My Aunt

This morning at 4:00am my aunt lost her year and a half long battle with breast cancer. My aunt Karen is the wife of my dad's twin brother and though we didn't see each other very much, I still feel very close to them. We were just up visiting last weekend showing off Ana, she had been so looking forward to meeting her! Ana had been running a temp on and off and my aunt had just completed another (experimental) round of chemotherapy so we didn't want to take any chances on getting her sick. After a few days, we decided that the fever was due to teething (the two front bottom teeth finally popped through!) and brought her up last Sunday. I am so grateful she and Ana were able to meet, I'll be able to tell Ana some day just how smitten her great Auntie Karen was with her. I think what I'll remember most about my Aunt is the way whenever we got together she would inevitably end up sitting in each of our laps before the visit was over. She would play with our hair and ask us questions about what was going on in our lives. She just had a way of making every one she came in contact with feel so special. If you could, would you mind saying a prayer for our family as we all work through this loss? Especially for her husband, her three sons, her beautiful little grand daughter (she's only 6), and her parents and siblings. She was a generous, caring, funny, amazing woman and she will be sorely missed by so many people.

Alpha Testers

So Greg has been working on this project. Pretty cool actually; he is finagling a bird house with a web cam. He bought a bird house, and fiddled with our web cam so it would operate in low light conditions. We're going to put the house out within the next week or so and we hope that some birds will take residence in it. Wouldn't it be super cool if a bird builds her nest and lays her eggs in it? We'll see! Anyways, he has put up a web site with streaming video and has pleaded with me to recruit some "alpha testers" for him. Would you all mind going to this website (you have to use Internet Explorer) and letting me know what you see? If it is working you will see a grey picture. It's what is in the bird house right now. I asked him to put something in there so you could confirm seeing something. Then I watched the site as he went out there stuffed some unidentifiable empty wrapper or something in there, so don't expect to be able to tell me what it is, I don't even know (men!). If it's not working, you'll see a black screen. Thanks for your help! Once it's working, I'll have a permanent link so you can watch whenever you want!

The Gas Man and The Bleach Sniffer

I can't believe it's been another week since I last posted! The truth is, there's not a whole lot of things to write about here, and quite honestly, I'm happy for that! Last week was our first week back to normal. Greg returned to work, Ian was in school and I found myself trying to figure out how to try and work ourselves into a routine of sorts. Of course after being couped up for two weeks, I was quite ready to just get out of the house so that's actually what I did. I visited my mum at work who was just dying to show off her grand-daughter, and visited with a friend who has a daughter Ana's age (as a matter of fact, Ian is very good friends with her oldest daughter as well). It was a nice week, but it did nothing for my getting a routine in place! Dinners ended up being sandwiches and scrambled eggs and the like. Laundry is stacked up in giant dirty piles in the basement and in a few neatly folded piles in my bedroom (which are slowly getting knocked over one by one as Ian is looking for something to wear in the morning). Nobody was complaining mind you, but I'm really hoping to get myself caught up this week and back into a routine (which I confess I haven't been on for a very long time!). Sitting in a cluttery mess has the unfortunate side effect of putting me in a foul mood, poor Greg!

Anyways, to get around to the title of my post. I swear my family is going to become famous in the ER. Besides our whole post visit to Guatemala double date in the ER, I thought I'd share a couple other doosies with you all. A couple years ago, Greg had a gas powered remote control car. I can't even remember what he was trying to do, but it had something to do with siphoning gas into the tiny car's engine. Well, the gas back flowed right into his mouth so we called poison control to see what we should do. They told us we needed to go to the ER. Upon our arrival to the ER Greg told them what he was there for and they replied, "Oh you're the gas man!". He's been teased about that on and off since! The only reason this popped into my mind today is that yesterday my mother had a similar brain lapse of a moment that resulted in an ER visit. She was getting ready to get into the hot tub when she noticed that the chemical bottles were out in the open all wet so she decided to check and see if they were okay. How did she do this? She removed the top, held it directly under her nose and SNIFFED it! This immediately resulted in her throat burning and her chest tightening up (she has asthma as well) so off they went to the ER where she received an albuterol treatment and the third degree about sniffing household chemicals; "Now Dorothy, I have to ask this. Did you sniff the chemicals on purpose?" he asked her. She replied "well of course not!" Too bad they didn't call poison control ahead of time. I can just see her entering the ER and being asked "Are you the bleach sniffer?"!

Nine Months Old!

Can you believe that Ana is 9 months old today? Usually I am posting these monthly birthdays with a heavy heart because we were not together. We are so blessed to finally have her home with us! Happy Nine Months Baby Girl! Seriously, can life get any better? I now not only have my snuggly cuddly Ian to wake up to, but I know I can now always count on a big gummy grin and pure excitement from Ana first thing in the morning. Just knowing she's happy to see me immediately makes my day!

I can't believe the gains she has made in just the two weeks that we have been home. She is now sitting independently (with the occasional, "oops, looked too far backward" tumble of course), she is beginning to bear weight on her legs, she is consistently getting finger foods in her mouth, she responds to her name, and she is rolling both ways more and more every day. Oh and we've found that she's a real drama queen. A couple times now,she's been happily jumping away in the jumper as I'm making a bottle for her. As soon as she sees the bottle, she starts to fuss and cry and scream. It's like, "I see it, why isn't it in my mouth yet?" It's quite humorous actually. Today I showed her how to bang two blocks together and she just thought that was the funniest thing ever! I gave them to her and she actually copied me and did it herself. It's so amazing to see the light bulbs go on!

We had a really good first "new normal" day. It was really nice to have one on one time with Ana this morning. She was so happy, which made me feel really good. Nap times are still shorter than I'd like, she takes two 20-40 minute naps a day. It seems like that is the magic waking time. Even when she goes to bed at night, we can count on 20-40 minutes afterward her waking up crying. Must have something to do with sleep patterns, maybe it's a shallow sleep and enough for her to be aware of the noises and smells that are still different to her. I don't know, but she seems pretty happy during the day none the less, so I guess that's what really matters! Anyways, Ian got home from school, did his piano practice, his home work, and we even worked in a game of Sorry while Ana was napping. All in all, a very pleasant day. Well that was until I broke the news to Ian that he was having a bath and I was actually cooking something for dinner tonight...he's been far too accustomed to sandwiches for dinner for quite some time now! That resulted in a minor battle, but not one we aren't well accustomed to!

I'm going to leave you with a little comparison of what a difference we are seeing in Ana over the course of a week.

She went from playing with food on her tray to consistenly getting that food in her mouth:

She went from sitting with her hands supporting her to sitting up straight and sturdy:

She can really get going in her jumper now, she loves it!



Oh, by the way. The sweater that she is wearing in the top pictures is the one I crocheted for her when we got out of PGN. I couldn't fasten all the buttons, so it was likely her first and last time wearing it. Oh well, at least I got a picture!

The New Normal

We were eating dinner last night and I told Ian that tomorrow we would be back to normal again as daddy is going back to work. He politely informed me that it's not normal though because now we have Ana. We agreed that we would happily have a new normal now, and this was day one. I thought it was anyways.

My day was abruptly started at 3am when I was awakened by miss monkey pants kicking her feet in her crib. She does this when she wakes up in the morning, and just before she starts falling asleep at night. Her feet are always going, actually. Anyways, she wasn't fussing, just talking to herself mostly. I decided I wouldn't do anything unless she started to cry. She would seem like she was starting to fuss, but very briefly. By the time I would sit up she would be done and quiet down. I've found that sometimes she does this as she's falling asleep (her eyes are even closed) so I assumed she was just falling back to sleep. Well, this went on for about an hour before she actually started to cry. I picked her up and immediately knew why she was having trouble falling asleep, maybe even the reason for her waking so early. She had a diaper full (mother of the year, here I come!)! I brought her into her room and without turning on the over head light managed to clean her up and put a fresh diaper on. Well between the cold wipes and the light in the hallway, she was wide awake by the time we finished the task. I put her back in her crib and she started to cry so I picked her back up and brought her into bed with me. I had to lay her on my chest because of course monkey number one was taking up all the space between Greg and I. As soon as she noticed Ian was next to me, it was all over. I could almost see the wheels turning "Hey, that's my favorite boy! Let me touch him!!" she just wouldn't settle down. I tried to move my arm so it was in the way of her view of him but it turns out that Ian had rolled into me and his little face was directly between the bend in my elbow and my side so she could see his face and was trying to grab his nose. So I decided to take Ana into Ian's room to try and lie down in his bed. Well she has never been in Ian's room at night and she just became very freaked out by once again not knowing where she was. It was a downward spiral from there. She quickly became inconsolable so we had to go back into my room. On the way back, I noticed that Milo the wonder dog had escaped our bedroom and was in hot pursuit of that diaper I had just taken off Ana. I hissed at him to get out of there and he bolted down the stairs, to which I hissed again to get upstairs into our room. I got him corralled back in and pleaded with Greg to wake up and hold Ana while I went to make her a bottle. At this point she's been up for almost 2 hours and her stomach is undoubtedly beginning to growl. So I made her 4 ounces to hold her over and she did eventually fall asleep thankfully, and slept until a little after 7:00.

