Meeting of the Minds

Although local newspapers failed to pick up coverage, a long-awaited meeting took place last week at Einstein's Bagel shop in Wheaton, IL. Under the watchful eyes of their mothers, Miss Julie and Miss Addison said their first official hellos! They spent most of the meeting observing each other across a table while taking bites of cream-cheese-smeared bagels and grabbing for the straws of their mothers' drinks. A momentary crisis involving spilled water was quickly taken care of and the meeting continued as though nothing had happened. Toward the end of the proceedings, the two new friends sat next to each other for a brief photo shoot. Unfortunately, it ended in an untimely manner as Miss Julie dissolved into a tantrum. She is 2, after all!






Isn't she just adorable? To see more photos of beautiful Addison, visit her family's blog here.

(On a side note, I can't believe how BIG Julie looks next to Addison! How did that happen?)

Easter Egg Hunt & Aftermath

Last Saturday we took Julie to her first Easter Egg Hunt at our church. The 2 year olds definitely were the cutest to watch! They all wandered around, maybe picking up an egg here or there, but with no sense of urgency. I could hear several of us parents singing the "clean up" song to help our kids get the idea! How funny.

Checking out an egg before the festivities began.


Playing ball in a muddy field while waiting for the hunt to start.




Getting a heart painted on her hand.


Let the egg hunting begin!

After the Easter Egg Hunt, we headed downtown to pick up our packets for the Shamrock Shuffle. We spent a few hours at the Expo and then headed out to meet friends for dinner. We had a little extra time so we decided to stop at the store. Here is our tired sweetie on the way into the store!





After looking around the store, we headed to Chipotle. As we were waiting for our friends to arrive, Julie had lots of fun pretending to drive.

This is serious business!


I know Mommy and Daddy play with this thing to make the car work!


I need directions!


Last Saturday was quite the whirlwind day. The "carseat cutie" pictures from my other post were also taken that day. All in all, we had a great day and really just enjoyed spending so much time together as a family.

Diaper Difficulties

As I've written before, Julie has a thing for taking off her pants at naptime or bedtime. Well, she has now figured out how to remove her diaper too! We are really getting desperate for solutions at this point! Onesies with snaps used to work, but she has found a way to get the diaper off without unsnapping the onesie! We went to check on her before bed the other day and couldn't believe that she was "fully clothed" in her onesie but the diaper was on the floor! Unfortunately, she had peed on everything so we ended up doing a late-night laundry run. I don't have any pictures from that incident, but I do have a few others!

Here is what I found on the floor one morning when I went to get Julie out of bed (pants, socks, diaper):


She was pretty pleased with herself!


A day or two later...

Who needs clothes to play in the living room?


Success!


I wish you all could see the next picture in this sequence. Julie grabbed a book, climbed onto the couch, spread out on her tummy, stuck one foot in the air and began to read. It is priceless! I just don't think I'm ready to post naked pictures online! Shortly thereafter, the doorbell rang. A friend wanted to know if Julie could come outside. Well, Julie was so excited that she ran straight past Larry and out into the warm spring air wearing only her shirt. I'm sure she wouldn't have cared a bit if we would have let her play that way! Now only if we could get her interested in using the potty...

Swimming!

Last summer Julie enjoyed the pool, but she was also a little afraid of it. She always wanted to hold onto one of us (mostly Daddy), even if she was sitting in a baby float. We've been taking her to the Wheaton College pool about once a week for the last few months, where we started to notice that she was getting braver. So, we got her a life jacket and set her free! Now she pushes away from us, paddles all around, tries to climb the ladder and wall, jumps off the steps, and doesn't even mind when her face goes under the water for a few seconds. It's SO amazing to watch her swim separately from us. I believe we will be living at the pool this summer!

Carseat Cutie

We have had such busy days recently! I have a lot of photos to share, but it is getting late and I'm pretty wiped out. I thought I'd just post a few smiles to hold some of you (grandma) over until tomorrow!






One of Julie's favorite new games is "This Little Piggy." When we're in the car, she pulls off her shoes and socks and insistently says "Mommy!" then signs "piggy." She will wiggle each of her toes as I say the words. I always have to do it twice, of course, so that each foot gets a chance!

Sharing Praise!

We are ecstatic to report that we have been approved for a $3000 matching adoption grant from Life International! That means if we are able to raise $3000, they will turn it into $6000! So far, we have raised $1810 in pledges and donations, more than halfway there! If you'd like to know more about our fundraiser, click here: Run for Mei Mei. I want to stop and thank God for His amazing goodness and provision. I have known all along that HE would make this adoption happen, and it is so exciting to see Him work. The very idea for this fundraiser came straight from Him, I believe. Larry and I went to an adoption conference about a month ago, where we heard Jill Savage speak. She is the founder of Hearts at Home and she's also an adoptive mom. During her session on fundraising, she encouraged us to think about what makes our family unique and use it. I immediately thought of running. Then Jill talked about Life International and how her family had received a matching grant from them. At that moment, I felt like God plopped the idea for our fundraiser into my mind. It seemed so clear! I excitedly told Larry about it later, and we started planning it out. We applied to Life International and waited to hear back. They were so very nice to us during the application process and I felt in my heart that they would be able to help us. Usually I'm not so sure about what God is doing, but this was different. It was so wonderful to get the call this morning that they had, indeed, accepted us and were offering us $3000 in matching funds! Thanks to all of you who were praying for us and thanks so much for your contributions to this endeavor. We feel so blessed to have you in our lives and we are so grateful to God for His gracious provision for our every need.

