Month: February 2006

A school for Edda.

Today we visited the Genesis School. There are about 100 students there with varying degrees of disablilties, some have autism, some Down’s syndrome, some cerebal palsy, most of the kids have a mish-mash of diagnoses and some kids are probably undiagnosed and have unnamed developmental delays. Before I had Edda, I know walking into a special eduacation school would have made me quite uncomfortable, but today as I looked at all these kids struggling with their own challenges, I felt a wave of relief come over me and a feeling of belonging. Finally! A place where Edda can hang out! A place where it seems happy, cheerful and sunny even though the kids are flapping their arms or not looking at you when you talk or signing words or whatever. The school is not too fancy or too plain and there is a sense of community there. There are support groups and they know all the places that cater to special-needs kids, dentists, doctors, hair-cuts, etc, etc.

We almost didn’t go check this school out because their website says that they won’t take Edda until she’s 2.5, but the principal was very accomodating and is willing to work with us and basically we can hang out at the school as much as we’d like. We didn’t take Edda with us today, but we are bringing her back tomorrow and the principal said that she’d be willing to work with us to slowly bring Edda into the school’s program. Yah!

Also, speaking about schools, Vince is speaking in full sentences in Chinese now. He can say “I have eyes” and “I love my body” in Chinese (they are doing a unit on “myself” this term). I’m amazed at how quickly he can pick these things up, it’s only been 7 weeks of school, only 1 hour a day of Chinese and he’s got full sentences coming out of his mouth with good pronounciation. I know that all this focus on Edda is stressing him out, I hope that this period of intense emotion will pass soon and that we’ll be “just regular folks” again soon…

My daughter doesn’t sleep anymore.

Ever since Edda started therapy, her total sleep time has dropped like a rock. Yesterday – no naps, went to bed at 8:30pm, got up at 1am for 2 hours, then got up for good at 6am. Today, I coaxed out of her 2 measly 10-minute naps and now it’s 8 pm, no bedtime in sight. As a contrast, Vince now sleeps soundly from 8pm to 7am and at Edda’s age, he slept from 10 pm to 8 am and had a 2 hour nap in the afternoon. I’m not sure if it is just a coincience, if it is a good sign (maybe she’s keen on staying awake because she’s noticing more around her) or if it is a bad sign (maybe it’s just part of the progression her development and that she will soon be sleeping zero hours). I guess if she can make it through the day without sleeping at all, we could distill her essence and try to sell it as No-Doze. Anyways, I spend a good deal of my day trying to make Edda take a nap by nursing her every half-hour for 10 minutes or so because she seems so exhausted, but I think if my payback for nursing is a 10 minute nap, we may be ready for a weaning (which will be a relief for me, but will stress every one else more, because who knows how we’ll put Edda to bed now.)

So she’s zonkered which makes me a bit zonkered.

Edda at therapy.

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Here’s Edda swinging in a chair at her therapy session. Her therapist Yao-chi is next to her. Edda is really, really pissed off in this picture, she wants to be asleep and not doing therapy exercises. Edda’s more pissed off these days in general, which all the therapists say is a good, positive reaction to therapy and hightened stimulation, but boy, it’s pretty draining for the household.

Augusta & Atlanta

Yesterday, we went to our friend’s place at Augusta to look around the housing and land in the northern part of Augusta. They told us that during the Masters tournament, a lot of houses with extra rooms are rented out for the golf fans. It can fetch $1,000.00 per night per small family. The duration is about 3-5 days. The landlords can also provide meals with additional charges. But, the landlords should pay the golf organizers 7% of their income plus three pre-game inspections. Not bad.

After that, we drove to Atlanta to buy a lot of oriental groceries from a huge Korean store on Buford Road, just north of Atlanta beltway. Then we went to see our colleague’s Mom, Joyce, who was my landlord while I was in Atlanta. She lives in a small retirement apartment complex. It is pretty good but expensive. Well, Mom and Dad need to be prepared. We invited her whole immediately family members to have dinner with us, just like the one 2 years ago. She picked a nearby local restaurant where she frequently visited. It wasn’t fancy but the food was good. After dinner, a guy hold the door for us asking me whether there was food left. I joked there were some left over food on our table and he was welcome to have. Afterward, Joyce and her family told us he is a famous TV reporter in Atlanta. We did not know. But, he was nice, at least.

Around 9:30 PM, we left and drove back to Aiken. We arrived around 1:00 AM and Mom is still sleeping.

Well, I believe I got my webcam setup and ready for the show 🙂

At the zoo.

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Sally and Darcy Krasne were in town for a conference (they are good friends of Bob and Katherine from LA). We met them for breakfast at the zoo and hung out with them for the morning. We didn’t see a huge number of animals, but we did enjoy a bit of ice cream.

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A snake! Vince doesn’t seem too excited.

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Edda doesn’t seem enthralled by the orangatangs.

Life in Aiken, SC

This town is booming too. The only problem, it grows without careful city planning. Almost all shops, restaurants, fast food places, etc. are concentrated along the main street (Whiskey), like Rockville Pike in Rockville, MD. Traffic is pretty bad considering this is a small town.

Well, Mom and I are gradudally settling down and will explore the nearby towns and cities. After buying some furnitures the other day, we bought another TV. All these items, household stuff, may be destined to be disposal with deductions on our tax returns when we move to other town in the future. Believe me or not, just after 2 weeks at work, I heard Mom was bargaining with other head hunter for a higher pay job in another town just recently. People asked her about of just getting one job, instead of two with husband. She said she might accept because it is just a couple of hundred miles away. A couple of hundred miles away seems no big deal to us – laugh!. We are definitely acting like Gypsies. But, Gypsie life with pay isn’t that bad. We are kind of falling into the groves by doing that over and over again. With experience, there is less anxiety, stress, etc. by hopping from one job to other in different towns. Sometimes, it can be a preferred life style 🙂 Who knows.

I still wash the dishes and try to help Mom on household work as much as I can. I went to the apartment gym regulary to exercise. Mom does her exercise in the apartment. Sometime, I follow her moves as pair. She said I look like an “APE”. She even made a lot of paper apes and hang a big one on our car mirror. Of course, with big “N”s +on it.

I’m looking up a dog’s ass.

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So after many pictures of Edda walking, I thought that Vince deserved a picture of his own. Here he is after school, still in his school uniform — we walk through a mall every day to get home and the center of the mall has a revolving display of random stuff, sometimes there is kids clothes, sometimes, make-overs, sometimes shoes. Today there were ballons with animals. Vince was running around like a maniac playing with the balloons, it was only a little while later I noticed a small sign that indicated a 20 dollar fine for a destroyed balloon. Luckily no ballon animals were injured.