So Greg's alarm goes off at about 6:30 and I just can't open my eyes. Greg showered and got Ian up, dressed, and fed. He emptied the dishwasher and the trash, and got Ian's back pack all together (oh and apparently one of the animals vomited last night and he picked that up as well). Have I told you how much I love this man? I pulled myself out of bed at 7:00 and got into the shower myself but not before knocking the brand new roll of toilet paper into the toilet, arrgh! Anyways, I got myself ready and by this time Ana was awake and I got her up and dressed and got some cereal into her. At 7:52 (we were actually going to make the bus on time!) Ian announced that he doesn't think he has school today to which I reply, "Ian, you are going to school, nice try". He says "no, mumma really! Mrs. Schreiber told us we had next Monday off and that was last week!". So I go to the computer and wouldn't you know, he's right! Teacher workshop day today, no school. Geez, that little trip to Wal-Mart this morning just got a little more difficult!

Okay, I'm back from Wal-Mart, which is officially my first outing by myself with both kids. I think we managed okay actually! Ian says to me on the way home out of the blue, "I guess we'll have to wait until tomorrow to start the new normal!" I guess he's right...

Anyways, I'll leave you with some pictures I've been meaning to get up. I've been informed that there are people that have been anxiously awaiting an update from us...so sorry to keep you waiting! I had started 4 separate posts, but just haven't had the time to finish them for one reason or another. I've really wanted to post some pictures which has been part of the hold up as I hadn't figured out how to download them with the new computer set up we have. Also in my defense, every time I take a picture, it has to be converted in photo shop from the camera's raw file format to jpeg so I can use it, and that takes a while especially with the number of pictures I take! After the kids are in bed, to think about the amount of work it would take to give a decent update has just been too much to think about! So anyways, enough with the excuses, and on to the pictures...

Ana's first outside adventure. We first went out so Ian could ride his scooter and I carried Ana in the front carrier. Our neighbors came by to ask if we wanted to join them for a walk which we gladly accepted. I put Ana in the stroller and she was happy as a clam! The walk was quite humorous actually. We had five boys on bikes, finding it hard, after a long winter, to remember the "stay to the side" rule, absolute chaos! Then there was Marcia pushing an empty stroller because Emma abandoned it after exclaiming "I'm stuck, I'm stuck!" (she was strapped in the stroller) and Marcia took pity and let her get "unstuck". There was Ollie laying on the side of the road at one point screaming causing Marcia to sprint only to find he was playing with sticks, and Elizabeth who suddenly had to pee, and lastly there was Ian taking up the rear on his scooter whining "My legs are tired, I can't go any further" (yeah, this started about 15 minutes into the walk, lovely!). It was so nice to get out of the house though!!

Ian and his new bike. He finally admitted that "lightning strike" his old bike is too small for him. I think his admission was mostly because last year we took his training wheels off and he thought if he got a new bike he'd get one with training wheels. He wasn't very impressed when his new bike had only two wheels. He'll get there, he just needs some confidence! Here he is re-learning to ride without training wheels. He does fine, but is just really nervous about falling so doesn't want to ride far before throwing his legs down to stop himself.

Ana's first Easter! We invited everyone here this year because we didn't want to take Ana all over the place yet. She did okay, but did get pretty overwhelmed with all the people around. Ian had a ball finding the eggs the Easter Bunny hid, and tearing through his basket. He and daddy took turns wearing the blue grass filling.

Decorating eggs. Ian loves to dye Easter eggs. Just like with his play doh though, one color at a time is never enough. We usually end up with an assortment of purplish brown colored eggs. This year, he actually kept mostly to one color each and even took the time to stencil a couple eggs!

This Time Last Week...

This time last week we had just gotten on the final flight home to Manchester after nearly missing it! Ana was already a U.S. citizen and was soon to meet our closest family members. It feels like forever since then actually! Just thought I'd give an update of where we are a week later.

First, her personality. We have found her to be a rather serious baby actually. She really studies people for a long time (and I mean multiple meetings) before she starts to warm up. She gives a lot of the furrowed brow look. It's so neat though to see her personality unfolding to us. When we were in Guatemala, over the span of each day, it felt like she revealed something new to us every day. The first day (after that first night that we got her) she woke up smiling, and would give an occasional smile throughout that day. Then the next few days, she would start to smile at us, then started to babble a little bit when she was in her crib. When we came home, it feels like everything was sort of reset back to square one. She really needed to do her studying of the new surroundings and smells and just sort of regressed back to our first couple days together. Now, just about a week later we are still seeing new things every day. I am personally feeling closer and closer to her each day. I don't know if it's me, or her or a little bit of both but I like it. She has started to lay her head on my shoulder, and relax onto me where before she would feel kind of stiff, and just wouldn't let down her guard. I can't tell you how good it feels to feel her little body melt into mine. And I've noticed when I walk into the room where she is she smiles or giggles and seems to get excited to see me, so cool! Greg is doing well by her too. There have been a couple times these rough getting to sleep nights where he is the one who can get her to finally give in and fall asleep. He is so cute with her, I'm loving seeing him with a baby again!

As far as Ian's adjustment, he is doing well. Today at school he got to tell the class a little bit about Guatemala. I asked him what he talked about and he said, "I don't know, just about the swimming and the sand carpet." I'll have to ask his teacher what he actually talked about. He's really starting to warm back up to Ana again. He was very into her at the middle to end of our trip, but when we came home, I think the attention she was getting from not only us, but everyone around us wore on him. But he is really starting to pay her attention again, and seems to truly care for her. It does my heart so good to see him playing with her, or helping out with diaper changes (placing the clean diaper only of course, he won't even TOUCH a wet diaper even if it's been all folded up into a little bundle if we payed him!) or getting things for her. The only thing he can't tolerate is meal time. He has to have the weakest stomach of any child I know, and he cannot look at Ana's messy face while she is eating. All the pureed food that gets on her, and of course the massive amount of drool she is currently producing is just about enough to make him gag. In fact, he didn't say anything, but I saw him take a bit of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich today, watch me swipe food off her chin with her spoon and ran to the trash to spit the bite out. It's kind of comical actually. So I do my best to keep her as clean as I can for the time being, just wait until she starts feeding herself!! Tonight I left the room to get some lotion while I was getting Ana ready for bed, and I asked Ian to watch her and make sure she didn't roll anywhere (which she doesn't do much of anyways, but of course when I'm not watching is when she'll get into trouble right?) I left her pajamas open because I was going to put some lotion on her. Well I came back into the room and Ian was zipping up her pajamas for her ever so carefully, it was so sweet.

As far as Ana's development goes, we haven't called Early Intervention yet, we just want to wait until she is home a couple weeks before bringing complete strangers into the house but we will be setting things up soon. I am noticing though that she is sitting up a lot better now. She can sit for longer periods and even when she is leaning far forward can hoist herself up to a straight up position. It's amazing the difference in just this week! She has rolled over a couple times for us, and really seems to enjoy the jumper and exersaucer (we're really trying to get her to realize that her legs can do wonderful things for her!), she had a pretty good pincer grasp (oh yeah, she is a pincher, ouch!), but didn't really know what to do with it as far as feeding is concerned. We give her puffs or cheerios and she'll pick them up, but will generally just drop them. Well just yesterday, she picked up a puff and after first smacking herself in the forehead with it, she got it into her mouth, success! We were so excited, she gave us her furrowed brow and looked at us like we were crazy.

