Pho for Five

laurie August 18th, 2008

Hopefully people aren’t tired of reading about our incredible vacation in St. Augustine, and since Nicki and Kelly both already wrote about it WAY better than I have it in me to do right now, I’ll just refer you to their blogs for a good read!  No seriously; I’m exhausted and won’t be able to blog it half as good as they already have.  For my family and friends though: we know these families through various Vietnam adoption groups - some were with our agency (Nicki & Kelly), another we met up with while we were in Vietnam (Shannon), another through blogging alone (Jena).  Between all of us, we have 6 beautiful children adopted from Vietnam.  Seeing them all run, scream, laugh, play, etc., together was amazing and we’re really thankful to have established these friendships - these are very meaningful relationships to us and hopefully will be for our children as well.  Since there are so many blogger friends out there I would really love to know IRL, I’m hoping to organize a BIG get together where we can all get our kids together sometime in the next year.  The key will be to do it in a way that doesn’t take anything away from Vietnam Heritage Camp, for those of us who plan on attending that annually.  Perhaps we could plan around that and spend a day or two before or after that week?  Suggestions for how to pull this off are welcome! 

So, the weekend was pretty hysterical.  It was full of lively discussions, TONS of laughter and late nights, wild children, and happy, but exhausted parents by the end of it all!  We had an absolute BLAST.  We talked about everything from Bloggerville to Vietnam adoption ethics to religion to politics to olympics to parenting to careers, and so so so much more.  It’s funny how well you can know people through the internet…it was like all our friendships just had a very different starting point.  Like we’d been friends for years (which we have through our blogs and discussion boards) and were just catching up in person. 

Anyway, Nicki did her highlights already, so I’m copying that with a few of mine:

• Seeing Jackson TOTALLY smitten with Nicki’s boys, and then asking about her oldest son, whom he calls “Dolphin” after arriving home in Colorado (his name is Dalton!).
• Hearing Jackson exclaim “TRAVIS” when he saw his Daddy walk through the bedroom door.  We had so much adult conversation going on around the kids at all times that they all heard their parents referred to by first names so much and I think Lucy and Addy both referred to their parent by first name at one point or another as well.
• Seeing Jena’s face when I dropped the F* bomb in the most sacrilegious of ways (I believe it was something like “good F’ing Lord!). 
• Hearing sweet little Lucy’s voice say “hi baby, hi” every time she saw Finley. 
• Mistaking Khai for Jackson more than twice.  Shoot me, but they are SO similar physically.  They are about the same height, similar builds, same haircut, same exact skin tone, SAME freakin’ voices!!!  But I also have to admit I called Addy “Lucy” once…just thought you should have all the facts.
• Seeing Shane SO worn out from trying to keep up with the big kids (and holding that precious noggin up has GOT to be hard work too!) that he actually laid his head down in the sand to get a quick breather here and there.  Every time he’d give himself a little time-out from the action, he’d pick his head up and half of it would be painted with sand like The Mask.  Pretty funny stuff (see Kelly’s blog for a picture of him laying his head down!). 
• Teasing Kelly about how fanatical she is about the olympics.  I think at 1 point someone accused Michael Phelps of being fat and she busted out how many calories per day he consumes, his % body fat, and his training regimen.  Bwahahaha!!  It was a riot. 
• Jackson chanting “beach, beach, beach” as soon as we got off the plane in Colorado…poor kid.  I guess we know his heart lies with the ocean, not the mountains, although I used to think he was a mountain kinda kid!  Maybe you can be both, like how some people are dog and cat people?! 
• Hearing Shannon’s voicemail when she called Jena “Gina!”  Shan, totally forgot to tease you IRL about this, but I laughed my butt off and we jokingly called Jena “Gina” most of the weekend.  I guess that’s another one of those hilariously funny blogging things - you can know someone SO well on the internet for awhile and then meet them in person and realize you don’t know how to pronounce her name!  Hahaha.  So freakin funny.
• The VERY nosey woman ahead of me in the airport security line ask if my husband is Korean (Travis wasn’t with me at the time), to which I responded “no, and neither are my kids.”  Oh I’m cruel; I derived a strange sense of pleasure from tormenting her nosey mind with just enough info to really make her rat start running.

My least favorite part of the trip:

• Going 3 for 3 with poop diapers on the plane ride home…can you believe they were ALL 3 inspired to take a dump at the same damn time?!  And worse, there was NO changing table in either bathroom on the airplane(the airline was Southwest, and they should be ashamed of themselves!)

