These photos are from the beginning of the month. I meant to post them then, but it's been crazy around here. Kai has been sick the last couple days and I have been staying home with him in the morning, so I finally got a chance to post this.

There are updated photos on Shen's Blog too!

Kai continues to attend the co-op preschool where Tina teaches 4 mornings a week. He is in both classes Tina teaches: the 3-4 yr old class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the toddler class on Wednesdays and Fridays. This has helped his language development quite a bit, and he loves being with the other kids. In the picture on the left he is playing "store". Note the fancy tu-tu he's wearing, this is his favorite item from the dress-up clothes, on the right he's playing in the sand-boat in the outside play area. The view of the bay on top is what you see looking out the windows or from the playground. I really enjoy the days that I get to be a "working-parent" at the school. I did this with both Cam and Ben at the very same preschool years ago.

Sunday we started a new quarter at Chinese Language School. The Pre-Kindergarten class Kai is in got their main teacher back. Last quarter, Kai's first, was taught by a very nice woman who really worked hard to keep the class together, but wasn't really the right person for this age group. I'm not going to complain about her because I really liked her a lot and appreciate what she did. But the class today was a wonderful change of pace for us. It was much more interactive, and Kai really enjoyed it. There were only 4 kids today as well, so that helped a bit too - usually there is about 8 to 10 kids. There is another new little boy in the class who has been living in China for the last several months. He speaks fluent Chinese and is a fun little guy. I've been working on getting him and Kai to connect as they are the only two boys in the class. Today they really started to hit it off. We were starting to get a bit stressed out by this class, but today was a real turning point. I think this program is going to be really good for Kai in many of ways. And we discovered today that the school's principal lived in Xi'an (the city where Shen is) for 5 years; we will definitely have to ask her for tips about what to do and see there before we travel.

Today was Tina's birthday! We had a fun little celebration, we went to dinner with the kids and all gave her little gifts. It's always so hard for me to find nice presents, I wish I was better at that. I got her a car.

Actually, the car purchase was more of an anti-climactic ending to a major ongoing problem, so it wasn't really a birthday present. I want to blog more about the car as it's a pretty good story and will probably write more about it later, but then someone we don't even really know gave her a present that blew away anything I might have tried to give her.

A family traveling to Shen's SWI to adopt their daughter took a photo album and stuffed toy to Shen for us. Yesterday they were able to give him these gifts and take photos for us. Want to see some great pictures? CLICK HERE!

We've posted a new entry on Shen's Bog.
CLICK HERE to read it!

Hong Bao Biao; that's Mandarin for Red Envelope Fish.
This is the first ever Crafting entry on Stinky Mouse. Enjoy it, and don't hold your breath for another one!
So now that Chinese New Year is over and you've put away all the decorations, did you have a bunch of red envelopes left over? We did, and we learned a really cool thing to do with them at Chinese Language School.
First, get out your red envelopes. You will also need a pair of scissors and a stapler. This project is really pretty simple. It consists of 3 simple cuts to the envelope, then a tricky little move to shape the fish...




you can use a needle to run a thread through it and make a nice little hanging ornament. These would look great on a Christmas tree.

We haven't done a FFFF post in a while here at Stinky Mouse but really liked this week's subject. FFFF stands for "Family FotoFun Friday" and was thought up by our good friend Donna on her blog: Double Happiness.

Each week Donna thinks up a different theme for pictures to post. This week the theme is Hands, and I knew I'd want to play this time. Hands are a very big deal around here.

Both Kai and Shen have limb differences which affect a hand. In Kai's case he has a radial club hand on the left side. He has no thumb on this hand and very limited range of motion in his index and middle fingers. His forearm is very short and his wrist is situated so that his hand is always curled in. Shen was born without a right hand. We don't have many pictures of Shen or know much about the cause of his missing hand, but the photo above is the best one we have that shows his right arm.

The photo of Kai's hand was taken at Children's Hospital almost a year ago on the day we took him in for surgery to remove the tiny little "thumb" nubbin he was born with. The decision to have that removed was sort of a difficult one for us. Before we brought Kai home we thought that we might be in for a future of complex surgeries to rearrange his fingers. Skilled doctors can move fingers to create "thumbs", there are ways to lengthen limbs as well. But when we met Kai we discovered he was quite adept at using his left hand just the way it was. This was after all, the hand he had been born with and he had almost 3 years of experience working with it this way. The surgeon we met with at Children's Hospital explained to us that most children who are affected "unilaterally" (meaning they have one regular hand) statistically don't really benefit from surgery. Having gotten to Kai a bit at this point and being more familiar with how he used his hand we were relieved to find out we could let him be just the way he is and that he would be fine. We had grown fond of his little hand just the way it was and didn't want to subject him to surgery if it wasn't clearly going to help him. We had the little nubbins removed because we were concerned about it getting snagged and felt it drew attention to his hand. Having it removed was a very minor procedure and it has healed quickly with hardly any scar at all.

