Recovering from Vacation

It's been two weeks since vacation and I think Lucas and I are finally getting back to normal. I'm finally getting over whatever virus I had and Lucas was still coughing when we got home so I took him right to his doctor. Lucas was on breathing treatments for about a week, but he's fine now. He's been on breathing treatments before (we own the nebulizer) and this last time he was really interested in it. He was actually holding it sometimes and he looks like such a big boy.

I got the call (email) last week from my social worker to start my homestudy update so I can renew my 171H for Immigration this fall. This is the free renewal, so I have to hustle and get things done. It seems silly to me that we have to do this at all. I had to redo 2 sets of ink fingerprints, one for the FBI and one for the Illinois state police. Seriously, do you think my fingerprints have changed? You know they keep those on file, so why can't they just run a new search to make sure I haven't turned into a criminal in the last 12 months. Isn't it crazy what we do to adopt? So anyway, I'm working on that and still hoping and praying that Vietnam will grandfather my dossier so we can proceed with the adoption of baby #2. I go up and down freaking out over the situation in Vietnam. Some days I'm a totally normal person and others I just can't stand it.

As for Lucas, he's perfectly wonderful. I don't know if I've mentioned it here before (and I'm too lazy to go back and look), but Lucas isn't really talking. He communicates by nodding and different sounds, but not really talking. So when he turned two, the doctor asked if we wanted to be evaluated for Early Intervention. After evals by two different therapists, they pretty much confirmed what I already know: Lucas is a really smart little guy, who's not talking. :) When they gave him some instructions during the evals, they even found him to be ahead in some areas. They said that children develop at different speeds and also different areas of the brain develop at different times for different children. Lucas has probably concentrated on motor skills and some problem solving, but obviously not talking. So just last week, we started visits with a speech therapist. I haven't been too stressed out about this, especially after the evaluations found he's pretty smart. One of the therapists even thought he'd start talking on his own eventually, but I thought a little help wouldn't hurt and it may get him talking a little faster than on his own.

Just last night, Lucas got a train table from Nana and Grandad. Grandad LOVES trains, so they've had this table for a while. We were just waiting for him to show some interest and when we were in Hilton Head, I couldn't get him away from the Thomas table in the toy store. So, now we've got our own table and he is just fascinated. Not really with the trains yet, but he takes the track apart and puts it back together and he plays with the bridges, etc. I'm sure he'll get the hang of the trains someday. And Nana and Grandad also got him a big wooden train that he was playing with a few nights ago before bed.

And since we live on the Mississippi, I can't resist putting some flood pictures on the blog. As you can see, one of our bridges looks like it almost goes down into the water. The second picture is of a restaurant where my sister had her rehearsal dinner. You could only get to it now by boat!


Lucas giving himself a breathing treatment.