Thursday, June 9

This morning we have a planned return visit to the hospital, to try to fetch Grace's records, and a trial-run for breakfast at the Wellness Center. Otherwise, it'll probably just be a lay-low day.

We got a good start right at 9AM. We headed to the hospital, intent on getting the records copy under way. Originally we thought to do breakfast at the Wellness Center, but the other mother suggested instead that we start at the hospital, in case it was something that would take some time, and then if it worked out, we would kill time by having breakfast. Her idea turned out to be closer to right.

We got in pretty much right away to talk with the medical records gal. She gave the mothers request forms, and after a few questions while she reviewed them, she told us to stop by next week to pick them up. Nothing more specific than “next week.” A little more discussion about that and the yellow card, and we were on our way, requests submitted, but otherwise no additional records in hand.

While we were there, the other mother made an appointment with the pediatrician, as her boy was still having trouble. It seemed to go pretty smoothly after she got to the window, and she left with a 1PM appointment.

We walked across the parking lot to the Wellness Center to try breakfast. We'd been told that breakfast is usually oatmeal and pancakes, with fruit and other stuff. They had oatmeal and banana pancakes, but just small bananas for fruit. Claire and I each got a couple banana pancakes, with honey instead of syrup, and a banana, and I got a glass of soy milk. The other mother wimped and got their muffins instead of trying one of the prepared dishes. The MIR restaurant wins for banana pancakes, hands down. We haven't had the ones offered by the RRE, but the other mother had, an said that while they looked better than the ones here, they were not nearly as good as the MIR's.

The banana pancakes at the Wellness Center are whole-wheat, for starters, where the MIR pancakes are buttermilk. This makes them just a little less sweet. Also, it seems that the healthier DWC pancakes were missing whatever makes the MIR pancakes so fluffy. Also the MIR serves maple and coconut syrup, surely both mostly sugar.

The soy milk was OK, but it was warm, and didn't offer quite the texture I sought. As I neared the bottom of my glass, I noticed the chunks floating there, telling me someone (or everyone) had failed to give it a good shake. No harm, I figured, and I stopped before chunking down the paste at the bottom of my glass.

After breakfast, we headed to the courthouse to get some more copies of the adoption decree. It happened to be that we left court with just enough to give them all away to the people we needed to to get the visa requested. We had three, and had to surrender them for the birth certificate correction, the passport request, and the visa request. We know that we've run into more situations than we thought we'd need to find my divorce decree, so we thought to have some to put in the safe at home, just in case. We have about nine copies of her birth certificate, which will probably be enough to get her into school.

We returned to the hotel room, and I settled in to watch the Red Sox play at the Yankees for a little Wednesday Night Baseball on ESPN. Grace had eaten and fallen asleep, and, apparently, so did I for the middle innings.

One-o'clock approached, so the gals left to go to their appointment, leaving sleeping Grace and me behind. Awake, I watched the rest of the game (Red Sox won, despite a strong try by the Yankees), and highlights from other games (the Twins also won, beating the Indians in the 10th inning).

While Grace continued to sleep, I started feeling not so well. Mostly stomach grumbles. Like I was either very hungry, or very not hungry. I also started feeling a little warm and ached a little more than falling asleep on a couch too small should make me ache. Thankfully, Grace was happily slumbering her afternoon away, so I just lounged, watching benign television.

After a few hours the gals returned. The hospital was not a friendly experience. They waited about an hour after their scheduled appointment to be admitted. Then they waited another hour before a nurse recognized they hadn't been seen. Then they found the pediatrician wasn't available in the afternoon today, so they got in to see the family practitioner. He diagnosed a continued or repeated scabies infection, and gave them the medicine to surely clear it up this time, and recommended they discontinue contact with the probable source.

Scabies, unfortunately, is easy to get here. For those that don't know, they're tiny, tiny bugs that, like ticks, burrow beneath your skin to parasitically feed and possibly lay their eggs; eggs which may hatch and do the same. They're spread easily enough just by coming into contact with them, or sometimes surfaces that have been contacted by someone infested with scabies. Not unlike fleas, which are spread by sharing combs, brushes, and hats, or by petting dogs or cats that are infested.

Until the parasites are totally eradicated, you can't expect to be free of the ailment. All you can do is avoid contact with the infected, or their possessions, or things they touch...like chairs or doors or whatever. Or, if infested, treat them promptly to avoid additional ailments, such as infection from scratching the infestation points.