Ok, there were SO many more highlights but I have to get some sleep.  Here are some of my favorite pictures, but for the really good ones, you’ll have to see Nicki and Kelly’s blogs. 

Addy, Lucy, and Jackson:

Kell reading to my boys:

Jena reading to her kids and mine:

The most photogenic kid on earth, Khai:

The famously gorgeous Lucy:

Lucy, Addy, and Jackson:

Lucy, looking like she’s trying to flick off the camera, and Finley:

Lucy, Addy, and Jackson:

Khai, Jackson, and Lucy:

Khai, Addy, Jack, Lucy, and Shane Bug:

Shane looking out at Lucy, Jack, and Kell on the porch

Addy Mai’s million dollar smile:

Little Miss A~, smart as a whip and drop dead gorgeous:

Kelly and Lucy:

Jackson and Lucy:

Jena with Bailey and Khai

• Adoption , Family , Friends
• Comments(19)

laurie August 14th, 2008

Laurie: “Ewww, I just found a green crusty booger on my arm. Wonder who that used to belong to!”

Melanie regarding Travis and Brad: “Do you think we can just put them in a box, tape it up, and not put a return address?”

Brad talking about hotdog buns: “You guys can worry about more productive things than where your buns are.”

Sarah about Laurie and Finley: “They seem to be attached at the hip…at the boob actually.”

Brad trying to take Melanie’s sandwich order: “If you don’t even know what you want, how can I possibly satisfy you?”

Melanie talking to Ashlyn about the Greek Orthodox icon she was playing with: “Ashlyn, show mommy the Baby Jesus…Oh man, she’s gonna be SO F@%^ed up!”

Laurie while scrambling to get the kids picture ready: “WAIT! Where’s Shane?! Oh, I’m holding him.”

Travis, out of annoyance with the construction going on at the house: “What if I just open the window, punch him in the nuts, close it, and put Jack up on the counter?!”

Sarah to Bryson while she was sitting on the coffee table: “We don’t sit on furniture.”

Laurie referring to the toddlers: “AMAZING how fast their moods can turn!”
Melanie: “Yeah, they’re like rapid cycling bipolars.”

Travis while watching gymnastics on the Olympics: “Whatever happened to Dominique Mucciano?
Laurie: “She wrote an autobiography.”
Travis: “About WHAT?!”
Laurie: “Umm, her life.”

Melanie in a deep discussion: “I’d consider myself an optimist. Brad, what do you think?”
Brad: “Welllllll, you have become bitterer.”
Melanie: “Hmmm, I”ll accept that. I guess it was the death of my life as I knew it.”

Travis: “I’m an optimist.”
Laurie: “Yeah right!”
Travis: “Ok, I’m optimistic about myself, but pessimistic about everyone else.”

[SILENCE]

Melanie: “That sounds like arrogance to me, you b@stard!!”

Brad: “I’m a cynic, but I assume the best in others.”
Travis: “That’s why I love hanging out with Brad so much…between the two of us, there’s a lot of confidence in ME!”

• Friends , Funny , travel
• Comments(11)

laurie August 12th, 2008

We are LOVING vacation. Travis finished his 3 months of surgery and we took off to Florida the next day. The boys are having a blast at the beach, and Travis and I have realized how in need we’ve been of some time together as a family, away from our day-to-day routine. Amazing what that can do! 

We had some visitors drive about 3 hours to come hangout with us the first day we were here. Some of my Vietnam blogging buddies might know Erin’s family.  Her ADORABLE boys shared their beginnings with our son, Jackson, at an orphanage in Vung Tau.  Travis and I first met Cameron and Connor the day we adopted Jackson, and we sent Erin some pictures of her little guys, who lived in the infant room with Jackson.  Here are some shots of our boys reunited:

Our DC buddies are here now…the ‘Caca Crusaders,’ although we’re missing my best friend, Dominique, and her family;(  It’s not quite the same without them, but we’re still having a great time and the quote list is already beyond ridiculous.  So there are 3 couples here and 5 kids, Jackson being the oldest!  It makes for an action-packed vacations, with very little sleep!  Oh, and for the Vietnam adoption bloggers, check back this weekend; we have some more good friends coming to visit this weekend!  Here are some pictures with our friends from the past few days:

Not at the beach, but I just love this picture of Jackson and his gorgeous eyes:

Here is a HILARIOUS sequence of Bryson drifting off to sleep on the couch next to Jackson:

Going…

Going…

Gone…

JACKSON: “Hey man, wake-up!  Movie’s not over yet!”

