Wars of Rosacea

I haven't blogged since Christmas, and that's because I've had a recurring problem with using screens. The glare is awful. Apparently my ocular rosacea flares up when it's very cold, and so as soon as we got back from Texas and the temperature plunged, my rosacea went nuts. What happens to me is that the oils in my tear glands are blocked in from the inflammation, and so the oil parts never get into the tears (I can now testify that they are very important). As a result, I wake up crying projectively and have to force drops into my eyes to hydrate them properly. Repeat every hour or so, all night. It takes about 2 days for my eyesight to recover in that eye, and a few more for screens to be comfortable.

The first week this happened, I had three flare-ups in a week and then one of my corneas got over-wet and exploded (it's like a waterbed; too much water in between the cornea and the basement membrane and boom!). Since that has happened once before, I had a pretty good idea what had happened and hauled into the opthamologist's office and he cleaned it up for me. (First time he took dead tissue of of my eye with tweezers, horror movie. Second time, eh. I guess it all depends what you're used to. Personally, I am tired of the receptionists knowing my name.) So now I'm on drugs but still had a couple flare-ups this week. Jim got me a pirate patch just in case. Saw the uber-specialist again today and he put a contact lens bandaid in my eye (preemptively? he doesn't say much, but the last flareup might have caused a bit of a fissure, too). In three weeks we'll see how much better I am.

Humph. Now you know why there's precious little news coming out of this house. But the drugs are helping and the weather is warming, so soon I'll update on New Year's and etc.

Christmas!

It was Jed's first Christmas at home, and he was a bit overwhelmed. We start with stockings in bed, but he had trouble understanding that he could open everything in his stocking, and actually stopped about halfway through, content to scarf down a breakfast bar and watch everyone else. Gus exclaimed with almost every small present that this was "the best one EVER!" My favorite things are the wind-up caterpillars, which the boys mostly ignored until today. If they don't play with them, I will. The hits were the airplanes which make lots of noise when you zoom them.

After breakfast we opened the presents under the tree. That wasn't too overwhelming, since our family presents don't come until 3 Kings' Day, so all that was under the tree was from out-of-town family. Gus feels that the presents should never stop coming, even though today he can't remember half of what he received yesterday. The boys most enjoyed their Philadelphia sports slippers, the Viking-esque ship from their cousins, and the big box from Mike and Sarah. We had some friends over for dinner who are too far from family (Scotland!) to head home, and the 3 boys spent about an hour in and out of the box, yelling "Surprise!!!"

Today we are awaiting around a foot of snow, and will probably have part of tomorrow off to go sledding. Later this week we will go visit Jim's family in Texas, where there will not be enough snow to go sledding.

No More Shots!

Oops, I forgot until now to celebrate online, but the fix to the Hague has finally been passed and signed by the President. Now kids coming home under the new rules can be exempted from shots in China as long as their parents promise to bring them up to date at home on a reasonable schedule. Woohoo!

Monster Ball

It's been a weird eye month, with a scratch in my eye for which I have now seen three opthamologists. The third one actually snorted at the advice the first one gave me. I don't suppose he'll be at that practice for long. The scratch should be healed by now, and next week I have another appointment which will hopefully take the bandaid out of my eye and be fine. I also have rosacea which affects my tear ducts, so that explains the dry eye and eyelid pain I was having. Anyhow...

After one of the first opthamologist appointments, my eyes were still hurting. Jim came home from worship practice to find me with a baseball cap pulled way down over my eyes. "Honey, you look like Gwyneth Paltrow on the way to the grocery store." Glare from screens was especially painful, but since it was movie night I put on the hat and sucked it up. It was Jed's first turn to pick a video, and Gus was not pleased. But then Jed picked Gus's favorite video ever, Robin Hood (with the fox) and all was well. That night they both wanted to wear their new monster pajamas, and I'm pretty sure that Jed picked Robin Hood because of the music in the video, because he's Jed and he loves to dance. Even a sore eye can't dampen how much fun it was to watch both boys in their monster jamas gettin' down together with Alan a Dale.

I think we talk enough about why we discipline, because Gus can say it all when Jed is in trouble. "You don't talk with boys in timeout." "He can make a better decision next time." Of course he doesn't seem to remember it when he is having trouble behaving. And I can't say I like the preemptive whining: "Jed isn't sharing!" "Have you asked him to share?" Well, no. It's so much faster to jump to conclusions.

Just got back from a week in Pittsburgh with my family. Gus was a bit miffed that Great PopPop belonged to Jed too. The cousins were the big hit, of course--it took the boys a little while to figure out how to play together, and then they were great, and we played with the girls. A day without the cousins was a day with lots of whining, so we got them together as much as we could. At one point Jed went up to his oldest cousin (6) and said something not particularly memorable. She said to me, "You sure can tell he's a Chinese boy!" Wondering how she had learned that from him saying "Hi!" I asked her how that was. And she looked at me like I was a complete moron and said, "Because he looks like one!" Moral of the story: sometimes the thought is not all that deep.

Jed spent the week impressing everyone with his prodigious appetite for poultry and pasta (one night he ate chicken faster than my sister could cut it), his determination, and his progress with English. He started three-word sentences early in the week "That's my daddy!" "I want this!" and progressed to a 5-word sentence before we left, "I want do that again!" Pretty much everything he says has exclamation points. "Mama!" "Sweatshirt!"

When we got home I rushed to get out the advent calendar that I made last year. Yes, I'm crazy, but I couldn't find what I wanted anywhere so I ended up making it. It's a felt calendar which tells the Christmas story (I felt a little less silly when one of my coworkers told me that she has a felt menorah for Hanukkah). We have another "calendar" made out of socks on a string, and in each sock is a piece for the Christmas calendar (and sometimes a treat). It's only day 3, and Gus is already overjoyed when it is his turn for a sock and despondent when it is Jed's. Jed loves all things foot-related, so he will stand there and say "Sock! Mama, sock!"

"SOCK!"

Indispensability

Remarks on Halloween: as Reb was raised with a healthy dislike of trick-or-treating, we also stayed away from other people's doors last night. We did, however, dress up the kids in their costumes (Gus was a monkey and Jed a headless toucan (no blood, he just doesn't like to wear the beak part)), take pictures of them with the pumpkin, and take them out for ice cream, where they were appropriately sugared up and oohed and aahed over. We saw the Cat in the Hat and a whole family dressed as the Little Engine that Could. Anyhow, after Jed went sugar crazy after 3 pieces of candy at Jim's work party, I don't want him acquiring much more. Also of note, we saw a mom *pushing* two kids in a stroller trick-or-treating! No way--no walk, no more candy. "We're trick-of-treating as future participants in the obesity epidemic." Jim noticed how different the costumes are here than in Houston, b/c either they have to be warm enough to walk out in the chilly fall weather or you can't see them b/c of your coat. We voted as "most inconvenient" the hockey player complete with rollerblades. It must be awful to climb the steps to 30 porches in rollerblades. It was sweet to see one house that was clearly staffed with college students excited to be grown-up enough to hand out the candy.

Jim and Gus picked out the perfect pumpkin to carve on Saturday. Undisemboweled, it weighed 24 pounds. That's only 3 pounds less than Jed weighs. Jed loves the jack-o-lantern. It's currently sitting on the coffee table and he will point it out to me several times a day. "Mommy! Pumpkin!" with a huge grin.

We also had our first three-word-sentence this week: "I WANT SHOES!" I was very impressed and told him so, but he was too busy howling to take the compliment.

On Sunday afternoons I often crash on the couch while the kids take their nap. When Jed woke up and came out to the living room, he immediately climbed up for some more snuggle. Only half-awake, I settled him in next to me and thought how quickly someone can become indispensable to your life. I don't mind at all him climbing on me while I'm mostly asleep, and I miss him when I'm not home, and he's only been here 2 months.

