O-ba-ma!

Owen watched Obama take the oath of office today. He can say, "Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!" pretty well.

Then he had a meltdown because I wouldn't give him some candy. Then he took a nap.

Rock Lobster

Here's another photo from a few weeks ago. We had lobsters for our New Year's Eve dinner. Actually, I was flat on my back on the couch with a terrible cold I caught from Owen right after Christmas. So, he and Dad prepared a lobster dinner, and I dragged myself to the table. There was no Annie Hall moment -- Owen was very matter-of-fact about the whole thing.

Sharp-Dressed Man

Owen on Christmas Day.

Back to work

I'm almost through my first week back at work.

I can't say I'm very happy about it, but I'm settling in. This has been a huge transition for me. I miss all my "Owen time" during the day. The evenings are too short.

But Owen is doing great at home with his dad. They wave good-bye to me in the morning, and then do guy stuff all day. They've been to Ikea, they've worked on our big kitchen remodeling project, and today they baked a pie. Okay, maybe that last one wasn't guy stuff, but the pie was damn yummy!

This morning, for the first time, when Owen woke up, he called out, "Daddy! Mommy!" instead of just asking for me. That was great. This is going to be a wonderful few weeks of bonding for him and Ray.

Mommy, on the other hand, will have to adjust.

I've had the time of my life

This is it. It's over. I'm heading to bed in a few minutes, and when I wake up, I re-enter the working world.

I don't want to make too much of a drama about this. Millions of women head to work every day, leaving their kids in someone else's care. There's nothing unique about this.

Except that it's killing me. Owen's speech therapist told me last week that every mom cries the first day back, so I shouldn't be too hard on myself. And Owen will be home with his dad. He'll have a great time. Ray will have a great time. It's going to be hardest on me.

It really has been an amazing ride. We went on a trip and came back with someone we'll know for the rest of our lives. I went on a trip and became a mom. It still blows my mind how much has happened in such a short time.

Being at home with him taught me how non-linear time is. Sometimes the days felt endless, sometimes they flew by. The weeks and months disappeared before I knew it.

Owen went from being a scared little boy who barely opened his mouth to a little motormouth who can say probably 100 words in English and is starting to put two-word sentences together. Since we've been home, I've gotten him off the bottle and sleeping through the night (most nights). He's become very attached to his grandparents, cousins, and his parents of course. He's met so many people and done so many things, and he rolls with all of it with amazing flexibility. He laughs and jokes and teases all the time now -- things that were unimaginable in July and August.

We still have transition issues. Getting him to go to sleep is an exercise in frustration for me most nights. Eating is fraught with issues, but he's learning to regulate his food a little better. The sensory integration issues are still tough -- I got bit twice today, and badly. And while sometimes he's pretty good about getting his needs met, other times he's just a little too go-with-the-flow. When he doesn't protest about being hungry or uncomfortable, you can see how much deprivation has shaped him.

But he's done amazingly well, considering all that's been asked of him since July 22. I am in awe of how the transition has gone.

So now we start a new routine. At what point in the day am I going to miss him the most? I think naptime, when I'd be snuggling with him in the rocking chair, under a soft blanket, with his little head on my shoulder. That's pretty hard to beat. On the other hand, there's pretty much zero chance I'll have to change a dirty diaper from 8 to 5 tomorrow.

The sweetest and saddest time of day

T minus three days. I have three days of maternity leave left.

Owen's going to be fine. He's going to have a great time with Ray over the next few weeks. And once he's in daycare full-time, I think he'll be fine. He loves to play with other kids, so I think he'll have a ball.

But still.

The past few days, we start every morning with our usual routine. I'm up, drinking coffee, watching a little Matt 'n Meredith 'n Al, or trying to get a start on the day, when Owen sits up in his bed and calls out, "Mommy!"

When I walk in his room, he's calmly sitting there, waiting for me, with the biggest smile on his face. Then I scoop up him, his Capitals blanket, and his teddy bear, and we head to the couch. Sometimes he drifts back to sleep on my shoulder, or just snuggles there for a while. We sit on the couch together and cuddle and laugh. We might practice some sounds and words. We exchange a lot of tickles and kisses. Then we go have breakfast.

