Hair Cut

Lizbeth recently had her first hair cut (well first since I shaved her head at 4 months).  Since her hair is a bit odd, very curly underneath and very straight on top, I decided to let a professional do it.  I was really impressed both by how well she did and by how prepared the salon was for a little kid.  Lizbeth was delighted and stayed amazingly still through the whole thing.  She still likes to tell people about her haircut and it's been almost a month!

Before:

From 2012.9 September

During:

From 2012.9 September

From 2012.9 September

From 2012.9 September

After:

From 2012.9 September

Solid Foods

As mentioned recently, Matthew finally convinced me to start him on solid foods.  I was trying to wait until six months, but he would scream through dinner and tried to grab anything I put in my mouth. 

Funny story, I actually decided to start him on solids once I realized his thrust reflex was completely gone.  He showed me this by delivering a significant piece of McDonald's wrapper in his diaper one day...what a great mom I am :-)  I honestly had no idea he had actually gotten a piece of it in his mouth the day before.

He took to actual solid foods like a duck takes to water.

From 2012.9 September

From 2012.9 September

From 2012.9 September

I think he likes it :-)

He now cries when we go out for dinner and I forget to take a little something for him too. :-)

Happy Moon Festival

So I've been here for 4 plus years and I still have very little understanding of all the Chinese holidays.  I've even read books about them, but since they are generally based on the lunar calendar, and therefore change on the common calendar I'm used to, I have an even harder time keeping them straight.

But, every year, at the end of September or beginning of October we have a week off of school.  Usually it is filled up with conferences and the like but this year was unique in that we have a true break.  It's been great having Nathan home all day.

Anyways, it's a combination of their national holiday, October 1st, and the mid autumn moon festival.  Because of this, you usually eat and give lots of "moon cakes", a traditional treat that many foreigners don't actually like too much because they often put what we think of as strange items in the middle, like bean paste or egg.The outside cake part is also very dense and rich.

A big part of our school is teaching the students Chinese culture, so all of the classes spend some time making them in their Chinese class period and then hand them out to teachers and take them home to their families. Since this is the first year I've been eating gluten, it is my first year to actually participate in the desserts!

I was super impressed with how well they made them, and so professional.  Look at the fun wrappers and impressions. 

From 2012.9 September

From 2012.9 September

The school usually tries to make them fairly foreigner friendly, and Lizbeth and I certainly enjoyed sharing them for dessert and breakfast!

From 2012.9 September

I'm Back!

I've had every intention of giving you all a good picture post as both kids are just so adorable and I haven't had any pictures on here is SOOOO long.  However, I haven't been able to reach blogger long enough to post in weeks!  So, here's a quick update, and if I still have a connection, I'll do my best to follow it with some pics.

Matthew is nearly 6 months old (next week!)  He's very close to being able to sit, just started rice cereal, is always hungry, and still wakes up 2-4 times a night...needless to say, we're a bit exhausted, but he makes up for it with his adorable grins and constant enthusiasm for people.

Lizbeth is just about potty trained (again!)  You may remember she was potty trained 7 months ago, and then gave up on it.  Since then, we've had serious issues with poo in the toilet, but we may just about be there.  We just started a sticker chart yesterday and if she gets to 100 she gets a bike!  She has been wanting one forever but with our tightened finances we have been waiting.  We were going to get one for her 2nd bday but her poor little legs weren't long enough to reach the peddles of any bike we could find.  We're actually probably going to get her a balance bike, but we'll see.  She is super excited and we hear a lot of "I go poopy, I get a bike!"  Every 10 stickers she gets a smaller prize, like icecream out or a small toy.

You might also remember that Lizbeth had her photos done last spring by a Chinese company.  They were super eager to use her again and have even added me into the mix.  If you want to see some very Chinesey advertising (look at the English on the pics) go to:

www.qingdaoertong.com

You can click on the pics of us to open up the series.

And since I'm not posting any real pics, I'll paint an adorable word picture for you of Lizbeth tonight.  A sweet relative of ours gave Lizbeth a beautiful pair of pink leather cowgirl boots this summer.  Lizbeth LOVES them and wears them every chance she can.  We don't usually wear shoes in the house, but today I caught her marching around the house in just the shoes and a pink and white pair of panties holding a meter long stick she found a few days ago.  So cute, but probably wouldn't post the mostly nude 2 year old here anyways.  :-)

Hope you are all doing great!  We miss you!

Done

So, here we are in Korea.  Tomorrow we head back to our sweet daughter-oh how I miss her!

Our time here was quite different than I expected.  By the time we flew in, picked up our rented phone, found the bus, sat on the bus FOREVER because of the rainstorm and traffic, missed our stop and walked back from the next one, it was 8:30 at night.  Add finding our place, dropping our stuff, and eating dinner it was quite late by the time we crashed.

The next day, Wednesday, we headed out about 10:00, wandered around, found a Dunkin Donuts for breakfast and began navigating the subway to find the hospital--suddenly we were nearly late!

