4 Happy Family The personal blog of Kevin R. Hoffmann

Day 23-27 - Yes, it is all running together

Thanks for all the concern from everyone. We are doing OK. Nothing going on and just too tired to write anything interesting. Three of us (Maya was the odd girl out) spent the week with head colds and just feeling generally miserable. We hung out in the hotel room for the most part and just tried to get by on little sleep. Maya wakes up Evie during the day and Evie wakes up Maya at night. C and I jsut don't sleep much.

Evie is becoming a little person thankfully. She is sleeping better and her colic fits are relegrated to primarily before naps, especially during "Arsenic Hours" (Thanks Tad T) in the evening. She is taking to the pacifier which is helpful in controlling her spats and we even have seen her sleep normally a couple of times. C and I on the other hand are still not caught up yet, but such is life with a newborn I suppose.

At about 3AM one night this week I was standing by the balcony door trying to calm the kid while Courtney dug in the diaper bag for Gas X or some other parental tool when I saw one of the fully-armored cockroaches come in from the door and stop on the floor behind her. She was bent over with legs akimbo searching through the bag and the little bastard made a beeline between her legs on the floor. I just stood there and held my breath because I did not want to say anything (silently chuckling as the whole scene unfolded) to save waking Maya up.

Her jump was Olympic caliber and she actually contained herself and yelled (Marcel Marceauish) for me to come over for the coup de squish. I took my flip flop and smacked it good and thing popped like a Summer bonfire, but it did not die. Swing two...its bottom part stopped moving but two barbed legs and its attenae twitched. Three hits, it took three hits to knock this thing out. Arrgghhh. The next day we (royal) napalmed the room with the best Ant/Roach never toxin we could find.

In other news, the Emnassy assures us that our paperwork will be delivered some time next week. The good news is that we should be here no later than our originally scheduled date of the 9th, but I am still not trusting until I see the tracking number. I am hoping we are down to single digits in days. We are feeling better and Evie and Maya are doing better, but we are weary and fatigued and actually looking forward to a dreary Chicago day.

Day 22 - Just stay away from the formula

Total zombies. I have had maybe six hours of sleep in the last two days. Evie has been getting better and better. We have taken a lot of everyone’s unsaid advice and have been laying her on her stomach while watching her. I don’t think I ever mentioned that we have SuperCrib. It is a foldable crib that comes with these attachments that can make it vibrate, play white noise, blink lights and change a poopy diaper. We have also been doing the bird nest technique of rolling towels around her and I have been a zen-Shhhhing monkey trying to give her some meditative relaxation. Things are definitely improving. She is self-soothing and not being as fussy. She is even lying down on her own without constant body contact.

An interesting little tidbit about this place is that there is a lot of tension between the local Marshallese and a group of Chinese that have come to this country and setup shops. The immigrants are able to get cheap goods from their homeland and undercut some of the Marshallese vendors. In a country that is already struggling to make ends meet, this has been a point of contention. The free market economy strikes a dissonant chord of imbalance on the harp of capitalism, but cheap Chinese knocks-off provide some kick-ass pictures:

“Spider-Mrn, Spider-Mrn – nobody knows who you are.” We bought a pair of these for MM’s son after he broke his playing at our hotel. I think the decal is now an inseparable part of his instep after about 6 hours of use.

All my life I have searched for the elusive tricked-out Popeye. It has taken me far and wide to find this once-thought-to-be-legend specimen, but travelling far and wide I have been finally able to bring this gorgeous beast to light. Notice its beautiful plumage. This one even has the telltale pinky ring signifying 'No Fear'. Unlike its North American cousin, this one wears the sequined ear piece to attract its mate Olive Orl (which sadly is not completely in view in this picture). In fact, this creature appears to have adapted to its surroundings by being able to generate shiny sequins on different pieces of its body. Known as the bling affect, it is normally only present on Peacocks and 20-something Jersey shore residents. Breathtaking.

MM and her two girls came by for a swim in the afternoon. Her youngest son is a little handful and has a tendency to try and practice his karate moves on me and Maya. I usually can take him. It is just hard that his swing zone is right at an unfortunate height on my body. Well, at least it is like being at home with some of the kids in the neighborhood.

More of the usual. I hung out with the girls near the water and C sat with MM and Evie in the shade. MM’s girls are still a little wary of us, but they are fascinated with Maya. Being Sunday, there was a ton of people out by the beach and between conversations we seemed to be another attraction to them. Don’t even really notice it anymore.