This week has been bittersweet. I keep thinking, we won't have time for this once I go back to work. Not at the leisurely, all-the-time-in-the-world pace we have now. I don't even know if Owen will be up when I leave next week. Will he wake up and call "Mommy"? Then what'll happen?

Every morning lately has been beautiful, and yet it has tugged at my heart unbearably.

How's that again?

We spent the day in VA so that Ray could get his car worked on and inspected, and interesting things always seem to happen over there.

1. We were in the library down the street, keeping Owen entertained in the children's section, when I looked over at a shelf of picture books. My eyes settled on these three book spines, all in a row: "Punk Farm," Bubble Bath Pirates," and "Annie Was Warned."

Now, I'm just getting back into children's books after a long absence (a high school job in a public library); maybe some of you are familiar with these. For all I know, they're classics. But the titles just cracked me up. "Punk Farm" could be the name of a band (and indeed it's about a hard rockin' band made up of a pig, sheep, cow, and horse). "Bubble Bath Pirates" clearly belongs in the women's erotica section -- except that this is Virginia so there's no women's erotica section. Obvs. And as for "Annie Was Warned," well, that's an ominous title for a book aimed at tots. It sounds like one of those after-school specials of my youth. Warned about what? And what happened to her when she apparently disobeyed? I was too afraid to find out.

2. Then we went to lunch, at the legendary Vienna Inn. While we waited for our loaded chili dogs, a cell phone starting ringing in the booth behind us, which was occupied solely by an elderly woman.

Buddy you're a boy make a big noise
Playin' in the street gonna be a big man some day
You got mud on your face
You big disgrace
Kickin' your can all over the place

We will we will rock you
We will we will rock you

Seemed like an odd choice for a ringtone for her phone. I did a doubletake while the lady tried to answer the phone...but then her granddaughter came to the table, bearing their drinks.

3. In the afternoon, Ray and Owen went out for a bit in the newly fixed car. When they came back, Ray said, "The whole drive back, I thought Owen was saying 'butthole,' 'butthole,' but then I realized he was saying, 'pretzel.'"

Reunion Day

Today, we had brunch with our travel group -- the first time we've all been together since Hanoi -- and with two families who recently returned with their new daughters.

It was great to see how the four kids have grown since August. Everyone's bigger with fuller heads of hair -- yes, good nutrition works wonders. The three formerly floppy babies are crawling and incredibly mobile. Everyone commented on how big Owen's getting and how much he's changed.

We posed the kids for a group photo just like the one we took on the couch in the lobby of the Somerset Grand in Hanoi. (Of course, we forgot our camera, so I hope I can get a photo from one of the other parents to post here.)

We also watched a short video that one of the dads put together from his trip footage. We all had cameos in it, and of course we all started groaning at the G&R footage, remembering how hot it was that day. Dan chose the most relaxing, soft music for the background, and we had to laugh at how that changed the tenor of the video, since we remember how hectic and stressed parts of the trip were (and don't get us started when the Halong Bay footage came on-screen). But it was so sweet, we were all wiping tears away by the end. Puts my little memory book that I made for Owen to shame -- I wish we had taken more video. Dan did it all with a Flip camera, and it looked terrific.

It was hard to find a weekend when all four families were in town, so I don't know when we'll all get together again, but we talked about an annual photo, on a couch somewhere, with all the kids in a line (Owen on the far right).

Owen gets into the holiday spirit

More recent photos, these from my family's holiday party.

Owen and his big brother, Red:

Owen LOVES candy canes!

Did I mention how much he loves them?

While I wasn't blogging -- Jacksonville edition

Here are some photos from our trip to Jacksonville, FL, in early December.

Owen finally meets Grandpa Ray:

Owen with Grandpa Ray and Grandma Beth:

We feed a giraffe at the excellent zoo in Jax:

Owen meets Santa -- and while he wasn't quite sure what was going on, he did not freak out. This was taken at a Breakfast with Santa event at the preschool our friends own:

Uh...something missing here

WashingtonPost.com is running this graphic from the AP with an article on adoptive parents' concerns about their children's health in the wake of the Chinese tainted formula problem.

The graphic, you'll note, is headlined "Adoptions Steadily Decreasing," and notes that the number of international adoptions by US parents has declined since the peak in 2004.

But there's nothing in the graphic, or the article, that so much as hints at why. Readers are left to draw their own conclusions.

