An Online Journal of Our Adoption Journey

Fall '04

December 12, 2004
Autumn spent her autumn learning and growing and having fun.  She is now potty trained, except at night when she still wears a diaper.  She talks much of the time, and although she often says complete sentences, she still is working on her enunciation.  

In September we went apple picking up in Julian, a small town about an hour's drive to the mountains that's renowned for its apple pies.  Autumn enjoyed picking apples off the trees, but she also wanted to be carried throughout the entire grove.  That's one of the things we're working on.  Like most kids she's quickly realized that being carried is a lot easier than walking.  "I'm heavy," she'll tell us, and step right into our path and stop, expecting us to pick her up.  

The other great American pastime she also enjoys is watching TV shows.  She loves Blues Clue, Dora the Explorer, and Barney (we've made a basic rule in our house, no Barney videos for the sake of the adult's sanity, but she does watch them at her friend Rachel's house).  And on PBS she watches Dragon Tales, Zoboomafoo, and Teletubbies.  She also has several animated movies that are her favorite as well: Spirited Away, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Mulan.  Live action, she enjoys Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang and The Muppet Movie.  

We also went camping at a Renaissance Faire (an SCA event -- the Society for Creative Anachronism) up near Los Angeles.  Autumn had a lot of fun, and put up with the whole camping thing really well.  We had more trouble sleeping through all the loud partying, Autumn slept through it all!

For Halloween we dressed Autumn up as a Mongolian Princess.  She looked SO adorable.  But we had to bribe her to wear the fur hat.  She didn't want to have anything to do with it.  We told her that in order to Trick-or-Treat, she had to wear it or she wouldn't get any candy.  That worked for awhile...   

Late fall has been one cold after another for all of us.  I don't thing we've been virus-free for over six weeks.  The culmination of the illness happened when we went up to Disneyland for the a couple of days -- that's Murphy's Law for you.  Within a few hours of being in the park Autumn had a sudden fever spike.  She didn't touch her lunch, and we decided to head back to the hotel.  But before we could even leave the park Autumn was nearly delirious and glassy-eyed.  At a first-aid station they measured her temperature at 104.7º.  We put wet towels on her until the paramedics arrived and took us to the hospital.  By then her temp had dropped to 101, and the doctor found out she had a middle ear infection.  So we spent the rest of the vacation with Autumn doped up on Tylenol, Motrin, and antibiotics.  It was definitely one of our worst vacations.  She continued to cough badly so once back in San Diego we saw her pediatrician and started in on nebulizing with Albuteral.  As I write this she is doing much better, and is almost done with the antibiotic.  Her parents, however, are still trying to rid themselves of these nasty viruses.  Such is parenthood.

We've put the Christmas tree up and Autumn loves to stare at it.  She doesn't quite know the whole deal, but I'm sure come Christmas morning she'll have no problem opening presents.