Happy Feet: A Girl and Her Shoes

Ying loves shoes like only a girl can.

She’s frequently pointing out someone’s shoes when we’re shopping or walking through a parking lot.

The other day we went shoe shopping for her brother.

Shoes are wholly impractical for Ying. She uses her feet to do so many things. Plus she’s short a few bones in her feet, so shoes tend to fall off. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t love them.

Or that she didn’t talk her momma into buying her a pair.

Because she did.

She is now the owner of some undeniably gold sandals.

She also has a new pastime -- dangling her feet off the curb so that she can admire her shiny new beauties.

Oh girl, may the road always rise up to meet you and may you always have happy feet.

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Linking up with Favorite Photo Friday Photo at The Long Road to China.

Be Well {Updated}

Self-care is a big buzz word these days. I don’t know what it is, but that term always makes me feel a little queasy. It makes me think of cleaning a wound or something equally unappealing. This, perhaps, is because I’ve never had a strong stomach. I gave blood last week and looked the other way the entire time. 

But my wimpiness aside, I do believe in taking care of yourself and not just in the get enough sleep, drink enough water, eat enough veggies kind of way. I believe in feeding your soul.

To me feeding my soul means good books, lazy lounging tv with a cup of tea (Cranford, Call the Midwives, The Land Girls, Kingdom and Doc Martin, who incidentally faints at the sight of blood) and enjoying life’s pleasures, big and small.

I find I always can enjoy myself more if my mind and my life are less cluttered. Gretchin Rubin talks about this principle in her book, Happier At Home. You can read an excerpt of it here. But here’s a snippet, “I've often heard that happiness is having less. But as I cleared clutter, I learned that happiness is not having less or more. Happiness is wanting — and using — what I have. No matter how nicely organized, useless things make clutter.”

Here are three practical ways to declutter and make more room for joy in your life today: 

1. According to the Federal Trade Commission, you can opt-out of prescreened credit offers by calling toll-free 1-888-5-OPT-OUT (1-888-567-8688) or visiting www.optoutprescreen.com.

2. Get rid of unwanted catalogs using CatalogChoice.org.

3. Put all of your appointments on an online calendar. I use Cozi. It’s free, and you can access it from your phone or computer. It color codes each appointment by family member, and it gives you the option of emailing calendar items to other family members.

Live well, love well.

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UPDATE: Want an additional way to be well? There’s a new adoption retreat, Called to Love, taking place in Oregon in November for adoptive and foster moms. Learn more about it here.

Shut The Front Door

Except that it’s not really the front door. It’s really the door leading into the house from the garage. But that wasn’t very catchy. 

Regardless, it’s not the location of the door that was at issue, but the size. 

The door leading to the wheelchair ramp, was unfortunately, too small. We either needed to reverse the way it swung or get a new door. 

Ultimately, we opted for a  wider door.

A wider door equaled a weekend project and, became, rather unintentionally, a group participation event.

My husband provided the labor.

The neighbors came by, checking on all the banging and offering their help. 

Luk Chaai made a sign reminding us all not to go past the plastic (if only the wind had listened). He also sat in the garage, in both appropriate and inappropriate places, and kept up a steady stream of questions.

Ying did a bit of hammering on an adjoining wall, and fully intact, wall.

At one point she pronounced herself “swea-shy,” and we convinced her to call it a day.

No such entreaties were made of her much “swea-shy” father.

Minus some drywall patching that still needs to be done, the door is ready.

Everyone is understandably proud of their contribution.

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Two additional tidbits:

- You need an RX for the ramp if it’s going through insurance.

- We are going to add a magnetic door stop, so that no one will need to hold the door open for Ying.

Linking up to Sunday Snapshot at www.nihaoyall.com

Attachment and the Adopted Child

I’m no parenting expert. In fact, sometimes, I’m the parent who wants to pull her kid out of Toys R’ Us by his hair.

But what I have learned is that I tend to get more practical information from friends/blogs/real life experiences than I have any books on parenting, adoption or the like. I think that’s because while I appreciate the theory, I need more of the application.

These are lychee peels. They are bumpy on the outside, yet iridescent and smooth on the inside. I’m pretty sure there’s a life metaphor in there. Plus, lychee are extra delicious!

I think that if I’ve learned one concrete thing about attachment it’s that it is a lot about personality – theirs and yours. There are certainly tangible mile markers you can look for: good eye contact, physical closeness, the lack or presence of hypervigilance, etc…  All of these are documented in the truly wonderful book, Parenting Your Internationally Adopted Child: From Your First Hours Together Through the Teen Years by Patty Cogen. Here’s a tidbit from her book that has really stayed with me, from page 105, “In their first two months together, an infant and parent practice eye contact for approximately 200 hours. Parents of an internationally adopted child need to replicate this level of eye contact and face-to-face interaction in order to retrace these early connection steps.”

In the book, Cogen gives a lot of great activity suggestions, one of which we’ve put our own spin on. She suggests singing If You’re Happy and You Know It as a way to learn about feelings. We changed it, and a few other songs, as an expression of affection.

For example, instead of If You’re Happy and You Know It, we sing: If you love Ying and you know it, give her a hug. If you love Ying and you know it give her a hug, etc….

We also sing the song my Nana taught my mom and my momma taught me, Where oh where is dear little Luk Chaai? Where oh where is dear little Luk Chaai? Way down yonder in the pawpaw patch…..

