Adolf's Story: Happy Birthday

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.

Adolf and friends "watching" the movie.

Kelly loved "hanging" with the big girls

Adolf cartwheeling in our backyard.

Happy Birthday, Adolf!

Twelve candles!

The very Americanized King of Uganda

Baby Hayden enjoying her cake

Adolf's friend reading him his card

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!

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.