3 more...

3 families saw their Hai Duong baby faces for the first time yesterday. 3 more families have been blessed. Here is the road I traveled...may theirs be as joyful.

A special congratulations to my very dedicated "Waiting Grandma" reader who has just seen her delicious grandson's face for the first time. I got a peek as well and know she must just be bursting with excitement!

A bit of reminiscing

June 24th,

A peek, a glance...
at the baby that may be Benjaminh...
probably is Benjaminh
but so much about this process was unpredictable
trying not to get attached for months was impossible
I was in love within seconds.
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I remember this day so well.
September 2nd.
First day back at school.
Waiting all day for the phone to ring...
referrals make it real
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December 16th
an email
"I am thrilled to let you know your Letters of Invitation have just arrived.
We can now book your travel."
20 words that changed my life forever.
I cried like a baby
when I should have been concentrating
on dressing the Oompa Loompas for the school play.
no photos available...
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No words required.
Finally, I met my son.
January 8th, 2009
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Together Forever
January 9th

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January 23rd
We are home
You might want to invite this photo mama extraordinaire
to your airport arrival...

Pho on the Phace

We took a little trip into the big town for walking shoes...and I swear the boy walks way better now than he did before the trip.


I'm thinking of taking them back. (he was a size 4 by the way...)


The shoe store of choice is right beside a Vietnamese Restaurant so I picked up some Pho.To celebrate.

Life.

And sweet little Molly.
Baby KT has finally shown her face
and such a pretty little face it is
Pho was a phitting tribute I thought.

Shared the pho with my phavourite guy to mark the occasion.







With yogurt for desert...thickened of course with oatmeal cereal. Eaten with chopsticks. Isn't this how everyone eats yogurt?

5 families 6 girls (Read to the end for BIG Ben news)

6 baby girls (1 set of twins) joined 5 Canadian families in Hai Duong while we slept last night.

6 baby girls who waited longer than they should have for paperwork to be completed had their G+R 2 days before scheduled.

Seems only fair that after waiting nearly 10 months since hearing of their daughters this last leg of the family building process should be smooth, quick and bump free.

Now, VN passport, translation, Canadian Embassy, wait, come home.

Sweet Benjaminh Manh is anxiously awaiting a play date with his Hai Duong buddies.

While he waits he has been hanging out in the garden with his best friend...
doing a bit of this...with no one helping cause mama was holding the camera...
yikes.
Looks like 11 months might bring some changes to the world of Ben.

eleven

The little Manh is eleven months old today. Yikes. So very close to being one that it makes me more than a little sad to be honest.

In honour of this moment in time I'm going to start his adoption video this week. I'd like to have it ready by this time next month, his first birthday...wish me luck.

Click Here to see his little referral video that I made back in September...


Here's a little update on the fella (I'm going to add more pictures later...I never got around to posting 10 months because I didn't have pictures ready and then couldn't figure out how to back date it correctly)...

He is waving bye-bye and pointing at everything these days, sort of in a "what's that" manner. His point is most often a full hand reach and is being misinterpreted by others as reaching to be held which does not always go over well with the little guy or with his mama...

He is loving the outdoors, sticks, leaves, sand, rocks, tooling around on the grass pushing his little walking cart or crawling through the dirt, riding in the stroller pointing at the buds on the tress and the flowers in neighbourhood gardens. He loves to swing at the park. I love bringing him home dirty at the end of the day.

My sweet Benjaminh is sleeping through the night on a fairly consistent basis since starting a mild reflux medication a week and a half ago. I feel blessed. His bedtime is between 7 and 8:30 and he gets up between 6 and 7:30. Not too bad. If we stay home for the day (with no sleep inducing car rides) he naps from 10 to 11:30 and again from 3ish until 4:30ish. Sometimes the afternoon nap starts late and bedtime gets shifted later as well.

He eats his 3 meals per day eagerly, especially enjoying the whole "play in the food in hopes I might some day find my mouth". Mama likes when it is warm enough to do the whole food play thing practically naked.

Benjaminh drinks his thickened formula less eagerly but he is certainly gagging, aspirating, coughing, vomiting, choking, turning bright red and bursting blood vessels on his face while he drinks...well almost never! There is joy in the land. I don't think the volume of liquid drank each day is high enough but I'm working on that...

and there seems to be a digestive issue at the diaper end of things but I"m monitoring that...thinking wheat perhaps is not sitting well in the baby's gut but I'll get back to this in a few days.

This past week his receptive language has really taken off and he is understanding so much of what I say. Simple directions like "put it in" and "take it out", "Where's Boomer?" , "Get the block", "More?", "Finished?", "Can mama have a kiss?". You get the idea. He certainly understands and dislikes the word no which he hears when he gets a bit "slap happy" or bites. He consistently says Mama and Woof (for Boomer obviously...) but I don't notice any other consistent words in his considerable babbling.

Loves chasing the dog in his walker, playing at his Leap Frog music table, jumping in his Graco jumper which hangs in his bedroom door, playing "tap tap" with is stacking cups, beating on pots with tablespoons. Loves the bath and post bath cuddles and massages. Loves his dog beyond reason but pats a bit vigorously...

Such a sweet boy. So much personality in a teeny tiny body (well, not by VN standards...even with poor growth for nearly 3 months he still sits at the top of the top curve at 11 months and nearly 9.5 kg). I hope he is slimming down and stretching up and not just slimming down.

He is the light of my life.

This and That

They are on their way.
5 families flying half way around the world.
6 babies, their lives about to change forever.

In Benjaminh news

It has taken the little dude a week to progress from this...to this...Scary fast progress towards walking unaided
(Thanks Angie and Greg for the great Walker!).

In other news we were visiting Auntie Carol and Uncle Bill for dinner tonight where I stated with joy that Benjaminh had not aspirated or vomited for 2 whole days...
not 1 minute passed before he spewed everywhere.

Lesson learned?
Keep the progress private.


He has a devilish twinkle.
It usually means he is about to torture the dog or touch something he clearly associates with the word NO.

It looks a bit like this.

The boy loves his sand.
LOVES.HIS.SAND.

He can sit in the sand at the park for 30 minutes picking it up and examining it closely, moving from spot to spot to find the perfect sand. He is going to love the beach at the cottage. Okay, he is whining...but it's the words that count don't ya think?
Don't forget to pause the music...

Food, glorious food

So, food.
First me...and food.

Someone (thanks mom...really) bought me a DairyQueen Cake for Birthday day. Then we ate about 2/3's of it and then everyone left and the cake stayed and that is BAD. Very bad. I tried to give it away to my neighbour with 3 kids but she really felt her daughter needed to avoid sweets so that was a no go. I have invited people to visit and indulge over the next couple of days...hopefully that happens before I've eaten it all. Oh, and the key Lime bars? And the most amazing apple pie EVER. H.E.L.P M.E...

Benjaminh...and food.

The irony is not lost on me.
I have a kidlet with quite serious eating delays.
Delays people.
The only eating delay I can handle personally is the 3 minute wait in the TiMHOrton's line to get my morning tea and bagel on the way to work...

Oh right, Benjaminh's delays.
We headed out to see the feeding specialist on Friday and now have confirmation that I AM NOT LOSING MY MIND...he is in fact consistently aspirating his fluids, even when I was already thickening them at the rate of 1TBSP of rice cereal per 3 oz fluid as per the ped's request.

This is very bad news. The good news part of this bad news is that it is happening at the point of swallowing and the feeding specialist is quite certain this is a swallowing reflex delay and not physiological...like a "fistula" or hole in the esophagus. In other goodish news he has a well developed gag/cough reflex and is quite efficient at clearing things out when they get flowing on the wrong track...though the big blood vessel bursting attacks he has had of 4 occasions now would indicate his isn't always completely successful.

So, I now thicken everything that he ingests. Formula obviously as well as foods such as pureed fruits/veges and yogurt.

I was asked to thicken his formula using baby cereal to the point that he was able to complete a 5 oz bottle with no coughing or gagging even if it means enlarging the nipple hole. That required 4 or more TBSP's of formula for every 5 oz bottle and after the 4th bottle he was clearly NOT into it. He began to gag and vomit the very minute he tasted that baby cereal. Oh, and the same cereal was thickening his puree's so he vomited his solids as well...for the first time ever. ALL DAY Saturday. Offer him a bite of chicken stew, a favourite he had been eating for weeks and weeks and he vomited everything he had eaten in the previous 4 hours...through his nose (and his mouth as well but seriously carrots through the nose is a bit disconcerting).

So, cereal at every meal and in every beverage all day long was clearly not the answer if it was going to result in nothing at all being in his stomach for longer than 2 hours.

Off I went to the pharmacist...where I purchased a thickener derived from corn. Chemically derived. Not ideal I know but seriously it was Saturday evening and the poor boy needed to eat and keep something down before I could talk to the doctor on Monday so I bought it. 3/4's of one tablespoon of this miracle powder does the same thickening as 3 TBSP's of cereal in his bottle. So a bit of the miracle powder and 1 TBSP of the cereal and he ate and it stayed down and he ate again before bed and he slept through the night and on Sunday I bought shares in the company...

So, he is eating.

Fruit + yogurt thickened with a fair bit of rice cereal for breakfast and a 5 oz thickened bottle

meat + veges thickened with a bit of stage 2 mixed cereal for lunch and a 5oz thickened bottle

mid afternoon 5 oz thickened bottle before nap time

slightly larger serving meat + cheesey veges with a bit of stage 2 cereal for dinner

6 oz thickened bedtime bottle

So, 3 meals high in calories, protein and iron and 21 oz of formula (24 would be better). This is the plan and it worked today.

Reminiscing

As the next group of families prepares to take off for Hanoi mid week I'm feeling a bit left out. I love Vietnam. I love Hanoi. I can hardly wait to go back. I took some time to go through my photos today and picked out some of my favourites...in no particular order (hmmm, perhaps not all of my favourites afterall...blogger is only letting me post 10 pictures).

Not a fan of the caves at Halong Bay
Canadian Embassy
What-a-ya mean I can go home now...Singapore only took 4 days?
Love that Maple Leaf upholstery.
Beautiful walks around Hoan Kiem Kiem
Temple of Literature...a wonderful afternoon

Ready to head out to the G+R.
Delicious food, vast menu at Hoa Sua Training School
Lots of baby supplies on hand at the Citimart Grocery in the Hanoi Towers
Brother's Cafe...simply don't miss it (opens at 6:30)
Evening sidewalk badminton...go AROUND...as Auntie Kristen soon found out