This is the way we do sick, and it's still pouring...

Ugh, I am such a sorry blogger! The time just flies by and I realize that our poor newest son has not gotten nearly the press coverage as our other child from China. It might also be because he is so incredibly easy, I have no really naughty stories or pictures to share. How about just a shot of him because he's cute?

That is corn on the side of his face, he's probably saving it for later.  He loves corn.



Here he is not watching the monster truck video with the other tods.  This kid knows what to do when the camera comes out!

So in my last post I talked about our getting rained out of our camping trip, the car breaking down, and the infectious disease plaguing our home. Thankfully the disease did not extend past the four kids.  We realized later that D and I have already had it.  Not sure about Papa Bear, and L.B. either has had it, or is somehow immune. 

The kids were considered to be contagious until all of their mouth sores had healed.  Consequently, they looked fine and were feeling better, but had to still be quarantined.  This is how they handled not being able to go to church.

 G referred to the Rubbermaid container as the "safety car"

 Sad that his ride is over

 After their thrill ride, they decided to form a "Muppet band."  Here they are being muppets, playing their air instruments:

 Okay, ignore the mess on the table, look at L.B. wondering if it's too late to go back to China...

 He slowly moves his way out of this crazy scene...

 while the rest of the kids let loose...

Yeah, yeah, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.  My sister and I used to play the air guitar in the bathroom, getting ready for school.

The kids are all well now, but the mama is gimpy.  I was rushing through the house, intent on running to the store while I had dinner in the oven.  I ran into one of our heavy kitchen chairs.  I moved, but the chair didn't.  I tried to shake it off, went to the store, walked around, and by the time I got home, my shoe barely fit.  I went to the doctor a few days later, and he told me I had both a broken toe and a sprained foot.  He asked what I did for a living, I told him I stay home with my kids.  He said, "Well, that's work."  I said, "Yeah, I have six kids."  He laughed.  Then he said, "Well, you'll have to stay off your foot as much as possible," and laughed again.  I did too.  That's a pretty funny thought.

I think we're ready for a drought about now......
 

When it rains, it pours...literally and figuratively

As you can deduce from my inactivity lately on this blog, thing have been busy.  That is, busier than normal, and our normal is pretty busy.

First off, update on L.B.  After seeing several specialists, it seems that his original diagnosis of cerbral palsy was incorrect.  Instead, it looks as though he does have a blood disorder that was never mentioned in his medical report.  We're still waiting on more test results to get a confirmation.

It has become more and more clear that L.B. was probably held quite a bit.  He very often will walk from person to person in our house with his arms raised, looking for someone to hold him.  It's also obvious that he hasn't had to do much for himself.  The other day I gave him his sandals and told them to put them on.  It wasn't pretty.  Have you ever seen the Youtube video of the inebriated guy trying to put on his flip flops? It was a lot like that.  He didn't seem to have a clue how to do it.  We're working on it.

He is clearly very bright and picks up on things quickly.  He continues to enjoy imitating people which seems to be helping him pick up some English.  He is starting to initiate using English rather than just repeating what we say.  He really can be like a little echo, which is cute, but can be frustrating if you're trying to give him directions on something.  We were playing a game where he had to match cards in his hands with cards I laid out on the floor.  I was trying to explain what he needed to do and it went like this:
Me: Okay, find the ball (tapping the card in his hand). 
L.B. (tapping the card in his hand): Ball
Me: Yes, that's a ball.  Find one over here (pointing around to the cards I laid out)
L.B. (pointing to the cards I laid out) Find here.
Me:  Yes, find it here.
L.B. Find here.
Me: No, you find the card.  Don't just copy mama.
L.B.: Copy mama.

During this discussion the WTs have already found their matches and are attempting to confiscate L.B.'s cards.  He does catch on eventually and it's only because he's so smart and was able to ignore my poor directions and gesticulations.

He still operates pretty independently of the WTs.  Here is a rare picture of the three together, and he's happy....

 as long as they keep their distance.  When they get too close...

 Uh, not so much.

 This is a pretty common scene of general mayhem.  Where's L.B.?

 At a safe distance away from the melee.

 His favorite person by far is C.  She is the only one he'll hug voluntarily.  He also lets her dress him like this.

