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Chicken Pox??

September 7, 2009

So Saturday morning we had the pleasure of going over to a friends house to swim. They were out of town and graciously gave us entry into their home for the weekend. They have an awesome backyard w/ pool, hot tub, basketball court, and in ground trampoline.

The kids LOVE being in the water and they are getting so much better at their swimming. They are really independent but still require watching in case they panic (although they are capable of swimming). They’re jumping off the diving board and everything. It is great to see them progress in their swimming.

We grilled dinner and were sitting around the table eating when I noticed a bunch of bumps on Wen’s chest. Some small, like zits, some slightly bigger and kind of scaly. Hmmm??? Mark’s first thought was chicken pox. He didn’t seem to be itchy and no fever though.

Sunday morning there was more spots. They didn’t exactly look like the chicken pox I remembered but honestly, I’ve never seen chicken pox on dark skin. We called our friend who is a ped nurse and she gave us some info re: who is contagious, etc. We kept Wen home from church and I took the other kids. Since there’s a 3 week incubation period there’s not really anyway you know whether or not they’re going to get it and I can’t very well just keep them secluded for 3 weeks.

The kids have ALL had the chicken pox vaccine. Wen & Beza had the first dose back in January. I can’t find the last immunization sheet from their appt. on August 11th to see if that’s when they got the second dose. If it is then that’s pretty much 3 weeks ago. So I’m wondering if he actually developed the case FROM the immunization.

We don’t have 100 percent confirmation that it’s chicken pox. Didn’t feel it necessary to take him to urgent care or anything. He doesn’t seem uncomfortable in the least. So we’ll take him in on Tuesday morning and see if that’s really what it is.

I’m hoping none of the other kids get it and that Wen’s done with it soon. I leave to go visit my BF on Thursday and hate to leave dad with a bunch of sick kids :-)

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Communication Breakdown

August 31, 2009

We feel very fortunate that Wen and Beza came to us with a fair amount of English under their belt and I’ve commented to many friends that we really haven’t had any huge communication problems.

We’re still working on getting Wen to slow down. When he gets excited he talks super fast and w/ the accent it’s hard to understand him.

Sometimes it is easy for us to forget that there is still a lot they don’t know and are catching on to. Just because they can read something doesn’t mean they understand it, etc.

However, I FINALLY realized that an issue I’d been having with Beza boiled down to a language issue.

See, I would ask her to do something…like “Beza, please take your clean clothes upstairs.” I’d go about my business for a couple of minutes and then find her still doing the other thing.

“Beza, I said to take your clean clothes upstairs.”

“I know Mom!” (in a whiny voice and often interrupting me)

“Well, if you know, then why didn’t you do it?”

“I know Mom!”

“Then why aren’t you doing it???” (me getting ever exasperated)

And then she’d dissolve into tears and or stomp off.

It finally occurred to me that maybe she was meaning to say more of a “okay mom, I heard you”. It doesn’t sound like much of a difference but trust me, when we’d go round and round like this several times a week, it was huge. So we talked it through and she confirmed my thinking.

So now we’ve learned. “Beza, clean your room” gets a nice “Okay mom” in reply.

Music to my ears.

Posted in Our Family, Post-Adoption | Tagged , , | 2 Comments »

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Readoption Day

August 28, 2009

Wednesday marks the official end of the paperwork and court proceedings for our adoption (okay, unless you count the post-placement reports we have to send to the Ethiopian gov’t every year until the kids turn 18).

Even though our adoption is final in the eyes of Ethiopia and the kids have Permanent Resident status, the readoption process is needed to gain their full U.S. citizenship, social security numbers and all that other stuff that will one day prove useful :-)

It entails our social worker right a report, us filing some paperwork with the County (all free and they are very helpful) and then getting assigned a court date and time. Somehow we lucked into a really quick court date, even our social worker was surprised.

We turned it into a family celebration and decided that Ethiopian food was in order. Beza has been yearning for Doro Wat for more than a month. My original plan was to go to court and then take everyone to one of the Ethiopian restaurants that is on the other side of town. But then our court time was 8:30 a.m. So instead I decided to cook it up myself. I spent about 5 hours in the kitchen the night before doing the lentils, doro wat and shiro ahead of time – leaving the cabbbage and potatoes to the day of. Mark’s mom picked up fresh injera at the Ethiopian market that is close to her house.