We met with the neurologist and he was very knowledgeable.  He felt due to the combination of migraines and the brain "lesion", as they kept referring to it, there is quite likely a hole in the heart allowing blood to pass from one side to the other where it really wasn't supposed to...and allowing tiny blood clots to head to the brain.  In order to get all the testing done quickly, he opted to admit me...and I've spent the past 2 1/2 days in the hospital now!  So much for seeing Korea between appointments! (And thank goodness for good insurance!)

Well, after all the testing, they have found that indeed I do have some blood going where it shouldn't, but they can not find the hole.  Further testing would require an invasive procedure and at this point the risks outweigh the benefits.  Therefore, for now, I am to do my best to prevent headaches through lifestyle changes (avoiding dehydration and migraine triggers, and making sure to exercise regularly).  After I am done nursing Matthew, I will go on some type of blood thinner, probably a small amount of Aspirin a day, to prevent clots.  Then in a year or so we will redo some testing to make sure nothing has gotten worse.

How do I feel?  Relieved that it is not something scary such as cancer or MS.  A little bummed that all I can do is treat the headaches.  So glad to be headed back to Lizbeth.  Relieved that we're not dealing with surgery right now with two little ones!  In some ways it feels like this was an expensive way to find out very little, but in other ways it is such a relief.  Thank you for all of your prayers!  We have been blessed in so many ways through this time!

And More Doctors...

 A few weeks ago our family was battling an awful virus that's main symptoms were a high fever (103 and above) and feeling terrible.  Really terrible.  It also seemed to hang around for a couple days, then go away for a day, then come back again for a day before passing on to the next person.  Lizbeth got it first, then passed it on to Matthew and me, finally Nathan came down with it :-(

However, for me, this seems to have triggered what I thought was the world's worst migraine.  Turns out it was worse than the world's worst migraine.  After a nearly sleepless night of feeling as though my head was going to explode, I decided to go to our international clinic and hope for an opening since they were all booked up.  Long story short, four blood tests and a urine test later everything came back normal.  Too normal, since for how sick we've all been something should show up in my blood.  The doctor doesn't really have an answer for that.  As for my headache, it continued on until about 5:00 PM.  They rushed a CT scan (which in Qingdao means it takes two hours instead of two days to a week) which cleared up concerns of an aneurysm (thank God), but did have a couple anomalies.

Last year I went to this same doctor about some visual auras I had during both pregnancies.  They ran an MRI (in January) that didn't really explain the auras but did show that the right side of my brain has a section that shows a strange ab-normality.  The MRI can't really show us WHAT is wrong, just that SOMETHING is wrong.  It looks like it is either a problem with the lining of the nerves or a lack of blood flow to the area.  He was concerned about it but I saw two neurologists here in China that suggested I follow up with an MRA (it looks at your brain blood vessels instead of tissue).  This came back normal which ruled out the number one concern, a brain aneurism, so no one was overly worried.  He ruled the auras as painless migraines.

Well, this CT scan showed that the ab-normality may have worsened, possibly causing the increase in moderate headaches I've had and the massive one I had after getting sick.  They ran another MRI so that they could compare apples to apples which still showed the same problem, but does not appear to have progressed a considerable amount.  Regardless, he recommended I see a western trained neurologist to see what is going on.

He is not giving any suggestions as to what this might mean, and I have no idea.  Everyone seems very confused as we've never heard of such a thing, especially since the MRA doesn't show any blockages or anything.  He really doesn't seem to have any idea, though he's not mentioning any possibilities if there are any.

So...tomorrow we head to Korea to see a neurologist.  Lizbeth will stay here with some good friends of ours that live two floors below us.  Matthew, of course, will go with us.  Hopefully we will get some answers.  Please pray for our family as we are about to be apart for the longest we have been.  Lizbeth is very excited to stay with our friends but is also scared about us leaving.  She cried a lot as she went to sleep this evening.  I am very emotional about leaving her, but trying not to show it so she isn't more scared.  I'm also nervous about the trip.  As of this morning, our flights were booked under the wrong names and the Guarantee of Payment from our insurance had not even been started...both seem to have been cleared up but I will feel better once we are there and see the doctor.  

Thank you for your Thoughts and concern!

Being Nice to Friends

This morning I woke Lizbeth up and told her we were going to school.  We talked about the friends she was going to see.  There are a total of three other girls in her class and no boys.  The conversation went like this.

Me: "Today you can go play with L and C and A!
Lizbeth: "L cries at school."

We took a moment to talk about cheering up our friends, bringing them a toy, saying nice things, ect.

Lizbeth: "C cries too sometimes."
Me: "That's too bad.  Does A cry too?"
Lizbeth: "No...well, when I PUSH her she does!"

It was all I could do not to laugh out loud.  Talk about honesty.  We then had a conversation about not pushing our friends.