Progress, on More Than One Level

Language is not exactly flowing from Miss M's mouth. Lots of words, yes, but none of them strung together.

This is a typical conversation:

Me: Say, Hi Mama!
M: Hi
Me: Mama
M: mama
Me: no, say Hi Mama!
M: Hi
Me: Mama
M: mama mama mama

You get the drift.

Since we haven't progressed as far as Hi Mama, I've not really tried anything else. This was, perhaps, a mistake. Apparently, it was just the subject matter she was not keen on.

This past weekend we were out walking in the stroller and a man got out of his parked car. She leaned out of the stroller and said "Hi Baby!".

He was kind of old and not my type, but with a little training...

Heartbreaker

The time has come to bid adieu to the great italian love of my life. That's right. Black Death, aka my 2005 Ducati multistrada, is sporting a for sale sign. Sort of. It's breaking my heart. So I placed an unreasonably high sticker price on it and crossed my fingers that no one would go that high. And I do mean unreasonable. I've had this bike for 3 years and I'm almost making money off of this. And so far it's worked!!! Not one phonecall. Nada. Until yesterday. He checked it out. He fell in love. He asked me if my price was firm. I said it was. And... crap. I think he's gonna take it. I'll know this weekend.

But the deal's not done til the paperwork's signed....

I love you italian studmuffin!

Adoption Playgroup Posse

I have been very blessed to meet a number of families who live very near me in Vancouver and who have also adopted from Ethiopia. We all went down around the same time, and the kids are all fairly close in age. They form my local adoption posse and we try to get together for playgroups as often as possible. This was easier before we went back to work, but those lucky few who aren't back yet, or don't engage in the 9 to 5 grind, enthusiasticly lead the charge to keep it going. These pics were taken this summer on a weekend brunch playdate at Rochelle and Ayana's. There's about 8 kids all together, but here's just a couple of shots.















Abdisa and Makeda















Binyam and Ayana















Matteo

We have a diagnosis!!

The cause of the crappy croup has been determined. In fact, there are two separate problems: (1) Myer-Cotton Grade I subglottic stenosis and (2) Laryngcomalacia (a.k.a. floppy voice box). Subglottic stenosis is a narrowing of the airway. Floppy voice box is caused by the cartilage in the larynx being soft. It causes the inlet to narrow, especially if breathing is hard. Either one of these conditions is a factor in recurring croup and my little darling has been blessed with both. For now, we're not doing anything, the hope being that she will grow out of both conditions. But, as of early Fall, she'll be back on a puffer for the duration of cold and flu season, just to try and create a base so that we can hopefully avoid the great 2010 emergency room camp-outs. She put on quite a performance in post-op yesterday. For a mild-mannered little girl she was bringing the house down. At least we know her lungs are clear. While I empathized with her unhappiness, I have to confess to a certain satisfaction over her tantrums. They couldn't wait to get her out of there, and as a result, we got out a couple of hours earlier than if she'd been her typical well-behaved self.

Afrikadeys was great fun. We met lots of new Cowtown adoption peeps and Makeda was rocking out to the music with great abandon. I love this girls' confidence. Here she is wearing Biset's pail on her head. I did not put it there. This is her very own fashion statement. Haze got video as well, and if it turns out, I'll post that later. It was quite hilarious to see her running around the field wearing a bucket on top of her sunhat.

Hey It's Me Staring Back at Me

So I was doing my nightly scroll through the e-news to see if my interview had been picked up (yet) and hey! there i was! That's a bit startling actually to see your own face staring back at you on a website, especially since the interview was so long ago now, I really thought they'd decided not to publish it. For a second I thought I'd logged onto my own blog by mistake. But finally - the promised Sun article.

A bit of an update on the situation - there does appear to be some light at the end of the tunnel. The Trustee is looking at a "viable" proposal that has been submitted to keep the agency operating until those of us at the pre-referral stage can complete our adoptions. But the devil will be in the details of course. The financial shortfall will be a signifcant stumbling block to overcome. Yours truly is now the BC rep on the Trustee liason committee so hopefully there will be more concrete details soon.

In the meantime, to lighten things up a bit, Mak and I are packing our bags for Cowtown this weekend to go to Afrikadey Festival with some of the Calgary adoption posse. We will be staying with Auntie Haze and Makeda will break in darling Biset's new crib. We hope to meet Dianne and the beauteous Hana and many others that I've only connected with through blogland. AND, Marelise and Mak will FINALLY get to meet in person since I did not bring her as my date to Marelise's recent wedding, much to her chagrin. Marelise, Makeda gets her scope done at Children's on Monday after we leave, so you know I will be pestering you again for info. In fact, if you could just look down her throat while we're there, I'd really rather have you in charge.

See you all soon!