Court proceedings were easy – my first time ever in a “real courtroom”. It was small. Of course it’s juvenile court so I suppose it’s different. The county attorney was there asked us a few questions, then the commissioner read the order finalizing the adoption and changing the kids names officially. They are heretoforwith name Wendemagegn Luke Gumm and Beza Eliana Gumm.  We gave them the choice of whether or not they wanted to start going by their new names. Wendemagegn said yes and so we are gradually changing over to Luke although I admit it is difficult. I’ve been saying Wendemagegn for 18 months. Beza is keeping hers as is.

We went back to my parents house for our feast since they are centrally located and it gave my mom some flexibility w/ her health needs. I was just excited that she got to be there. She missed out on the big airport homecoming back in December so it was especially nice that she could be there today. The food got everyone’s approval. Even my dad was pretty adventurous in trying the new food (we warned him off the shiro since it was pretty spicy).

As requested here are recipes:

  • Cabbage & Potatoes
  • Doro Wat
  • Shiro – was made from an already spiced powder bought at the ethiopian market. Just sauteed some onions and added water.

Here’s a few pics from our day:

Posted in Our Family, Post-Adoption | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments »

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Workout update

August 26, 2009

Just a quick update on my workout progress because I’m really excited about it. It’s been 10 days since I started tracking the foods I eat and working out (I did the Shred 8 of those 10 days) and I’ve lost 3.5 lbs.

Tonight I noticed a big difference in my stamina during the workout. There’s still a couple spots where I gotta take a break for a few seconds, but I’m encouraged.

Another new tool I found is the Calorie Count Recipe Analysis. On Monday I was making Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies for my co-workers and I was curious about their “damage”. Plugged in the recipe and I found out exactly how many calories they were (95), etc.

This way I know how many I can eat :-)

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Turning a New Leaf

August 19, 2009

Despite my numerous wonderful qualities there is one area of my life that is sorely lacking – self-discipline. Given time I could probably produce many childhood report cards with words like “Wonderful student, needs to work on self-discipline.”

Most of my self-discipline issues come out when it’s something I don’t like to do – like exercise. I will go for spurts here and there but then the excuses start coming, etc.

When I started back to work full time about 18 months ago and went from chasing a preschooler to sitting at a desk I put on 10-13 lbs. I’m finally tired of it. (Well I shouldn’t say “finally” because really I’ve been tired of it for a long time but I guess I’m finally enough tired of it to actually do something.)

With my schedule (drop the kids off at school, go to work, eat lunch at desk, pick kids up at school, homework, dinner, kids to bed, etc) I know that realistically there is no way I’m going to go to the gym. I’m not a morning person so I’m not getting up any earlier than my current 5:30 a.m. rising time. Just ain’t happening!

So I’ve been eavesdropping on conversations re: P90X and various other programs I could do at home. I ALMOST went for P90X but I was hesitant about the time commitment – basically an hour every night, 6x a week.

Then I started hearing lots about Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Shred. She’s the trainer from The Biggest Loser. I read reviews and finally made the purchase last weekend. My goal is to do it 6 days a week. Knowing I might get bored I also bought her two other DVD’s on trouble areas and metabolism booster.

Two days down and I love it! First, it’s only 20 minutes – no matter how busy I am, I can always do that. I also love that it’s a circuit. After the 2 minute warm-up she does 3 minutes of strength, 2 minutes of cardio, 1 minute of abs. Then she repeats the circuit 2 more times each time with new exercises (a few repeat). Within those sections she might do 2, 4 or 6 different actual exercises. I love this because I know that if I’m dying doing the high leg kicks that it’s almost over and it helps me hang on and finish the set!

Extra bonus is that the only equipment you need is a set of hand weights – $8 at Wal-Mart. And another bonus, the cardio isn’t aerobic dance moves; it’s simple stuff like jumping jacks, high leg kicks, jump rope (w/o the rope). I’m not the most coordinated woman ever but I can do that.

The first night when I finished I went to go downstairs to get water. I felt like those cartoons where the animal gets flattened and then “folds” down the stairs. I thought my legs were going to turn to Jell-O and I would just dissolve my way to the first floor.

But I’ve made it through 2 nights (about to do the 3rd) and while I can definitely feel it in my muscles the next day, I can function. (The DVD has 3 levels of circuits so when Level 1 starts to get easy I’ll move up.)

I’m also trying to really watch what I eat. Not starve myself or anything but try to fill up more on fruits and veggies and eat smaller portions of the other stuff. I’ve been using the Daily Plate application on LiveStrong.com to track my nutrition intake. It’s got an awesome database of products and restaurant menus that make it really easy to see what you’ve eaten.

I don’t necessarily have a specific goal weight in mind – more important is going back down a size in clothes (so I can wear all the pants/shorts in my wardrobe that have been gathering dust) and toning up.

