New boots, more snow and more fun

Well, I can't believe it's been 2 weeks since I last posted. Time does continue to fly by. We're all doing well. After lots and lots of yucky weather and indoor time, I could just see the kids craving to get outside. Honestly, Andrew and Lily are such outdoor kids and I figured we should go out and purchase some good snowsuits and boots for them both. Well, apparently shopping for such items in January is too late. Go figure :) So we made due with what we could find. The only boots in Lily's size were ones that looked a little too grown up to me. Naturally, she loooooves them. The only snowsuit for Andrew was a 24 month size and it's way too big. So as I was taking the kids out in their new get up I felt like I was hanging out with a Model and a Teddy Bear. Take a look!

Here's Lily striking a pose all on her own. I swear she's 6 going on 16.



and here's my little Teddy Bear. At least he has room to grow in that snow suit!


In either case, I've got two precious little ones and I'm one lucky mama!

Happy New Year!

Ok, so he's not Baby New Year. He's still pretty cute, right? Hope everyone had a wonderful New Year's Eve and is enjoying their holiday weekend. We took the kids to an indoor water park for a night and then came back home to have our own party of appetizers and games at home. It was a far cry from the days of shopping for a new dress, getting your hair done, going out to a fancy restaurant, attending a party and staying up way past midnight. But everything has a season, and I wouldn't trade places. Wishing everyone a fabulous 2010. May it be a year of good health, prosperity, joy and much love!

Fun in the Snow

With the bright sunshine and a backyard of fluffy snow, we just had to get outside today. Both Lily and Andrew are outside, wide open spaces kind of kids and they had a blast romping around in the snow. Andrew has this weird facination of doing snow angels face first in the snow. Guess some kids just march to their own beat, eh? I had fun snapping these pictures of them.

Merry Christmas!!!!

Keeping it simple........

Martha Stewart would be appalled. After realizing our schedule was going to be busy today, I totally simplified our Santa cookies. Last night we rolled pre-bought cookie dough in green and red sugar sprinkles. Decorated them with some mini M & M's and popped them in the oven. Easy for both kids to do, no real mess and the kids had a blast. Sometimes simple is best!

It's begining to look a lot like Christmas...........

How sweet is this?

We're enjoying a quiet morning here. A cup of hot tea, Christmas lights are on and there's snow on the ground. Lily is making a story in an old notebook. I just read the story with pictures and it says this:

The night before Christmas Daddy, Mommy, Lily and Andrew are sleeping.
There are Christmas lights on the house.
We wake up in the morning and open our prezents.
My favrit prezent is my brother Andew
Merry Christmas.

I'm keeping this book and will look at it fondly (esp. when the get into their next power struggle :)

December is flying by!

Wow! So much time has passed since my last post. What can I say? Between work, managing a home, raising 2 children and all the additional preparations, I've been busy. Things have been going well around our household. Lily has learned how to read at such a fast rate, it's amazing. Her kindergarten teacher is known for getting kids reading at the second grade level by the end of the year and I can believe it. She's almost there now! Andrew is learning new words at the rate of one per day. It's fun to see. The other day I didn't realize he knew the word for Zebra and asked if he was playing with a horse. He looked at me as if I were the one who needs help with my vocabulary and said "No horse Momma. Zebra!"

We're gearing up for Christmas here and I think it's going to be a good one. Fortunately for me, I was able to get my shopping done pretty early and with the help of my family, I got some of those "hard to find" toys. Thanks Dad! Shopping is done, everything is wrapped and the cards are all out. Lily and I are on our Christmas break now. Yipee!! Sixteen days of freedom. Our schedule this week should be fun. We're going to take Andrew to his first movie, Disney's Frog Princess. We are going to bake, drive and see some lights and go to the train display downtown and visit Daddy's office. I'm so looking forward to it and ofcouse celebrating Christmas Eve and Day with the family. I hope everyone is able to enjoy a healthy, relaxing and wonderful holiday!