Hallelujah!

On Monday Gus said to me in the morning, "I don't have to cry when I go to preschool." He repeated it to himself several times, last right near the door--and HE DIDN'T! He had a great transition in all week, and we celebrated with brownie sundaes tonight. It took a whole month, but he is now comfortable at preschool. Whew!

But the drama is not over. Jed starts daycare with Lois on Tuesday. Dun-DUN.

Language acquisition is fun. Jed wants to say "Bus!" He started with "Bu!" Then it went to, "Butt, Mommy, Butt!" That took a minute to figure out. Now it's "Buck! Buck!" I think that's progress.

We were invited to the lab for lunch this week so that everyone who liked could come meet Jed. He had an absolute blast being the complete center of attention, and was ridiculously cute. Thanks for making me look good, little man.

Weekly Wrapup

Any day is better when you're not dealing with a chloral hydrated two-year-old, I can tell you that.

The past couple of weeks we've been chasing squirrels in the park. The first time Jed saw one he hollered something at it that wasn't "doggie" or "squirrel", which he didn't yet know. But he sure knew the Mandarin word for squirrel! We've since been working on the principle of conservation of squirrels: you can chase them and they will go somewhere else, but they do not disappear. He tracks them in the trees and continues to yell at them. But one today just paid him no mind and shelled his acorn onto Jed's head.

Language is coming along beautifully. He has around 30 words now, 2 of which are "Dinosaur Train". He babbles almost constantly. And he's starting to pick up Gus-isms: Gus's magic words to play with other children (well, to everyone, but it works best on other children) is "Can't catch me!" followed by a dash. As soon as he finished his last swallow of dinner tonight he was right over by Jed's chair: "Can't catch me, Jed Junwei!" So at the park today I was chasing Jed around and he turned and said something, then took off. It took me a few times to nail it down. Yep, "Can't catch me!"

He's also getting very good with "No". Today he hollered "No" at a girl who wanted to play with a toy he was no longer playing with at the park, "No" at a squirrel who was in the park, and "No" at the automatic door at the grocery store which was closing. Jim says that he hasn't yet learned the limits of its application. He really does seem to take the presence of squirrels in the park very personally.

We had some old friends over to dinner this week, and one of the families included a 7-year-old girl. The result was extensive use of playsilks and a night walk through the park. Gus woke up the next day talking about her, and I now have toga-wearing pirate superheroes racing through the house and jumping on the sofa (one sofa is designated as the jump sofa, at least until someone falls off). Jed was ridiculously comfortable with the guests, only two of which he'd met before. He does not usually give the time of day to other adults, but he ducked through legs and played peekaboo and even let one of them hold him for a few minutes with me nearby. I guess he assumed that since they were in our house, they were good people. I'm encouraged that he's trusting our judgment, and have invited Lois and her husband over for dinner so that he can see she's "our people" too. He starts daycare with her next Tuesday. We've been hanging out with her crew at the park whenever possible, and he's starting to warm up to her a bit.

Got our family photos taken last weekend. Jed was pretty weirded out and would NOT smile, except when we had Gus play peekaboo with him through the backdrop. Hence the cute smiles on individual shots only. And Gus is clearly preparing for a gubernatorial run with the wattage of that smile. As one of his aunts says, "He needs to use it for good."

And we got the pictures developed that were taken by Jed's nannies in Shenyang. It seems very well equipped with different kinds of toys, so I can see why he doesn't have sensory issues. They sent back a couple hats and toys (which I didn't expect), but I can see from the pictures that various kids were enjoying the rest, and that one of his nannies was explaining his photo book to him, so I feel very happy about the pictures. It's funny that the playroom in the orphanage has the same rubber tile flooring as we have in the boys' room, so that must have seemed very familiar to him.