutes to weigh the kids and sign the forms. Why did we really need to be up at 4 am? Why did we wait in the rec. room until 7:30? Don't they know my baby is hungry and tired? So other than that their rec. room was AMAZING. It had 50 billion toys for every age range. There were pianos, WIIs, Playstations, Lego's, arts and crafts, a big TV with tons of movies, books, basically everything a kid could want short of candy and ice cream. And this is at Shriner's so it was all donated or purchased through donations. It was just awesome. If we had to be stuck somewhere with a hungry tired kid this was the place to be. I think it deserves a million pictures to capture the awesomeness.

Little kids area... you can't even see all the toys in bins and buckets and on shelves.
Art area with psycho fish.
Norah rode the horsey.
Played with a doll house.

Was generally very happy and good.
Now why is it with all of the toys she wants to go bang on the big black storage cabinet??!?!

Ummm, yeah, she found the only loose wires in the room.

Video games, play house, air hockey, etc. It rocked.
Lego and train tables.
One of the 2 pianos....
Globe on top of the piano happened to be turned to Viet Nam
Daddy playing basketball with Norah.

"Ummm, mommy, daddy is throwing a ball inside...."
Sleepy eyes.Uh oh, time to get ready for surgery.
And then she was Miss Personality. Smiling at the nurses. Waving bye bye.

The doctors even thought she got happy juice in pre-op. She was just chillin'. They drew a smiley on her arm to mark it for the operation.

Oh yeah, did I mention that our anesthesiologist was about 80 years old. I am not even kidding. I wish I was. She looked older than my grandma. That was pretty scary.

The last suck of that precious thumb. Then they took her away.
2 hours later we get the call to come to post-op and we have a screaming baby. They were trying to give her watered down apple juice cut with pedialyte. She was having none of it.
Mama knows baby is hungry!!
And then she calmly passed out. You know, I would scream too if I woke up to that scary clown back there looking at me.

Wonderful post-op nurse, Bob, (he was a cool guy) and peds floor nurse Tracy took really good care of us. Norah had a pile of presents on her bed waiting for her when she got out of surgery. Yes, presents!! She got a cell phone toy that does a lot of things, much more advanced than the ones we have at home and a nursery rhymes book and CD and an interactive book and DVD with DVD remote that the kids can use. That last one was a little out of her age range but she will grow into it. We were very impressed.
Then we moved upstairs to her "room" which was really a quad room. It was really cramped in there as there were 2 other girls that had been there for weeks. One of them was either Amish or Quaker and as the surgeon said, the whole village was there for a visit. They tried to make it nice for us, brought in a little TV and DVDs of Baby Einstein & Elmo's World but we were so so glad we did not have to stay overnight.

Norah still sleeping right until discharge.

Then back at home and wide awake on Vicodin.
Mom, the drugs are wearing off!!!!
So, as far as the operation goes, they put her under and then tried to get the IV in. It took them over an hour. She has very small rolling veins. ( That runs in my family, btw ;-)) She has over 20 pricks in her arm, hand, ankle, foot and forehead. Poor baby. Then the actual surgery took about 10 minutes the doctor said. After they clipped the band of skin holding her fingers together, they just came apart. Up until that point it was unknown if they were held together by skin or tissue at the base of the finger. So she has 4 little stitches in her fingers. We have yet to see them as our follow-up isn't until the 21st and she has to keep her dressings on until then. She tried to rip them off on the way home from the hospital so now she has a sock over her hand.

On a side note, we were really impressed with the service we got at Shriners. We learned a lot about the hospital while we were there. There are 22 in the U.S. with different specialties at different hospitals. It costs $1.6 million per day to run the hospitals and it all comes from donations. Our surgeon had 33 years of experience and works at Children's Hospital and has done work at the Mayo Clinic. The surgeries performed there are all free to the patients but a lot of people do not know about them. I wish that we had been able to have her cleft lip repair done there but that specialty is performed in the Chicago hospital and we figured that staying in Chicago for a few weeks would cost just as much as paying through our insurance company. So as nurse Tracy said, get the word out!

I will post more about Norah's recovery probably tomorrow. She is up now and getting into everything around my desk. Argh....

Surgery Update

2008-07-11T17:13:00.002-05:00

Sorry all for not posting earlier. Norah's surgery went really smoothly yesterday. So smoothly that they discharged us at 1pm and we avoided the dreaded overnight stay! They gave us a scrip for Vicodin which we were really happy about. The tylenol with codine that we had during her CL repair just didn't seem to cut it and the vicodin seemed to be working great at the hospital. Norah was up and very active all afternoon yesterday and went to bed slightly off schedule and then woke at 10 pm and would NOT go back to sleep. She wanted to sleep, she was clearly tired but the drugs were making her loopy and wound up. She is like her mommy and reacts the opposite way to drugs than one is supposed to. Then she started coughing really and seemed to be breathing hard so we decided not to give her any more vicodin through the night. I finally got her to sleep around 12:30 am and she slept to 5:30am. Daddy gave her drugs when she woke up and we had sleep issues again today. She is only wanting to sleep on us right now or snuggled between us which is not how I want this to be going. I have a feeling that the day care is holding her a lot at nap time and getting her used to that which we have not done since shortly after our return from Viet Nam. She has been a solitary sleeper and a good one at that. I do not want to undo that in any way. We called our care coordinator and got a new scrip for the tylenol with codine (at least we know it knocks her out!) and she finally took a nap today at 4 pm. She was clearly in pain before those drugs kicked in, crying hard with a shaking lip, motrin was not cutting it. I am hoping tonight goes better, we all need the rest and I am debating trying to make it to the CHI reunion picnic tomorrow. We would really like to see so many of our fellow bloggers and kiddos but it all depends on how Norah is doing. I will post pictures over the weekend.

Surgery Day

2008-07-10T05:13:00.002-05:00

I was up at 4 am.... this should go well..... poor baby has already been screaming for 20 minutes and we haven't even left the house yet.

Happy 4th of July and 11 Months

2008-07-06T16:01:00.006-05:00

This great 4th of July weekend we laid low and took it easy. We had some really nice cool weather and calm days to just relax in preparation for a busy month. Norah got some alone time with mommy and daddy which I think she really needed. Although she is adjusting well to school we have noticed some changes like extra clinginess and issues with napping. She had another fall this week at school too when she was climbing out of the baby pool and fell face first onto the hard wood floor. She cut her lip in 2 places, on her scar of course, and had a nose bleed that continued off and on all day Tuesday. We know that at this age where they are just starting to walk and explore accidents do happen but it is still rough to get those calls when you are at work and helpless.

Here are some photos from us playing on the 4th:

An attempt at a hug for Addison...

Here she was crawling towards me and I kept sliding her back across the floor. She thought it was a great game.

And of course she is pulling up now on all the cabinets, fridge, dishwasher, etc. How long before she is pushing those buttons??
My girl... so big at 11 months. I cannot believe it. Where does the time go?
Then we went outside for some time with the neighbors. She stole my seat and no, she did not get up there herself.
Then she was mad at mommy for setting her in the sun and the grass. She hasn't adjusted yet to grass. She goes in reverse when barefoot on it, trying to climb backwards onto my feet or shoes.
Flying baby.

