Mid-Autumn Festival

Today is the Chinese Holiday celebrating the harvest moon. In China they are making moon cakes and eating their dinners outside under the stars. This year there is the extra bonus of some sort of celestial alignment which has given us the closest look at the moon in nine years. Grace's foster family wanted us to connect "our webcam" so that they could all see her during their celebration, but we still haven't gotten caught up with our Chinese friends in the technology department. I thought we could use my friend's webcam but apparently it's not that simple. There's some kind of issue with each side using the same server, but I haven't figured that out yet. I still think it would be nice for the family to be able to see her, but I don't know if she would be able to comprehend that she could see them but that they weren't actually there. She's looked at pictures of them and not been upset at all, in fact she was smiling and pointing at them, so I think she'd do just fine.

Otherwise Grace has had a kind of tough week. She has a cold. Or allergies, I'm not sure. If you've never experienced a child with a cleft palate and a cold, it's not much fun. The bodily fluids that usually stay put in the nose, don't. So she's very drippy to say the least. Her recurring ear infection still hasn't been resolved so she's on a pretty heavy duty antibiotic which is giving her diarrhea and a nasty diaper rash. Last night she was in her crib while the girls were getting ready for bed. We were brushing teeth in the bathroom when we heard a huge crash. Running back into the room, we found that she had somehow managed to pull a three foot long solid wood shelf out of the wall and down on top of her head. I have no idea how she managed to reach it. Lily slept in that crib for three and a half years, is twice as tall as Grace and never touched the thing. Anyway, she's got a gash above her right eye so it's just as well her foster family couldn't see her today. They might have changed their mind about us. So Gracie got to go to bed early on this Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. Hopefully next year's will be better for her.

We have scheduled her palate surgery for Dec. 5th. That should work out well since basketball will be over, she'll still get to celebrate her birthday, and she'll be back to a somewhat normal diet by Christmas. We're seeing the ENT Doc. next week and are expecting to schedule tubes to be put in her ears at the time of her surgery. After that we will begin speech therapy. That's about it for us. Dave, being the banker that he is, has Monday off, so we're looking forward to a nice family weekend; the girls and I are going to the ballet tomorrow afternoon, Michigan/MSU game with neighbors tomorrow evening, church on Sunday, school for the girls on Monday. Happy moon viewing to you all!!