Piano Angst

Holland has made it oh so clear that she detests piano. She had a slight meltdown the other night after practicing-- and then this showed up on her door. Nice...........

Shenanigans and the rest of the day to day stuff

First thing this morning, Byron was working on his lesson for church (he teaches the 8 year olds). Reese was "helping" him prepare the lesson on Adam and Eve. She looked at the picture of Adam and Eve and said "Why is that guy wearing a dress?" and "That lady looks like Taylor Swift". So from now on, I'll look at that painting in an entirely new way.
As for Kean-- he is officially the girls newest toy. Every day-- they have to "do" his hair-- and more often than not, it's in a Mohawk. I even caught them using their Barbie curlers on him the other day. So check out Mr. Handsome.

And finally, drum roll please...

Miss Holland got glasses.

Picking them out took FOREVER. The girl has opinions.

But she found a good look, we think!

The Story Behind The Story

Okay, okay, okay. So many of you have wanted to know (to quote Paul Harvey) "the rest of the story" from my Haiti trip. So here goes.
If you remember, we (my producer, Myra and my photographer, Larry) spent a week in Port au Prince back in 1998 as part of an investigation for KCBS-TV in L.A. We were focusing on insurance fraud-- specifically, people who take out life insurance policies then go to a third world country and fake their deaths. Their relatives then collect on the policies. Haiti has a huge black market/fake funeral industry to service this scam. We flew there to - in part - show how easy it is for one to "die" in Haiti.
We first flew to Miami where we stayed at the Airport Ritz Carlton. In the room next to me was Haiti's president, Aristide. That has nothing to do with the story-- but I found it pretty interesting. This was of course, before he was run out of the country and back in the day when he was still in good graces with his people. There were security guards outside his room in the hallway the entire time I was there.
Anyway, I digress. We arrived in Haiti on a Sunday. By Monday mid-morning, we had paid off a corrupt government official to forge all the official documents to show that I had perished in a car accident. If my memory serves me, I believe I died on April 14, 1998. (The original death certificate is framed and here in my office-- a fun little memento, eh?). And it only cost me (or CBS) $75.
By Monday afternoon, our native guide, Alix had led us to a crooked funeral home director who agreed (all captured by hidden camera) to stage a full-on funeral for me, fill a casket with rocks and place my casket in the city cemetery. It would only cost us fifteen hundred American dollars. What a deal!!!
By the way, he offered to get us a real body to put in the casket for only ten dollars more. We politely declined and opted for the rocks for ethical reasons. Evidently, at the time (can you imagine what it is like now?) there was a huge glut of unclaimed bodies at the local morgue. Most Haitiens could not afford the few dollars to claim their loved ones bodies. The video we took at the morgue of bodies stacked everywhere was ghastly and too disturbing to use in our story.
We paid the funeral director $750 down and were told to pay him the remaining balance on Friday. He said the funeral would be on Wednesday and then he would need a few days to "edit" the video tape of the entire event. He would then give us that video as proof for the insurance companies that I had died. I still have it and the story we filed if you ever have a night where there's nothing on TV.
I know I'm jumping to the end-- but the video tape, by the way was hilarious. It was set to classical music and was full of constant pans, zooms and movements that made you feel like you were on a roller coaster. In short, can we say amateur? It starts out with a "wake" of sorts where 350 of my closest "friends" came to mourn my passing. The funeral director had paid these locals one dollar each to dress up in their Sunday finest and come and pretend to be devastated by my loss.
So the first part of my "funeral" has all these people sitting and sniffling and crying in a reception type hall. My casket (with rocks inside and flowers on top) sits at the front of the room. Some of the folks are so overcome with their sadness at my untimely demise that they fall to the floor and roll around in anguish. I guess that part is our fault. My producer (on hidden camera) tells the funeral director through our interpreter that she wants "lots of emotion" from the mourners.
After about an hour of this, the entire group heads down the street to the big Catholic Cathedral where an older, white Priest drones on and on in Creole. Who knows whether he was in on the scam and knew there were rocks in the coffin. But I got the full treatment-- the smoking ashes or incense or whatever is done. It made for pretty cool video, I tell ya!
From there, the funeral procession paraded through the streets of Port au Prince-- my coffin in an old hearse, a small raggedy band of boys and men playing Amazing Grace on a handful of instruments and a few hundred Haitiens walking and crying and following along.
They passed me several times. Or perhaps I should say- I passed me several times. It was surreal, to say the least.
Finally, we ended up in the Port au Prince City Cemetery where my coffin was shoved into a big concrete encasement. I'm certain the grave robbers who undoubtedly descended upon my coffin that evening were scratching their heads when they found the rocks!
Now back to the "story behind the news story". On Friday, we headed through the teeming city streets to the funeral home to pay the rest of the money to the funeral director and to get our "proof"-- the video tape.
As we approached the funeral home, we could tell and feel something going on. There were hundreds of people congregating around the place. Our driver/interpreter, Alix rolled down his window and asked a man what was happening.
I'll never forget the man's answer: "We are waiting for the dead to come back to life".
We drove on and parked a few blocks away to get the hidden cameras all hooked up and running.
I, being the fair hair and pasty white skin girl-- stayed in the car with my photographer (who also stood out). My producer disappeared with Alix into the crowd. Here's what they told us when they got back.
They made their way through the mass of people, went inside and found the funeral director. After they had paid him and got my tape-- they asked him what in the world was going on.
Before I tell you his answer, you have to remember that 98 percent of the population in Haiti practices Voodoo.
The funeral director told them that a very poor family from out in the country had gone to the local Hoogan (not sure of the spelling but pronounced who-gone) who would be the equivalent of a witch doctor in the world of Voodoo and asked him to use his magic and sacrifice their young son to bring them luck in the lottery.
The deal was struck and the Hoogan was to bring their son back to life after the lottery numbers were drawn.
Well, you can probably guess-- but the Hoogan was unable to revive the child.
And since he failed-- he was considered to have bad magic. The crowd outside the funeral home had just killed him-- by pulling at him. The funeral director said they had pulled his arms off of him and were now waiting for the dead to come back to life!! Not the Hoogan mind you-- the young boy. The people thought that by killing the bad witch doctor, that the spell would be broken and the boy would be somehow saved.
We didn't stick around to see if he revived. We got out of there as fast as we could-- nervously laughing because we were all so freaked out. I never found out how the parents did with those lottery numbers. Or if the boy came back to life.