We took the family to dinner with us at the hotel. They ordered way more than they could eat, but we were happy that they could take it home to others or have for later. The weather was pretty enjoyable today, maybe lower 90s, and MM must have been prepared for the cooling lagoon breezes because she showed up wearing corduroys. Wow. Can’t even imagine.

Day 21 - Saturday Night Special

It is hard to believe that we have been here 3 weeks now. About 5AM this morning one of the permanent residents on the ground floor beneath us decided to celebrate our 21 days on the atoll with a little post-post party celebration. Much obliged.

It was not that bad except there was one guy who every 7 minutes or so would yell out in a high-pitched shrill “Yi-yi-yi-yi-yeeeeee”, I thing the Marshallese to frat guy translation was “WOOOOOOOOO Yeah!”

I called the front desk like any good middle-aged father of two would do and asked that they send someone over from security to quiet them down. The front desk person apologized and said they would take care of it right away. Did I mention that a lot of the people that live here at the hotel permanently work here as well? About an hour later I called down again after “Yi-yi” guy kicked it up a notch again.

From a previous conversation with someone and meeting him briefly, the owner of the hotel’s name was Bill. I dropped his name as being my next phone call (bluff) and to my amazement everything was quiet for a little while. I had revenge dreams of taking a cantankerous and screaming infant by their window, but to my amazement, they were all sitting up and out talking still. They looked like they had been dragged through broken glass, but they were all alive and well.

I was pretty tired that day. For the second day in a row we headed over to where MM lives so that she could spend some time with Evie and us. It was canker-sore hot that day. The heat index was about 115 and we decided to walk the roughly 1.5 miles over there. Yes, we took a shortcut after picking up dinner for everyone that took us about another .25 miles out of our way. We showed up drenched with sweat and tired.

We hung out there for a little while without talking and had Evie as the center of attention while we Oohed and Aahed together across languages in reaction to the things she was doing. Maya kep asking questions like “Our house is bigger than theirs, right?” and “Why is their house made out of different pieces of wood?” Lovely, lovely child.

We finally motioned that we needed to leave and we all said our goodbyes. We went out to eat, dreading it because both of the girls had major attitude yesterday causing us to flip-flopped duty between watching them. It is so frustrating to have to go out to every meal and not have your kid appreciate it. Evie just cried all dinner long.

Thankfully they both stayed super tonight and it was actually pleasant.

Day 20 - Thrilla it’s in Manila

The screenshpot does not show it, but our papers made it to their final destination. Just waiting for them to be processed; hopefully next week. People have had to wait an exta week(s) or so from what I hear due to vacations and holidays. We will have to wait and see. Once we have the final tracking number (hopefully next week) we will know when we are coming home.

Day 19 – Good Cop Bad Cop

Hit two new restaurants today. Le Boquet is a bakery about a ten minute walk toward the airport from our hotel. Awesome. We had a $10 brunch that was fantastic. Garlic enfused roll for a hot dog, a bacon cheese roll up and a pepper burger. Well worth it. They also serve coffee and espresso and it is peppered with couches and free WiFi. For Majuro and this whole adoption trip, it was a very pleasant surprise.

For dinner we hit DAR which is a local joint tucked back into one of the neighborhood communities near Reimers. Our cabbie seemed a little surprised that we were going to go there. Super clean and amazing food with a taste of local dishes. The Pumpkn Rice was superb. We need to thank Dawn for recommending this. The total bill was $20 and Maya got a fat serving of “crazy noodles” (Ramen with chicken), I got cashew chicken that was served with corn and macaroni salad and Courtney got sweet and sour chicken. Excellent stuff.

The owner/manager or someone employed there came over and talked to us about Evie and she even insisted on holding her while we ate. We were glad she did it, but had to wonder what she was talking to the locals about and pointing back to us.

Evie was a awesome. She slept well, has not been that fussy and seems to be turning the corner a little. Maya on the other hand was rude, obnoxious and driving us crazy doing things like spilling her noodles on the floor and grinding them with her foot. Still, seems like every sentence was “Don’t” or “Stop”. Frustrating. Trying to walk the line between cutting slack and enforcing.

Next door is a little store that sells clothes, knick-knacks and trinkets. Maya lost it. She was pulling displays down, knocking things off shelves and generally misbehaving. What happened to our sweet girl? We were done. I picked her up on my hip and dragged her out of the store to the bemusement of all the locals congregated on the street. She screamed and cried and carried on and I force marched her down the road.
Luckily, a cab was coming the other way and we did not have to walk all the way to the main road. Unlucky for the cab driver. Maya wailed and wailed and woke up Evie who started to cry too. It was an out of tune cacophony of total suck. Enraged we tried to console the one that could be consoled and talk down the one that has the ability to understand. Wasn’t working.

