Kid Conversations

So we had two of Ian's friends in our car last night on the way to a birthday party. This is the conversation that I overheard going on in the backseat:

Alex - You mean Sophie my girlfriend?
Greg and I - Your giiirrrlllfriend?!
Ollie - You know, if she's your girlfriend, then you have to marry her!
Ian - Nuh uh!
Alex - Right Ian, 'cause you might marry your ex-girlfriend!
Greg - Ian do you have a girlfriend?
Ian - Nope......I'm going to marry Alex!

I feel it is my duty to record this so we can remember it in his teenage years. There, my job is done.

Favorite Photo Friday

I is for Ian

(of course!)

My growing up too fast, doesn't cuddle often enough, suddenly doesn't need doggie to go to sleep at night (seriously, that is killing me....) new first grader, just turned seven year old boy! Where the heck did the time go?!

This is Ian enjoying his requested birthday breakfast of pizza! I think he was very pleased to wake up to the smell of pizza. Ana was thrilled too, 'cause you know she was having no part of her cheerios and fruit after seeing brother having pizza!

I is also for Improvisation

Which is what Ian's birthday was all about this year. I have always tried my best to have really cool, themed birthday parties (I enjoy planning them!), and I've always been able to get Ian to agree to something I can come up with neat ideas for. Well, this year he was insistent on having a Bakugan birthday party. I have to tell you, I was bummed. For those of you who are thinking, "Baku-what?!", these things are the hottest thing in Ian's peer group at the moment. Which makes them equivalent to Cabbage Patch Dolls when I was a kid...you cannot find them ANYWHERE! This makes planning a Bakugan themed party extremely difficult. I searched everywhere to figure out how to make a Bakugan cake, and found a very cool one here. Greg was pretty sure we could come up with a pretty good version so I let him be the sculptor, and I would be the decorator. It was actually looking good for a while, but lets just say things didn't work out as planned and Greg's creation crumbled at about 11pm the night before the party. He was subsequently up until 1 am making cupcakes (without cupcake wrappers - they were not pretty!). So that left us with mounds of half frosted, crumbled cake, and a pile of lumpy looking cupcakes...I was freaking out! I remembered reading something somewhere about cake balls, so I did some research and found that they are made by mixing crumbled cake with frosting (okay, step one done!) then forming balls and coating them in chocolate...BINGO, that's what I was going to do. I could even make them look like Bakugan balls (the party planner in me started to perk up)! So to make a long story a little shorter, we wake up on Ian's birthday still with nothing final. Cake balls aren't done, we still have a plate full of deformed cupcakes, and the pinata Greg started late the day before is still drying in the garage. My mum comes over to help me make the balls (they were a mess, and they were kind of yucky to top it off), and we try and salvage the cupcakes by slicing off the tops, cutting them in half and perching them atop the cupcake bottoms like wings (you have to see a Bakugan to understand, even so they looked nothing like them). Greg and Ian went about finishing the pinata (a very interesting design), figuring out goody bags, and planning the party games. Everything was ready by the time the party started, and everyone seemed to have a good time but I was just so disappointed how everything turned out. Ian said he had the best birthday ever, so I guess that's all that really matters, right? Anyways, here's some pictures from the day. Please be gentle about my ugly confections, I'm still fragile!

The collapsed Bakugan cake:



The cupcakes. That plop of frosting in the front is supposed to be a head. We started with tootsie rolls for that purpose, it just made the cupcakes look like pooping bums...it was very, very disappointing.

Ian decorating the cake balls. He seemed to have a lot of fun writing everyone's names on them (at least they were good for something!).

The pinata:

Ian blowing out his candles:

The youngest guest, isn't he just the cutest little guy?!

Ian running around the house to express how much he loved his presents. He was very happy, in case you couldn't tell. Mimi and Bumpa, Nannie and Papa, Greg and I all chipped in to get him a Wii. We've had it for over a month, and I was starting to freak out because the only thing he was asking for was Bakugan. He was so excited though. And the icing on the cake was that he also received a couple gift certificates to get some Bakugan when they become available again, a Bakugan launcher, and Auntie Shel and Uncle Mike miraculously found a "Bakurack" (a Bakugan case) that he had been dying for. He also got a Cranium game, some K'nex, Legos, a bag of cool goodies from Gramma Char and Grampa Scot, and an I-Dog that he was equally excited about.

All in all, for as stressed out as I was about it all, he had a really great day, and really that's all I can ask for. I will say though, never again with I have his birthday party on his actual birthday. I really felt bad about being grumpy for a good part of the morning of his birthday, just because I felt things weren't coming together. Lesson learned!

It's broken...

Ian's heart, that is. On Monday morning his fish "Beta" died. He got the fish for Christmas in 2006. I had noticed that since the weather got cooler that he was looking droopy so I moved him upstairs. He didn't seem to get any better, and wasn't eating so I bought some medication to put in the water in case he was fighting some sort of infection. That was Sunday, and on Monday morning he was floating belly up. Poor Ian, I don't think any one realized how much he loved that fish! He cried big old tears when we found him. He wanted to help me flush him, and I watched his eyes well up again as he tried to fight back his tears. It was just genuine sadness, and it killed me! I thought he was doing okay, but last night, a good hour after he was in bed (I thought he was sleeping!), I heard him crying. When I went to investigate, his face was all teary as he explained to me how one of the songs at the end of his Magic Tree House book on cd reminded him of Beta and he really missed him. He was sobbing! I laid down and cuddled with him for a while, and he told me that the song was about how the two children in the book were saying goodbye to someone and were sad because they didn't want to leave. Ian told me he didn't want Beta to leave, and he didn't really get to say goodbye. His little heart is still aching, and there's nothing I can do to make it better.

