The Adoption Option

My spot for thoughts, feelings, rambles, and updates as we journey through the adoption process. Highlights: Dossier arrived in Thailand ~ Sept 26, 2005; Approved ~ October, 2005; Matched ~ August, 2006; Referral received ~ January 2007; Traveled & Home ~ June, 2007; Finalized!! ~ December, 2007

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Jesse update

I should have posted this over the weekend but time slipped away. Jesse had school again on Friday. He was very upset about going earlier in the morning and even shed some tears in our living room. But....we packed his snack bag - which got him a little excited - then he carried it to the car, which apparently is great fun. I was nervous because of the earlier episode.....but.....Jesse didn't cry!!!!!!! We arrived at his classroom and he hung up his bag...walked into the classroom....saw a giant tunnel....crawled through.....went straight over the media table.....and that was that.

I quickly (and quietly) signed him in and exited the room. I felt a little bad about not saying good-bye but the trade off was not having to have him ripped from my arms. Turns out, even after class started and he realized I wasn't there.....he still didn't cry!!!!!!! We'll see how it goes this week.

Cute story about my super cute and totally 2-year old.
Scene: Jesse working on a puzzle.
Jesse "I need help"
Ms. Claudia "Okay - can you say please?"
Jesse "yes."
The end :)

Monday, July 07, 2008

Pictures

Here we are canoeing.
It was a lot of fun and we had a perfect day!



Here are all the kids enjoying an mini pool in the backyard.
(You can kind of see Ian's bumped up lip if you look close)
(L to R) Mikaela, Faren, Jesse, Nathaniel, and Ian.


This is us standing in front of the giant bat
at the Louisville Slugger Museum!
(Check out the website for a picture of the entire thing, it's really cool.)


These are pictures from my sister's camera - I'll add more when our pictures get downloaded off our camera. :)

I forgot to mention in the last post, that we all went to the movies one afternoon as well. It was Faren and Jesse's first movie. Jesse slept through most of it (but he was quiet during the time he was awake) :) We saw the new Pixar movie, Wall-E.

Sunday, July 06, 2008

Chipped teeth and a family photo

Okay - so it was only one chipped TOOTH, but still :)

We just returned from a week of vacationing. For the first time in over 3 years my entire immediate family was in one place - my oldest sister's house. This meant, me (plus my 3), my middle sister (plus her 2), my oldest sister (plus her 3), and my mom & dad! Let me tell you....it was actually fun 85% of the time (the other 15% was normal family drama) which I think it not bad for 13 people in one house for 7 days!

I have a ton of pictures to sort through and share but basically we had a few "field trips" and hung out. One of our main goals was to take a family picture. The last one was when Ian was three months old - so we were currently missing Jesse and my niece, Faren. We had an appointment for that on Tuesday. So, of course we went canoeing Sunday morning :) and hoped for no injuries and no weird sunburns (and yes, I went canoeing as well and had a great time). We survived that only to have Ian fall into a brick wall later that day - yup, hence the chipped tooth. He had a fat lip, scraped gums, chipped a tooth, and scraped his nose! We will forever remember it, since you can still see the end result in the large picture. But my mom wasn't mad - so it was okay. After all he is a 5 year old boy! By today, you can hardly tell there was much damage at all. (and yes, we did get a good picture with all 13 of us in it) :)

During the picture, I had a funny "oops" moment of my own. I had spent a lot of time color coordinating out shirts and making sure things would look good. A few people in each color type thing. My nephew, Nathaniel (who's 11), and Ian were both wearing brown and Jesse had on white (he was the only kid in white). The photographer from arranging us and asked who belonged with me. He pulled Sam over and arranged him...then asked about the kids. Without even thinking I said "The little brown one and the white one." I immediately saw a few of my family members look at me with shock and surprise......"I meant their shirts" I cried!!!!! My face was bright red and everyone was laughing.

We had a fun field trip day to the Louisville Slugger Museum and an old candy shop near by. If you are a baseball fan, I highly recommend the slugger museum! Besides the canoeing and some swimming at the YMCA, a few people saw a Reds v. Nathionals baseball game, and we could see a ton of fireworks from my sister's house. And if you ever need kid friendly activities in the Cincinnati area - just let me know :)

It's good to be home though! I'll load some pictures soon.