This is Liam Kaplan now: curious eyes, shiny hair, legs ready to scramble at a moment's notice. Then there is the boy his mother remembers...
Liam Kaplan, 2, spent his early months at an orphanage in Vietnam.
When Nancy Kaplan arrived at Liam's Vietnamese orphanage in May 2008, having traveled 17 hours from Redmond to meet her new son, she was prepared to adopt a 1-year-old with deformed hands.
But other challenges awaited her. This baby did not curl into her arms or turn at the sound of her voice. His head and neck hung as limp as a rag doll. He did not cry. His eyes seemed to register nothing.
To Kaplan, it was clear what Liam needed. She held him, fed him, took him to the doctor. Within three days, he was sitting up and laughing. Two weeks later, he was crawling. By the time they left the country, the boy's infection had cleared, and he was reaching for a rattle even though his condition prevented a sure grasp.
Liam, now 2, was born with "radial club hands," a genetic abnormality in which the radius bone does not form correctly and turns the wrist into a bent position. In Liam's case, his right arm didn't even have a radius bone.
Liam Kaplan, born with "radial club hands," undergoes therapy at the Kindering Center to strengthen fine motor skills
Half a world away from Liam's birthplace, inside Kindering Center in Bellevue, the little boy who once faced near-certain death from his infection played intently with other children. The toddlers gathered in groups to share toys, occasionally erupting with a claim of "Mine!"
The classroom was filled with children with special needs, some who are developmentally delayed and others, like Liam, with physical limitations.
"Kids with extraordinary needs can feel normal here," Kaplan said.
The nonprofit center provides therapy, special education and counseling to children from birth to 3 who are disabled, medically fragile, or vulnerable because they've been neglected or abused.
The agency is one of 13 helped by The Seattle Times Fund for the Needy, which has provided $12 million to local charities since 1979. Kindering serves more than 3,000 children and families every year.
This year at Kindering, the gap between the cost of services and funding has widened substantially, said Jennifer Schumacher, the center's development manager.
Kindering's early-intervention program, where Liam is enrolled, took an additional 100 children this year, she said. Because of drastic budget cuts from the state and county, the center is struggling to pay for uncompensated care given to developmentally delayed infants and toddlers, she added.
Kaplan, who works two jobs as a hospice/social worker and adoption counselor, has adopted four children with physical challenges. She said Liam is thriving because of the center.
She said this as her son sat at a classroom table with four other children, who did not seem to care about the hanging thumb on Liam's right hand, or his bent wrist, or the missing finger on his left hand. Everyone appeared laser-focused on the important task that day: decorating a Christmas cookie.
"Do you want some icing?" the teacher asked Liam. The boy nodded, and she handed him a plastic knife.
"OK," she said, "spread, spread, spread."
Therapy is disguised as play. In Liam's case, icing a sugar cookie forces him to strengthen fine motor skills. The goal is to stimulate his brain and work muscles that otherwise might grow weak.
Liam has more dexterity in his left arm. He has undergone several surgeries at Seattle Children's hospital, and in the last operation, his left thumb was amputated and doctors shifted his index finger in its place. After a year, his mother said, he'll have a fully functional hand and will be able to write.
Kaplan said her son has gotten this far only because of resources like Kindering that are available in this country. She often thinks back to that day she met Liam, when she mistakenly thought he was deaf, blind and profoundly disabled.
Now she smiles when she talks about his razor-sharp vocabulary, the sweet songs he sings to her, and the way he runs around like a live wire at home.
Behind a one-way mirror at Kindering, she watched Liam pick up the cookie he'd decorated, carefully balance it between his fingers, then stuff it in his mouth.