Why blog all this? Just one more way to keep myself accountable. I’ll report back from time to time and let you know how it’s going.

Right now, I’m hungry. Going to go eat a plum. (That would be 30 calories, .18g of fat and 8g of carbs.)

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The Rest of California

August 15, 2009

We had a great time on the rest of our California vacation. On Tuesday Mark had his weekly World Orphans conference call so I took the kids down to the pool for swimming. After lunch we headed to Downtown Disney to peruse the Lego Store and see G-Force. Taking 6 people to the movies in CA is expensive. We had originally planned to see the 3-D version but an extra $20 convinced us otherwise.

Then Wednesday was the big Disneyland day thanks to our wonderful friends who gave us passes. (We had dinner with them on Sunday night and just loved it. They have an awesome family!) I had mapped out our strategy thanks to the Disneyland discussion boards. We hit the park at opening time and immediately started gathering our Fast Passes. Did you know that you DON’T have to go back and use the FP at the time is says? Yep, that is the key. You can use it anytime during or after that window.

So we rode the Star Tours ride, rocket ride, Dumbo, Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad…all the while getting new FP about every 45 minutes for the really popular rides (as the day goes on it is longer and longer in between when you can get new FPs). Around 10 we headed over to CA Adventure and got in line for Soarin. Had heard good things about the ride and kind of knew what it was about. When we finally walked inside and saw the rows of seats and big screen I was wondering what the big deal was. Ha, when the canopy came down and our row of chairs (w/ feet dangling) pushed out so we felt surrounded by the screen I was blown away. It felt like you were flying. So cool!!!

We hit California Screamin’ but Natalie was an inch too short to ride (the only ride she couldn’t go on). Noah wasn’t up to the loop and so I hung with those two while Mark took Wen & Beza. I grabbed a rider switch pass but by the time they got down the kids (well really just the girls) were whiny and ready for a break. Mark took the boys back across to Disneyland for the Star Wars Jedi Training Academy show and me and the girls, with much whining and gnashing of teeth, headed back to the hotel via the Anaheim resort shuttle system.

The kids put on swim suits and jumped in the pool while I grilled food poolside for lunch. We let the kids swim for about an hour and then we all headed back to the room and laid down for a rest. The girls slept for about an hour. I don’t think the boys actually slept but they were quiet and got some rest. We got back up around 5, packed some sandwiches and snacks and headed back to the park with all our Fast Passes in hand. I was super excited about riding Space Mountain which was my favorite ride growing up. Mark took the boys (girls didn’t want to go) and then I went back on with Wen (once was enough for Noah).

We had saved Indiana Jones for last but when we got there it was down. It was 11:15 p.m. and we weren’t going to wait around on the off chance it was up again so we called it a day.

Thursday we just rested, swam and watched movies. The resort had quite a selection of movies for rental for $3 which was nice. Friday we headed back to the beach again. Saturday it was home again to the heat of Arizona.

It was a great vacation and a fun time making memories with the kids.

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Ocean View

August 3, 2009

It seems that almost since they got home Beza and Wen have been asking about going to the ocean and today was FINALLY the day.

As we drove into the parking lot and Beza looked to the left she exclaimed, “Mama, it’s so pretty!” Amen, girl!

They promptly strapped on the boogie boards (thanks Vay!) and started to walk toward the water.

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“Is it cold?” Wen asked.

“Um, yes.”

But they walked on. They were a bit taken aback with the waves coming in and out and the sand going out from underneath their feet, but we trekked onward into the water.

The caught on to bogey boarding really quick but seemed just as content to stand and play in the waves, undeterred (for the most part) when they fell down or got salt water in their face. Especially Wen. I think he would have like to go out further and swim if we would have let him.

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We had lunch, the kids played in the sand, I laid on a towel for a little too long and sunburned the back of my legs…you know the drill. I’m thrilled they seem to love the ocean as much as I do.

vacay4

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Summer Catchup

August 2, 2009

I really did not intend for my blog to take a summer hiatus but it kind of has. I had really good intentions of writing a lot last week but to be honest I was doing my best to keep my head above water.

Mark was gone for 8 days on another trip to Kenya with World Orphans. With the kids out of school that meant a little extra effort to juggle my work schedule and just when I thought I had everything figured out Satan threw me a whammy and 3 out of the 4 kids got sick – Natalie first, then Noah and Wendemagegn.

