Hannah has an announcement to make:

We're adopting again from Taiwan. We've been on our agency's waiting list for about a year, and expected at least a two year wait for a referral. We received new news to expect a referral for an infant boy in the next 3-6 months from St. Lucy's. Right now we're busily preparing for another homestudy, immigration, etc. Lots and lots to do, as we hadn't started ANY of this yet. We've picked out a name... and think we're settling on Andrew Ray and will be calling him Drew. Andrew is Kevin's middle name and Ray is my maternal grandfather's name.

We've been keeping things hush hush for the past year. We thought the wait would be long and didn't want to get our family all excited in case things changed and it wasn't going to happen. Kevin's parents are visiting from Florida, and we told both sets of our parents over dinner at our house Monday night. Everyone's thrilled, of course. I think my mom was the most surprised. She cried and said that she didn't think we would adopt again because we sold our baby jumper in our garage sale last summer. Surprise!

Redirect: Dearest Gift

Grab your tissues first and then head on over to Sara/Sofa's post titled "Dearest Gift."

the stain

It took me a week to think this story was funny enough to print here. Don't read it if you get grossed out by things toddlerish.

One morning last week I was running late for work, and dressed in our very dark bedroom while Kevin slept, pulling clean but unfolded laundry out of laundry baskets. While walking into work, I realized that my shirt was inside out. Oh well, no one will notice as I'll have a jacket over it anyway. A coworker followed me in with a funny look on his face. Before he could say anything, I said, "I know, I know. My shirt's on inside out." He replied, "Uh... there's a stain on the back, too." I can't print the thoughts running through my head at that moment in time. I thanked him for letting me know, and hurried on to get ready for work, pulling on my jacket, while he made some sort of comments about kids and stained laundry.

Three hours later I went in the bathroom to turn my shirt right side out. As I pulled off my shirt, I noticed THE STAIN. Not just a little stain, but a stain that was larger than the size of my hand. The size of the stain wasn't the problem... but that the stain looked like poop. Seriously, like someone had wiped a bottom with it. Oh. My. Gosh. I froze with humilitation. No. Way. This can't be poop!

What's a mother to do? Well, I examine the stain closely. This can't be poop. It has a greasy stain around the brown. Then... I do the test. The stiff test. I inhale a whiff while cringing.

No way. It's chocolate. CHOCOLATE! What's chocolate doing in the wash?!?!?

Oh, yeah. Chocolate covered almonds were 75% off last week, and my two year old "chalk-it" lover had some. I have a feeling that the little monkey put some in her pocket, stashing it away for later, and no one checked her pockets before her pants went into the wash.

All I could think about was that my coworker thought I was here at work with a giant poop stain on my back. I called him on the phone, but he was out for lunch. As soon as he returned, I had to find him right away to tell him that I just investigated this stain, having no idea that it was there, and it was chocolate. He laughed really hard and turned red in the face. Yep, he had thought it was poop.

"Mommy, play!"

Last Sunday we were visiting friends and joined them at church. Instead of going into the nursery, I decided to bring Hannah with me into the sanctuary. I was a little nervous doing this by myself with only one parent to keep her happy and quiet. She kept pretty occupied coloring and eating fruit snacks. When the fruit snacks ran out during the sermon, she started getting restless. Hannah wanted to stand up in my lap, look around, and started requesting to play. If we weren't sitting in the middle of the sanctuary... if we weren't guests, and if it wasn't in the very middle of the sermon, I would have taken her out to find the nursery.

All of a sudden, Hannah got right in my face with her nose touching my nose. She grinned and started kissing me little pecks kisses right on the lips. "Mommy!!! Play!!!" she requested, rather loudly. It was so funny! I couldn't help but laugh. I was being bribed with lots of kisses! Thankfully, I had an equally effective bribe in my purse. I won, keeping her quiet for the rest of the sermon with a Hello Kitty Pez dispenser and plenty of Pez.

two little sweeties

What do you do when you want to take cute pictures of your cute kids outside after lunch and it's sizzling 96F? One idea is to push them around in a shopping cart so the breeze cools them off and give them suckers.


















Hannah and Libby thought it was a great idea. Well, I imagine they'd think that anything involving suckers is a good idea.

This past weekend I drove and drove and drove to spend a day and a half with Libby and family. I couldn't have done it alone without apple juice, Pixar, and a DVD player. Hannah loves Cars, Toy Story, and Monsters Inc. and can watch them over, and over, and over.

We swam, played with toys, went on the carousel at the mall, and tried to keep cool as it was so hot outside. {Photo credit for the next four photos goes to Libby's mama.}

Tired girl. Rest up. We have more adventures planned for this week!

monkey see, monkey do

Monkey SEE,



Monkey DO.

