Patch, Surgery, etc....

Today is day 2 of Jack’s eye patch. Day 1 went better than expected. We put it on him right at 6am when we woke him up for the day so he was still groggy and he really didn’t know what was going on. He didn’t start to fight the patch for about 30 minutes. It lasted 1 ½ hrs, so we will take it. Today was the same situation, 6am and he was too groggy to fight it. He realized it was on there about 30 minutes later, but didn’t really fuss too much. I ended up taking it off at 1 hr, 40 minutes because he fell asleep. Tomorrow maybe we can do 1 hr 50 minutes?!? The patches do not stick very well around the nose, and it is tough to make sure that light is not peeking in. We are constantly messing with it to make sure it is as effective as possible.

To clarify my post on the eye surgery, both eyes will be done at the same time. Apparently, there are 6 muscles in each eye that control eye movement. One muscle moves the eye to the right, one moves it to the left, and 4 move it up or down and at an angle. Jack will have 2 of these muscles on each eye “relaxed”. His muscles are not balanced and working together at this point. The surgery is on Dec 22nd, with a pre-op appt on the 21st and a post op appt on Jan 5th.

We are looking forward to the surgery being completed for several reasons. First and foremost for attachment. Jack makes below average eye contact at this point, but it is nearly impossible to determine what he is looking at. Sometimes I think he is looking at me, but then realize he is just zoning out and looking out into space. Eye contact is an important aspect of bonding and we feel the surgery will at least help us determine if we are making improvements in this area. Another reason is due to his constant falling. All toddlers fall, but since Jackson sees double, he falls ALL the time. I have no idea how his head isn’t always black and blue. We are concerned he is going to get a head injury. Eventually, the brain will just shut off his other eye if he isn’t treated for the Strabismus, which will affect a variety of things, including learning.

As far as attachment goes, we are doing okay overall. We have kept him in the house with both parents for the most part for the last month. We have gone out just a handful of times. When we were at the eye appointment, Jack walked right up to a man and grabbed him. Of course, this isn’t good for attachment reasons, but to make matters worse – this particular man was very angry and had been pestering the staff for the entire time we had been there. Jack not only went to a stranger, he went to an angry stranger. At first, he did stay with us, but continued to get further and further away from us with very little hesitation. Bill would get up from the chair and separate him from the others, but Jack still wanted to go over to where the other adults were (and have nothing to do with us). Needless to say, we have a lot of work to do. We don’t expect him to become attached to us overnight, but we do want to keep a close eye on this and other types of behaviors and need to make sure that he doesn’t continue indiscriminate friendliness.

Here is a short video of Jackson trying out his new scooter! He loves it!

Doctor's appointment

We visited the Opthalmogist today just after 2pm and didn't leave the office until 5pm. Jackson has Congenital Esotropia Intermittent Strabismus. This is where both of his eyes turn inward intermittently and he cannot use them together. He does however, have full use of both eyes, even though he is a little farsighted.

We scheduled surgery for December 22nd with a Physician that specializes in Strabismus and this should realign his eyes. Until then, we will patch his right eye everyday with an Orthopedic Eye Patch for 2 hours to strengthen his left eye (the weaker of the two).

We were aware of this diagnosis and researched this condition prior to adopting Jack. The news today was what we were expecting.

We have not posted any pictures that shows the severity of Jackson's inward turning eye, but plan to do so after the surgery.

The Magic Word!

Today as we were finishing up lunch, Jack shocked us both when he said the magic word we have been waiting to hear.... MAMA! Michelle and I were cleaning up our lunch stuff when Jack just started repeating MAMA over and over out of the blue. We had been working on this with him, but up until today he had just stared at us like we were asking him to recite Tolstoy or something. Mommy had a smile on her face that was powered by her heart. She looked so proud of our little guy! For about the next 10 minutes, the three of us just kept saying "MAMA, MAMA , MAMA..." to each other. This was a great day for us, and especially for Mommy. She had been wanting to hear this, and for it to come out of the blue like that was great. We still aren't quite sure that Jack really knows who "Mama" is yet, but tonight while I was reading to him, he reached out his arms towards Michelle who was in the kitchen and said "Mama" once. We are making strides!

Tomorrow we meet with an opthamologist who will advise us about Jack's Strabismus. Jack is not a fan of doctors, so we expect him to be in full throat for the appointment.

We usually don't let Jack run around in his diaper, but we were getting a kick out of his excitement after lunch....

Thanksgiving (take one)

Michelle is a perfectionist. That is a good thing because when she sets her mind to something, she gets it done no matter what the task. The staff at our adoption agency often commented on how thorough we were with our paperwork and how timely we were at getting things done. This is all a credit to Michelle because she took the reigns on that and just told me to what to do and when to do it. She is like this with everything. Sometimes I groan when we have a task to do because I know that no matter what the task is, we will be working on it ASAP no matter how tough or tedious the task is (or what football games happen to be on at that moment). But, every once in awhile Michelle's perfectionism works out in my favor (actually, it pretty much always works out in my favor in the end, but I am a procrastinator by nature so I like to put off stuff but that doesn't happen with Michelle). The other day she decided she wanted to do a practice Thanksgiving Dinner since my sister, brother-in-law and niece are coming in town for the real Thanksgiving weekend. So, today we had our dry run on Thanksgiving dinner. Everything was great, and I happily devoured this practice meal. We even have leftovers for dinner tomorrow. So, between the practice Thanksgiving and the real Thanksgiving, I plan on getting between 4-6 turkey dinners over the next two weeks when you factor in leftovers. I am a lucky man!

Okay, enough about me and onto the real reason you read this blog, stories about Jack! Yesterday we took our first trip to the beach. Well, technically we went to the beach in Vladivostok, but this was our first trip to an American beach. We took a long walk and collected some pretty cool shells. There had been a big storm in this area last week, so there were some really cool shells on the beach. I had never seen fully intact conch and hermit crab shells on any beach before in my life but there were lots of them where we went yesterday (a place called Sandbridge Beach in VA). We would have taken some home with us, but the problem was that there were hermit crabs and other creatures living in these shells. So we took a few empty ones home with us and left the rest to return to the ocean. Jack did really well and even liked to walk on the sand. He wasn't too crazy about the sand at that beach in Vlad. We saw lots of dogs playing at the beach which Jack really enjoyed seeing. We saw some huge birds and some guys catching some decent sized fish too. What a great day at the beach.

The beach trip was a nice thing to do on a Sunday afternoon but for the most part we have been hanging around the house letting Jack get used to things on is own terms. He is doing really well with most of his routines, though he is not the best napper in the world. Sometimes he naps well, sometimes he doesn't. This is the one area where he hasn't quite found consistency. He took 2 naps a day at the baby home, and that is what we have been doing here but we may need to eventually tweak that into one longer nap rather than 2 short ones. The naps or lack of naps don't really seem to have much bearing on the rest of his waking hours though (meaning he isn't overly cranky if he doesn't nap well in a particular day) so there isn't a real urgency to make a change to the routine yet.

That's all for now. Stop on in if you want a turkey sandwich tomorrow!

Update from Curranland

Well we finally collected the last of the stool samples today. Michelle, Jack and I have agreed never to discuss that process again. We did not get back to the doctor today because our area is having pretty bad storms and the news people are advising everyone to stay at home. So Jack, Michelle and I (and the samples) will load up (no pun intended) tomorrow and head back to the doctor.

Other than the unpleasantries mentioned above (and they weren't that unpleasant), we are having a great time together. Michelle found a music channel on our cable called "Toddler Tunes" so we listened to music today and Jack showed off his dancing skills. He cracks us up, and his favorite tune is the "heads, shoulders, knees and toes" tune. When we start singing that he laughs and points to his head. He also does this funny wrist shake thing and hops from one foot to the other when he dances. He seems to love music. Tonight we heard a Rolling Stones song on that channel and the album it came from was something like "lullabies to the music of the Rolling Stones". Very cool!

In addition to dancing, Jack likes helping us do things. He helped Mommy make brownies the other day and he helped us vacuum last night too. He was fascinated with the vacuum and at one point he stood in front of it and stared at it so I couldn't get around him. We must have looked like the famous picture of the student standing in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square. He is more brave with the vacuum than our pets are!

Speaking of the pets, he LOVES our two dogs, Gracie and Copper. We thought they would be overbearing to him, but it might be the other way around. He follows Copper around and loves to pet her. She is so good with him and doesn't care when he steps on her tail or trips over her feet. Gracie, the smaller dog pictured on our blog is great with him too. She was used to being the baby before Jack came into the picture but has adjusted nicely to being a big sister.

Right now Jack is asleep for the night, but the wind is howling and the rain is pounding against the house. Hopefully he can sleep through the night despite the noise!

Time goes too quickly

Jackson woke up this morning at 5am to start the day. He actually slept through the night other than waking up once around 10pm, and quickly falling back asleep. His naps are much shorter than they were at one time, 1 hr in the morning and 40 minutes in the afternoon, but given a choice - we would choose sleeping through the night.

Since he isn't on the chart for his age on weight, we attempted to increase his food intake today. 3 diaper blowouts later, and I think we were successful. I sometimes wonder that more comes out than goes in?!?

He was still cranky today, not sure if this residual effects of the inoculations or if he was just cranky. Tomorrow we take in three days of stool samples (ahhh, the joys of parenthood), and they will also read his TB results. His arm looks good, so hopefully all is well with that.

I have kept the washer/dryer super busy since we have arrived home. How can a family of 3 make so much dirty laundry? I have no idea how a family of 4 or more do it! Not sure how we will keep up when we go back to work, but just like most families - we will make it.

As far as the never ending paperwork goes...today I contacted an Attorney that is familiar with re-adoption in our state. We were referred to him by a local family that used him as well to re-adopt their son, and they were happy with him. Anyway, he was low on personality, but is familiar with the process so that works for us. We need to wait 6 months from our adoption date to file for the adoption due to how the courts work in our state. Looks like we will be putting this on our to do list for late April.

We have yet to apply for a SS#, I have to admit I am a bit confused on how and when to do this. I have heard so many different things, we aren't sure what to do. I emailed our agency a couple days back and again today for direction but no response. This will have to wait another day!

Drs Appt and Russian Consulate Registration

Today Jack had his first Pediatrician appointment. It wasn't an overly fun experience, but it is done and over. Doctors scare our little guy, but after 6 shots and several tubes of blood taken from my arm - I would be crying too.

It appears things are as we thought - he is either below the curve or in a low percentile, but is making progress. Physically, he is pretty healthy. The blood work will come back in a few days and we can then confirm the remainder of his vaccinations. We follow up in 1 month.

We also scheduled an appointment with an Opthamologist to address the Strabismus. This is scheduled for next week with a doctor who specializes in eye disorders for toddlers. We will either patch his eye, wear glasses or have surgery to correct the issue.

As part of our adoption process, we are required to register Jackson with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the Russian Consulate in Washington, DC. It is due within 3 months of when we arrive home.

We had to send in an application, passport photo of Jack, original passport, new birth certificate (in Russian and English), and new Adoption Certificate (in Russian and English). We went out yesterday to copy these items and get them notarized and sent them on via UPS. Mark this one off our 'to do' list!

Tonight Jack is cranky after his shots. Bill has been carrying him around for about an hour now to calm him. Hopefully he will sleep through the night and feel better tomorrow!!