American Girl

Guess I found time to post again after all. :) Hannah was so funny again tonight. I was rolling my head around for some reason, and she started mimicking me rolling her head all around. We'd nod yes... and she'd nod yes. We shook our head no side to side and she did it too. Daddy would make the "oh no!" face with his hands on his cheeks and she'd scream and do it too.


Tonight Hannah and I took some photos in the yard for fun while Daddy had a nap. It's pretty much always windy where we live as there's not many trees. The wind caught Hannah's dress and pulled it out into the air. She thought that was fun, and kept pulling her dress back up. Silly girl! When I'm rolling around in the grass taking photos of Hannah, I always wonder how much dog poo I'm getting into... but I don't want to look because I don't wanna know. Thank goodness we have a little dog with little poops and a BIG yard.

There are several photos from tonight on my photography blog HERE where they can be viewed in a larger format.

Happy Independence Day

I'll be working and going to parties this weekend and won't have time to be posting... but I wanted to wish my friends and blog readers in the US a Happy Independence Day.

Hannah took four steps today. We're so proud! Miss Independent is betting to be such a big girl!

Lucky Girl Redirect: "Has Your Family Read It?"

Mei-Ling Hopgood, author of the memoir "Lucky Girl," was a guest blogger this week at Devourer of Books. She writes about her birth family's response to her book. Very interesting. Not the response I'd expect. What do you think?

Conversations with Hannah on our Hannahversary

Hannah was just so funny Monday night with all of her laughs and baby talk. I'm so happy that I got a little bit of it on video. She's growing up so fast, and we won't hear the sweet baby talk much longer.

Celebrating our SIX Month Hannahversary

For our six month Hannahversary, I wanted to take a little family photo. I took six shots with my older point and shoot camera on a little stick with the timer. They were all pretty horrible shots, but this one is less yucky than the rest. Id' like a new nice new tripod... as the el-cheapo one broke. I'd like a lot of things. Right now I'll just settle for clean kitchen floors. Sigh.


When trying to figure out what to do tonight to celebrate our six months together as family, we asked ourselves "What would Hannah want to do?" We figured that she'd want to eat sweets and look at birds. We drove into town and went to a nice sit down Chinese Restaurant. It took a long time for our order to come, and Miss Squirmy doesn't sit well without food. The restaurant has lots of embroidered wall hangings, and most depict birds. Hannah and I walked around an empty section of the restaurant looking at birds on the walls to try to keep busy. After several stern words from Daddy to keep her quiet and in the high chair, our dinner finally came. Kevin ordered the three dim sum items on the menu. He's really looking forward to our upcoming trip to Chicago so we can go out to a dim sum restaurant again. I had sesame chicken, and Hannah always has bits of whatever we're having.

It was way too late to go to the zoo to look for birds, so we decided to go to a pet store just to look. Hannah loved looking at the parakeets, cockatiels, and canaries. "Burrrrrrrrr da! Burrrrrrr!" We looked at turtles, fish, snakes, lizards, hamsters, guinea pigs, and ferrets. What fun! Sedona got a replacement for her little football that has seen much better, and cleaner, days.

On the way home we stopped at Dairy Queen. Hannah had a vanilla cone all to herself and ate it while sitting on top of the table (no high chairs) while in her pretty gold dress. Her bib caught a lot of the mess... but she was a sticky laughing crazy silly sugar-high girl at the end of the cone. Tonight she jabbered on and on more than I've never heard her talk before. Of course, I don't understand hardly any of it except for "Ma ma ma ma ma" and "Burrrrrr!"

So silly tonight! Whether from just being a happy girl or on a sugar-high, we heard lots of laughs and giggles back at home.

Here's a little video and a few photos with what we do around the house for fun. Good night!

six months together

"For so long, I dreamed about you, waited for you, imagined you, tried to picture you. I fantasized about you, already loved you, thought of you all the time. Never ever had a day I didn't wonder about you. The day you entered my life, you took my breath away! Finally meet you, see you, feel you, smell you, hug you, and Loooooooooooove you - you are my life. I love to just be with you, look at you, play with you, listen to you, talk to you, see you smile... Nothing prepared me for your smile. I love you! Mom"
- Author Chantal Scalais

Kits used:
Chunlin Designs - Your Mama Forever
Katie Pertiet - LaCremerie Fraise
Cottage Arts - Growth Spurts

Sometimes I still wake up in the middle of the night and want to pinch myself. "Is this real? Is she really here, three doors down from ours sleeping softly with one foot hanging out of her crib? This really happened?" Then I hear her wake up and start her little cries. I rush sleepily to the kitchen. The bright refrigerator light causes me to squint in the darkness. I pour her a bottle of whole milk, heat it up in the microwave for 30 seconds, and shuffle back towards her room. The cries immediately stop when I open the door. She stands up holding on to the edge of her crib, holding her blanket, and grins at me with all four teeth and a dimple. "Heeeeee! Heeeeee!" she shouts excitedly. Yup. She's got me wrapped around her little finger.

So hard to believe this was only six months ago.

spoon it on in

Daddy and Hannah visited me at work today to present me with
an envelope of photos he had just printed. Here's a few of my favorites.



We bought Hannah some new training spoons this week,
as we feel ready to start working on self-feeding with a spoon.



Daddy has a lot more patience for messes than Mama does.



Mama would want to be cleaning her up while she was still eating.



Daddy's style makes for much better photography, I thinks.

Hannah's First Father's Day

We celebrated Father's Day last year while waiting for orphanage approval to adopt Hannah. It was a really emotional time. We were worried about what we were going to do if we couldn't get approval to be the parents of this little girl that we'd wished and waited for.

I wanted to do something special for Kevin for Father's Day, and had it in my head to do something with her handprints in plaster of paris mounted on a photo frame. I mixed up the plaster of paris at my mom's house... but had all kinds of problems getting the right consistency. It was too soft... then too hard... then too soft again. Then when I thought I had the consistency right, we smooshed in Hannah's little hand and she grabbed a handful of the plaster of paris. Ooops. Kinda hard to make a handprint when the printee is grabbing it. I was so aggravated, and decided this SO WASN'T WORTH MY FRUSTRATION. We'll try something like this again soon for Daddy. Nana's idea of using tempra paint and paper might be a much better option.

No handmade gifts for Daddy for Father's Day, but Hannah did make him breakfast in bed. Yes! She made him breakfast! Thank goodness Mama married Daddy, as he has great kitchen skills.


Hannah helped open the pop tart out of the wrapper.


After sampling the corner off a pop tart, Hannah helped me put them into the toaster.


We poured Daddy a glass of milk, and woke him up to present him
Father's Day cards and the fine breakfast that we slaved over in the kitchen.

Happy Father's Day to the man that can make my little girl squeal and laugh, who gives and gets great big hugs, and knows how to love so well. xoxo, Sarah

Added 10:22pm
Lisa, Thank you so much for letting me know about the handprint keepsake kits. I ordered one that uses clay. I think we'll try this out when Hannah is sound asleep one night so she won't grab at the clay.

pop tart smiles

Hannah hasn't been interested in dolls until we encouraged her to play with them this week. We're been repeating the word "baby" over and over. I've been rocking her dolls, hugging her dolls, and having the dolls kiss Hannah on the cheek in hopes that she gets the idea. She's catching on and shows interest in holding them, touching their mouth, and touching their eyes. Today she played with a baby doll while I changed her diaper before a nap. After I said the word baby several times, she started babbling and mimicking my sounds. "Ba ba. Bay ba. Bay bay." After lots of claping and praise, she's repeating back "bay bay" and grinning at us.

Here's a few sticky sweet pop tart smiles from this week. :)