Finally, at Courtney’s suggestion, I shoved the hotel key and some cash into Courtney’s hand and told the cabbie to pull over and I yanked Maya out to her surprise and well, mine too. So, there we were, two diamonds in the rough, one screaming and the other enraged. I looked up and we happened into a street corner teeming with locals in different phases of alcohol enjoyment.

Maya continued to wail and everyone stared at us like we were from another planet. I started her walking and in between sobs tried to talk her down. She was so upset, but I wanted her to have some time to pull it around. After answering some questions about where Mama was and why were we walking and why the dogs are walking themselves on the street she turned to me and said “Daddy, can we sit down and talk for a second?” Wow, the flashes of maturity amaze me some time. She then went on to tell me why she is so frustrated and mad. She was tired of Evie waking her up and she is mad that she can’t sleep when she is tired. Then she said that she misses her friends and just wants to go home and sleep in her “flower bed” (she has a comforter with flowers).

Call me Mr. Asshole. I felt horrible that she was so beside herself and I was so proud that she pulled me over, snapped me out of my way of thinking and we talked about it for about 10 minutes, had hugs and finished our walk home. I had her repeat the same things for Courtney and everything seemed a little better for all of us. Even Evie only woke up about 5 times that night and we all finally caught up a little bit on sleep. Not a bad day….

Days 16,17 and 18 - With apologies to Dr. Seuss - The Waiting Place

Day 15 was pretty cool and I know I missed it as a blog entry, so I will come back when I can give it more time. We were invited to a day at a private island and it was a good day (with pictures)

This has been a challenging week. Evie’s colic is getting a lot better, but she is still super fussy; crying with colic-like fortitude, but a lot easier to calm down lately. I put all three of these days together because we are in a rut and just in a holding pattern waiting for our paperwork to clear. We have not been sleeping at night at all. We have been taking shifts taking care of Evie.

There actually is a website called fussybaby.com and it had a lot of suggestions that we have already been doing so we are just stuck and finally are to the point where we are really yearning to come home, but probably still have two more weeks more on that below). It is just hard, hard on all of us. When she starts crying, we rush her outside, but more often than not this wakes up Maya and the person off-shift. When she wakes up and you do not figure out which position to hold her in, she freaks like a banshee. We call it “How Does Evie want to be Held?” and we usually lose.

Seriously, I have never seen a baby this fussy and cry so much. One minute she will be doing her happy (spit) bubbles thing and literally 3 seconds later she is a screaming wreck. Not just crying, but that pit of her soul anguish scream that can be heard inside and out. We console her and calm her down and the minute you take her from the shoulder to a laying position, she loses it 80% of the time, wakes everyone up and you have to start over.

We have checked out the “Happiest Baby” book web site and we have been doing some of the techniques, but it just seems like she is so angry. I am sure she can feel the stress around her coming from us and the fact that she only sees her birth Mom 3-4 times a week might have something to do with it, but man, it is killing us.

Obviously, lack of sleep is taking its toll on Maya too. She has total sass-mouth and our patience is short and we are raw and quick-tempered with her and she is the same way back to us. We keep on keeping on. The only two things that really happened this Mon-Wed (I am writing this on TH) is that we had a power outage in the early AM which turned off the fryers from blowing grease-flavored wind our way and there was perfect silence at 7AM.

We sat out on the balcony and could actually hear the lagoon waves and the roosters from all around chiming in. It was very pleasant until you realize that the AC needs power to run and that the day is just starting to heat up. Interesting though.

The other amusing thing that happened was that Courtney let her imagination get the best of her. I ran to the grocery store to get some dinner for us after the kids went down. They did not have what we wanted so I got some bar food at the hotel. Well, this being Island Time and I was ordering something on Pizza night that was not pizza, my 30 minutes took almost 2 hours.

Courtney had vision of me smushed on the side of the road or even worse, under someone’s care at the Majuro hospital. She was on the balcony do her widow’s walk thing when she saw me coming up with the food. Still scary for her.

Last and not least, though this post is only supposed to be up through Wed, I was able to get a tracking number from the Embassy. Man, you have to be persistent with them and tell little white lies to get anything. My first response was that the number was not there (before I told her my name), the second response was that the person who had access to the information was not there. Which I knew ahead of time that she was going to be gone for two weeks. After a couple of minute wait, I was able to finally get the number from her to track our papers to the Philippines.