So what else has been going on this month? After helping to run our church's Vacation Bible School, we took one day off and then headed up north for a week of camping with friends.  Let me stop here and point out that it really takes about three weeks to plan and recover from a camping trip with kids.  It's two weeks to plan and pack, one week of cleaning and laundry.

 After leaving later than planned and a five hour drive, we were glad to arrive at Humboldt before nightfall...barely before nightfall.  Because of VBS, we arrived a day later than our friends.  We enjoyed one glorious day of camping, before the rain came.  And when it rained, it poured.  We're talking a thunderstorm that sent us running out of our tents early in the morning to try and put away as much as we could.  We would have been willing to wait out the rain if it hadn't decided to make its way into our tents.  Once puddles started forming on the little boys' sleeping bags, we knew we had to pack it in.

All of our friends decided to leave as well.  To try and salvage a little more of the trip, we decided to meet up with two of the other families with wee ones for lunch on the way home.  We packed up, sent our friends ahead so we could follow, got into our cars (we took two to accomodate both us and our stuff, we have a lot of both), and mine would not start.  James popped the hood, looked around, and found a mouse and its nest cozy warm in our engine.  One of our friends came back to check on us, but it seemed that nothing short of calling a tow truck was going to work.

With no cell service, James had to make frequent trips to the ranger station to call our insurance company and work out the tow and the servicing.  We also had to figure out how to transport all of us to where the car would be towed, about 20 minutes north.  Between the smaller car and the tow truck, we still would not be able to fit.  Thankfully, James convinced the very gracious ranger (who was just getting off duty) to give him and one of the toddlers (tods) a ride to our destination (we paid for the gas) while I waited for the tow truck.  We were told that it would take up to three hours for the tow truck to get there.  Sure enough, three hours later, with no heat in the car, wet kids, and having to entertain two tods (the older three were troopers), we were excited to see Bryan the tow truck driver.  He tried the Suburban and it wouldn't start for him either. 

 After towing us to the very nice town of Fortuna, this very nice guy went out of his way to help us out.  He heard me trying to figure out how we were going to shuttle all of us to the hotel where James and M were waiting.  I would have to leave D and G there at Fortuna motors (which had closed up for the night), drive over to the hotel which was not that far away, drop off some of the kids and go back for D and G.  He offered to drive D and G (who had been riding with him on the way up) to the hotel while I drove the other three in the functioning car.  What a relief!

To make a long story short, we arrived in Fortuna on Tuesday and went home on Thursday.  What was wrong with the Sub? Apparently nothing.  The blasted thing started up right away for the mechanics.  They did a few things, but determined that something was blocking some sensor which caused the engine to shut down.  That's my scientific explanation.  So two days in a hotel room with three tods.  Okay, truth be told, I enjoyed our time there.  We had fun with the kids and had concentrated amounts of time with them without being distracted by life.

Here are a few pics from our one day of camping of our five day trip:

 The three tods having lunch while Dad and the three OS are out hiking

 K is perusing D's Lego club magazine while he draws his comics

 Take note of the figure in the lower right corner.  Let's go in for a closer look.

 This little guy decided to throw a tantrum and was placed in this seat as a consequence.

 We seriously did not leave him there that long.  He had missed his nap, and tantrums are so draining!

 He's getting re-energized for his next one.

Welcome to an American tradition, my son, s'mores!!!

We got home last Thursday, and Friday K came down with some mystery illness.  She had a high fever and complained of her teeth hurting.  It wasn't until the next day that I looked into her mouth and saw lots of little sores all over her cheeks, lips and tongue.  Poor baby, the only thing she wanted to drink was medicine, so I bribed her into drinking a smoothie I made by putting it in the medicine spoon.

 I think she was on to me...

We thought she might have fever sores, until M came down with the same thing on Monday.  Then we knew it was something contagious.  On a hunch, I looked at M's feet and hands and called the advice nurse.  We both came to the conclusion that the WTs have hand, foot, and mouth disease.  Today the disease claimed two more victims: G and C.  Amazingly enough, our golden boy L.B. has not yet succumbed.  The mouth sores are the painful and I am having to prepare many different meals as different things sound good to different people.  Am I allowing them to have their own way with food?  You better believe it! Even one little old sore can ruin your day, imagine a mouth full of sores!  Will this plague claim more victims? Stay tuned and see (oh, and please pray that it won't!)

