Almost on our way to China

Just wanted to let you know we started a new blog (cause I'm so great at keeping this one up) for the adoption of our little girl. You can follow our journey here

Halloween 2010

If it isn't obvious from the pictures - T is, indeed, a dragon. There are some similarities to last year's costume of the cow - note the wide area around the hips, though not nearly as much. Had to show off the tail now didn't we, I mean, I had too. He had a blast! Running from house to house to stay up with his friends. At one point, through his bag to me, too heavy! And he was off. When his friends stopping trick or treating he was done however. "Too scary!" he said to his dad. It's hard to tell from the pics but I covered his nose and his beautiful little cheeks with a facepaint green crayon.

4th surgery scheduled

Happy Spring

eXTREME puddlejumping

Lion Dancing with Grandpa Crouch

A hug before dinner

My Chinese New Years outfit about 1 year too early

Vogue

Just wanted to give you a little update on Timothy. I've pretty much given up the blog for dead but it is the easiest way to update photos without having to send so many to each person via email.

Here's the great news! Timothy is almost completely at or above developmental age in every category with the exception of articulated speech. He talks a lot now and I'm always amazed at how many words he's attempting. He always speaks in two or three word sentences and will even do 4 words on occasion. He will be in speech therapy for a long time but he's made major gains in such a short time. Given the physical limitations of his mouth he has a hypernasality which you can hear in almost every word particularly with "s" sounds. We are working to get him to be able to suck with a straw which can be quite discouraging but he's trying so hard that he will pick it up one of these days. Also we are beginning the process of moving him to the next phase of his therapy. Unfortunately when he is three he'll have to move to the school system to get his speech work, which means less concentration on him individually. Hopefully his speech won't suffer and he'll still make gains. Otherwise we'll need to find him an individual therapist.

You may remember when he started therapy we were concentrating on individual sounds, the first being the "m" sound to help him gain strength in his upper lip and to stop drooling. It took two months for him to be able to make this sound and then for two weeks he would not do it at all due to my and our therapists' pushing him too hard. We reduced the pressure way down and it worked and he's been doing gangbusters ever since. I was so discouraged at the time and having a pity party for myself. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be to teach him speech as well as unbelievably time consuming. At times I thought it was too much. I learned so much about Timothy and how to make this work. Timothy is so smart and he really is self-motivated. He wants to be successful and he understands when he isn't making the correct sound. I can only imagine how hard it was for him.

Well the other night we were driving home from our friends house, just Timothy and I. When we get in the car the first thing Timothy always says is "music". We were driving along a beautiful stretch of land next to the water with little traffic and no stoplights. It was dark and Timothy just started singing all of the songs. He knows every word to every song - he can't sing the whole song but so much of them. It was amazing. I remember those times last April and I can't help but want to cry from joy. I'm so lucky! It was a great moment to feel and know how far he's come.

In other areas he continues to amaze. He taught himself the alphabet on the computer he got for Christmas. It took him a couple of months and a lot of throwing the computer down when he could NOT figure the game out but he kept at it. He can count to twenty which he does every night when we play hide n' seek. He loves piggyback rides which we call "klopp" from the Dr. Seuss book "Mr. Brown can moo, can you?". He is supposed to request his needs with the phrase "I want...". This is an amazing amount of up and down speech movement and he can do this perfectly now and fast.

I almost forgot some big news! Timothy can pedal his tricycle! He would have been able to do this sooner if his legs were long enough! I love seeing him be able to do this as he's been watching his much taller friend Carter do this last summer. He wanted to do this so badly! He's so confident in his ability he now allows me to push him again while he pedals.

It's cold again here, I knew it would happen but we had so many warm days I thought we might be past the winter. Timothy loves loves loves being outside. He is brave enough to go down all of the slides at the playground by himself. He still likes me to go on them after him though so he can "catch me". He loves to yell his friends names which he can now say "Cardaa" (Carter) "Toria" for Victoria and "Jacob".

He runs into his preschool classroom instead of crying when I drop him off. He loves the music time they have during the day and especially the free time they have upstairs playing in the old sanctuary, a huge room filled with industrial strength toys. He even naps some days there. He will spread out a blanket at home and pretend to "nap" like at school. Sometimes he'll even pretend to change his daddy's "diapers". This is hilarious.

You have probably heard that we went to downtown DC for Chinese New Year's. We were able to see a lion dancer, a traditional form of dancing with a huge puppet like creature with two men doing unbelievable acrobatic feats. He has since been obsessed with lion dancing. Obsessed. He found a picture of lion dancers in one of my cookbooks and would carry this book around with him. I just got him another book and he asks to look at the pictures constantly. We got him a little lion puppet as well as a drum - some of his favorite toys. Also you need to feed this lion a diet of red envelopes traditionally given to the performers. I spend too much money trying to expose him to his native culture. Next year I plan to have a huge Chinese New Year celebration.

I've started trying to learn to cook more Asian style food. I can now make (usually successfully) pad thai, beef with broccoli, butter noodles, 3 pea stir fry, homemade ramen-noodle soup and tofu with spinach as well as my greatest success - fried chocolate wontons. I've also had many many Asian style failures but it's been fun to try and learn this style of cooking.

Hope you are well.

Worst. Costume. Ever.

Okay, I know, I know. I'm going to hear about this later, perhaps after Timothy has a therapy session. I procrastinated and looked at 5000 costumes online and I just could not decide. And then I saw an adorable Tiger costume for $10 bucks at Costco. Sold! The problem was it didn't fit even though he almost always can wear 12-18 size. In fact it's usually too big. Well this one was too small - it came to mid shin and we had to strain to lift it on his head.

So we took it back and the only thing they had left was these silly cows - with spots more like a Dalmatian dog then any self-respecting cow. I also didn't realize that the back would be so...realistic of a large sized...human rather than a pear shaped cow?! Very strange. Also although it was too big in the legs and arms it was still too small in the...how to say politely, uhm groin area. So. very. wrong. Sorry little man!

I gotta say all of the guys at the kids party really liked it and thought it was cute. The women...well let's say it was a little too close to home.

Anyway Timothy loved loved loved Halloween. In fact he was ready to go out the next night and do the same thing and was furious to discover that it was not possible. When we brought him home after trick or treating he kept trying to keep his costume and shoes back on and would run to the door looking very sadly out. He only got scared after a neighbor's kid came out wearing a "Scream" mask -- Timothy let out a scream and demanded I hold him the rest of the night. Who lets their six year old wear such a mask I ask you? Guess we'll find out in about 4 years....

Halloween is a special day for us in that we received our Letter of Acceptance from the Chinese Government on this day last year. I'll love Halloween forever because of this.

Balloons and birthday

I had a lot of stress planning Timothy's birthday party because I wanted it to be special and fun for him as well as a celebration of him. We celebrated his actual birthday somewhat quietly with just the three of us - four if you count his speech therapist, for his scheduled appointment and she very sweetly brought two gifts for him, really she is so nice. Timothy awoke to a surprise of his new little kitchen and recycling truck as well as new pots and pans and a shopping cart (gotta have the push toys). He loves the kitchen as I knew he would - mainly because he likes to open and close doors over and over again. The "burners" make noises and light up - really likes that. He couldn't even concentrate on the pots/pans or the cart as the kitchen and truck were enough. Again, I got him too many toys and even saved one of the others we got him for a Christmas present. So we had a nice quiet family day and spent a lot of quantity and quality time with our little man.



His birthday party was fine - next year we are going to Chuck E. Cheese, I swear, wow. We had it outside although on the cool side and borrowed our neighbor's moonbounce. Timothy even got in this time especially when his little friend and idol Carter went in to play. Spent all day Saturday decluttering my house (decluttering means moving cr** to the basement and hopefully on to a new home in Goodwill). Greg and I pride ourselves on not being too material but we have managed to keep a lot of junk over four moves in the last ten years. I watched a show on hoarders and that's what made me determined - but I digress. I cleaned and cleaned since all of our neighbors were going to be over...and no one came inside, but I now have a cleaner, less cluttered house!

Timothy had no idea what was going on - just that all his neighborhood friends were over and he didn't understand why. He did fine and we are so happy that he's our little son. We had two cakes as you can see including Elmo. His all-time favorite activity of the day? Watching his Uncle Scott blow up the balloons with the helium tank. He was transfixed and spent all morning pulling all of the balloons up and down from the ceiling. It's also what he played with all afternoon and evening after his nap. So much for presents.

He's grown almost two inches since we last had him evaluated and is now in the 10-25%. He weighs almost 25 lbs. We still have speech therapy every week with the focus now on sounds using the tongue like "d", "t", "p" and "b". He's very guarded with his tongue and uses it to protect the rest of his mouth. We try to massage his tongue and the sides of his cheek with a device called a nuk. Lately he's starting to move his tongue around in his mouth more as a result. He can also say about 35 words. Even words he already knows he's improved upon such as now saying momma for mom. He's only behind in speech by about three months according to the IA doc. It's probably more than that - he still has a long way to go but he really is doing just great. His receptive speech is even above age at 25 months.

Timothy can play by himself for long periods of time - about 45 minutes to an hour. He loves his puppets and making them dance to music or using them when watching videos about a farm or an Elmo/Sesame Street video about birds. He loves loves loves his Kindermusik class. He imitates us constantly with the way we are sitting or kneeling or lying down. He's laughing and smiling so much more after his second surgery to the point of doubling over, I love this! He sleeps most nights a blessed 11 hours a night - how lucky are we? Naps are another story much more difficult but getting better - sleeping really is important for brain development in little ones as well as mental health for much older ones. He also loves cars and trucks as well as any type size and shape of ball. What is also amusing is hearing him when he makes himself laugh. That's pretty darn cute. Preschool is fine - each week he gets a little bit better. Last week he started crying before we were out of the parking lot but only for the first hour. Monday is my first day co-oping with another group of children, heard this is quite fatiguing.

Eating lots of muffins

Running on the boardwalk

Lovin' VA beach or not being stuck in a car for four hours

Thinking deep thoughts or future album cover?

Ready for my first day of "school"