News from our household

Thanks everyone for your encouraging words. Our pastor spoke this morning from Nehemiah chapter 4 about perseverence -- about sticking with what God has called us to do in spite of difficulties and discouragements.

Adoption update: The conclusion of the search for our document at the Sec of State in Virginia was that the document is nowhere to be found in spite of intensive searching. So tonight I sent off the request to Kevin's employer headquartered in Virgina for yet another verification of employment letter.

Friday Kevin and I were actually able to be together for several minutes during business hours and got the rest of our Idaho documents notarized down at our own City Hall. (Kevin drives truck and is often out of town until late evening making pick-ups and deliveries of freight) Here I am wracking my brain to think of someway, somewhere, somehow we could get this done right away and Kevin just calls our local City Clerk and sets up an appointment for 'today'. Absolutely could not beat that.

Caleb update: Caleb started pre-school on Sept 8th. He attends Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays from 8:15-11:00. He'd gotten 4 immunizations the week before so just has one more to go before he's 12. I'd explained about his missing birth certificate but his teacher didn't care since she only needed a photocopy anyway. I went ahead and showed her our adoption decree and Caleb's passport and citizenship paper. The school is about 2 blocks away. I've been taking him to school but he rides a little bus home. Caleb will be getting speech therapy and assessed for his need for physical therapy and occupational therapy.

About a month ago Caleb actually began answering questions with a very clearly enunciated 'yes'. This was a welcome change after months of 'nyet' and then 'no' as the standard answers. Now he's down to the very American "yeah"

Caleb had his 4 year well-child check last week. I am so proud of his progress and was bummed that he didn't show up better on the Denver developmental screening test. But it does give me ideas of things to work on. He's at the 5th percentile for weight and 10th percentile for height (possibly the other way around) on a typical child's growth curve. I couldn't find the curve I'd been given at his first Dr. visit that is specific for children with Down syndrome and Caleb's doctor is looking into why the DS curve isn't scanned into their office computer. Caleb doesn't require any other testing at this time (thyroid, neck, lead OK in April, recent eye exam and dental exams OK)

Critter update: I'm sure all you out in blogland have just been dying to know what became of the itching at my house. Well let me tell ya'll this is one experience I hope NEVER to repeat EVER, EVER, EVER in my lifetime. First we had to clear off our carpets as much as possible--empty out closets, empty out everything under the beds, move the coat bin and the sports-items bin and the toy bin and the shoe bin and the doll accessories bin and the scrapbooking bin and the mismatched sock sack and the swimsuit bag and even the plastic drawers. . . I'm sure you are getting the picture . . . move ALL this stuff into the center of our kitchen (where there is no carpet) and use it to form a shape resembling Mt Fuji or something. Then we had to thoroughly vacuum every strand of carpet that could be accessed as well as couches and cushions. I had to load all bedding and the pillows--not just bedding on the beds but bedding in the open linen cupboard and the stacked bedding plus all of the washable stuffed animals in addition to any regular laundry into black garbage bags and stuffed them into the back of the van and then the back seat of the van. When the kind exterminator showed up at our house I showed him around and answered questions like "where does your cat sleep?" which is basically "anywhere"--computer chair, piano bench, couch in the corner of the living room, couch in the extra room, up on the top bunk with all of the stuffed animals, in our closet. Then when he got ready to spray around 3 pm Caleb and I grabbed our sandwich components and ate them in the car while waiting to intercept the school-age kiddos as they came home. Then we drove to the Happy Laundromat Land where I proceeded to wash 18 loads of laundry (and some of these were double-load washers) after making 3 trips to the ATM. Kevin joined us during this adventure and got the unique joy of taking the van down to the carwash and vacuum spot and then to the pet store to purchase flea spray and shampoo and some kind of oil to treat our pets for one month. I left five or six big sacks of laundry that we wouldn't be needing in the next week in my parents' garage. After we finally got back home, I had to place the non-washable pillows and stuffed animals and the piano bench in black plastic bags and set them outside to "cook" in the sun. I had to even put my vacuum dirt in a black bag, throw away the filter and soak the canister in bleach water. I believe my last act of the day was helping give our dog a bath in flea soap and Dawn dishwashing soap and we got the flea-repelling oil on her. Someone else had the joy of bathing the cat. It was about 18 hours of non-stop thrill.

Then exactly one week later I got to repeat the above fun for the follow-up spray (in order to kill whatever little critters hatched in the intervening week) Now this time I only had 6 double-loads of laundry because I'd left so much stuff at my parents.

The good points: throwing away a lot of junk, re-organizing other junk, finding long-lost junk, having a tidier house.

General news I got interviewed by our local newspaper for an article for the Health and Religion page--about whether having faith in God helps when parenting children with special needs. (God makes all the difference in the world to me) There was a chance that it would come out in yesterday's paper but no one has said anything so it must not have. We don't take the paper.

J., our 5th grader, is playing football this year. He looks so cute (wouldn't he hate that description) in his jersey and pads and new cleats. The league had a jamboree on Saturday. All the teams from the league met over in Buhl for weigh-in at 8 am followed by mini-games over the course of the day. Each game lasted around 12-15 minutes. J's team won one, tied two and lost one. We'd gotten into our motor home after our high school Home-coming game on Friday night and driven the hour to Buhl where we stayed the night. This seemed much preferable to getting our crew up about 6 am after a late night. (By the way, S's class won 1st place and B's won 3rd place in the Home-coming float competition)

Good grief, this LLOONNGG post should excuse me from blogging for quite some while :)