JACKSON: “DUDE!  Your friend’s calling.  He’s says wake the heck up!”

BRYSON: “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!  MOM!!!!!  The kid who never sleeps is TORTURING me.”

• Adoption , Family , Friends , travel
• Comments(17)

laurie August 8th, 2008

Someone requested that I write a post about scabies and acropustulosis a LOOOOONG time ago, but at the time, I didn’t think it was relevant to very many of my readers since scabies has been written about often and acropustulosis is considered to be pretty uncommon. I think it was probably more relevant than I realized, and I just got another request to write on this topic. Sorry to whomever made the initial request that I ignored until now! Better late than never, right?

Hopefully this post will be useful to those readers who have adopted, or will adopt from an orphanage with the oh so familiar scabies epidemic.  Jackson’s orphanage in Vung Tau was pretty much crawling with them, and every baby we knew coming out of there had a decent to bad case of scabies.  Shane’s orphanage, on the other hand, in Que Son, was TOTALLY scabies-free.  It was amazing.  Shane left that place with GORGEOUS skin, and still has gorgeous skin.  Jackson, on the other hand, still suffers from his post-scabies skin problems, along with his eczema. 

Most people already know you should bring a few tubes of Elimite with you, which is a prescription topical cream that gets rid of the scabies mite.  Ok, I’ll back up.  Scabies is a dermatologic condition that results from the body’s immune response to the eggs of the scabies mite.  It’s commonly found in unclean conditions where people tend to be crowded together (prisons, orphanages, homeless shelters, etc.). The mites burrow under the skin, lay their nasty eggs, which causes the body to react with itching and red “bumps.” 

Here’s a picture of a scabies rash:

In case that didn’t already gross you out, here’s a microscopic picture of what the mites look like:

They love to burrow in the creases between fingers, toes, and in the natal cleft (butt crack), so those are good places to check if you’re not sure if your child has scabies.  Because live mites and eggs are involved, scabies is a contagious condition.  However, it’s not nearly as contagious as everyone treats it unless your child has the most severe infestation (Norwegian Scabies) and you have a lot of contact with his/her skin before you treat it with Elimite.  You’re most likely not going to catch it from holding your baby that first day.  But if you want to be extra careful anyway, put your clothes with your baby’s clothes in a separate bag to take home and wash on high heat.  Anyway, here’s my advice:

1. The first night you come home from the orphanage with your child, you should cover them head to toe (avoiding the eyes) with Elimite.  I would do this even if you aren’t sure of the diagnosis, but see red bumps that seem to itch.  It’s a pretty benign treatment, and imo, the potential of getting scabies or having your child continue to suffer with them in the midst of his/her transition into your care is worse than the treatment. The guidelines are to “treat all contacts,” but unless you’ve waited to initiate treatment with Elimite and have been co-sleeping or living in very close quarters with your child longer than just that first day, it’s highly unlikely you get scabies if you treat right away. So, imo, if you slather your child in Elimite the first night, you shouldn’t need to treat the other family members who were present that first day.
2. Put the clothes they were wearing in a separate baggie to wash with high heat when you return home (most people keep that orphanage outfit as memorabilia for their child). 
3. When your child wakes up, which hopefully doesn’t happen until the next morning (HAHAHA, yeah right!), bath them to remove the Elimite.  This should be sufficient to get rid of the scabies.  VERY rarely will a child require a 2nd application of Elimite. 

However, successfully getting rid of the mite does not ensure you are totally done with this issue.  I’m talking about a skin condition called infantile acropustulosis, which is commonly reported after a bout of scabies has been treated.  It doesn’t require scabies to have ever been present, but it does often follow a known case of scabies.  Initially, it was thought to be a persistent immune response despite the mite having been eradicated.  It’s now known that it is not an immune problem, and it’s not a result of the mite recurring.  The etiology is unknown and it’s a pretty poorly understood and under-recognized condition.  It’s also not contagious.  It is more common in darker skinned people and usually presents with vesicles, or fluid-filled bumps, on the palms of the hands and soles of the feet (here are 2 good pictures), although in rare cases the vesicles can be on the trunk, face, or scalp as well.  The vesicles itch like hell, and probably cause your baby/child a lot of discomfort.  They also seem to be cyclic, so they’ll come and go.  Sometimes they last a few days, sometimes longer, and they tend to recur every few weeks.  The outbreaks are self-limited, meaning they resolve on their own and there’s really nothing you can do to hasten the resolution.  You can treat the symptoms with a topical steroid (like hydrocortisone cream), or an antihistamine.  Occasionally, pediatric dermatologists will use dapsone for really severe, refractory cases.  Your child will eventually grow out of the outbreaks altogether, thankfully!  Most doctors are NOT familiar with acropustulosis, and it’s believed to be underreported because there’s not much awareness about it.  Also, many doctors misdiagnose this as a scabies recurrence because they’ve just never heard of it, in which case they’ll have you using Elimite over and over with no results.  I had to tell our doctor about the condition, and she’s a really informed physician! 

