Party In The City Where The Heat Is On

Otherwise entitled: Ode to T'ville 

The first part of this post will have nothing much to do with the main purpose of this blog, which is of course, Asher and adoption-related topics. However, a thought kind of half formulated in my brain, and I wanted to write it out. Lucky you... You all get to read it. My apologies! ;) 

It's all about perspective and what's familiar that defines what we call "home." As a kid, my family moved a lot. However, I always tell people I grew up in Miami because it's where we were for the longest period of time, and it's where we lived from the time I was ten until Josh and I moved to California after getting married. Miami was home. When we lived in California, I longed for the familiarity of Miami. Blue skies with big, puffy white clouds, greenery everywhere (we were in the "High Desert" area of CA. Not a lot of green. Just a lot of brown. Tumbleweeds blowing around. Literally), predictable afternoon rainstorms in the summer. Even those things I found obnoxious when we planned to move away: the crazy humidity, the fact that no one speaks English, the rude drivers, all those things became comforting because they were more familiar than life in a new place. 

Then, Josh had the opportunity to transfer back to Florida for work, and we set out to find a house in T'ville. I was so excited to come back! By that point, we had been in CA for more than three years.   We had settled. We had a baby and a house and friends. It could have become home, but I was glad to move back to the east coast, mostly to be closer to family so our kids could really know their grandparents. I remember so clearly the moment we set out from the Orlando airport to drive the rental car to our hotel in Cape Canaveral. Seeing that same big blue sky with white puffy clouds. Seeing the same green trees and grass. Smelling the salty air from the ocean and the smells from the trees that grew nearby my grandmother's house where we lived when I was seven. It was a new place, technically, and while I had feelings of apprehension about how we would transition to life in T'ville, which is even smaller than Lancaster, CA, I have never been somewhere that so instantly felt like home. It had all those comforting things I missed from Miami, but on the plus side, I don't feel like I should need a passport to get there... People speak English! The traffic is basically non-existent, and even though it's Florida and will always be hot and humid most of the year, T'ville does get really pleasant winters and the humidity doesn't usually seem quite as suffocating as further south. So, instantly, T'ville became home. Miami was replaced, and since then, every visit there since then has consecutively made Miami less and less appealing to me. Now, I realize several of our readers still live in Miami, and a couple also still live in Lancaster, CA. I don't mean to bash either place. Just to point out how funny it is that my perspective has changed. T'ville is tiny. It lacks many things some people desire. There is no night life. With the exception of Walmart and Target, pretty much everything is closed by 7:30 p.m., but seeing as I too have no night life, that's not really an issue for me. The restaurant selection is limited, but we rarely go out to eat. So, again, not really an issue, and the thing is that we are so close to bigger cities, we can find all those things we "lack" within a 20-30 minute drive, which is at least the time you'd spend in Miami traffic anyway. Plus, Mickey Mouse is only 45 minutes from our front door. I love T'ville. The end.

Ok, not really the end of the post. Just the end of my Ode to T'ville. What does this have to do with the reason you're even visiting this blog: Asher? Not much, but here's the part where I loosely tie it together with the latest news...

We spent this past weekend in Miami (there you go... Segued!) because a.) it was a long weekend and we hadn't been down since around September or so, and b.) Asher had his assessment with the craniofacial team at Miami Children's Hospital (henceforth referred to as MCH). Why, you may ask, did we go to that hospital if I apparently loathe Miami so much? Well, once again, and I don't loathe Miami altogether. Those Cubans make mean sandwich! ;) We felt that Miami was the best fit for our situation. They are a children's hospital, and a good one at that. We have spent time there in the past with Josh's little brother, and most importantly, we have all our family down there for backup with the other kids. So, it's worth the travel to do big medical things there in this situation.