Waving "hi"... this was new this week. Hi and Bye and one time a word that sounded like hi accompanied the action.
Cousin Liam watching his daddy set-off snakes that look like "poop"... that is him saying "poop" below. It was pretty darn cute.
The classic brow furrow.
Liam and Aunt Jessi post "boom" of a fire cracker.
Cousin Aiden with a sparkler.

I had fun with the camera while the guys were setting off the big fireworks. I don't even know what I was doing but they were somewhat time lapsed and came out neat!
This is my favorite.
And again Saturday Norah would not nap so daddy was holding her in bed to calm her down and this is what I walked in on, 2 sleeping babies....

This Thursday Norah goes to Shriners Hospital to have the 1st of her 2 hand surgeries. From our last discussion with the doctor it should be on her right hand and will separate all 3 middle fingers. We are feeling very anxious about this but praying it goes better than the lip surgery which we were so totally mentally unprepared for. It has to be better than that, right? We will then be home with her for 2 weeks for recovery time and in 6 weeks we get to do it all over again on her left hand. I really wish we could just get it all over with at once but the doctor thinks she will chew through her bandages to get to her hands since she is so active these days. We will see. I hope to post next weekend if all goes well and my baby isn't screaming in pain again. Yuck. Wish us luck!

Visit From Pop and Sharon

2008-06-29T15:27:00.006-05:00

On June 26th Barnabas's dad and step-mom, Sharon flew up from Texas to meet Norah for the first time. She was pretty cautious at first. I still think she is in some sort shock after leaving day care but she warmed up after an hour or so.

Norah meets Nana Sharon and Pop.

And then settles in for some serious play time while the guys go get dinner.
The next day she started pulling up on the coffee table. She was very proud of herself, especially when she discovered all the wonderful things she can pull off of the table... yippie...
Oh yeah, and then there is the tasty table itself which is now a giant chew toy.
We went out to Thai Jasmine again (we just love that place) where Norah figured out that if she screamed at other diners she could get their attention. This was a GREAT new game for her. This is a very small restaurant, like 6 tables, and she was very very LOUD. She yelled and hollered and then gave her cheesiest grins to everyone. She also flung quite a few toys on the ground for kicks. At least she was looking adorable and was happy as a lark eating edamame.
Yelling loudly.... and daddy thinks it's cute.

Cheesy grin.
Practicing her clapping. She does it on cue now when you say "yay Norah". Much clapping ensues.

Mommy is telling her to use her inside voice. She is already testing me... a lot... and when I say "NO" and she gets mad, instead of screaming she yells a bunch of gibberish back at me. When those start to be real words we are in trouble. She has a lot of attitude! Posing with Pop and Sharon.
Getting those family pictures in for the homestudy follow-ups. ;-)Playing with mommy when we got home.
Overall it was a good visit and maybe next time we can have some nicer weather so we can hit the zoo or something!

Week 2

2008-06-22T21:27:00.005-05:00

Week 2 went much better than week one despite the fact that Norah remains a giant snot monkey. Daddy stayed home with her on Monday because she was still running a fever. This is how she woke up from her nap Monday morning... still pathetic...
The rest of the week went much better. According to her teachers she was the best behaved in the class. I have a bit of a hard time believing it but they swore they were telling the truth. They said other than drop off time the only time she was really crying was when one of the other babies would wake her from her nap and it would piss her off. This I can believe, she HATES being woken up. On Wednesday she tried her first real meat... she had mac'n'cheese and turkey kielbasa. The noodles were yummy and then came the meat...
And she put it in her mouth and then smiled really big.

And then tried to feed me repeatedly.
YUM FOOD!!!
It was all super cute. She ate a ton. I tried leftovers the next night but she put it in her hair and then smashed it on her tray and the kielbasa was squirting me. She quickly got put straight in the bath. No one wants a baby that smells like meat.

Then on Saturday we made her a mini ball pit in the laundry basket. She was puzzled at first but soon came to have fun with the balls.
Daddy tried to juggle for her. Failure.
She attempted to throw them at the cats... that is Addison's tail as he made a quick escape.
Then of course, the balls were more fun outside of the basket. (Look at all those toys! How many kids do we have again?!?!)
Oh yeah, and on Friday afternoon the daycare called to tell me Norah had fallen while climbing and busted her lip open. It was not as bad as they made it sound but it did leave a mark.

Then she helped me sort the junk mail.
On Sunday she played with her new ball popper.
And chased her kitty, Aiden.
And bounced in her jumper. It is pretty much too small for her but she still loves to go in there. Sorry about the potty in the background.
She also started clapping her hands this week. The first time she did it was when daddy walked through the door. I got some pics but they will have to go on next week's post. It is late and there is laundry to be folded.

Starting Daycare

2008-06-14T18:37:00.006-05:00

Well, the week started off innocently enough. Norah had a good weekend last week spending every second possible glued to daddy unaware of what was about to happen come Monday. Here she is getting ready for a bath.
And tasting soy milk for the first time. She wants everything that comes in a glass!

YUMMY!!! Then the dreaded Monday morning. We were the first one to arrive at her school and she was pretty bewildered by the whole thing. She was still sleepy and kind of out of it.

Norah's room & crib. See, it does not look like a horrible place....
Barnabas and I gave her kisses and told her we loved her and would get her later. She of course, had no idea what we were talking about. We were just trying not to cry so she wouldn't get upset.
Then I set her down in the ball pit to play and we snapped a few more pics and then snuck out the door.
Oblivious to the fact we were about to leave her there....
Well, it didn't go well which was expected. We only called twice on the first day and that was super hard since every single person I spoke to at work was asking about her. It is hard to put it in the back of your mind when people keep bringing it up. So on day 1 they pretty much said she was "fussy" which I am pretty sure really meant she was screaming her head off. When Barnabas picked her up she had mentally checked out. She would not make eye contact and was very quiet. He said she was just shell-shocked. Day 2 was worse, she knew what was coming when he dropped her off and then would not sleep at all that day. She came home acting slightly better but very fussy and exhausted. Day 3 I think was better than day 2 but again she was not sleeping, only "resting" in the ball pool. Barnabas said that she reached for him the minute he set foot in the door and was in a much better mood that night, even smiling a little for me. Then on Thursday she woke up snotty but acting normal so back to school she went but I picked her up that day and she was practically comatose. She was in the swing when I got there and would not look at me at all. It was pretty much like Monday all over again except it was with me which made me have a breakdown when Barnabas got home and Norah would not let me hold her. I feel upset again just writing about it. It is incredibly hard going from being with her 24/7 to only seeing her maybe 1.5 to 2 hours a day and those are not even "quality" time. You know, she might be in the room playing in her high chair while I cook dinner or something and I talk to her but she is staring off into space because she hasn't slept more than 30 minutes all day. By the time dinner and clean up are over it is bed time for her, if she can manage to stay awake that long. I am hating the whole thing. I know it will take some time for her to adjust but I really hoped that it would go a little more smoothly. Anyway, back to Norah. So she cut BOTH her front top 2 teeth on Thursday so for me, that explained the snottiness of the a.m. Then on Friday they called me at 11:30 and told me she was running a temp. of 102.7 and it was steadily increasing. I rushed out of work, got her and by the time I got home her temp. was at 103.3. I gave her some Tylenol, fed her some Yo Baby, changed her poppy butt and put her down for a nap. By the time we got into the doctor's her temp was down to 100.5. Doc said it was just a virus but her throat was so red and she was hoarse (undoubtedly from crying all week) she ran a strep test anyway which came back negative. So Tylenol was it and we went home to relax from this stressful week.