Of course, with such a threat, every little itch or twitch of hair leads to a fear that you're being attacked! I have noticed tiny, tiny bugs from time to time, but they're usually little ants or fruit flies or something similar. I'm not sure, after looking it up on the Internet, if I'd be able to see the mite that causes scabies. At least not with my old eyes, especially since I'm not often wearing my glasses whilst on vacation.

The gals returned also with a plan for dinner. They needed a little reminder of home, so they decided it's going to be cheeseburgers and fries for dinner, followed by the fried banana sundae for dessert. I still wasn't feeling totally recharged, intestinally speaking, but agreed that a cheeseburger sounded tasty.

While we waited, we got a call back from Claudia about our time on Saturday, now loosely confirmed for Laura beach with our birthmother, and, while not explicitly stated, we assumed her other children. We tentatively set a time for 11AM, allowing for changes due to weather or island time.

Astute readers will notice this is the first mention of our birthmother, in the context of a visit, in over a week. We last saw our birthmother a full week ago, yesterday. That is, not since the 1st of June! Some adopting parents we've talked to have expressed difficulty with too many visits from their birthmothers, but I think in part because of the language barrier we have, we're having the opposite problem. We'd like to see her a bit more, to try to get to know her and about her family some, so we have some history to tell Grace, and a foundation for any kind of continuing relationship, even as long-distance as it will be.

Claudia conveyed that our birthmother understands this is not us, but the CAA that has dropped this ball. Especially with the translation issue, as well as the general well-being of the birthmothers and the process as a whole, this is one relationship that has been suffering due to various absences. Maddy, who generally takes care of the birthmothers and handles these particularly difficult interactions, has been off-island for our first few weeks here. While Maddy has returned to Majuro, she hasn't been in contact with Claudia or the CAA, and hasn't returned any phone calls or texts. Donna, who helps Claudia, is also away for a few days, leaving Claudia busier than usual, and our visits have suffered because of it.

We'll have to wait until Saturday to confirm the time and contingent of the visit and beach run. This makes planning a little difficult, as we fully expect a call to be something along the lines of “we're on our way,” which means not a lot of time for gathering supplies after we know anything. As such, we're probably going to have to over-supply, just in case. If we end up with too much, we plan to take the excess to the Sunday beach trip, if we make that.

When the planned dinnertime came, we headed downstairs for burgers. We stopped by to fetch the other two from downstairs, but he'd just started napping, so she said she'd follow shortly, after letting him doze for a while. We said we'd take our time and order for her, knowing how long it takes to serve, we figured she'd beat the burgers by a generous bit of time. We sat and chatted a bit and ordered iced teas. After a little, we ordered three cheeseburgers with fries. After a little while longer, other mother and son arrived, beating the food by quite a while.

We told her about the confirmed probable plans for Saturday. We suggested that if she was interested, she could invite her birthmother, too, or just join us at the beach. We're planning to bring some cook-out fixings, like burning some hotdogs, as well as splash around in the water a little bit. She said she'd probably go, especially since the other family's been a little absent.

Their new little boy has been sick for the last few days, too. When we went to the beach on Sunday, they took him in the water a little bit, and evidently he picked up an evil amoeba, and spiked a fever of 106F at one point! They also visited the hospital, got some medicines, and have been resting up. As such, we haven't seen or heard much from them. We talked about visiting, but don't want to impose, or risk exposure if anything should be contagious, in either direction.

I picked at my burger, but wasn't really hungry after all. It is a monstrous 8oz burger, on a gigantic bun, which I have had (and regrettably finished) in the past. I finished about half of the half I cut off the burger, and a good portion of the fries. The burgers filled everyone else up, too, so we thought to put dessert off until tomorrow, maybe for a mid-day treat to help beat the heat.

I'm sure I've mentioned it's hot here. It's only 85F, give or take a few degrees, every day. But it's 85F every day, with a wind-chill somewhere around 95F, sometimes closer to 100F. We saw on the web that it was 100F in Minneapolis today. Hotter than here, unless you average in yesterday, or probably tomorrow.

After we split up after dinner, we returned to the room with an idea to take in a movie. In addition to a few TV series on DVD, Claire brought a small set of movies she hasn't seen yet, and she decided today would be a good day for that.

Grace was awake and while she was warm and dry and fed, she didn't want to sleep. Neither did she really want to watch a movie. In what will probably be a first of disrupted movies for years to come, we plugged in Tangled anyway. It's a cute re-telling of the Rapunzel story. About half-way through, Grace took the last of her bottle and drifted mostly to sleep. We took turns holding her until she seemed to be fully sleeping. With probably just fifteen minutes of movie left, we endeavored to put her in her bed, and after a couple false-starts, she finally slept, and we finished the movie.