As you can tell by the screenshot below, it first comes back to Oakland and then up to Alaska and so forth. They process it in the Philippines and then send it back to Majuro. Based on the way it is tracking and the experience of others, it looks like we are going to be sticking to our return flight of Nov 9th. It may come a little earlier, but it costs us $750 to change our flights. We would love to come back a few days earlier for work and home reasons, but we need to see how we feel and how much red our checkbook is dripping. Unfortunately, that works both ways so if we miss it by a couple of days later, we have to pay this as well unless we can pull either some smooth talking or adoption pity on the airlines.

Two and a half more weeks. Two and a half more weeks.

Day 14 – Date Night

We have been here for two weeks and decided to have a date night which consisted of three shared Heineken’s and some decent shared appetizers from the restaurant in the hotel. We talked about nothing really, just hung out and laughed together about everything we have been through so far. Though we have been in constant company we have not had much time to talk except for how we are going crazy.

I met some people in the bar including the owner of the hotel and one of the coaches for the RMI Olympic committee. Nice bunch of guys.

Day 13 – Taken for a Ride

Not much going on here, Evie has made the transition pretty well to the formula; Maya is a wreck and nobody is getting much sleep, except for Evie when she chooses to do so.

We hit the shops up and down the street and perused the finest Chinese knock-offs that Yuan can buy. Been trying to make the divine Miss M walk more, but me being a sucker has caused my own downfall. She gets all “girly” when she needs to stroll through the sand or on the street.

Cab rides are pretty interesting here. Pretty much anyone can be for hire, you just slap a sign on top and/or put a cardboard sign in your windshield advertising your fare. We have taken these all over the place, only means of transportation really. We are always met with double takes and looks and usually polite questions. If there is someone in the car you get to share the ride with them, just like a bus. Most times we try to find an empty car because we are a carnival ride if we are cramming in with two kids, a sling, a diaper bag and usually one bag of stuff.

Tonight we got what the locals called a “skin” tax. Most rides are $1 as was the fare from our hotel to dinner. We took the same road back, but we were charged $2. Incredulous. I tried to argue but Courtney just rolled her eyes. I wanted to grab the guy from the hotel to help me translate, but it was late and we were tired. No biggie.

Day 12 - As the Atoll Turns OR These are the Days of our Balcony

There is a book called Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman that talks in different vignettes about theories of time and how things can move faster or slower depending on where you are; just a series of short stories about the movement of time. One forgotten episode could be the discussion of our time here. We have been here about two weeks and it seems like forever and it seems like there has been no time passed at all.

Things have really settled down until today, just a little potential drama, but nothing outlandish. A million years ago this was a story about a boy supposed to meet a girl, but first boy meets paperwork, boy finished paper work, boy gets a picture of girl and girl’s mother, girl gets colic, boy is going slowly insane waiting for paperwork and wondering why girl cries for no reason. Simple story really. But today, there is a new possible twist, a wrinkle in time where our characters hit an intersection with a possible new player in the story. But first, let’s talk about feral cats.

Every night, outside of our balcony, two stories down, there is a pride(?) of feral cats in heat (also the name of my Scandinavian death metal band) that meow and bluster into the late hours of the evening. It seems that it is a couple of atypical trash cats that are cruising the alley below because the smell of heat is in the air. One morning when we brought lil’ Miss Colic out to the balcony we saw a bloated cat floating in the water below us. Poor guy, fell in at high tide.

Courtney was definitely feeling better this day, though still fatigued and out of it. Anyway, we had a meeting with MM out on the front entrance of the resort with her three other kids. They were shy at first except for her son who is also the same age as Maya. MM held Evie and I entertained the kids which meant I kept the little boy from punching me in the crotch while everyone else laughed. Good times in the tropical heat!

This boy is also sweet on Maya and alternates between trying to kiss her and put her into a Marshallese death grip. We gave her permission to push back if he started to hurt her and she took this in stride letting her inner Hunanimal come out. It was cute in a scary way and makes me wonder if I have a lost calling as a baby boxing promoter.

We looked up and a guy walked by and said “Yokwe” deliberately to us which we returned the greeting. Weird. Next thing we know, he was playing with MM’s kids with such familiarity that it gave us pause. One of her kid’s was holding Evie and he took her out of her arms and started to kiss her. MM just gave us a polite little smile that betrayed her stoic nature and did not say a word to him.