And what does one do to relax?

SWIM of course!! Norah was better Saturday morning, yakking away and a temp. under 100 so we went ahead with our plans to spend some time at friend, Tracy's house. I just thought that floating in a pool was probably just the same as sitting in her Exersaucer, not physically taxing and the nice cool water might even help a bit. You know, sunshine and fresh air and some lovin' from mom and dad ... =)

Well, it went like this...

Get me the HELL out of this THING!!
So, I think the water was just a little cool for her there at the beginning. But soon she chilled out and floated with dad all over the pool. Tracy got some better pics, I had to put the camera away because Barnabas did not think that digital SLRs belong in a pool. Grrrr.
See, not so bad...

And the mandatory froggy towel to dry off....

And when we got home and put her down from her nap she went right to sleep.. or so we thought and then 5 minutes later she was jabbering at the top of her lungs so I went to check on her and she was standing in her crib for the very first time. (Jabbering kinda like she is now...) Unfortunately I did not get a pic and today we dropped the crib to the lowest level so I am not sure she will do it again soon.

But she woke up a snotty whiny baby today on Father's Day... she how pathetic she looked....

P....A.... T.....H....E....T......I.....C !!!

I also noticed she is getting ready to cut another bottom tooth.
STOP TAKING PICTURES OF ME!!!
Ooh and my art project Tracy helped me with on Saturday is below. This is Norah's binder for daycare. They put all of her "art" projects in it all year for us. I always thought I was too much of a perfectionist for scrap booking but this was fun. Maybe I will give it a try...
Here's hoping week 2 goes better than week 1.

Bad Blogger Bad! This is going to be the longest post ever....

2008-06-08T11:37:00.011-05:00

Okay, I know I have been completely horrible about blogging. I really don't know what happened. I guess I got lazy or busy or both. I started finding projects I wanted to complete around the house, like getting the 1600+ pictures from Viet Nam edited, in order and into albums! So I am going to try to recap the last almost 2 months. =) When I left of Norah still had those stupid tubes in her nose and was not a happy girl. She was starting to commando crawl around the floor but was constantly fussy and not sleeping well.

So then on 4/25 we went to the plastic surgeon to get the tubes out. Mind you, all they did was snip the tiny blue stitch holding them in and they basically just fell out of her nose. I so could have done that!! She was soooo happy to have them out. She took a deep breath immediately. I cleaned her nose really well and for the first time in 3 weeks she took a 2 hour nap when we got home.
The next night we went to friends Liz & Mikey's house for a BBQ. Norah met doggies, Truman & Cedar, and got tons of kisses. Truman kept trying to drink her drool, even from inside her mouth. She wasn't really sure what to make of it at first but she didn't want the dogs to go away.

A happy girl with Liz!
Come back doggies!!

Then on 5/2 we had another doctor's appt. where Norah got 4 more shots. That of course was no fun but at least her ear infections had not returned. The nurse told us that she weighed 16 lbs. 2 oz. which was only a 2 oz. gain since her last appt. 1 month prior. This was a little hard for me to believe considering she was eating a ton but since she had surgery and all I let it go.

Then on 5/5, Norah's 9 month b-day, we went to the park with Stacie & Micah! It was great to talk to another adoptive mom. At that point I was still feeling really run down. Norah and I were both having allergy issues and I wasn't sleeping well. But we had a blast at the park, Micah was a riot.

Micah and Norah swing together. This was definitely the way to go. Works much better than worrying the baby is going to flip out the whole time!

I even got a few smiles out of Norah this time around.

Stacie holding Norah, Micah was not thrilled with this.

Adorable boy!!!

The following week my parents arrived for a 2 week long visit. Norah had not met my dad yet and fell in love immediately. Every time he would walk into the room she would grin from ear to ear and get very excited. Here she is below with her Papa Ne Ne at Thai Kitchen.
We spent some time at another BBQ with Uncle Gil, Aunt Lauren and new cousin Ziggy.

And my parents were constantly disappearing with Norah. They would take her on VERY long walks to who knows where and come back with her half asleep. Below my mom is about to head out on one of the aforementioned walks.
Why is it that everyone thinks the baby is going to freeze to death all of the time. If it is warm enough for us to be in t-shirts and shorts why does she need 12 layers and a blanket?

Norah loves Landon Pigg's, Falling In Love at a Coffee shop video. She stops everything she is doing and stares at the TV the second it comes on which is usually daily since we have it saved on our TIVO. She also started pulling up to a sitting position on things at this point as her crawling began to improve. Then on the 18th she was sitting on the floor and holding my fingers and she just stood up. And she did it again and again and was sooo proud of herself. She wanted to show everyone and would smile every time she did it. The following day she finally began to just sit in the middle of the floor. She had been perfectly capable of sitting on her own since mid-March but would refuse to do it, unless on a rare occasion would forget she was doing it but now she was commando crawling all over to a sitting position and back down again.
On the 19th we had our second consult with the hand surgeon at Shriner's. At our first appt. surgery was supposed to be around the first week of June but now the doctor wanted to change everything around. The new plan is to do 2 separate surgeries 6 weeks apart. The first one is to be mid-July and it will separate all of her fingers on her left hand. He was just too concerned she would eat her bandages off if she could not use either hand for eating for playing for 2 weeks. I honestly would rather have just gotten it all over with as this posed a big problem for us since we will now have to take 2 weeks off for each operation and pull her out of day care each time (and yet still pay for it... argh!) I had also released the spot at her day care that we had been on the wait list for since late January so it was back to the day care hunt all over again.

Then on the 26th we had a final dinner with my parents at Jasmine Thai before they headed back to Florida. (We like Thai food, can you tell?) I just wish we had some Vietnamese restaurants close to us but I think the closest one is about 35 minutes away.
Norah looks at the sushi!
I am not sure what I am doing in this picture. I was holding Norah's hand and she moved at the last minute.
The next morning my parent's tried to pack Norah but they had to leave her behind because the suitcase was overweight.

The next night we went to cousin Aidens' pre-school graduation. I cannot believe how big he has gotten. He was almost Norah's age when we first met him and the time has flown by.

Norah was a little confused by the whole thing.
So with an early unplanned return to work we tried to make the most out of the week we had left. We played in the bath with Mr. Crab....
And Mr. Blowfishy...
Played in the Exersaucer....