You think I jest about the whole Satan thing, but I’m completely serious. He knows when we are at our most vulnerable and I think he thinks he can get me to whine and complain about how hard it is to handle everything while Mark is gone and then maybe he won’t go. Well ha! I AM ON TO HIM!! Yes, it’s stressful and it always seems to get more so than I anticipate but it just serves as confirmation for me that Mark is doing what he’s supposed to be doing.

The kids handle his being gone fairly well. There were some tears from the girls and Beza was more emotional this week then she has been for the last month but I think a lot of that was because dad was gone.

I did add to the stress a bit by finding a GREAT deal on a condo in Anaheim for the week. Problem is check in was the day after Mark got back :-) Which meant that I had to get everything ready by myself including having some work done on the van. It was also crazy, nuts, off the hook at work trying to get a bunch of stuff done for a new series we start next weekend.

But we did it, we survived. Mark got home safe, got one good nights sleep in his beloved Sleep Number bed and then we left this morning for CA. First road trip for Beza and Wendemagegn and they had a hard time wrapping their minds around 6 hours in the car. But really the did pretty good other than Beza (and Natalie) asking “Are we almost there yet?” about a bazillion times.

After getting some pizza delivered I took the kids down to swim and Mark promptly fell asleep. It was after 10 before the kids were finally asleep and I ventured out to the grocery store to stock us up on food for the week.

What the kids DON’T KNOW is that we are going to Disneyland on Wednesday, courtesy of a man Mark met through World Orphans who has one-day passes for us. It’s huge blessing as we wouldn’t have been able to do it otherwise. Noah is the only one of the kids who have been to DL and that was when he was 3. We’re going to tell them tomorrow and then sit back and watch them bounce off the walls for the next 72 hours.

Posted in God's Lessons, Our Family | 1 Comment »

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Swim Progress

July 12, 2009

Friday we spent the day swimming at our friend’s house. Dad told the 3 youngest kids “No floaties!”

I was curious to see how all of them would do. Natalie is right on the brink of being fully independent in the water. As long as she doesn’t try to cross at a really wide part of the pool, she does great at swimming underwater, gliding. Gotta work on her freestyle some more and being able to get a breath and continue.

Wendemagegn and Beza stayed in the part where they can stand up for the most part but they had a lot of fun swimming back and forth. It’s really fine tuning – like getting them to kick with mostly-straight legs, and “scoop” the water instead of slap it with their hands. They got more adventurous as the day went on and even went down to the deeper part, would jump in and then swim back to the side (w/ mom standing by for backup that was unneeded).

Here’s a couple really short clips we took to show dad when we got home:

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Answering the prayer of a little girl’s heart

July 6, 2009

I was just commenting to someone last week that it seemed as if we had not had as many grieving tears lately – especially from Beza (she’s the one that shows the most emotion about leaving Ethiopia and Grammy behind).

Well I’m not sure exactly what set it off (although I’m sure it was exacerbated by lack of sleep) but last night the tears were flowing. She even told me she wanted to go back to Ethiopia and not come back. (I knew she didn’t really mean it, so I didn’t take it personally.) We have told her before that we would love to take her and Wendemagegn back to Ethiopia some time but it is very expensive and so we’re not sure when we will be able to do that. Her concern is that Grammy will die before she gets to see her again.

So I was comforting her the best I could. I asked if she maybe wanted to write a letter or draw a picture for Grammy tomorrow and she said “No, it’s not the same. I want to SEE Grammy.” So we prayed that God would keep Grammy healthy until Beza and Wendemagegn could see her again, that we would be able to have the money to make a trip to Ethiopia sometime “soon” and that he would help Beza not to be sad.

I finally left the girls room only to hear her calling me a few minutes later to come back up. When I got up there she was trying to figure out how to stick a picture of Grammy on the wall next to the nightlight by her bed so she could see it. So we taped it up there. Then Natalie asked if she could sleep with Beza so she wouldn’t be sad (isn’t she sweet). So we compromised by throwing all the blankets and pillows on the floor and they slept together.

This morning as I was scarfing down breakfast I grabbed by Blackberry to scan my emails. There in my inbox was an email from the family friend in Ethiopia. Attached were 4 WONDERFUL professional pictures of Grammy and the kids half sister Mesret. I totally got chills at how God answers Beza’s prayer. I know it wasn’t exactly what Beza meant when she said “SEE” Grammy but what a wonderful reminder that God cares about what is in her heart. He sent us a visible reminder that Grammy is well.

She is a beautiful woman and to me embodies so many things including courage and selfless love.

Grammy

Posted in God's Lessons, Our Family | Tagged , , , , | 9 Comments »

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