Sleep is getting better. Ian is going to sleep in his own bed again, and seems ready to actually go to sleep at the appropriate time. We dug out his old aquarium crib toy that plays music and lights up to try with Ana last night. When I layed her down and turned it on, she looked at it, then looked at me and giggled, then she looked back at it and back at me and giggled again. It was so stinkin' cute! The only drawback is that it only plays for 10 minutes, but she seemed to really enjoy it and after resetting it 3 or 4 times she actually fell asleep on her own. She still seems to wake 30-45 min after she initially goes down, but just starting that back up seems to be doing the trick for now. We're still trying to work out the whole nap timing thing, but I know it will all come.

Okay, I'm going to leave you with a little Ian giggle. I think I mentioned that Ana's primary babble at the moment is "ra ra ra ra". Well tonight we were on our way home from a trip to Wal-Mart and Ian says to us "When do you think Ana will learn how to say "sish coom bah?". Gave us a good giggle, hope it does the same for you.

Settling In

Sorry you haven't heard from us in a while. I wanted to be able to post pictures when I finally updated and I just finished getting them sorted last night. So hold on tight, you're in for a long ride!

First, I wanted to share our home coming. We left Guatemala at 2:30pm on Monday the 17th. It was so surreal. I kept waiting for someone to come barging onto the plane to tell us a mistake was made and that we couldn't take her home! To lift off the ground in Guatemala was amazing, it was really happening, and in a few short hours Ana would be a U.S. citizen!! The flight was fine, everyone held up very well (despite Greg sharing with Michelle that morning that there had been tornadoes in North Carolina the day before. Michelle is terrified of flying, I could've kicked Greg for sharing that information!) Ian got the window seat, and played games with Greg and Shelle. I sat behind with a free seat in between myself and another woman (who coincidentally was also named Ana) and held Ana. She sucked down her bottle before lift off, so I was worried about her ears, but she seemed fine. She was a little fussy on and off, but did really well over all. The biggest excitement was trying to feed her a jar of carrots while holding her in my lap, that was very interesting, and messy I assure you. Ana became an American the moment the plane touched down in Charlotte, North Carolina at 8:06pm. I remember the eyes starting to well up as the plane made that bumpy landing, it was just so overwhelming, I felt like the last year had all culminated in that moment. We had ended that journey, and a whole new one was just beginning, the journey of our newly formed family! We had a mere hour and a half to get through customs and make it to our connection to Manchester, so it was very tight! We changed Ana in the first bathroom we found, she was soaking wet and was a mess (remember the carrots on the plane?). I put on her "Kiss me I'm American" St. Patrick's Day t-shirt and we hurried into the customs line. We should have had Greg get in line while we were changing her because another plane landed just after us and the line was enormous! We finally made it through the line, and handed the customs guy our mysterious sealed packet (all the adoption documents that were given us with Ana's visa, we were told if it was opened, they wouldn't allow us into the country!). He looked at our passports, asked a few questions and handed us a tag with a number 5 on it which we were instructed to give to the next customs guy (darn, I knew it couldn't be that easy!). They sent us to a little room to wait while they processed our paperwork, it seemed to take forever! Finally he called us back out to the desk and handed us Ana's passport and congratulated us, then we were allowed to continue on our way. It wasn't until that point, after leaving customs that we were allowed to take any pictures or video (we were warned before leaving the plane that any use of cameras would result in confiscation so we weren't risking that!). My camera was stowed away, and Michelle's battery was dead. Greg shot a little video, hopefully we'll get that uploaded soon, it was a sweet moment! We had to recheck in to get to our next flight and once again the line was tremendously long! I really didn't think we'd make it in time. We were all panicking, Greg and Michelle went to two separate desks to ask if they would hold the plane for us, but they told them there was nothing they could do! The thought of being stuck in Charlotte overnight was agonizing! Long story short (see I will skip some of the silly details!) we did make it through just in time to run to the gate. We literally made it just as they were preparing to close the gate, we were so relieved!! We all slept most of that 2 hour flight and were overjoyed when we landed in Manchester! My mum and dad, Greg's mum, Steve and Amy (my brother and his wife), and Michael (Michelle's husband) were all there waiting for us as we came out of the gate. It was so wonderful to see those familiar faces as we rounded the corner, thanks for coming everyone, and thanks for taking pictures of the event, it is so nice to have those! After spending a little time with the family, and getting our luggage, we were so happy to be on our way home. I think it was almost 2:00 before we made it home and we headed straight to bed, Ian was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. Ana on the other hand was not ready to sleep. Who could blame the poor little thing, every time she woke up she was in a different place! We finally got her to sleep at around 3:00 which really wasn't bad. We all slept through to 9:00 the next morning, not nearly enough sleep, but we somehow felt rested. Day one home started with a trip to the doctor's office. Ana has had a cough (she even had one when we went to visit her in October) and she seemed to have been wheezing so I really wanted to doctor to take a listen to see if there was anything more going on. The doctor did the full work up on her, which we weren't planning on, but in hind sight, I'm glad it's all over with. I felt a tremendous amount of guilt that afternoon though. It had been suggested to us that our first visit to the doctor, we do not do any vaccinations, just a once over to make sure nothing immediate had to be dealt with. Well, our doctor felt it was very important that we get her started on her vaccinations as soon as possible. She made a good case, and we went for it she ended up getting four vaccinations that day, and having blood drawn to boot. I'm still a little tormented, but I am happy we got all the trauma out of the way with quickly, and she seems to be doing just fine. The doctor estimates that developmentally she is about 3 months behind, but expects her to catch up quickly. She suggested we call Early Intervention to get an assessment, and tips on how to help her catch up. We'll be calling next week some time. All of her blood work came back fine, so it's good to know we don't have anything medically at this time to worry about.