Played with all our toys....
And with daddy and his guitar...
In her room with blocks....
And in the laundry basket...
And with more new friends. Here is Norah with Max Power who stopped by with mommy Jess and daddy Tim on the way to KC on 6-5, Norah's 10 month b-day. They asked about her crawling and we said she was only commando crawling and then lo and behold she flat out crawled across the floor on her hands and knees.... go figure!!

Max kissing Norah...
Norah trying to kiss Max back... or eat his face off. One or the other.
Then on 6/6, this past Friday, we had to go to a 4 hour team consult with her plastic surgeon's post opp. team. We were basically put in a little room with a couple of chairs and toys (thank god for toys) and the doctors came in every now and then to talk to us... most often when she just fell asleep. It was NOT fun trying to hold her screaming squirming body through her normal nap time. She was seen by an audiologist, geneticist, psychologist, plastic surgeon, RN, pediatric dentist and speech therapist. She is advanced on her language skills despite the fact she still has some fluid in her left ear. No infections though and her hearing was good. Her plastic surgeon would like to operate again when she is 4 to fix her right nostril a bit more. He said the cartilage is just too soft right now. Yippie, more surgery. And she weighed in on their scale at 18 lbs, 10 oz which I why I think the doctor's scale was off in May ... she did not gain 2.5 lbs in 1 month. I just don't believe it. BUT .. they did weigh her fully clothed with a wet diaper that weighed 3 oz (yes, I weighed it when they left the room) so I think she is closer to 18 lbs.
A happy girl 15 minutes before we got to leave.

And finally, (whew, I am tired...) last night we went to another BBQ at Liz & Mikey's house. She was such a good girl through dinner. Then she ate her first meat. Well, kinda meat. Pureed chicken & sweet potatoes. She LIKED it. She also had Cherios for the first time yesterday and inhaled those. With all the new foods we have been starting her on she does not want her bottles much anymore. She will drink the first one of the day and shove the rest away. I don't know wether to fight her on this or let it be.

She was even wearing her G & R dress... 4 months later and still too big and it is a 3-6 month dress. =)
And then the moment came... she saw the dogs... crawled to them....
Got her hands licked on a whole bunch and started to pull up.... and up....

And she did it!!! And we saw it!!!
And she was oh so proud of herself.
And then she shrieked to let everyone know in case they missed it!!
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeekkkk!!!!

And tomorrow... the dreaded day.... I am returning to work and Norah starts daycare. We found a really really nice development center that I am very happy with. They promote organics, do baby yoga, teach sign language and keep binders of each baby's art and photos. She will be crib nighbors with the nephew of my co-worker. So everything will be good or at least that is what I keep telling myself. I really just want to say forget the deposit and screw work, I can't do this but I have to suck it up and at least give it a try. I am trying to be brave but everyday it is something new and I just don't want to miss it. I love my girl!!!

I hate those tubes

2008-04-19T08:15:00.010-05:00

So Norah has pretty much been a cranky whiny little witch all week and that is saying it politely. She isn't sleeping as well with the tubes at night, I just don't think she can get comfortable on her stomach without being on her face and pushing on the tubes. We have one more week until they get removed. So all day long she has been very very clingy and won't let me put her down to even go to the bathroom. Tummy time has pretty much been unsuccessful as she will flip onto her back immediately and scream at me to pick her up, and again I am sitting right there next to her. She screams when I eat because she can't have any (mind you, I feed her first so her belly is full!). It has been a very trying week. My back is KILLING me. Oh, and did I mention the kicking? She has been kicking like a wild horse. I didn't think 8 month olds threw temper tantrums but that is what she does. And she kicks HARD. She will shake the floor or leave bruises on me when she really gets going. She also does it every now and then when she goes down for a nap and whacks the crib so violently that you can hear it anywhere in the house, thank god for crib bumpers. I don't know how she does not break her feet. She has such a big attitude. It must be the Leo side of her, just like mommy. ;-) I am really not sure how much of this is adoption related vs. personality related. My mom said my 8th month was really hard on her as well and I screamed anytime she was out of my sight. When we go out in public she usually behaves really well. I say usually because we had a bit of a incident at the grocery store this week when I put her Yo Baby in the cart. I knew she knew the containers as individual units but I had no idea she grasped them as a 6-pack. She flew around in the seat whining loudly and trying to get to them in the cart. Yeah, she likes Yo Baby that much. It is the only food she gets excited about, followed by cereal or whatever she sees us eating that she can't have. At least it wasn't a full on screaming & kicking fit. I should consider myself lucky.

We did have our follow up with the pediatrician who said her ears are clear for now. I was almost sure the ear infections were back with the way she was pulling on them. She weighed in at 16lbs, the same as her visit 2.5 weeks ago. Not being able to eat after surgery probably had a lot to do with that. She is eating a ton now and holding her own bottle. We had stopped her from trying to do that since we returned from Viet Nam but now that it has been 2 months I just gave up and let her do it.

Here is the face I have been getting all week.

Then after Barnabas gets home and I tell him about the fussy baby she gets deliriously happy.

So she goes to bed smiley!

And laughing.

We went to the park with her cousins. All she did was stare for an hour.
She did not like the swing and tried to grab me every time it came close. Her drool was blowing in the wind in 4 ft. long streams.
Then back to the bedtime delirious state again at bedtime.
Crazy baby.

1 week later

2008-04-11T10:37:00.004-05:00

Norah is still healing from her surgery and doing pretty well considering. I swear I think this week has been harder on us than it has on her. It is rough cleaning her nose all the time and of course she hates it. We are having to re-learn how to feed her without being covered in baby food. She is breathing mostly through her mouth because of the nose tubes so if you feed her on an exhale watch out. It is like when they sneeze and food goes everywhere, except it can happen 10 times a meal. =) I think the hardest thing for me so far is missing her smile. She used to grin so big, from ear to ear and it just melted our hearts. She still has a beautiful smile, even all scabby, but it's so much smaller now and you don't see her dimples as much. I know these surgeries are in her best interest as she grows but we loved her so much just the way she was. Development wise, she still isn't crawling or making much of an effort at scooting either. She prefers standing to anything other than being held. She is working more on her M & R sounds and may have possibly said mama yesterday but I am sure it was not intentional. Oh, and on Tuesday she learned to lick her lips. As with any newly discovery she did it over and over again which make breakfast extremely difficult that morning but then it was old news by the end of the day and I have hardly seen her do it since. Anyway, gremlin has awoken so I better get to the pics.

Tuesday 4/8 (5 days after surgery) when the steri-strip fell off. I still couldn't clean the wound until the next day.

Such a poser.
"She will keep her hands out of her mouth after surgery because it will hurt her." ... Yeah, right!Her new smile. Still beautiful.Thursday 4/10 - 1 week since surgery

She was soooo good last night while we were eating dinner and played in her Exersaucer for 45 minutes. She is always happy when mommy and daddy are together and the sun is out. Because the sun makes a difference!!! Yep, seriously, she hates rainy days.Miss Pokey Dots (because that is what you do with them, poke them, you don't do the polka, that would be stupid) ready for bed. Oh, and standing of course.

Meeting Granny Janny

2008-04-08T08:44:00.017-05:00

So in all the chaos of the surgery we didn't get to put any pics up from Norah's visit with Granny Janny from the weekend of the 29th. I know my mom's friends are reading this so here you go...

Who are you??
Gimmie that scarf.
The Granny went away for a few days and Norah watched for her out the window with daddy.

While we were waiting Norah and I went to my friend Cathy's baby shower. She was a very good girl while we were there. Then we came home and played with dad some more. I miss that smile so much!!
Then Granny came back and shoved a bink in her mouth. It was super cute. She would not take a bink at all in Viet Nam and now just likes to chew on it on occasion. I am interested to see if she will take it when her lip heals. The only reason I am even trying it now is because with her hand surgery coming up she will not be able to chew on her fingers like she does all day and all night long.

Then on Granny's last night here we went to Ruby Tuesday's for dinner.

Healing

2008-04-07T17:27:00.005-05:00

Norah is quickly healing from surgery and we are all counting down the days until I can clean some of that crap off of her face. Her steri-strip is beginning to peel top down and I doubt it will stay on until Wednesday morning. Her lip stitches are dissolving quickly, hopefully not too quickly, as I cannot get her to keep her hands (or anything else in her reach) out of her mouth. We are decreasing the frequency of her Tylenol with codeine and giving her regular Tylenol instead and so far so good. I know she must be starving at this point as she just stares at us and ogles our food or looks longingly at her high chair. It must be hard not being able to understand all of these changes. She has been a trooper through all of this and is trying her best to laugh and smile even though I am sure it hurts her.

I think Friday was the worst day by far, feeling wise for everyone, and I did not take any more pics after we left the hospital. She was miserable, running a fever and her nose tubes were completely clogged so she couldn't breathe. She slept most of the day which was wonderful because I did the same. On Saturday she said "muh". It was not directed at me in anyway but it was the first time she made an M noise. I don't think she could have done it before with her lips. So I was pretty happy about that. Then we went to the pediatrician and big surprise, she had ear infections in both ears and is now on round 4 of antibiotics. Here is a pic of her stoned on Saturday afternoon. I had cleared away just enough of her tubes so that she could breathe but not parts by the stitches.

(Day 3 after surgery)

Then yesterday she was feeling much better and we popped over to the park with our neighbors. Several people have asked so here is a pic of the back of her head where her "lump" was removed. You may have to enlarge the pic to really see it through the hair since they did not shave anything.

Daddy loves his baby komodo dragon. So sweet. (Day 4 after surgery)

Home from the Hospital

2008-04-04T17:06:00.014-05:00

Well, we are home from surgery after a really long and painful night for all involved. Things started off better than we expected. Norah woke up Thursday morning at 5:55, a good hour earlier than she usually wakes up and right under the pedialyte cut off of 6:10 am. I had no faith that she was going to drink a pedialyte bottle but she did take down about 3 ozs and then was very patient until shortly after we arrived at the hospital.

Here we are in the waiting room. Then we went to an exam room and they took her temp (only slightly elevated) and we waited for the doctors. Norah knows all about the doctors office and what happens there.

She was very on to us. Then the doctors came in to discuss the surgery and somehow there was a mistake and they did not have the ear tubes listed on the paperwork. I don't know what the deal was there because I had told about 10 people about it by that point but they said there was no ENT on staff and they would have to schedule a SEPARATE procedure at another time. I was PISSSSSSED. My baby cannot go through any more. Below she mirrors my feelings about that news.

We kept her calm in the exam room for a good hour and a half and she was doing okay until the anesthesiologist came to take her away. The last thing we saw was her screaming and reaching for me. Bad bad times.

Then when she was in surgery (for an ETERNITY) cousins Aiden and Liam and Aunt Jess stopped by to check on us. It was a welcome distraction that helped pass the time.

The boys were all smiles... love my boys!

WARNING GRAPHIC PICS BELOW.

Then they came and got us both to go to recovery. My poor baby

She was a very unhappy girl after it was over and who can blame her. They did not give her morphine like they told us she would get, they did Tylenol with codeine instead. I really think at many points yesterday and through the night she needed something stronger. She was conscious throughout almost all of yesterday where we had assumed she would be in a drugged up stupor to keep her calm and still. Not the case. She was bleeding quite a bit and putting her hands in her mouth and pulling on her stitches. We were told that she would do it once and realize it hurts and then would not do it again. Not our girl. She only wanted to mess with her face. Also, they did not want her to lay on her stomach so I had to stay up all night and keep flipping her over (she is a tummy sleeper). At one point I lost it and the nurse had to tell me to go get some fresh air. It was so so hard watching her cry and knowing how much she hurt but not being able to do anything to help her. She was tied to several machines monitoring vitals & IVs and holding her was hard when she was awake and squirming around. At one point before bed she was unplugged from the IV but they left the input in and her arm splinted so she was beating me with it and smacking herself in the face whenever she tried to rub her eyes or suck her thumb. She could not get comfortable. I could not get comfortable either, this was right up there with the trip home from Viet Nam. A hot room, babies screaming, nurses (stewardesses, turbulence) waking her every 30 minutes, Barnabas snoring, a very very uncomfortable chair, sweatshirt wrapped around my head and like 1 hour of sleep. The only problem was we did not arrive in an exciting city with a happy baby. No rewards yet.

Oh and the scar on the back of her head was removed and she has A LOT of stitches back there so laying on her back is not much fun either. It looks like she was hit in the head with a bat to be honest.

Then this morning we had 12 more people come in to examine her for discharge. Again not a happy baby and again we were told she would not do things that hurt her and she could not mess up the surgery so we will see. In the car on the way home she was shoving her plastic keys in her mouth. We have to leave the steri-strip on for 6 days and cannot wash her face during that time. That means she cannot eat food only bottles. Also because of the back of her head she cannot have her hair washed for a week. She has to leave the nose tubes in for 3 weeks and then they will remove the stiches holding them in place. That is going to seem like an eternity for her as they are really annoying and clog with blood and snot. All we can do is lightly dab and she hates it. So, wish us luck, we have some hard times ahead in the next few days. I hope she starts feeling better soon. She just looks miserable.

LET ME GO HOME!!!

Surgery tomorrow

2008-04-02T21:19:00.004-05:00

I just wanted to let everyone know that Norah's surgery was moved up to tomorrow from Friday. Barnabas and I are both very nervous tonight and dreading the morning, especially the car ride to the hospital. She cannot have any formula or food after mid-night tonight and denying her it in the morning will only amount to a very loud traumatic hour long car ride to the hospital. To top it all off she was not feeling 100% today and we are hoping that we do not go through all of that just to be turned away because she has a fever. I have a sneaking suspicion her ear infection is back but the thermometer gives me different readings every 2 minutes. Everyone cross your fingers that all goes well.

Catching Up

2008-03-26T09:18:00.012-05:00

I am going to attempt to catch up the past couple of weeks if the gremlin can stay sleeping for a while. Yesterday was daddy's first day back at work so we are trying to get on a good schedule... uh oh, I heard a noise. Nope, she is quiet again. Anyway, the last few weeks have been really busy. We visited CHI on the 13th to show off Norah. She was NOT happy and screamed a lot of the time we were there. She seems to have developed a fear of strangers, especially blonds which of course includes her doctor. She screams at the slightest glimpse of her. Crap, she is awake. Argh. Maybe she will just play in there awhile. So below we have a pic of Norah with Nicky Losse, our Viet Nam program director.

And with our SW, Nichole Deal. We won't talk about what happened next. ;-)

Then after exhausting herself from screaming at the agency she was all smiles on the way home.
That night we went out with Norah's Aunt Lauren & Uncle Gil for sushi to celebrate the 1 month anniversary of our G & R. Norah was great through the entire dinner and we all know sushi takes a while. Below Norah eats her first sushi. Okay, no, she didn't really eat it but I learned I could use chopsticks with my left hand and take a picture with my right! All of us together, just for my mother!
Then on the 14th Karen & Khai came over for a visit. The kids were very interested in each other and man is Khai cute. His photos don't do him justice, he is adorable! They played a little while while Karen and I talked about our trips to Viet Nam and the current adoption situation. We both feel very lucky to have our little ones home. Oh, Karen, I found your chapstick in Norah's drum after you left.

Then later in the afternoon, Gran Becki arrived to meet Norah for the first time! Norah learned all kinds of manipulation skills over the next few days with Gran Becki. She also learned to use her hands to reach for us and beckon to us. I think she picked it up from Khai. Also, we had our second pediatrician appt that day. Norah weighed in at 15 lbs 4 oz, which was a 10 oz gain. The doctor was thrilled with this, although I have to admit it freaked me out a little. It seemed like a lot in just a few weeks but we were told she is just catching up. She of course screamed the entire time and got 3 more shots and a 3rd round of antibiotics for her ear infections. The good news was she also got a clean bill of health! Woo hoo!

Meeting Gran Becki.
Trying to determine if grandma is friend or foe.
Honorary grandma Val stopped in for a visit over the weekend. Norah screamed at her too.
Then it was all smiles in the Exersaucer.
And drool of course. Her first tooth is breaking through the gums, it has really made progress over the last few days. Oragel is our friend.

Here she is beckoning... Mama come closer so I can drooooool on you.....Norah is talking tons and constantly says dada although I don't think she associates it with a person yet... it could me me or dada or baba or just random babble. Daddy recorded a video of her talking and we put it on our TIVO. When I play it for her she turns immediatly and watches, smiles, and laughs. It is the cutest thing.
Later that evening we went out to Chevy's.
Daddy, baby and Gran Becki. We did not take enough pics of the visit.
Whew, what is next.. oh yeah, St. Patty's day. Again, Norah was not a smiley baby that day but Granny Janny sent her a bib for the occasion. The next day Gran Becki left us and we had our first Parents as Teachers visit. Norah liked our PAT rep. and had a good time smiling and talking to her.

Then on the 19th we took her into my work to meet the co-workers and she was very good and patient the entire time we were there, even when others were holding her. She got a new panda toy as a reward on the way home. She loves that critter and it's crinkly ears. It is giving Ellie, her elephant, a run for it's money. She also started fruits and tried her first banana, it did not go over well the first or second time but on day 3 she seemed to be coming around. Then friends Sarah, Eric and Connor came from KC to visit and we went to the zoo on Friday. It was a little chilly and I am not sure the kids had a much fun. Norah tried peaches. Below is Connor looking sad. I think he may have fallen. He did that a lot when he was here. But it was great too see them and we had a fun time together.
The new penguin exhibit is very cool. You can practically reach out and touch them.

Happy Feet!
Connor, Sarah and Eric.

Malasian Sun Bear. Eric reminded us that the last time we went to the zoo this bear puked on itself and then licked it off. Yuck.

The lone prairie dog that ventured out for breakfast.
Rabid camel.
Tired baby.
Oh yea and of course daddy keeps messing with Norah and his WOW obsession. Now she is on the vent server? Whatever daddy.
And then it was Easter and I already posted about that. She also discovered her tongue on Easter evening and it was very very funny. It looks like she can roll it and do clover leaf. Since then she has also tried Prunes and Apricots and a tiny tiny bit of Kheer. (Hey, gotta start her early!) On Monday we had our Shriner's appt. for her hands. The doctor would like to do the first surgery mid-May to early June. I am not sure how that is going to work out yet but if that is what she needs then so be it. The surgery will be to separate her index fingers from the others so that she can learn the pinching motion. Most likely it will be a few years before she has to have any additional surgery as the bones need to be at least 1/2 a cm long and they are so so tiny in those fingers. Right now she does not seem to have many problems using her hands at all. It is a bit difficult for her to grab larger blocks but small objects and toys are not a problem.

Then when we returned home we found that Norah's citizenship certificate had arrived. That was very exciting and did not take anywhere near the 3-6 months they told us.

So that is about it. Mommy and baby are just chillin' for a while before Granny Janny arrives Thursday night. We have another ped. appt. on Friday to check on her ears. I am not sure if she is getting 4 more shots at this appt or the one after that. She will not be a happy girl for sure. I just wanted to thank everyone again for their comments and emails. I don't always have time to reply these days but I try! It will be better once our laptop gets fixed. I hope.

Norah's 1st Easter

2008-03-23T12:53:00.007-05:00

We are so behind at blogging it is ridiculous. We have had visitors, out of town company and family, more doctors appts and a couple of day trips. Norah appears to be a celebrity! One of these days I will get caught up but for now I know the grandmas wanted to see easter pics.

Norah's first Easter basket (from Gran Becki) filled with presents from mommy, daddy and Granny Janny, Papa NeNe and Great Grandma Katie.
Her first cell phone was a big hit ... and of course a bunny teether... there must be lots of bunnies on easter!
After a nap she got all dressed up in her carrot outfit. We got this outfit 8 years ago, before we were married. It was the first thing we bought for our future child. Even though it is several sizes too big it made me so happy to see her in it today.

Above she is eating the card from her grandparents and below she has a false tooth from a piece of the envelope.

Tummy time.
Soooo BIG!

Buddy Connor saying goodbye after a great visit.
So sweet.
The End. (Norah says, "enough pictures, I want to play with my toys!")

Leaving Vietnam

2008-03-15T10:25:00.008-05:00

Finally, here are the last group of pictures from Vietnam, from the last couple of days in Hanoi. At the time, we really were exhausted and tired and we were ready to come home. Now, just a few weeks later, we do miss it and wish we could go back (although the thought of the flight is a bit daunting--too bad nobody's developed a teleportation device yet).

There's a wonderful french bakery at the bottom of the Hanoi Hotel that served excellent cakes and pastries and the like for an extremely low amount of money.

This was at a Thai restaurant (yummmmmmmmy).

Hue definitely took good care of us all.

Packed and ready to go to the airport to begin the LONG journey back to St. Louis.

Some shots of the Hanoi Hotel lobby.

These trees are maintained throughout the year and controlled so that they will all bloom on the first day of Tet.

Our little pink-striped inmate.

Goodbye to the Capps.

On the road to the airport.