Here are some pictures of the kids last night out at our favorite Chinese restaurant.

The Holidays are Here!

I can't believe it. Halloween has come and gone. The Buckeyes have another win over Michigan. The stores are decorated and we are gearing up for Thanksgiving this week. I have to admit this is my favorite time of the year. I just love Thanksgiving, time with family and all the fun holiday activities ahead of us.

The kids were goofing around this afternoon and I snapped a picture of them together.


Our goofiness continued and we snapped this picture of our cat, Allie. How ticked does she look?

This picture reminds me of this clip of Puss in Boots. If you have a cat, you'll find this funny

5 Years Ago Today........

we became a family of three. Today we are celebrating our 5 year familiversary with Lily. It doesn't seem possible that it's been 5 years already. I can remember all the details so clearly. Bill and his father, Joe had traveled to China with CCAI's 678 group. They were in Nanning, Guangxi province and traveled to a second hotel to meet the babies who had come from 2 different orphanages and 3 different foster homes. A French or Swiss group was meeting their children first in the room and 678 was waiting outside. It sounded like pure chaos. Soon, it was 678's turn and trust me, it soon sounded like pure chaos too. Bill was handed an upset Lily. It was love at first site for him, but Lily wasn't so sure. After the hand off and settling back into the Majestic Hotel, I called Bill back an hour later expecting to hear more screaming and crying from Lily. It was such a pleasant surprise to call and find Lily happily playing and eating cheerios with Bill. Bill, Joe and Lily stayed in China for an additional 12 days and then started the long journey home. They were supposed to arrive on the 19th, but didn't get in to the 20th which was coincidentally National Adoption Day. I had prepared myself for the fact that Lily would likely not go to me at the airport. Afterall, I was a stranger to her. I can totally remember the shock, awe and adrenaline rush it was when she willingly went to me after about 5 minutes. Those first few weeks home were amazing, challenging and precious. Our tiny, 13 month 3 week old, 16.75 pound daughter was such a joy. She was interactive, observant, social and at times wary of things. On our second day home, I took her to Charles Penzone (yes, I know that's funny) to get her "wall of hair" cut. When I brought her home from the salon, we got her first real smile on camera. To this day, it's one of my favorite pictures of Lily.

It continues to be a joy to raise. She's silly, smart, complex, funny and so loving. As sappy as it, it reminds me of the quote "However parenthood comes to you, it's a miracle."

Yay!

I'm so happy to report that Andrew's communication has taken a nice step forward these past few weeks. Given my job as a speech pathologist, I'm hypervigilant about both of my kids language development. I think it's a blessing and a curse :) Lily spoiled me because she was so imitative and had that desire to please. It took her time to feel confident to talk outside the home, but with Mommy and Daddy she picked up on language pretty effortlessly. Andrew is definitely charming and sweet, but he is not super imitative. Whenever I try to do some of my speech therapy methods on him he gets a glint in his eye and looks at me as if to say "Nice try speech-therapist-Mom. I'm going to do what I want to do when I want to do it." Still I've provided lots of language stimulation and watched him closely. If I'm 100% honest, I've known he's within normal limits for typical language development and wouldn't qualify for services, but I still wanted to see him talk more. I know, I know. Shame on me.

He's now 21 months old and his vocabulary is close to the 50 word mark. I think it's about 46-47 words. Still 50 words is when you typically see the 2 word combinations. Sure enough, he's starting to really create novel, 2 word utterances. I'm hearing things like "more cookies, all done book, daddy shoe, baby night night." Usually 24 months, 100 words and novel 2 word utterances is the big marker for typical development and so far Andrew is right on track. Of course, there are certainly kids at the same age who will be speaking in full sentences like "I want more juice." Still, I'm happy to see Andrew's development considering the lack of language stimulation he got in Taiwan, his prematurity and the language shift.