All in all, things are going quite well. Ian did return to school on Thursday, I was finally able to get up in time, and get him ready which was nice. He was really reluctant to go back, but he seems to have had a great couple days so we're happy for that! We are in the process of transitioning Ana to 3 meals a day and 3 bottles a day from 2 meals and 5 bottles a day and she seems to be taking that quite well. We also just today have started to try and get her into a two nap a day schedule versus her once in the afternoon nap. As I type, she is taking her second nap of the day. The first was about an hour this morning, I'm hoping for at least another hour this afternoon, we'll see! (Well, I'm editing to add that she only slept 45 minutes this afternoon. Even when you total the two naps today together it still doesn't equal the 2 hour one she was taking before, oh well, maybe tomorrow!) Night time sleep the past two nights have been rough. She is starting to have a real hard time settling down. I'm pretty sure she is teething, so I'm sure that has a lot to do with it. She just cries as soon as you leave the crib side. If you return, she gives you a big grin! On one hand, I'm glad she is testing us, I want her to figure out that she can trust us to be there, but I'll admit, I'm tired and it's been hard dealing with a baby who doesn't want to sleep at night! Add to that the fact that Ian is having trouble getting to sleep as well (he slept with us in Guatemala, we're trying to get him right back into falling to sleep in his own bed but it's not going great!), every one is still a little discombobulated I think! I'm hoping sorting out a daytime nap schedule might help Ana, and I hope that once she is situated, Ian will be able to settle down easier as well. It will all work out I'm sure! Anyways, I'll close for now with some pictures I'd been meaning to post from our trip. I haven't really taken a ton of pictures since we've been home, but I'll get on that soon!

From the coffee plantation:
A coffee plant:


Coffee beans drying in the sun. After this, they will go to be roasted:

Marimba players at the great restaurant we went to in Antigua:

Overlooking Antigua, it was a steep hike down to this point:


Ian racing Victor our tour guide back up the hill. Victor ran the whole way!

Ian didn't...He told Victor that was the first race he ever lost and chanted "Victor Fast..." for about 20 minutes into the car ride home:

A family picture at the outlook over Antigua:

Just some random Ana cuteness, the first one is on Embassy day:

At the Zoo:

Yes, they were very close, a little too close for comfort:



Love the giraffes, and big brother pushing the stroller:

The first picture taken at home. About 2:00am March 18th, 2008: