Kai is such an amazing little trooper! We have had a really busy last four days. Memorial Day weekend in Bellingham is the weekend of our big local civic celebration, The Ski to Sea Race. Cam and Ben both marched with their high school band so we took Kai to watch them. We had taken him to see the Junior Ski to Sea parade the weekend before so he had an idea of what to expect. He loves parades. Loves to wave at everyone, and shake hands with the clowns, Shriners, etc. Had a great time. And best of all Cam and Ben’s band took first place in their division, beating out the other two city high school bands as well as a number of others.
We had even stopped on our way there to get him a last minute haircut. Haircuts have not been a favorite activity for him, and from the look of the cut he had back at the S.W.I. I think I can understand why. But he seems to have gotten over that and didn’t mind it at all this time.
On Sunday we went south for the annual party at our friends Kim and Alex’s. The weather was not so great, but we had a great time anyway. There were quite a few people there and it gets pretty loud. Kai fell right into the mix and had a great time. He enjoyed watching the horseshoe tournament, and getting to sit on Alex’s Harley.

Alex always has lots of toys. This is a picture of Kai and his cousin Devon watching Alex launch a little glider-plane from a bunch of helium balloons…

Monday was a quieter day of working around the house and lawn. It was good that it was a bit quieter, because Tuesday was not the day we returned to our regular routine.

No, Tuesday was the day we returned to Children’s Hospital for Kai’s hand surgery. To keep things in perspective, this was not a major surgery. All we were having done was the removal of his “floating thumb” from his left hand.

We probably could have had our local G.P. do it, but Dr. Hanel was glad to do it, and Kai was able to have a general anesthetic. We thought this would make it less traumatic for him, though we realized it would add an additional complexity to the procedure. We had set the appointment months ago, but had been wavering as to whether or not we were going to go through with it. His little thumb nubbin doesn’t pose a direct problem, but it does get in the way, and draws attention to his hand. We talked about putting it off, but in the end decided it was best to get it over with.

Our day began at 4:20 A.M. when our alarm went off. Tina and I snuck out of bed and got dressed while Kai slept. We quietly snuck some coffee and toast, feeling a little guilty, as Kai would not be able to eat until much later when he came out of the anesthesia. We had everything ready to go and the car warming up before we woke him. As usual, the first thing he asked for upon waking was breakfast. “Yup,” I told him, “We’ll eat in a minute.” This was going to be a very long minute. We changed his diaper, put shoes on him and loaded him directly into the car. This distracted him from his request and he probably wasn’t really ready to eat anyway, as it was only 5:00 A.M.

It was a beautiful morning; perfectly clear and the traffic was light. We stopped in Marysville (about an hour south) to pick up my mom, and then headed on to Seattle. On our last trip down the traffic had been really bad and we were late getting to Children’s, so we had left extra early this morning. Today the traffic was as nice as the weather and we made excellent time. We hit our exit at 7:00 A.M. and made every light on the way to the hospital. This sounds great, but it meant we had over an hour to kill before it was time to check in and we still couldn’t give Kai that breakfast we had promised him “in just a minute.”

We went ahead and checked in and sat in the reception area. This part of the hospital had just been redone and is absolutely gorgeous. Each part of the hospital has a different theme: airplanes, space, farm, etc. This area is called the “Whale Entrance” and is beautifully decorated.







Kai loves whales and was very taken by all the imagery. As it turned out we didn’t have to wait that long. The family scheduled ahead of us was driving over from Yakima and had called to say they were lost. Our early arrival meant we could switch places with them; we got in early and they didn’t lose their appointment.

The check-in receptionist noticed Kai’s fondness of Mouse and asked if he would be accompanying Kai into surgery. We thought that was a good idea so Mouse got a wristband too.

In the prep room Kai willingly let us undress him and put the tiny hospital gown on him.

The first time we met Dr. Hanel Kai was very upset when we had to undress him to be examined. After we met with nurse-practitioner and the anesthesiologist they brought in a dose of “goofy juice” for Kai. This was the first relaxing drug to prep him for the surgery. He wasn’t too happy about being given this, but didn’t fuss too much. Within minutes he started getting pretty slack, and before too long he began singing loudly to Mouse. I didn’t recognize the song, but it was reminiscent of :
“Show me the way to go home
I'm tired and I want to go to bed
I had a little drink about an hour ago
And it went right to my head”

The anesthesiologist returned and we put Kai into her arms. He was totally slack at this point and gave no resistance. This was really a very minor procedure, but entrusting your child to others this way is very, very hard. General anesthetics can have side affects, and this was his tiny, little hand they were going to be cutting on.

The procedure was to last only half an hour and they had given us pager to let us know when Dr. Hanel was finished. We went up to the cafeteria to eat something while we waited. Just as we were finishing our meal the pager went off. We raced back to the recovery room and in a few minutes the doctor came in to talk to us. The procedure went smoothly and Kai was sleeping. They would bring him in to us as soon as he started to wake. It took about an hour and they brought him back in on a little tiny gurney. His eyes were open and he was starting to come around. We were worried about how the anesthesia might affect him, would he be nauseous, irritated, panicky? Nope, he came out of it easily, had some water and even tried a popsicle. I think he still was a bit wonky as he normally won’t touch anything that sweet.

We got him dressed, checked out, and drove back to my mom’s for lunch. By the time we got there Kai was pretty much himself again and made himself at home in Gramma’s toy closet.

The whole process was much harder on us than it was on him, which is how it should be, and why we took him to Children’s for the procedure. When we got home he was up and going. He played in the backyard watering everything in sight, and working his earth moving equipment.





We have kept him on Tylenol with codeine to make sure he doesn’t have any pain, but apart from the annoyance of the bandage, he doesn’t seem to know he had surgery today. We are very proud of how well he handled it all and are continuously amazed at his resilience and positive attitude.

This entry is about Love Without Boundaries, a volunteer organization dedicated to improving the lives of orphans in China. They are currently hosting an auction on ebay to raise funds for essential life-saving heart surgeries for orphaned children in China. The goal this year is to heal 12 heart children. There are almost 700 wonderful items to bid on, and there is something for everyone. It certainly isn't limited to adoptive families, with wonderful artwork, music and collectibles. CLICK HERE to view the auction!

I posted earlier how Cam had made an art piece for this auction as part of his senior culminating project you can see (and bid on) his piece on by CLICKING HERE.

Love Without Boundaries also has a program for sponsoring children. We sponsor a little girl called "Libby" and recently got an update on her with the following information:

Libby
DOB: August 2005

Libby has really grown a lot. She has gained 4 cm and about a kilogram in weight. Libby can now sit up on her own and enjoys playing with toys on by herself. As soon as she is sitting up, she tries to grab anything within her vicinity. She turns to voices and always greets her foster mother with a huge smile! She continues to be healthy and happy. The foster family really loves her and is enjoying having her in their home.

Stinky Mouse finally got an update, CLICK HERE to see what he's been up to!

This week will be the 8th month anniversary of the day we received Kai into our family. Our official "Adoption Day" was September 19th, but we were able to meet Kai and take him with us on the 18th which fittingly was Moon Festival in China. It's been an amazing 8 months. Having been with Kai every day since he joined our family makes it hard to see just how much he has changed in this time; partly because the beautiful spark of who he is has not changed since we met him. But for those first few days together in China he was a very frightened little boy going through an amazingly challenging time. Over these last 8 months two things have gone on with Kai, one is that he has grown and developed and learned, just as any three-year-old does. The other thing though is that he has become a member of our family, and has opened up and shared who he is (and already was) more and more with us.

I have put together a little video montage of photographs of Kai that span the time from just before we traveled to get him until just a few days ago. I think you can see quite a transformation in him...

On Wednesdays Kai has his friend Mimi spend the day with him. They have been having a great time together, and Tina has been having fun taking pictures of the two of them together. I have been playing with the latest version of iMovie and put together this little video. I'm hosting it on videoegg.com. They're new, and currently don't have any ads on their site. I really like their interface; easy to use and they support Windows and Macs. The song is a White Stripes song, but is the Jack Johnson version from the soundtrack to Curious George (highly recommended!)

For those of you who check in on this blog regularly to see what's new, I apologize for not posting in a little while. We've been pretty busy here with a number of things. and I just haven't felt like blogging that much. Maybe it's the nice weather we've been having? Maybe I'm just lazy.
Part of it though is that blogging takes away time from living, and I'm trying to "live" a little more lately, so my online life has been taking a back seat. But I do like doing this, so do keep checking in.
I promise a Stinky Mouse update ASAP as well!

We had Tina's dad here with us for a few days last week, which was nice. Kai had only met Grampa twice before and both of those times were when we visited at Grampa's house, but he remembered him and was very playful and affectionate. Tina's dad had flown over to our side of the state to attend a memorial service for one of his best friends. I had a work thing down in Seattle, so Tina had to drive her dad down for the service; a 2+ hour drive through Seattle pretty much during rush hour, with Kai. She was pretty stressed out about how this was going to go, but ended up having a good time. Kai was a little trooper and held up great for the whole day.

Our middle son, Ben, is taking driver's ed. now, so I have been taking him out for driving practice. We have two vehicles to choose from, a beater '94 white Dodge Caravan, and a bright yellow '99 5 speed New Beetle.

The Caravan is the obvious choice to take a student driver out in for his first run, but where's the fun in that? When Cam learned to drive I let him try the Beetle. He had a pretty hard time with it, and we ended up putting it aside indefinitely. Last year Cam's summer job was about 15 miles from home and he really needed his own car, so we helped him buy an '85 Jetta. It's not the hottest ride on the road but it's been very reliable; and it's a manual tranny, so Cam did ultimately learn to master this skill. Ben really wanted to try the Bug, and I figured there's no harm in it. We went out a couple evenings last week and drove around through the cul de sacs of our neighborhood. He actually did quite well, but I think we'll go back to the Caravan until he gets a few more hours in behind the wheel. There's a whole lot going on outside the car you have to keep track of without having to think about shifting. All in all Ben shows signs of being a really good driver.

Cameron has been working hard on finishing up his senior culminating project (a graduation requirement). For part of this project he created an art piece and donated it to Love Without Boundaries 3rd Annual Born in My Heart Art Auction. (<--click to view the webpage) The Auction was created to raise funds for essential life-saving heart surgeries for orphaned children in China.

The piece is done in Lyra watercolor pencil,
matted under glass with a simple wood frame.

Kai has a "gesture" he does which we call "pray to Buddha". He was doing it when we were in China and Ben was the one who named it. He got Kai trained to do it on command. Over the last few months we haven't prompted him for it, but he'll still occasionally do it. It consists of him putting his hands together, raising them up and down in front of him while "singing". When he saw Cam's finished piece he did it spontaneously. I had to ask him to do it again for the camera...