I feel like my head is spinning lately. Nothing bad, don't worry, just a lot of stuff going on. I feel like I'm just keeping my head above water most days with my mess of a house, Ana is walking now, and leaves a wake of trouble behind her every step, Ian started first grade a few weeks ago, and turned seven years old this past weekend, I've just taken on the role of secretary for our PTA, Greg's work schedule has been crazy and unpredictable, and I've been fighting a cold for the past week and a half or so. It just feels like it's been non stop craziness! But like I said, it's all good stuff (well besides Greg work and the cold that is!), and really I'm not whining! I guess I'm just looking for excuses as to why I've not been blogging lately! There's certainly been enough to blog about! It's just that every free moment that I have, that stupid perfectionist part of me won't let me just sit and blog, I end up thinking of all the catching up I have to do to to bring myself current and I get all stressed out and just walk away! What I have loved most about this blog is that I can look back and read not only about our past adventures, but also about how I was feeling at the time. Like did you know that a year ago today I posted about the start of the real fear for me about Guatemalan adoption troubles? We were gearing up for our visit trip, and were slammed with that information that threw me into a panic, would we ever bring Ana home?! And look at us now a year later, lovin' the heck out of her here in NH! So I'm going to try and be better about just blogging when I feel like it and catching up on the "going's on" as I have time. Hopefully I can let go of trying to produce the "perfect post" with "just the right" picture and you will hear from me more often!

Favorite Photo Friday

So, I've missed quite a few weeks now, my apologies. I was going to do a fast forward through the missed weeks but I'm going to ignore that irritating perfectionist voice in my head and I'm going to just start where I left off, which is the letter H.

Now, I had bigger plans for H than this, but wasn't able to get it together. Just know that "Princess Crazy Hair" will become a montage (hmmm, maybe for "P") but today, just a picture.

H is for Hair.

Ana has had crazy hair since we brought her home. We've fondly nicknamed her "Princess Crazy Hair". It just sticks up every which way no matter how many times you wet it, brush it, or clip it down! It's too funny, and we always know even though we brush it all down after her bath at night that she'll wake up the next day looking like a punk! Anyways, here's one of my favorites. On one of those really hot days this summer, she was really sweaty going down for a nap. I always run my fingers through her hair after I lay her down in her crib and this is how she woke up...



And I can't pass H without talking about Ian's recent "Gooey Gunk" incident, even if I don't have pictures. We were over at Mimi and Bumpa's and I brought the stuff to make "Gooey Gunk" because I had been promising Ian we would make some. For those who don't know, "Gooey Gunk" is made out of white glue, borax and water and it becomes a kind of slime that stays molded for a moment then oozes away. Last time we made it, Greg and Ian had a grand time putting it on their faces and making imprints as it really catches every detail. Well, this time Ian thought it would be funny to put on top of his head like a hat. He left it there while it started to ooze down his forehead. I have to admit, it was pretty funny as he began to look like a frosted cupcake before my eyes! However, when he tried to take it off his head, it wasn't so funny anymore. It had worked it's way through every hair and we couldn't get it out, it wouldn't wash with soap, it wouldn't rub out, it wouldn't allow a comb to pass through it (it was very much like rubber mixed with hair, try and separate those out!) it just wouldn't come out!! I was convinced we were going to have to make a trip the barber shop to have his head shaved. As I tried to ignore the image in my mind of Ian going to his first day of first grade bald, I decided to go to the computer to see if anyone else had ever encountered such a problem. I did a search for " 'gooey gunk' + hair". Yeah, I got nothing...By the time I got back to the bathroom to inform Ian we were going to have to cut all his hair off he had by some miracle managed to loosen the mess (by wetting and rubbing with a towel over and over) and I was able to get a comb through and shampoo the rest out. So Ian wants everyone to know his very important lesson...

NEVER PUT GOOEY GUNK IN YOUR HAIR!!!

There, now maybe the next poor soul that looks to the computer in a gooey gunk emergency will find our page before the head shaving begins.

Lastly,

H is for Hands


That's where shoes go according to Ana! This has been going on for several weeks now, and it still makes me giggle every time she does it. Ana CONSTANTLY crawls around with shoes on her hands! Her first stop in the morning is the shoe bucket, and within a half hour or so, shoes are strewn everywhere about the house. Her favorites seem to be flip flops, but she's not really very choosy, any shoes will do. Greg's mum brought her over some play shoes the other day that she immediately tried out, and loved! I think she likes how they clackety-clack on the kitchen tile. The other day I was sitting holding her and I kicked my shoes off. She nearly launched herself off my lap to get to the shoes, giggling with excitement, she's too funny! When we were at the hospital during Greg's dad's surgery, she was fully occupied the entire time tromping around in everyone's shoes. Now if I could just get her to stop climbing the stairs with shoes on her hands, I'd be a happy mummy!

I have dozens of pictures with different shoe combinations, here are a few for your enjoyment.

I am so Excited to Introduce....

My nephew!!

Steven Douglas Jr.

Born September 3 at 11:13 pm
8 pounds
21 inches long

Amy's water broke yesterday morning at 6am. She ended her long exhausting labor with 2 1/2 hours of pushing, and I hear she was such a champ through it all. Everyone is very tired but doing well. He's just the most precious little boy!

Welcome to the family buddy!