Every time we go to Lora and Allie's house to play, Hannah comes home with new tricks. Playing with Allie taught her how to play dress up and jump on beds. Unfortunately, Hannah climbs up on to our big bed and jumps all of the time. Then Allie taught her how to do somersaults. Hannah refers to these as "Allie-saults" and likes to attempt these on our big bed after she tires of jumping activities. This week Hannah learned how to pretend to take pictures with a camera and how to walk in dress up high heels. Last but not least, Allie welcomed Hannah into the world of Barbies. Hannah enjoyed using the elevator and flushing the toilet in the Barbie Dream House.


Allie, do you do potty training, too? Lora, Kevin's already checking reviews online for power wheels for next summer. It tickled me how much Hannah REALLY wanted to go sit on Allie's power wheels and would scamper over to the seat as soon as she saw that Allie was done with it.

Lora took all sorts of pics of the girls in their dress up clothes. Surely she'll post some pics when she has a chance (wink wink nudge nudge) and I'll link to that post here when she does. {Added later: Here's the link to Lora's post with the dress up pics!} My favorite moment was helping Hannah slip into play high heels. Hannah wasn't sure what to think as the shoes were obviously huge on her. When she tried to walk and struggled, I commented that "High heels are hard to walk in, that's why Mommy doesn't wear them." Hannah replied, "Hard to walk in." Then Hannah and Allie scampered over to the play kitchen and cooked in high heels. Lora must cook in high heels, because those girls certainly didn't learn that from watching me.

Lora and I both share a friend of a friend that is an adult Taiwanese American adoptee in her 30s who was adopted as an infant together with her twin sister. The twins reunited with their birth family this summer. She said that it was relatively easy to find the family after 35 years because of the national household registration system. We enjoyed lunch together and she shared some of her stories from her trip. I'm not going to share more details, but this... this is the good stuff. The sisters are talking about writing a book. I hope they do.

Google Street View in Taiwan

Google Street View has done a lot of mapping in Taiwan over the last two years. Very neat to be able to explore important addresses in adoption documents. If you'd like a taste of what I'm talking about, try taking a peek at Taipei 101 from the street view.

coming soon... to an iPhone near you

Wow... pretty cool app that will be released in September. And yes, can translate both simplified and traditional characters.

Video: fear of flies flew away

We've been reading books about flies, ladybugs, bees, grasshoppers, crickets, ants, and spiders... and my girl can name all of these bugs. We sing songs such as "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" and "Shoo Fly, Don't Bother Me!" Hannah also has a new ladybug beanie toy that we play with. I think (holding my breath)... it is working! Thank goodness! I've become soooooo tired of the screaming fits that seeing a housefly across the room used to prompt.

Turn up the volume and ignore the mess if you'd like to watch. :)

first of many MJ portraits

This mama has the Matilda Jane bug thanks to the 40-60% off sale last month.
We had our first of many MJ portraits to come today. Smiles courtesy of Nemo fruit snacks.

profile

I tried a little photo session today with my girl while she was playing with her magnadoodle. Hannah wasn't very interested in looking at Mama's camera, but the first profile pic might be one of my favorites ever. Will have to have a large version printed to see how it looks.

We're just spending a relaxing day at home today. Playing, eating, laundry, etc. This morning in the bathtub we were playing with foam letters that stick to the sides of the tub. Hannah shows me the letters that she knows and I point out some that we still need to work on. One of the letters that Hannah recognizes is "N." I explained that "N" makes a Nnnnnnn sound. Hannah replied, "N in Nana!". Had to call Nana right away to tell her about that discovery!

Today during lunch I had some bean sprouts to put on our sandwiches. I put some on Hannah's plate and she voiced, "no no no no" right away to tell me she didn't want any. I said, "Oh, Hannah. Don't you want to try mama's little noodles?" Since I called them noodles, she ate a handful. Go figure.

She's becoming very vocal with food requests. "Cars cup chocolate milk." "Tinkerbell cup apple juice." Kevin told me last night that Hannah dug through the kitchen cabinets, found a package of ramen noodles, and brought it to him and told him to cook. Heh heh.

out of the mouths of babes

Tonight we went to our neighborhood Chinese buffet for dinner. As usual, we're always welcomed by the staff and EVERYBODY there knows Hannah's Chinese name and talks to her. Towards the end of dinner, a large party of about 20 people were seated next to us. The majority of the party was Korean American and the adults were most likely conversing in Korean. At some point Hannah turned around in her high chair to look at the group and the cutie little Korean girl sitting behind her. Hannah turned back to me with a big grin on her face and exclaimed, "Taiwan!!!"

I heart this girl! We also had a big event after dinner. Alert the media. Hannah made pee pee AND poo poo in her little pink potty for the FIRST time tonight. We've celebrated with chocolate, high fives, hugs, and quarters to put in her piggy bank. She also requested to watch Toy Story, so Hannah and I snuggled under a blanket and watched the first half of the movie together. Daddy went to the store and bought her Tinkerbell panties. Thanks to Carmen, she gave me a heads up long ago that little panties don't come in sizes small enough for our little tiny girl's bottoms. We'll be going to Nana's house tomorrow for some tailoring of the Tinkerbelle panties so that a 2T can be fashioned to fit a 12-18 month waist.