Jackson has acropustulosis, although he hasn’t had a flare in a few months and I’m praying he’s finally outgrown it. During the flares, the itching bugs (no pun intended) the heck out of him.  He sometimes comes hopping towards us with 1 foot in the air saying “itch, itch!”  On occasion, he even has a hard time falling asleep because his poor little feet itch so badly.  On those nights, we give him Benadryl and apply a topical steroid.  We’ve learned to cover the hydrocortisone cream with a layer of aquaphor to seal it in so it doesn’t just rub off.  That helps a little bit, but it still really stinks when he has an outbreak.

Just out of curiosity, how many of your kids out there have acropustulosis?  If so, what did you have to go through to end up at that diagnosis (was your child given several rounds of scabies treatment?  skin scrapings?  etc.)?

• Adoption , Medical / Medical school / career , Peru , Jackson
• Comments(24)

laurie August 6th, 2008

• Medical / Medical school / career
• Enter your password to view comments

laurie August 4th, 2008

[There were a few password emails I sent that got bounced back. If you left a comment to get that, and you never got an email, please follow up with me because I cannot get it to you if you didn’t leave a valid email address when leaving a comment]

Sorry for the angry title. I’m just pissed at myself for spending $15 at B0rders on this book that was meant to be for my own “pleasure reading.” If you loved this book, as most people seemed to, you might be a tad offended by my opinion, so I’ll apologize in advance.

I guess I just have a serious problem with the wealthy socialite who abandons her life and material things to skip off to India, where she spends several months with a guru, returns proclaiming enlightenment, and writes a best seller about her spiritual journey. I’ll admit, I did not get very far into the book before making a pretty harsh judgement about this woman, but I think she was just reminiscent of characters I knew in college and certain themes in her life overlap with those characters who made my eyes roll.

For 1, only rich people have the luxury of “giving up all material wealth.” Why does it seem like it’s usually trust fund kids who do things like this? Perhaps because they are the ones with the security of knowing they can always return to that wealth when they want it back. For another thing, the whole notion that you can just temporarily plop yourself into a totally different country, religion, culture, etc, and suck up what it has to offer, leave, and proclaim spiritual enlightenment just annoys me. I’d have no issue with the trust fund kids who skips around the world contributing something productive and leaving a positive impact along the way, like if s/he uses her money to start micro-finance companies to benefit developing areas, or to improve schools, volunteer at hospitals, or whatever.

And if you know Colorado at all, Boulder is the capital of this sort of thing. Don’t get me wrong; we LOVE Boulder - it’s beautiful, funky, liberal, educated. But it also harbors a crazy amount of pretense and wealth that I don’t like so much. Travis and I always joke about it though because it’s the sort of place you’ll see people dressed like bums, looking like they haven’t showered in weeks, bopping around with dreads and gross clothes, and then you’ll see them hop into a $50K car, or onto a $6K bike. It’s pretty amusing, but also irritating in a different way.

So all of that was only peripherally related to the book Eat, Pray, Love, but it’s what the book reminds me of and why I’m having a hard time making myself like the protagonist.

As a funny aside though, during the same trip to the bookstore, I decided to finally buy myself the book Raising Your Spirited Child. About damn time, I know. Anyway, as I was asking the customer service desk to please order it for me since they were no copies left on the shelves, Jackson was racing around the store like a crazy person…clearing books off shelves and running from me like we were playing a game of chase. I looked up and noticed the customer service rep had this look on her face like, “holy &hit, that kid just wrecked the place.” All I could say in response to her horrified look was “um yeah, so that would be the ’spirited’ one!” Hahaha.