I Don't Make This Stuff Up!

Our conversation:
Reese: Mom, how do I grow big?
Me: Well, you eat lots of healthy food, drink lots of water, play outside in the sunshine and sleep really good at night.
Reese: Aw Mom, this is really taking too long. I want to be big now-- like you.

We won't tell her I said this-- but I hope she stays little for a really long time.

My Lovey's

We had a new therapist come to the house Friday morning--- Pat. She is an older woman who is supposed to be exceptional in her field. She specializes in working with babies who have eating and mouth issues. She spent a few minutes with Kean and told me it is no wonder he could never quite get the breast feeding thing down. She said the little horseshoe shaped bone under the chin that hold the tongue (from slipping down the throat-- I think it's called a hyoid)--- well, his is too far back stuck in some muscles. So we are working on some exercises to get it into place. His tongue is also flat on the bottom of his mouth instead of in a trough shape. Pat put Kean on a new type of bottle-- one that makes him work much harder to suck the milk out (and therefore work on the right muscles). She said there is hope that he may still be able to nurse-- but if we had not intervened this early-- she'd be working twice as hard down the road when he tried (and would fail) to be able to eat solids. One other benefit-- Pat says getting his mouth in the right positions and shape should also help with how stuffy his breathing always sounds. No guarantees-- but she'd be surprised if we don't see a difference. I'm excited!The coolest thing she said to me was that if she hadn't been told, she'd never had known Kean had Down Syndrome. And she's been working with special need babies for FORTY YEARS. That comment made my day! I keep thinking/hoping that he will be higher functioning since his Downs is not quite so apparent at this stage. I also had to add this picture for you to see. It's one of my very favorites (thanks Melissa S.)!

A graduation of sorts

I can check one doctor's name off the list for good as of today!!! I took Kean in for a follow-up with the Pediatric Cardiologist to see how the flap on his heart was healing. And we got the best of news-- his Echocardiogram (spelling?) showed his flap is healing right on schedule and his little ticker is working just fine. So so long, farewell to Dr. Emge.


P.S. My friend, Melissa Snyder took the family photos (and the one above) just before Christmas. Since we are mostly housebound, she came over to our place and snapped away. She's just starting up a photography business-- thanks Melissa for putting up with us and the cold!

Let's Get Ready To Rumble...

Unless you're living under a rock, you can't help but be aware of the brouhaha dominating the late night air waves. I've recently found myself quietly cheering on Conan O'Brien. Which is quite the turn-a-round for me.
When I was working in Phoenix, my friend LaRae Kunz and I went to the NFL Experience. Think Disneyland for football fans. It was in conjunction with the Super Bowl being played in AZ. Conan was there by himself and LaRae and I reluctantly hung out with him out of pity. He had just gotten his own show that was airing after Leno. He was awkward, dweeby and a first class geek. (Plus, if you remember, he was being tremendously criticized as a poor, inexperienced choice to get such a plum gig). But since I was on NBC and he was on NBC-- my friend and I felt obligated to be his friends for the night.
Now look at him. Geez, I should've been nicer. Ha!