While you can certainly change the words to any song to incorporate names, we particularly like to add names to When the Rooster Wakes Up in the Morning, He always says Cock-a-doodle-do. Cock-a-doodle-do, Cock-a-doodle-do. We sing: When Daddy wakes up in the morning, he always says, Good Morning, Good Morning, etc….  This helps demonstrate that we will be there when they wake up and that we’ll consistently be happy to see them.

While parents of adopted children tend to think more in terms of attachment, a song that promotes bonding is obviously good for everyone. What tunes are you warbling too?

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Two more happys: I made Luk Chaai this family memory game for his birthday a few years back. I got the wooden circles from Michaels. Then I had pictures of each of us printed in duplicate. I ModPodged the pictures to one side and scrapbook paper to another.

I made this alphabet photo book by photographing toys, household items and special people for each letter. D is for Daddy, M for Mommy, G for Grandma and Grandpa and the dog even made it in too.

On Why It’s Not Sad

So it’s pretty self-evident that Ying’s limbs draw a lot of comments from kids, some mean-spirited, many unintentionally funny. But nothing makes me want to whip out my megaphone and soapbox like hearing, “That’s so sad.”

I know these kids are repeating something they’ve heard from their parents. I also know they mean no malice by it. But it really gets me.

Having a limb difference might be a whole holy host of things, but sad isn’t one of them. We recently met a young woman at the mobility dealership who was getting her first car. It had been adapted so that the steering wheel could be controlled with almost no pressure. The able bodied men at the dealership said that they hated driving it during the modification because it was almost impossible for them to steer. That’s not sad – it’s stinking awesome.

A few months back, we had the opportunity to met another congenital quad. He was on the floor playing with Ying. When we all went to get up, he practically catapulted up from the floor on his prosthetics while I was still trying to get my legs underneath me. It wasn’t sad, it was impressive.

Sad is children going to bed hungry. Sad is the people that you love never knowing it. Sad is not living out your God-given purpose because you’re crippled by the fear of failure.

People who are differently abled don’t need you to take out a hanky for them, unless you’re going to cry at how beautifully they get on with the business of living. But they probably don’t want that either, it might only serve to embarrass them.

The Wheel Chair Minivan, Part II

After much confusion and many headaches, we finally bought a minivan and are having it converted for wheelchair rear entry.

We were able to get all of the things we wanted: automatic ramp, rear entry, two wheelchair tie downs, the wheelchair is almost parallel to the second row, and an optional fold-down third row. 

Ultimately, our decision came down to the Honda Odyssey or Toyota Sienna. We chose the Toyota because when you open the hatch and lower the ramp, the rear of the car squats. As a result, it uses a shorter ramp than if the wheel chair had to climb the ramp at a steeper angle. We thought a shorter ramp was better because it requires less roadway and makes backing into traffic a bit safer. 

Buying this van, like much of parenting, had us scratching our heads and asking, ‘Where is the step-by-step instruction guide for this?’ Here are a few things we wish we had known ahead of time.

Every mobility dealership coverts their vans just a little bit differently. They just don’t exactly tell you that. More than once we were told, “ohh it’s not possible to do it like that.” The kicker is that we knew this wasn’t true. We’d gone to the Abilities Expo some months back and made it a point to sit in numerous vans even though we weren’t in the market for one at the time. What the mobility places mean is THEY don’t covert vans like that.

Not every mobility location has all of the various conversions available on the lot. That makes it difficult because you are being shown brochures versus the actual car. For someone like me who is visual, this made it that much harder.

Mobility locations don’t offer the same financing that dealerships do. Mobility locations offer financing on both the cars and the conversions. The problem was that the deals were not nearly as good as what we could get buying the car directly from the dealership. For example, Toyota was offering 0% financing and cash back incentives. However, even if I purchased a brand new Toyota from the mobility location and financed the car though them, they couldn’t give me 0% financing or the cash back incentive.

Most conversions aren’t done on site. The cars are shipped to a few various locations across the country. Because of that, it’s likely that your car will be shipped and you’ll pay shipping both ways. Shipping coming home will be more expensive because shipping fees are incurred based on weight and your car will be heavier post-conversion.

What we ultimately did was buy the van from a Toyota dealership in Michigan. We don’t live in Michigan, but it’s the state where the conversion will take place. This lets us take advantage of Toyota financing and only pay shipping one way.

There was a small downside to the route we chose. For starters, we purchased our exact vehicle sight unseen. Secondly, there was a small amount more coordination required in dealing with two locations instead of just one-stop shopping from the mobility dealership. Lastly, when the car arrives we’ll need to register it with our local DMV.

Part III to come when the van arrives. If you missed it, here’s Part I.

Better With Butter

What’s better with butter? Well, everything of course.

Because of that we did something this week that I haven’t done since kindergarten. And, no, it wasn’t eat paste.

We made homemade butter.

Butter making is really just some rather vigorous shaking of whipping cream.

Luk Chaai shook the jar with an alarming amount of energy, given that we were dealing with glass.

Ying couldn’t really shake the jar. But that didn’t stop her from helping. She rolled and kicked it, which was also effective.

The results? 

Quite tasty, if I do say so myself.

I think the dropout rates in schools would be markedly lower if food-making didn’t end in kindergarten.

Let them eat cake? No, let them make butter!