I’ll write more about this book in another post, but so far I love it. It’s given me some really positive ways to look at Jackson’s behavior, which, by the way, has actually been really good lately. He’s been doing SO well at playgroups, with Shane, and just in general. Don’t get me wrong, he’s still ’spirited,’ but I think a lot of the struggles we encountered a few months ago were more a product of the very rapid, difficult adjustment we forced on him by introducing 2 new babies into the family so close together. That was a LOT of change for an almost 2 year old to have gone through, especially on the heels of having lived in Vietnam away from his little world at our house for 7 weeks. All things considered, I think he’s handled it all pretty darn well.

He was so cute the other day as we were leaving a get together with a group of friends whose kids Jackson used to not play very well with. He was really really good, no issues, no fighting, no toy snatching, no aggression. We were in the car and I told him, “Jack, mommy is SO proud of you. You made me SO happy today because you played so nicely with your friends.” He had the biggest smile and then said, “Mommy soooooo happy. Jack so happy too.”

• Funny , parenting , Jackson
• Comments(34)

laurie August 3rd, 2008

Here’s how it all went down…

Jackson and Cassidy were playing and having a blast.  Cassidy was feeling mischievous and gave Jackson a taste of his own medicine.  She snagged the truck he was playing with right out of his hands and ran for her life! 

Kyndra intervened: “Hey you!  Give that back to Jack and say sorry.”

Jack: “Sorrrrrry.”

Kyndra: “Not you love.”

Cassidy (as she hands Jackson his truck back): “thank you!”

Jackson: “woncome.” 

I think Kyndra and I were the only ones totally confused by the whole exchange. Jackson and Cassidy seemed to be on exactly the same page!

Guess you had to be there.  Trust me, I was justified in peeing my pants. 

Aren’t they ridiculously cute together?!

By the way, how freakin moronic am I?? I have this crazy obsession with / fear of sharks, yet I stayed up late last night to watch the most sensationalized, horrific shark attack story and reenactment as part of Discovery Channel’s Shark Week (which has had me captivated!) and woke up this morning still traumatized. Brilliant thing to do just a week before our beach vacation in Florida!!

• Friends , Funny , Jackson
• Comments(7)

laurie August 1st, 2008

• Medical / Medical school / career , parenting
• Enter your password to view comments

laurie July 31st, 2008

08/01/08 Update…Shane took his first steps yesterday?! 1 day shy of 13 months old! He was so proud of himself. He’s gotten bold all of the sudden, and strung ~4 steps together this morning! Yay Shane-bug!

{I’ll try and get the password out to you all in an email after the kids go to bed tonight. If there are anymore requests, drop a comment on the previous post, otherwise I have to look a million different places for people’s email addresses to include. Does anyone know a more efficient way than logging into wordpress and cutting and pasting all email addresses from that post’s comments into an email? If so, can you share your idea with me? Thanks for reading guys, and thanks to all who de-lurked to be included!}

Aren’t these pictures adorable? I love that one of Shane-Bug; it’s just a classic Shane face (when he’s happy). And the one of Jackson holding “Finnie,” as he now calls her, is one of my new favs too. But you wanna see something so gross? Like disgusting, gross? Ok, you’re sick. No seriously, there’s something wrong with you…
Look more closely at the picture of Jack and Finley. She was in the midst of doing a MASSIVE poop that was escaping out the side as this picture was being snapped (look closely at the underside of her left upper thigh). Jackson started yelling “Finnie poop, Jack’s leg!” Sure enough, a breastmilk poop (I specify because they’re just a different breed of poop) was dripping down his leg. Sorry for the visual!! Hahaha!

If you haven’t had enough of Jackson singing yet, below are a few more of his hilarious vocalist debuts. I love how musical he is. He’s constantly humming or singing something to himself.

Listen closely (and you’ll have to turn the volume up again, sorry) to the beginning of this one; he starts out singing the Sesame theme song, then goes into the ABC’s.

This one is Ba Ba Black Sheep (my favorite part is the “yessa, yessa”):

• Shane , Finley , Jackson
• Comments(24)

laurie July 28th, 2008

Just as a heads-up, I’m still thinking through my career dilemma and want to do some semi-private writing about it.  It’s not that I don’t want people reading, it’s just that I want to be totally honest with my thoughts without worrying I might be burning bridges if people who only know me in a professional context happen to read those posts (med school deans, residency programs, etc.).  The password will be different than what it was in the past, so if you want access, just leave a comment here.  If you think its appropriate that I give you the password for these few protected posts (as in, you’re not affiliated with medical school administration or a residency program), just tell me who you are if I don’t *know* you already. 

• Uncategorized
• Comments(224)