Could this be the father of all four of her kids that ran out on her? It felt that way, but we are not sure. For this narrative, to go along with MM, I will call him MF for Marshallese Father or Friend. So, the MFer played with all of the kids, taking pictures of them with his cell phone and gave hugs and kisses. C and I watched him carefully as he held Evie and then he said something to indicate that he was leaving. The 4YO boy threw himself on the ground and started crying. Hmmm.

MM or the kids never said anything. I watched him cross the street and go into a mall grocer where came out with a couple of cigarettes and a small black bag. He talked with his buddies for a bit pointing over in our general direction. Courtney and I exchanged nervous glances.

It was raining and we played with kids some more. We looked down the hallway of the lobby and we saw the MFer walking toward us. He reached into his bag and pulled out peanut M&Ms for MM’s kids and a Snickers bar for Maya. We spot checked it and thanked him as they walked on their way.

We never said anything to MM or her kids about it but told our facilitator and lawyer about it and asked for a translation when they spoke with MM. I know, passive, but we were not sure how to handle the situation so we punted. It could have been a family member, a friend or Evie’s father, we still don’t know.
Our lawyer told us that sometimes (though, rare) people try to get the birth mother to ask the adopting couple for things. It wasn’t that big of a deal and could placate if the item is small, but to call him if someone shows up drunk pounding on our door at 3AM.

Outside our balcony are two scuba boats that a group of men take out daily to catch fish for the restaurant. To our surprise, the MFer was a part of this group and we had seen him every day since we have been here. We recognized him by sight, but it sealed it when he was wearing the same green T-shirt from yesterday.

Again, he could be anyone, but we have been trying to take pictures of him from the balcony for posterity for Evie. We watched him as he loaded the scuba tanks on to the boat wondering if he is the father if he is laying low and will return for his kids when we are gone. We also wonder if he can hear Evie cry two stories beneath us the same way we hear the feral cats at night.

Day 11 - A trip to the hospital OR Alvin, Simon, Cholera

The title grabs your attention, huh? Mom – Get your heart out of your throat; we were asked by another adoption family that returned home a few years ago to deliver a Get Well basket to a woman that was a part of their birth family’s story.

Looking for things to do and wanting to get back out into Majuro life, we walked up and down the street and assembled a basket of things that we were told she likes including pudding, black tea, cough drops, etc.

After putting it together we jumped into a cab and headed to the hospital. Being the only major health care facility in the region, it was a scattered mess. We held the kids tightly and walked through closely getting stares from every direction.

It wasn’t completely unsanitary, but it was not the sparkling clean zero bacteria care centers that we are used to in the States. Again, welcome to how 90% of the world lives. In fact, I am sure it was not sub-par on a macro scale. We were able to follow signs and make our way past buckets in the hall collection leak water and scattered pockets of mold to the post-ICU receiving area.

We found the nurse’s station and were pointed to a tiny room with 8 curtains; they were all closed but the universal signs of agony crept through. Two surprised faces met us and we stumbled through introductions and presented them with the basket which was most appreciated. We nodded our good byes and high-tailed it out of there to the outside where we Purelled ourselves. Rumor has it that at one point a man went in with a heart attack and they treated him by giving him aspirin and putting an open bible on his head. Again…rumors to me.

We hopped in a cab and went to dinner. At this point we were both feeling run down and sick of dealing with fussy kids. Courtney told me that she thought she was getting sick and I was not feeling much better. By the end of dinner we were both dragging and could not even finish our meals so we bagged them up and headed out.

Our cab ride home was surreal. The cabs perform rolling duty meaning that if they come across anyone else on the way to your destination and there is room that person will be picked up. This is great when you want to see areas that you normally wouldn’t but after the trip to the hospital and freaking out, we just wanted to get back to the room.

We were so tired and then the cab driver put on, no joke, some Alvin and the Chipmunks album for us to listen to – maybe because Maya was in the car. So here we were, tired, sick and cruising through the backwaters of Majuro listening to the high-pitched crooning of Alvin covering Britney Spears. So surreal.
We made it home and since I was feeling the worse of us I told C I would take overnight duty so that she can try and recover. Evie has been sleeping pretty well lately, getting up at maybe 10, 12, 3 and then 6. It was the midnight feeding that I took her out onto the balcony and could not get her to take the bottle or stop crying. I tried all of the positions and holds, unswaddled her and kept trying the bottle, but nothing worked. I even thought that the formula might be too cold for her after sitting in the AV so I put it between my legs and tried to incubate it to room temp, After 15 minutes, I realized that I had not mixed the formula at all and had been trying to give her lukewarm water. After a mix and a burp all was right in the world again.