When bad news hits home

As a journalist, I've covered lots of terrible stories. But none has been quite so personal as the shootings last week at a grocery store in Tucson. The grocery store where my mom shops. The grocery store where Quinn and I take her regularly since she stopped driving.

Tragically, the little girl killed in the shootings was the daughter of a high school friend. One of the men who was shot but survived is a friend's father-in-law.

When I got the call about the shootings I had just left Quinn's monthly "Barnyard Fun" occupational therapy session. It was the first time EVER that he participated in a group session - he did the hand motions during the songs, played the name gave with the other kids, threw styrofoam "snowballs" into a bucket on command - and we were just thrilled.

We had plans for the rest of the day, but instead I rushed to work and stayed until the next day's paper was on the presses. When I came home I went into Quinn's room and just sat and watched him sleep for a while. Someone's child had died that day. One minute here, the next minute gone. It could have been anyone's child. It could have been Quinn.

I remember once, years ago, a friend telling me that her sister had decided to have a second child because she didn't think she could survive if her only child died. At the time, just married and not even contemplating parenthood, that seemed so bizarre to me. Now I get it.

The next day, again at work, I mentioned to a colleague who has a son a bit younger than Quinn that I had sat by his bedside when I got home. "I did that, too," he said. "Me, too," piped in a colleague with a 5-year-old girl. Turns out every parent in our newsroom had done the same.

The shootings here are such a terrible tragedy. They're a terrifying reminder that life as we know it is so fragile, so fleeting. But also a reminder to hold fast to what we have, and appreciate every single second - no matter how many we are given, or how few.

My little "helper"

Christmas with Quinn was a true joy. He loved lights and Santa and Frosty and "Ru-fall" (Rudolph). And after watching "Barney's Christmas Star" he came to believe that every tree should have a star on top.

We had a really nice visit with Tom's parents, and while there we took Quinn to see the lights at his beloved Candy Cane Lane TWO times. Tom set up a string of lights in our room and hung the star that was too heavy for the tree but looked very nice on top of the curtain rod. (Every day when Quinn would see his grandparents' tree he'd suggest to them, "Star on top tree? Angel down?")

This picture has nothing to do with Christmas, but it's my fave of the season. A few days after Christmas we went shopping to spend our Macy's gift cards from Obaachan (Japanese for grandmother). I was shopping for a coat and Tom was corralling Quinn. Suddenly he called me to come quick, and I happened to have my camera in hand. Here is what I saw:

Is 3 1/2 the perfect age for Christmas?

I haven't posted for a while because we've been having too darn much fun! Quinn is LOVING Christmas, and seeing him enjoy it is a total joy. He loves the lights and Christmas trees most of all, and gets quite perturbed if he sees a tree without a star on top (all pine trees should have stars, he believes). He also digs Santa - the big guy came to visit his school, and Quinn was one of the first to jump right up in his lap - as well as "Frosty Snowman" and "Ru-fall" (the red-nosed guy you might know as Rudolph.

The awesome part is, he has no understanding yet that presents are part of the equation. I'm sure that will change by next year, so I'm enjoying it while I can!

Raindrops keep falling on my tongue

It doesn't rain much in Tucson, which is maybe why Quinn got so darn excited last time it happened. He ran outside, screamed with glee and opened his mouth wide.

But the pictures say it better than I can:

Compare and contrast

I have accepted that Quinn is on his own time table, and I'm almost always okay with that. So why is it so hard not to compare him to other kids? If I hear a kid chatting in a full conversation or see one who can hardly walk, I take every opportunity to find out how old that kid is and compare him or her to Quinn.

This weekend we went to a 3-year-old's birthday party. Most of the kids are in daycare together, and most are quite verbal. Quinn did really well and definitely kept us with them. The girls talked circles around the boys, but he didn't seem that behind the boys to me. Today Quinn had his first group speech/occupational therapy session - it will be with three 3-year-olds, but today it was just Quinn and one other boy. He had a far more sophisticated vocabulary than Quinn does, but a host of other issues.

I've tended to stay away from a lot of events with other kids, because I was a bit afraid of being confronted with how far behind Quinn is. I've had a couple instances with neighbors bragging about how their 1-year-olds are doing things Quinn isn't doing yet, and it's hard not to feel bad when that happens.

But I got through both of these events this week. I can get through more. It's clear that interaction with other kids is good for him, and that he needs more of it. And I'm ready for that.

Quinn is behind in some ways. On track in others. Ahead in some. I know that's the same of all kids. But I wonder if all parents obsessively compare the way I do, and the way I've seen other parents of SN kids do.

Actually, probably so.

Crying in the night

As I write this, Quinn is crying. Not because he's mad or hurt or hungry - something I can identify, something I can fix if it needs to be fixed. He's crying in his sleep.

He did this when he first came to us, and it was heart-wrenching. His second night with us, after he realized these strangers weren't going away and it didn't seem he was going back to his home, he mourned, moaning through the night. Once we got home, he would go down easy at bedtime, and then start crying once he was asleep. Thankfully, it went away within a couple of weeks.

The shut-down kid became goofy and happy-go-lucky and a joy to be around. He wakes up happy, goes to sleep happy, and smiles through most of this day. And yet, two years after coming home, the crying has returned.

It's a horrible thing to hear your child cry and not be able to do anything about it. It's nothing short of heart-breaking to know there are hurts we cannot fix, and sadness we cannot erase.

And it's so hard to know what to do about it. The advice on night terrors is to let kids sleep, the thinking being that if you wake them in the middle of a terror you'll it into their conscience and make a bad thing so much worse. But how do you let a 3-year-old lay on his belly and cry alone? We watch the monitor and wait, in case he becomes conscious enough to call us, as he did tonight.

Now he's in our bed, sleeping peacefully next to his Baba and holding a tin airplane he picked up as I carried him from his room to ours.

There's so much I wonder. Is crying in the night the same as a night terror? Do kids tend to outgrow them? Have any of you whose older kids used to have night terrors talked to them about it? Do they remember?

Really interesting insights

This was posted a while back, but I keep thinking about it. If you haven't read it, take a moment and do. It's Adoption Talk's coverage of Amy Eldridge's talk at a summer heritage camp. Her topic is changes in adoption in China, and why today's adoptees likely had a much tougher beginning than their peers of even a few years ago.

http://chinaadoptiontalk.blogspot.com/2010/07/amy-eldridge-of-lwb-speaks.html