On a personal level, I'm so happy Andrew has finally gotten the concept of asking for help. I remember this being a big stress reducer for Lily and it's been the same for Andrew. Both of my kids had the desire to do things and explore and prior to be able to ask for help they'd squeal, shriek and yell when they found something frustrating. If I had a dime for everytime I said "Don't scream. Say 'help.'" Well finally, Andrew is coming to me with the problem (i.e. a wheel that is stuck, a container that needs opening) and clearing saying "hep!" Yesterday he came in from outside crawled up to the couch and stuck out his feet, pointed to his coat zipper and said "hep Momma" to request his shoes and coat off. It was too cute!
If I could give any advice to moms with early talkers I'd advocate teaching the concept of asking for help. It's really a stress reliever for all. Now, on the cynical side, Andrew has also learned the power of "no." I'm now hearing things like "no night night" and "no diaper." Apparently Andrew is also right on track with the terrible two's :)

Fun in Fall 09

Wow! I can't believe how fast time is flying by. We were down and out for about a week with the swine flu. Oink oink! If I had had the energy to post then, I was going to title it "Having one H of a time with the H1N1." Yet in a weird way, we are lucky to have gone through it, had no serious problems and be done with it. At least I'm not as terrified by all the media coverage now.

We weren't 100% by the time of Lily's b-day party so we had to reschedule it. Fortunately, we had a good turn out and a good time. The only bump in the road was a pee-wee football team who wasn't too open about sharing the shelter house and there was an alpha male dad who went after my brother who had stopped some of the football players from taking our kids party favors. I was thrown by the confrontation, but I don't think anyone else was. My mother pulled me aside and said "Honey, no matter where you are, there are going to be $#@ ^&** in the world." So true, so true. All in all, the kids were oblivious and had a good time and that is what matters.




Today we all had the day off and we were all healthy! What a joy :) So we headed over to do one of favorite little day trips. We went over to Granville, took the kids on campus to gather leaves and acorns, at lunch at the Buxton and then shopped in the boutiques uptown. It was just the perfect family day. Even though the sun wasn't out much, the leaves were perfect on the drive. I snapped some cute pictures and must say that the picture of Andrew running sort of sums up his personality!

Our Lily is 6!

It's hard to believe that our little girl is turning 6 on the 28th, yet all the signs are there. She's got her first wiggly tooth, she's chattering happily about school and she's super proud of all the things she can do for herself. As her parents, we are awfully proud of her too. We are so very blessed to have such a sweet, funny, engaging, smart and loving daughter. Happy Birthday Lilianna!

Feeling like Fall & Family

We've been in school now for a month and I can finally say it feels like we are hitting our grove. Lily's tears about the bus are down by 90% (and we're optimistic that they'll be gone this week!) She's doing so well with making friends, becoming more independent and keeping up with the academics. Andrew, whom I orginally thought was totally go with the flow, actually had some stress about me returning to work. He turned into what a friend of ours calls a "Mommy-monster." i.e. he needed mommy alllll the time. He finally seems at peace with our schedule and is back to his happy self. My work schedule is settling into place. Nothing like getting 34 new kids, 4 new teachers and a brand new building! It's a great assignment and I'm feeling more on top of all the demands.

We had the estate sale for Grandma's house. My family worked so hard to get ready for this. It's quite a job to break apart a home of 56 years! The sale went really well and I now 100% know what the term bitter sweet means. As we sorted through all the posessions, they triggered so many great memories and made us miss Grandma that much more. It surely is an end of an era in my life as I've spent all my Thanksgiving, Christmas and countless hours there. As my dad and I sat on Grandma's porch, I realized that this is a place where I grew up, confided about my fears to my Grandma, shared my triumphs during college, planned a wedding and brought home 2 children from the other side of the world. Now this chapter is closed. Then after the sale we all gathered at my inlaws and had the perfect evening with a beautiful view, great company and a yummy dinner. It gave me such a sense of how family endures and how many great times we have together and will have in the future. Fall is definitely in the air and we are looking forward to more family birthdays, pumpkin patch visits, trick or treating, football games and more great family times.