This ad was EVERYWHERE in Hanoi.

Looking over all the pictures, it was funny that this was the last picture we took (this was at the Hong Kong airport) until we got home. ComPLETEly exhausting trip back home. Norah was great (there was an hour between Hong Kong and L.A. where she was crying, but otherwise she was great) but after all the madness of Vietnam, all of those flights with the layovers and the security checkpoints were just too much. Don't even get me started on LAX airport. Seriously. If you can ever avoid LAX, avoid it. Seriously.

I had my one near-breakdown going through the security checkpoint at LAX. After getting our bags (you have to check your bags to LA since they must be taken through customs), going through customs (to get Norah into the country there is a packet of information that must be given to them) and waiting in line to check in for the flight (all of this took about two hours or so) I was DONE. We finally got all checked in and had to go through security. We walked up (Norah is strapped onto my chest as we had spent most of our trip) to the security checkpoint. Norah is starting to cry. Not fuss, but cry. I had my laptop bag on me, so the laptop had to come out. Oh yeah, we're in the States again where our freaking SHOES have to be taken off. We had travelled through however many countries that don't require the super-duper-extra-secure step of removing SHOES, so I had forgotten about this. So, Norah's crying, laptop has to come out of the bag, gotta take off my shoes. I don't know. I was very close to screaming and telling the security guy to shove off (a much less polite version of what I was thinking) but I figured it wouldn't be the best move on my part. Deep breaths saved the day.

Anyway, we made it back home. All in one piece and life is different, but somehow the same--or at least it is as it should be.

Katy got approval!

2008-03-13T11:56:00.002-05:00

I heard great news this morning from Katy that she is approved to go get baby Yen. I couldn't be happier or more excited for her! Unless I was going too... then I would be more excited. ;-) Barnabas said that the flight must be like labor because it was awful going thru it but so quickly we forget and want to do it all again.

Yenny, mommy is coming!!! Yippie!!!

2nd week home

2008-03-12T19:44:00.007-05:00

One month ago today we met our baby girl. Where does the time go??

Last week was Norah's second week home so technically this is the 2nd and part of the third. Norah has been adjusting extremely well to being home, in fact, we really couldn't have asked for things to be going better with her. Her appetite is back and she is eating well and trying new veggies. So far the ranking goes something like this:

Sweet Potatoes

Sweet Peas tied with Peas & Brown Rice

Spinach & Potatoes

Carrots

Green Beans

Butternut Squash

She is 100% on Similac now as we finished off the Vietnamese formula today. And we are working on eating Rice cereal & Oatmeal cereal combined with the very sweet Nestle cereal from Vietnam. That stuff takes like vanilla cake batter!

I am continuing to torture her with constant photo sessions, she is just so darn cute! And now that she is sleeping 11-12 hours every night everyone is in a much better mood. (Laura - I have no idea how you did it for so long, a few nights without sleep had me ready to go back to work asap. ;-) Clearly, I was delusional. )

Below we are eating peas for the first time and meeting good family friend Karen, who brought kisses from Granny Janny and Papa NeNe. She also brought presents for Norah which we are very thankful for. Thanks Karen!!!

The picture to the left has Norah wearing a "I'm Level 71 in His Heart" t-shirt. This is a throwback to daddy and his W.O.W. addiction.
Today was a beautiful 75 degrees and after I got over my weather change migraine we all went for a family walk in the park.

Norah and I were looking at the fountain and the ducks. Then she tried to fly like a duck.

Flying is fun!

Then we came back home and watched daddy do yard work. Or looked at trees or dogs ....

And drooled a whole lot! Then mommy laid on her back and I puked on her face. (See how much fun flying is???)

Then miraculously she was still awake so we played on the exersaucer a while before taking a power nap.

Whaaaa? NO NAP!!

Enough playing FEED ME!!!
One more thing, we know that the Viet Nam program is going through a lot of changes and that it is very scary for the families still waiting for referrals and waiting to travel to get their children. We just want everyone to know that we are thinking about you and hoping that things work out the way they are supposed to. Everyday I look at Norah and think about how sick with worry I would be if we were still waiting. We are so grateful to have our beautiful girl. Big hugs to Katy who is still waiting to get precious Yen. I think about you both every day!!!

Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre

2008-03-12T14:46:00.007-05:00

No trip to Hanoi would be complete without seeing a show at the famous Water Puppet Theatre. This company has performed all over the world. Hue took us to the theatre and then had to leave us to meet with us a few hours later, so we had time after the show to wander around for a couple of hours after the show.

We wondered how people learn how to ride the motorbikes--at what age, where they practice, etc. Well, here's the answer.

You're not really supposed to take photos during the performance, but we took our chances. The sign of a quality water puppet theatre are live musicians (some of the lesser ones use recorded music).

Norah was an angel during the show, staying very attentive and watching the show.

A word of advice. Be very careful and subtle when taking pictures of police and soldiers. I read this in something after we got back home. Luckily, this picture didn't land Dani in jail or anything drastic.

There was a temple near the theatre, but admission wasn't free. I was starting to get a little worn-out from the language barrier and foreign currency, so we skipped this one.

A huge video screen counting down to the 1000-year anniversary of the founding of Thang Long (the original name of Hanoi).

This girl was a little chatterbox and went on and on about how kind we were to be doing what we were doing for Norah, how children with her kinds of conditions need help and all kinds of other things. Admittedly, she was probably just wanting to sell us more stuff (which she definitely did).

Word of advice #2: if people come up with these contraptions wanting to put them on you and have you take pictures of yourself, DON'T DO IT! After we did this, they then wanted money for taking the picture. They followed us for about half a block badgering us. (The pictures were funny though.)

Tran Quoc Pagoda

2008-03-08T16:51:00.010-06:00

One of the things I was really wanting to do in Vietnam was visit one of the many pagodas. While I'm no longer really a practicing Buddhist (one of the most impactful statements I ever read was "One shouldn't strive to be a Buddhist, rather one should strive to be a Buddha") Buddhist thoughts and practices still play a major part of my life. Being able to visit one of the oldest pagodas in Vietnam was definitely a highlight of the trip for both of us.

We felt a bit weird taking pictures inside the worship area itself, and they didn't come out well regardless.

Guatama Buddha.

Dani wanted to take this old lady home with us, she was so cute.

There was money all over the steps here. I couldn't resist adding to the donations. Shortly afterward, a random guy came and took some of the money, but not all of it. I assumed he was associated, somehow, with the pagoda.

Snapshots of Hanoi

2008-03-08T10:50:00.004-06:00

The shops in Vietnam had everything but the kitchen sink? Here are the sinks!

We drove by a fire truck that was putting out a building fire. Imagine the traffic jam that could occur in this situation.

Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum. The security around this place was intense. No cars allowed nearby, etc. Apparently, even babies can't go inside. (We talked to another travelling family and they were turned away because they had a baby with them.)

These banners were all over, celebrating February 3, 1930, which is the date that Ho Chi Minh founded the Communist Party of Vietnam.

Seven Months Old

2008-03-05T19:35:00.003-06:00

In celebration of Norah's seven-month birthday, here are some pictures of her from earlier today.