The pincushion peanut and his pink-eyed pal

Not even two weeks home yet, and our littlest guy has already seen both our pediatrician and a neurologist, with an appointment to see the physical therapist.  He has handled very bravely being a pincushion as he has had to have immunizations and blood drawn for a battery of tests (our pediatrician, Dr. Ng, who by the way is the best in the world, is very thorough).  We found out that our little peanut is indeed little, barely making it onto the growth charts.  He is 3 inches shorter and 7 pounds lighter than M (who supposedly is three months older).

He also has to have some other tests that require a stool sample.  Because it can't be mixed with any other "liquids," this proved to be an interesting task.  We were given a "specimen collection" bowl which you place under the toilet seat.  Since L.B. has become unpotty trained for the most part (we think largely due to the language barrier), we had to just keep trying to get the specimen "alone."  One day I finally had success and had the wonderful privilege of totally grossing out my kids in the process of placing said specimen in the vials.  I got out a plastic spoon and assured them that I would wash it before they used it again.  Yes, that did give me the desired response.

In other medical news, the male wonder twin has had the worst case of pink eye we have ever seen.  He was really bummed out (as was I) that he couldn't go to church (so I couldn't go).  He cried, "But I don't want the pink eye!"  To which K asked, "You have green eye? You have red eye? What you have?" In addition to pink eye, he had a high fever which made him want to cuddle with mama.  Yeah, that's all sweet and stuff, except for the eye goop on the front of my shirts, and worse than that, M had the worst case of halitosis I have encountered (except maybe with the last dog I had).

Here is the normal monkey boy:

 and here he is with the dreaded pink eye

Here is most of the family off to L.B.'s first day at church

This is a friend who is from China.  He took to her right away, and we were glad he didn't want to go home with her!

He clearly felt at home at our second home

Something about our China kids and Mr. P.  K has a bond with him as well.  He has six kids too, so that might have something to do with it.

This is L.B. with his twin brother from another mother.  When we received updated pictures of L.B. about six months ago, we were amazed at how much he looked like Daniel's buddy.  Only one of the two of them is Chinese, the other being half Japanese, but you know, we all look alike.

So how is L.B. bonding? I think these pictures tell you how he feels about his older sibs (the OS).  The verdict is still out on the WTs.  They tend to dominate so I think he steers clear of them for the most part.

L.B. still waits to have things done for him.  Yesterday he fell over and I could tell that he was fine.  He was laying on his stomach making the familiar "We have fallen over and even though we can get up on our own, we are waiting for someone to upright our person" noise.  I smiled at him and said, "You can get up.  You're fine." and gestured for him to get up.  Not more than a few minutes passed and I see him walk by me as if nothing had happened.  M had walked over to him and I thought he might have helped him up, which he denied when I asked.  What I think transpired is that M whispered in his ear, "Dude, our mom is hard core.  If you don't get up on your own, you'll be here until dinner time." Good advice that will make us all happy.

Thick as thieves and...SUCCESS!

L.B. is still doing well almost a week after being home.  He has always seemed pretty comfortable in our house, so hopefully it is seeming like home.  He is definitely quieter than he was in China, though we are starting to see a bit more of those tantrums James talked about.  The area in which we see it the most is naptime/bedtime.  He can drum up quite a dramatic performance when put into his bed.  Bed  to him is what toothbrushing was to K.  If you don't know that story, K had really yellow teeth when we got her.  Clearly her teeth had not been brushed.  When we would brush them, she would act as though the toothbrush was some medieval torture device and scream like a banshee.  Perseverance and smoker's toothpaste solved that issue.

We had a major success today when Momma got her first kiss! Hurray, huzzah, and all that jazz! When the day was over, I could count a total of three kisses from my littlest man. That there is victory, my friends.

In addtion to getting my first kiss, we saw our first act of aggression on L.B.'s part.  James was playing with the trio as in this picture:

L.B. was having a great time when it was his turn to be turned upside down and tickled by Baba.  When it was M's turn, L.B. got mad and took the part of Little Bunny Foo foo and bopped M on the head.  M did not do anything, but L.B. got a "Noooooo" from his momma and baba.  That made him cry, and when he saw that that would not have the desired effect (namely sympathy), he did his own thing.

The trio does like doing the same things, though not always together.  They all very much like getting rides from the big boys:

But coalescing as a trio will take some time.  The WTs are going strong these days and are thick as thieves:

It'll be pretty hard to get between these two...

 Would you want to try???