As to Shen's "hand", or actually his lack thereof, we don't really know how this will affect him, though we have some ideas. The report we got from his orphanage says "When holding things, if his left hand cannot hold all, he puts things under his right arm and holds them tightly. If his right arm is not enough, he uses his jaw. He is a capable boy, does not give up due to his disability and does everything well". We have read a lot online about how children and adults with this type of limb difference cope and are confident that Shen will do very well.

Here are some more pictures of Kai's hands...


LINK BACK TO STINKY MOUSE HOMEPAGE

I have added a unique blog to this site just for Shen! There's a link to it in the sidebar on the right, or to go to it right now just
CLICK HERE

On Saturday we drove about a half hour south to take Kai to see a puppet show and we invited Cameron to come with us. We wanted to do some clothes shopping for Cam and thought it would be fun to combine the two outings. We were quite pleased that Cam agreed to come along. We weren't too surprised that he was willing to see the puppet show with us, but he absolutely hates shopping for clothes. I love the picture above of Cam and Kai; I took it outside the theater - check out the dimples on both of them!

The puppet show was excellent! We heard about it through the Northwest Chinese Cultural Association which we joined at their CNY celebration. The name of the show was "Monkey Goes Fishing & Other Chinese Tales". It was a really fun show with beautiful puppets. There was no narration, just music, lots of drumming and cymbals like you would hear in Beijing opera and other classical Chinese pieces. The quality of the puppeteering was excellent. They had a number of fun tricks they did with the puppets, like making them spin objects or toss and catch things. Even more impressive though was the way they could make them so perfectly mimic subtle human movement and actions. Kai was quite impressed, especially when the tiger swallowed a man! Not to worry, he was later rescued. Much as Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother was rescued from the belly of the wolf!

After the show the puppeteers came out to visit, and to let us see the puppets up close. The troop was a husband and wife, and their young son. My one complaint about the performance was that they didn't ever explain who the artists were, or the significance of their art. Through searching the internet I learned woman's name is Yang Xie Zheng whose family has performed this art for six generations, she is originally from Fujian China. The picture above is of her and her son holding up the monkey and the fish for me. I was also able to find a video clip of her father performing a number of the pieces we saw today. CLICK HERE to go to the page about her father, the video link is at the bottom of that page.

Here's one of the events that slowed blogging down lately.
That's our 16 year old son Ben, who had his appendix removed last week. I accompanied him on this little adventure as it's often easier for me to get out of work than it is for Tina. I snapped the two bottom pictures with my cellphone. The top background picture is one Ben took of his IV tube. I shot the pictures so Tina could get an idea of what was going on when she wasn't there. The one on the left is Ben about to have a C-T scan, and on the right is just before he went into surgery - he is flashing one of his classic goofy faces. He never objected to me taking the pictures even though he must have known they would end up on here.

It was quite an interesting day. Ben had been complaining about stomach discomfort for about four days, but as he continued to eat mass quantities of food, sometimes smothered with Tabasco, we didn't clue in right away that something serious might be going on. Finally he seemed to be describing more of a localized pain in the area one associates with the appendix. As Tina and I are both still in possession of our appendices we were still a little unsure of what was going on. He wasn't running a fever or in extreme distress, but Tina finally decided he should see the doctor. The doctor agreed it sounded like it could be an inflamed appendix, so they scheduled the C-T scan.

Somehow we screwed up on the instructions for the barium he was to drink before the scan. They gave him 2 pints - it was supposed to be one before bed and one an hour before the scan. We had him drink both before bed. It was a very impressive, though unnecessary feat. He survived our attempted poisoning and still seems to like us.
He had to drink another pint at the imaging center and then got an IV with iodine as well. They sent us to our doctor's office to wait for the results, and an hour later I was checking him into the hospital.

At the hospital we were put in a pre-op stall with the little curtain dividers and we waited.
and waited
and waited
Occasionally our wait would be interrupted by different people who would stop and ask the same questions: "when was the last time you ate?", and "are you allergic to any medications?" seemed to be their favorites.

After 8 hours of this it was time for surgery, which only took about 45 minutes. They do this laparoscopically now - 3 tiny incisions, no stitches, just some clear tape. Once Ben was awake, they wanted to see him drink, pee, walk, and get in the car. Yep, it's out-patient surgery now. The worst pain seemed to be from the residual bubbles of the inert gas used to inflate his abdomen during surgery. Ben spent about 4 days on the couch icing his tummy, and then was back to his routine.

One week later now, he went to the surgeon's office for a quick follow-up check where he was told he can do whatever he wants. So tonight Ben went to work at the ice rink and said he might stay late to play hockey. Tomorrow he's going snowboarding at Mt. Baker. Seems like he's on the mend.

*interesting adoption related footnote: when Tina brought Kai into the hospital to hang out and wait for us a bit and meet the surgeon we discovered he (the surgeon) has two daughters from China and three boys from Cambodia!

Okay, no excuses. I promise multiple entries this weekend to get caught up!