For his meeting with the craniofacial team, Asher met with eleven doctors and specialists. First, he was seen by the ENT, who told us  Asher has considerable fluid in his ears. I was kind of expecting this news, as it's extremely common in cleft kids. Since, however, Asher did have an ear infection at the beginning of the month, the ENT recommended waiting 4-6 weeks and having him reassessed before going straight to tubes in the ears.

Next, we saw the audiologist. He shot a puff of air into each of Asher's ears to check for that fluid, and then we went into a soundproof booth and proceeded with the hearing test. Asher did extremely poorly on the hearing test. I was in that booth with him, and the sounds were very clear to a person with regular hearing levels, but kiddo didn't even flinch for several of them. The audiologist put a set of headphones with a little box that vibrates or something on Asher's head to check the nerves in his ears. Asher did fine with that test. So, the audiologist's assessment: that fluid in there has been in there for a long time and is probably pretty thick. There are no nerve problems, but his hearing is currently severely impaired by the fluid. He recommended tubes ASAP. 

After seeing those two specialists in their own offices, we were brought to our own exam room, and the rest of the team rotated to check us out in there. The psychologist, social worker, pediatricians, geneticist, and dentist all said that, given the circumstances, he is quite healthy, well adjusted, and developing well. Praise God! 

The speech therapist says he need considerable work, and referred us to Early Intervention, but also said that we may only qualify for once a week or so, and that she would recommend additional therapy on top of that. After being with him for the hearing test, however, I can't help but think that all the speech therapy in the world isn't going to do all that much at this point if he can't hear because of all that fluid. Personally, my priority is ear tubes, then speech. He already tries to say so many things now in addition to the previously discussed "Mama, Elmo, llama, mine," and the base of every toddler vocabulary: "NO!" He now tries to say things like "more, milk, sit down, and please," and even though he's missing consonants, we can understand what he's trying to say. So, even though I understand that because of his cleft, actual speech therapy will still be necessary, am interested to see how much he improves once he can actually hear what we're saying.

The plastic surgery team was very impressed by the work that's been done on Asher thus far. The head doctor recommended coming back in a year and revising his nose just a little to fix his right nostril, where the cleft was, and injecting some sort of protein that may encourage bone growth in his palate, potentially eliminating and actual bone graft surgery later on down the road. So, we will reassess with them next year.

All in all, it was a really long and exhausting process, but very interesting and helpful. I had wondered about the ear tubes/fluid issue. So, I'm glad to get that clarified, and it was also helpful to hear the speech therapist's recommendations for what we can do for now. Hearing everyone rave about how well-adjusted he seems and how excellent his previous surgical work looks was also a good reminder of what amazing care he had at New Hope and Maria's Big House and how thankful we will always be for them and for the doctors who volunteered their time to go over there and work on these kids!

In other news, there were just a couple random observations I meant to include in my last post, but forgot to. So, I will stick them in here:

1.) Asher really doesn't seem to register his Chinese name anymore. When we first brought him home, two months ago today, in fact, he would laugh when I called him Tian Cheng. Most likely, part of the laughter came from the fact that I can't pronounce it like his ayis did, but I think it was of some comfort to him. Particularly at night, as I put him to bed, I would always say "wo ai ni, Tian Cheng" (I love you), and he would smile and giggle. Now, when I say it, he just stares blankly and looks at me as if to say "that's a funny noise you're making!" It's still his name... Well, part of his name... Asher James Tiancheng, but it's interesting to me his quickly he seems to have forgotten it. Or maybe my pronunciation has just gotten worse.

2.) I had increased the frequency with which I referred to the boys as the LGM (little Green men), but after borrowing the movie "Despicable Me" from a friend and watching it approximately 387 times, I have noticed some similarities between my LGM and the Minions. Like the minions, these boys are small. They speak in their own gibberish and then laugh at themselves for their own comments. They usually work together for mischief and play, but are also prone to bonking each other on the head randomly. So, I may also start to refer to them as my minions. That is all. It was long. I'm sure you're not all that surprised by now. Thanks for listening.  Leave a comment. Have a nice day. Ok then. Bye bye now...