What's Grosser than Gross?

When I was a kid, there was a series of common "jokes" that began with "what's grosser than gross" and ended in some bizarre scenario that was usually pretty gross. For reasons which I will explain, this phrase popped into my mind today for the first time since I was, maybe, 13 years old.

You may recall that Julie began taking her PJ's off this winter, leading us to say goodbye to zippered sleepers and switch to pants and tops. Well, she has now learned to take the pants off, which hasn't been a problem until today at naptime. When she was still awake after nearly an hour of being in her crib, I went up to see what was going on. Immediately I could smell that she had a dirty diaper. I also quickly noticed that her pants were no longer on her body. I proceeded to change her diaper and put her pants back on, thinking I'd rock her to help her fall asleep. Well, as I picked her up, I noticed a strange smell on her hands. Upon closer inspection, I realized that she had poo all over them! She must have stuck her hand down the back of her diaper during her "naptime" play. I washed her hands about 5 times, disinfected the crib railing and bars and changed the sheets and blankets, even though there was no visible poo on anything but Julie. After all that, I started to rock her, but my eyes were distracted by a slight smudge on Julie's eyebrow. I bent over to sniff it and, you guessed it, more poo! So, off we went to the bathtub, and naptime was no more. I guess I should have thrown her in the bath to begin with, but hey, I'm a newbie to this poo-play stuff. I just pray she didn't stick her fingers in her mouth too many times before I discovered her! What's grosser than gross? I think I know!

If that all weren't enough, there's more. We went to pick Larry up from work early so that we could hang some fundraiser signs around campus. First we had to assemble the posters, so we went to a work room in the basement of his building. Another man walked in at the same time and headed into the men's room. Apparently, Julie thought it would be a good idea to follow him! She was so quick that our first indication of what was going on was the man saying "I don't think you should be in here!" By the time Larry ran in there to grab Julie, she already had her hands in the toilet! Luckily there was nothing else in the toilet, but I still couldn't believe that she did it. Again, her hands got a good scrubbing. What's grosser than gross? I guess there are a lot of possibilities with a 2.5 year old!

Thankfully, that is the end of our potty stories for today! Julie went right to sleep when we put her down tonight, thanks to her lack of nap. Usually she stays awake for as long as 2 hours, but not tonight! She is not quite ready to give up her nap, but when she does nap, she isn't tired at night until nearly 10PM. I thought this wasn't supposed to happen until she was closer to 4! If you've read this far, thanks for your interest. Hopefully we won't have quite the same kind of stories to share tomorrow!

P.S. Sorry for the lack of pictures, but I don't think you'd have wanted to see them even if I had taken some!

FFFF Challenge - Hands!

I thought I'd finally take a shot at participating in a FFFF Challenge from Donna's Double Happiness Blog. This week's topic is Hands. I have lots of fun pictures of Julie's hands! I'm not sure how to make a collage yet, so I'm just going to post the pictures below. I hope I got the right idea. Some of the pictures are not focused in on the hands specifically, but I still thought they were the main element of the shot. See what you think!

Precious Gotcha Day Hand, December 5, 2005.


Late December 2005. Julie is unintentionally signing "I Love You" as she takes her bottle.


Also December 2005. Messy Hand!


April 2006. Funny sleepy hands.


May 2006. "Show me the camera or else!" hand.


June 2006. Time to Pray Hands.


June 2006. Hands waiting patiently.


Also June 2006. Finger Lickin' Good Hand!


September 2006. Peek-a-boo Hands!


September 2006. Sleeping on Daddy Hands.


January 2007. Hands drinking tea.


January 2007. Mommy, Julie and Daddy's Hands using Sign Language.




March 2007. Hands playing in flour!




Who knew how many pictures of hands I'd taken over the last 15 months!

SPRING!

I am thrilled to share that today was absolutely gorgeous outside! Praise God for the blessing of the coming spring! We drove by one bank sign that said it was 51 degrees, and the sun was warm and bright. We quickly realized that we didn't need our coats. It felt so great to be outside without them! In the afternoon, we went to Morton Arboretum so that Julie could play in the Children's Garden and we could all enjoy God's beautiful creation. I am so excited to post pictures of us out in the sun. Yippeeee!

Making music:


Climbing:


Making more music:


Traversing several rope bridges:






Julie, Mommy and the bright blue sky:


Our family up high in the "nest" at the center of the Maze Garden: