Lots of birthday’s in our family this week! The most
exciting one of course was ADOLF! He turned twelve years old! In actuality, no
one knows the exact day or year he was born because there are no official
records of his birth; however, the orphanage chose April 4 as his birthdate for
his passport, so that is the day we celebrated! What a wonderful celebration!
The day started out with a classmate picking him up for
school and stopping by the donut shop and buying the delicious breakfast treats
for the whole class. He is already a popular kid, but walking into a class of
pre-teens with sugary goodness for everyone, made him king! His teacher crowned
him with a pink sparkly tiara and the entire class sang “Happy Birthday” while
he danced around with a huge Adolf-sized smile. His fellow fourth graders were
very enthusiastic about his birthday and I think understood that he had never experienced
this sort of celebration before.
On Saturday, we invited a few friends over for pizza and a
movie. Adolf LOVES movies and pizza (truly he is Americanized) so I thought it
would be a fun party for him. He helped me decorate our living room with red
and white streamers and balloons. We popped popcorn and kettle corn and made
little red and white stripe popcorn bags for everyone. I imagined the kids
eating pizza then sitting nicely to watch the movie while eating popcorn. I
even thought I would be able to bathe my little ones and quietly put them to
bed while the party guests were occupied with the movie. Well, God sometimes
laughs when we try to plan, and this was one of those times. Adolf decided he
wanted to watch Life of Pi so
we rented it On Demand and the kids settled in to watch it for about 30 seconds
before getting out their phones and playing games. Then baby Hayden spilled two
buckets of popcorn on the floor and a can of 7Up. After a full 10 minutes of
the movie the kids migrated outside and decided they would have more fun doing
cartwheels and summersaults in my backyard. In the end only Uncle Laine, Scott,
and Hunter spent much time watching the movie. I guess movie-themed parties are
not the thing for fourth graders! Oh well, they had a lot of fun playing around
outside. We only had one child requiring first aid…and that was Adolf. To
continue with the Americanized birthday party we had a huge cake from Costco
and vanilla ice cream. Finally we opened presents and guess what his super
awesome friends did????? They pooled their money together and bought him his
ticket to Disneyland! WE’RE GOING TO DISNEYLAND! He also got some beautiful
books about California that he will get to share with his friends back in
Uganda and a hat embroidered with his name.
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| Adolf and friends "watching" the movie. |
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| Kelly loved "hanging" with the big girls |
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| Adolf cartwheeling in our backyard. |
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| Happy Birthday, Adolf! |
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| Twelve candles! |
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| The very Americanized King of Uganda |
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| Baby Hayden enjoying her cake |
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| Adolf's friend reading him his card |
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| Very proud of his Adolf hat |
Good things come in threes, right? In addition to Adolf’s birthday,
we also celebrated Maverick’s third birthday one day before Adolf and my birthday
tomorrow! After that, I think we are good on the birthday celebrations for a
while! I don’t have any more space in my fridge for any more birthday cake!
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| Happy Birthday to my three-year old Maverick! |
In addition to birthday celebrations, we continued with
Adolf’s medical progress. He had another procedure on his legs on Friday where
he had to be put under anesthesia. It was not a surgery, but he received steroid
injections at the sight of his injury to help with the scarring. He tolerated
the procedure fairly well and was home before lunch, but rested most of the
rest of the day. He also continues physical therapy three times a week in
addition to supplemental exercises at home. The good news is that he has full
range of motion in his right leg and very improved range of motion in his more
damaged left leg. The therapists are still working on strengthening and
stretching various muscle groups and his posture as he still arches his back
when walking. Overall, he is doing much better and making incredible progress.
Seeing him today, no one could notice his gait is any different than an average
child. With God all things are possible.
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| Adolf at physical therapy |
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| Stretching with Physical Therapist David Shumway and Intern Julie. |
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| Even a smile on the treadmill! |
