Busy School Days

Ashley is only in KINDERGARTEN and she’s so busy! Everyday she brings home a word bag, with words we go over every night – sight words that she should learn to recognize by sight, instead of by phonetically sounding them out. She also brings home a reader, a short book that she should read to us (or us first to her if she has trouble with words). These are very short books, that she easily memorizes after reading one or two times. She is also taking a Chinese class everyday and seems to be doing well. She brought home a Chinese book and read it to me this evening (again, repetitive words on each page, but still, it’s in CHINESE!). She is doing well in school, has lots of new friends and really seems to be thriving in the classroom. I’ve talked with her teacher, Miss Elizabeth, and have been told that Ashley is VERY social and loves helping out in the classroom. On Mondays, she’ll be starting choir next week with her classmates, Wednesday is gymnastics and Friday is ballet. She had her first gymnastics class today and had so much fun running around exercising and jumping. She’s been doing ballet now for a few weeks and enjoys that also. She’s just getting so big and growing up so fast! I can’t imagine how busy my life will be when I have 3 kids in school and am shuttling them all around! I see moms do it here, with 2 or 3 kids in different schools and different activities, they are running around ragged – guess that’s part of being a mom is all about

Mommy, the floor is moving!!!

This is apparently what happens to Liz after being given sedatives in order to put stitches in her chin! We had an exciting morning/afternoon spent at the hospital here. While Anthony was taking her to school this morning, she was running to the steps of the school outside, tripped and fell, and landed straight on the edge of the stairs with her chin. Anthony got back in the car, came to the house, picked me up and off we went to the ER. The cut was not bleeding badly, but it was big and we knew would need stitches. Too deep for the glue kind, so she had to have a sedative to wear her defenses down so she’d stay still. Unfortunately, she had eaten breakfast that morning (who would have thought!?) so we had to wait until 12:30 to give her the sedative. We had to stay there, keeping her occupied and happy until then. She was hungry, thirsty and tired and we couldn’t help her. It sucked. Finally, they gave her the meds and she was fast asleep (well, not really asleep, but out of it – her eyes were open, just not focused the entire time). Anthony and I had problems watching the doctor do the stitches – we both had to stop watching and concentrate on not becoming lightheaded. Usually that type of stuff doesn’t bother me, but when it’s your own kid, maybe it’s different. They had her on a monitor for heart rate and O2 – it was hard seeing her pulse race up to 160 and 170 (apparently quite normal for what she’d been given). It took about an hour for the meds to wear off and we got to see what Liz would be like either drunk or stoned, because that’s what it seemed like as the drugs started to wear off. We laughed quite a bit at her attempts to talk and make sense of things. It was cute and scary at the same time. Then she wanted to walk, but wasn’t ready to walk on her own yet, but didn’t want our help, so she was stumbling all over the place with us grabbing her from behind trying to prevent her from injuring herself all over again, oh the joys! She did a good job, even when getting the needle in her hand for the medicine – she cried, but once it was in, she pretty much forgot it was there. She’ll have the stitches out in four to five days. I’m not looking forward to that as I’m sure she’s gonna freak out when they start messing with it.

As parents, we knew, one day one of our kids was gonna have to get stitches or a cast – it was only a matter of time. We were scared and nervous, it’s not an easy thing to deal with when your child is injured. And this was such a minor injury. David’s son (our driver’s son) was injured last week by breaking his arm when he fell off the back of a bike. And today is Monday and they are finally going into surgery to put pins in to help put the arm back together. I could not imagine what he’s been through as a father for the past week, dealing with the local Chinese hospital doctors (who aren’t very good as they have too many patients to deal with, from what I’ve heard) and worrying about his son and whether his son’s arm will be functional again. As much as our hearts raced today for something so minor, I just can’t imagine what’s he been going through. For us, it’s a bit easier, we go to an international hospital with competent doctors (at least we hope so!) brought in from other countries. He can’t afford that kind of care, so it’s much more difficult for him and he doesn’t have much faith or trust in the local medical system.