Hanoi!

2008-03-05T14:43:00.007-06:00

After a fairly uneventful plane ride (Norah was amazingly well-behaved on the plane) we arrived in Hanoi. I may have said this already (I'm all confused about what's been posted and what hasn't) but I really enjoyed Hanoi. Although I've never been to either city here in the US, Saigon and Hanoi seem to be like Miami and New York City. Saigon is a beautiful, bright, (HOT) vibrant city. It's wonderful to visit, but I couldn't imagine living there. I understand why people wouldn't enjoy Hanoi as much as Saigon, but there was something about it that I really enjoyed. It just seemed more metropolitan, with a little more consistent identity than Saigon.

Some views from our room at the Hanoi Hotel (up on the 9th floor).

The sitting room.
Bedroom.

The first step of any trip to a Vietnamese city is to find where the local market is and go buy some bottled water. I took these during my journey to the market.

And of course...the baaaaaaby.

Our first week home

2008-03-04T20:14:00.010-06:00

We still have some photos from Hanoi to post, but we just wanted to put up some pictures of Norah at home.

Barnabas posted this before I got a chance to add my comments. I am slowly returning to the land of the living. I caught a stomach bug last week, most likely at the pediatrician's office (of course!) and spent the last 5 days in the bathroom for one reason or another and then this morning I wake up with what appears to be pink eye. I also did something to 2 of my fingers on my left hand during turbulence in the middle of the night on the flight from Hong Kong to LA and they are still hurting. Don't ask what, I couldn't tell you. I swear I am falling apart. So last week was really rough and I just wanted to give everyone an update as to what Norah has been doing.

First night at home. She went to bed really well that first night, err, morning as we didn't get in until after mid-night. That was the end of peaceful sleep until last night when she slept from 9:15 pm until 6:30 am. Tonight she went to bed at 8:45 pm and I am hoping she will sleep until 7 am... that would be so nice and more like the schedule we were on in Viet Nam.

Here Norah and Dad chill out before heading to the pediatrician on Monday 2/25. She had no idea what was coming... Oh and see those cute booties we got in Viet Nam? Daddy lost a whole booty and matching red poppy sock and mommy was very sad. At the doctors she was all cool with being weighed and measured. She weighed in at 14lbs 10 oz and measured 26 in long. The doctor told us that she is 100% developmentally on target which was wonderful and that in a week or so should be sitting unassisted. Then the nurse went to get the shots and Norah fell asleep on daddy's coat for 20 minutes.
This was a crappy way to wake up! She only got 2 shots to start, one in each leg. She was NOT happy and screamed all the way to the grocery store to get her 2nd round of antibiotics filled. She has another ear infection but you could have fooled us, she didn't cry during any of the take offs or landings during our trip home.
Immunization shots. Bad times for the Norah.

Then she discovered the joys of the ExerSaucer.

Okay, it was only joyful for 10 minutes that first day but tonight she spent and hour in there happy as could be, bouncing, giggling and yaking the entire time.
This was taken before going to Quest for an hour of pokes to try to get blood. They were unsucessful and she had to go to the hospital for another blood attempt on Wed. 2/27. I found out today that the 7 vials they took were not enough to run all the tests and she has to go back late next week after she replenishes half of her body's supply for round 2.
Here she is posing super cute.... or rubbing her infected ear.
Bundled up babe.
Norah went on her first walk on Sunday 3/2 in her stroller and seemed pretty bored with the whole thing. We had a freakish 78 degree day... today we got 7 inches of snow, that is St. Louis for you!!

Norah met neighbors Tom & Ashley and soon to be playmate Greta growing in Ashley's tummy.
Get this jacket off of me, it is HOT out here!!
The doctor gave us the okay to introduce Norah to veggies. She had some squash and green beans last week and some sweet potatoes this morning. She will only eat it if I trick her with bites of cereal first. The second bite of veggies usually gets projectiled nearby and then she screams. Aunt Jessi needs to send the green bean pic to me so I can post it, it looks pretty nasty.

More playtime excitement.

She loves CRUNCHY and will chew and chew on it. I think her favorite toy is her Infantino Elephant right now. It has lots of crunchy parts she can stuff in her mouth.
Happily eating cereal for dinner before I stuffed in more green beans and she yelled. She gets very excited about the cereal and will lean forward and almost shake with anticipation. She likes somewhat big bites and she likes them fast.
Big playtime tonight. She was so so happy and in such a good mood all day which was a nice change from the 3 hours of screaming-for-absolutely-no-freakin-reason yesterday. She was "talking" so loud we could not hear American Idol but would stop whenever I paused it, then start again and laugh when I turned it back on.
Uh oh, I accidentally deleted the last pic. We will have to add it back later. So other than that, we saw a specialist yesterday and Norah's first surgery to have her cleft lip repaired, head lump removed, (the doctor thought that it is scar tissue, no idea what happened to her to get that large of a scar on her head) and most likely ear tubes put in if the ear infections keep up will be 1 month from today on 4/4. It is a pretty quick surgery and she only has to stay 1 night in the hospital. I am not too worried about it, I just can't imagine her looking differently. We both love her the way she is!

Cu Chi Tunnels part two

2008-03-04T11:51:00.005-06:00

Here's the second part of the Cu Chi post. Again, some of this is a little disturbing, so please be aware. I debated even posting these, but I had never really seen these before (and I'm fairly well-studied on this period of history) so I wanted to put it up.

These are all examples of some of the booby traps used by the villagers of Cu Chi against the American soldiers. I definitely wondered if the tour guide felt strange at all, describing these traps and their effects to a group of Americans. It didn't make me uncomfortable at all, but I would imagine that some would definitely have an issue with seeing these traps.

This mural was behind the trap exhibit.

They would recover unexploded bombs and other explosive devices and saw them open and reuse the gunpowder to make land mines. Land mines are, without a doubt, among the most destructive device in any war, since they're always left behind after every war and take countless innocent lives.

Some of the bombs dropped on the people of Vietnam.

They were busy making rice paper (the kind used for making spring rolls, etc) and had some batches sitting out to dry.

Here is our tour guide, standing by some freakishly large sandals. I really enjoyed him and his stories about life during this horrible time and during his own life here.

Here I am (yes, with Norah strapped onto me) heading down into one of the larger tunnels (about three feet tall by two feet wide--the smaller ones are about 1.5 feet tall by two feet wide--eek). I got a few feet into the tunnel and felt my hips touch the side of the tunnels and quickly retreated back out. I could just see me getting halfway through the tunnel and Norah (or myself) start freaking out.

A watchtower.

Norah spent most of the time asleep, but woke up and started to fuss for a little while.

Here's one of the kitchens. They would divert the smoke through the tunnels so it would come out through a chimney far away as to not attract the American's attention.

We stopped towards the end and had tapioca. Our guide told us how this was pretty much all that the people of Cu Chi lived on for about 20 years (before, during and after the American War). It actually wasn't bad, having been steamed. It would not be good, though, after eating nothing but that for 20 years.

Here's the chimney (you can see the charred leaves) from the kitchen.