The reason, of course, is that some sending countries have tightened requirements or even shut down for periods since 2004, resulting in fewer completed adoptions.

But if you didn't know much about international adoption, would that even occur to you? You might make any number of assumptions -- lack of interest, lack of children needing homes, whatever.

Not helpful, AP!

(OTOH, look at that number for 2008 from Vietnam: 751 adoptions before Vietnam shut its doors this fall. And one of the 751, thank God, was Owen!)

New year, more blogging?

It's New Year's Day, and I've cleaned out two drawers. Yippee. At least I feel like I've started 2009 with some minor sense of accomplishment.

I have not updated the blog very much since mid-November. I was assuming no one was reading it, now that the big trip and homecoming are over and Owen's just another (adorable) kid and I'm just another jittery first-time mom.

But recent visits with friends and family have taught me that some of you out there are checking in, and you want more pictures and stories. So for 2009, I'll try to be a better blogger.

I missed a lot of milestones from mid-November on: Owen's first ER visit, his first Thanksgiving, his first visit to see Santa, and all the Christmas festivities. I can't really explain why I stopped chronicling all of these events. Partly the assumption of no audience (but then, I'm really writing this blog for Owen), but also partly because in mid-November I went into a major freakout (depression?) about returning to work. Sometimes I got so anxious about it, I didn't want to blog for fear of sounding like a basket case, and other times I was just too exhausted in the evenings, because I started a program of Making Every Day Count while I watched the clock run out on my maternity leave.

I know most everyone is conflicted about going back to work. I can't imagine what it's going to be like on January 12, when I pull out of the driveway and head to work instead of spending a leisurely morning giving Owen his breakfast, reading a book or two, and cuddling on the couch. For me, it's also the job itself, and the stress inherent in it. I'm sure I'll regain some passion for my work, but lately I've had this insane notion that I should go back to school -- at my age! -- and change careers to something that actually and literally saves lives. Because that sounds like the only option that has a chance of being more meaningful than spending my day with Owen.

Anxious, who me?

So here's a quick recap:

1. Owen's ER visit was in mid-November, right after my last blog entry. He had a high fever that spiked quickly, so over breakfast one morning he had a febrile seizure in Ray's arms. It was the longest 25 seconds of our lives. We rushed Owen to his doctor's office, where they got his fever down pretty quickly, but then they sent us to the ER for a fuller work-up than they could do at their office. Why a fuller work-up? Because at that point, he'd been home for three months, and we just can't answer questions like: Has he ever had one of these seizures before? Does he have a family history of X, Y, or Z? While the doctor thought it was likely "just" a febrile seizure, we had to rule out lots of other things, as well as figure out what was causing the fever.

So, we spent a day in a pediatric ER unit of a local hospital, and the poor child was poked and prodded far too much. They blew three lines before getting an IV in. They inserted TWO catheters -- the first one I could see under his skin while they jammed it, saying they couldn't get it into his bladder and would need a smaller gauge. He got a bloody nose during the nasal swab. And the whole time Ray and I were holding him down, and he was screaming, "Mom! Mom! Mom!"

But he was fine. Ten days of antibiotics for some undetermined, generic virus, and he was good as new. And seemed to forgive us for the Catheter Incident.

2. Thanksgiving was great. Big dinner, we all ate too much, and Owen was entertaining. He took my bowl of kale off of my plate before I could dish him out a toddler portion, and would not give it back. Of course, everyone laughed, which meant he just played to his audience, putting the bowl of kale nearly behind his back and saying, "No, no, no" to me.

3. All of the holiday festivities. I'll post photos soon, I promise. He sat on Santa's lap on two separate occasions and was fine both times. No tears, no bewilderment. He loves Christmas lights and snowmen, even though we've had no snow. He got a lot of presents, and he's been busy ever since with them. He was handsome in his Christmas sweater and his black velvet blazer.

For Ray and me, and for my family, it was a great time. I loved experiencing Christmas in a way I haven't since I was kid myself, and it's only going to get better -- by next year, he might have a better idea of who Santa is and why we're having this celebration. But this year, watching his eyes get big when he was Christmas lights was enough.

So, I'm wishing everyone a healthy and happy 2009, and I'll keep the blog posts coming.